"I shot them," he muttered, still looking down.
"Well, where did you go first?" Stanger asked.
Ernie then outlined what had happened. He told Stanger that he had stolen the carbine and the bullets for it in 1943, while he was still in the Army. In the weeks preceding the shootings, he bought bullets for the other guns from different stores throughout South Jersey. At about 8:00 P.M. on November 17, Ernie said he had left the Rulis home with the guns in his car and headed toward Piney Hollow Road.
"I done it and that's all there is to it," Ernie said. "I shot the whole works."
When he asked Ernie how the incident started, Ernie told him about the fight with his in-laws and said, "I shot Mike, then I shot my wife." Stanger asked why Ernie had gone across the street to the Pioppis, and in response the younger man said, "To get my mother-in-law. She was the cause of a lot of my trouble." During the trial, Ernie would disavow all memories of shooting anyone that night. But during his interrogation, he freely told Stanger that the only person he couldn't remember shooting was nine-year-old Jeannie Pioppi. He admitted that he went straight to Minotola after leaving Piney Hollow Road and his purpose was "To get Hilda. She'd been doing a lot of talking and giving me trouble." Despite his statements to the prosecutor, Ernie later refused to sign a formal confession. He once again told Stanger that he wasn't about to repeat the mistake he had made in the Army, when his superiors had "twisted" his words and used the signed statement against him. But a brown stenographer's notebook, still held in 2008 in the files of the Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office, included a damning statement: "I did it what more do you want," right above Ernie's sprawling signature.
After a while, the troopers took the prisoner out to the sun parlor, a room normally reserved for witnesses or members of the public. There, Piana sat on one sofa and Conroy sat with the prisoner on another as other law enforcement officials came and went. As soon as they sat down, Ernie said, "I did it. Give me the chair." Piana explained to Ernie that he would first have to appear before a judge in court before a decision would be made about his punishment. The two detectives then questioned Ernie for about another hour, but their prisoner insisted that the shootings started because the Mazzolis wouldn't let him see his sons. When Piana asked where he went first, Ernie said, "I went to the Mazzoli home. I went to the home of my mother-in-law."
"Why did you go there?" Piana asked.
"For the purpose of trying to see my children," Ernie said.
"Who did you see first when you went to the home of your in-laws?" Piana asked.
"I saw my wife and told her I wanted to see the kids," Ernie answered. "She said, `You will have to see Mr. Lipman, the lawyer. Arrangements are being made. You have got to pay $20 a week support and you also have to get a court order to see the children."'
"What else happened?" Piana asked.
"By that time, Mike Mazzoli, my father-in-law, come over, and then my mother-in-law come over, and all three of them started to talk to me at the same time," Ernie said.
"What happened then?"
Ernie remained silent.
"Who did you shoot first, your father-in-law or your wife?" Piana prompted.
"I shot Mike, my father-in-law, and I shot my wife," Ernie said.
"Where was your mother-in-law, Pearl?"
"She went across the street," Ernie said.
"Did you go across the street?" the detective asked.
"I did."
"Why did you go across the street?" Piana asked.
"To go get my mother-in-law," Ernie said again. "She was the cause of a lot of my trouble."
Piana asked him to explain that remark, but Ernie refused to offer any further details. He did, however, admit to shooting the other adults.
"Did you shoot Jeannie, the little nine-year-old girl?" Piana asked, trying to suppress his anger.
"I don't remember that," Ernie claimed. "But I shot the others."
"Where did you go from there?" the detective asked. "Over to Minotola? Why did you go to Minotola?"
"To get Hilda," Ernie repeated. "She is doing a lot of talking about me and gives me a lot of trouble."
"Did you shoot her?" Piana asked.
"Yes, I shot her and Frank."
Piana then asked Ernie if he had ever been arrested previously and about the Army carbine he had stolen from Fort Belvoir. After Ernie said he had swapped a Mixmaster for the Mauser, he admitted the other handgun had been in his possession for a "long time." At 2:45 A.M., Lieutenant Westphalen ordered the defendant and the two troopers who arrested him to have their photographs taken by the newspaper reporters, who were still hovering at the front of the building. After they finished, the troopers escorted Ernie to the kitchen, where other officers and county officials were waiting. George Small tried once again to get Ernie to sign the statement about the shootings. But when Small asked Ernie what happened that day, Ernie said, "I ain't got nothing to say."
"Why have you got nothing to say?" Small asked.
"Because I done it and that is all there is to it," Ernie said. "I am not going to say nothin'."
Ernie continued to admit his guilt periodically through the night. Small and Stanger stayed with Ernie and the troopers in the kitchen until about 4:20 A.M. After they left, the troopers continued the interrogation for about an hour after that. Together with the prisoner, they took time out to eat and smoke cigarettes between questions. At six o'clock in the morning, the officers tried once again to get Ernie to sign a confession, but Ernie only repeated, "I done it. That is all there is to it. I will not say anything more." At that point, Lieutenant Westphalen advised him once again of his rights.
At around 3:30 that morning, as Ernie was sitting in the sun parlor of the Malaga barracks with the two state police detectives, members of the Pioppi and Mazzoli families gathered at the two farm houses on Piney Hollow Road. Dominick Biagi had asked Sergeant DeWinne to contact his son James in Landisville and ask him to bring help. While he waited for other family members to arrive, Biagi was consoled by Reverend Mazzolini and Vincent Doyle and Kevin O'Doherty, two curates from Sacred Heart Church in Vineland. When the Biagis assembled at the Pioppi house, their assignment was much more grim than answering questions; they had been drafted to clean up the blood that stained floorboards and carpeting and try to return both homes to some semblance of order. The suspect's vehicle had been moved to John Spatafore's garage in Malaga, where it was photographed by the authorities.
In the early morning hours, as the police continued to piece together what had happened the night before, Ernie was remanded to the Gloucester County Jail in Woodbury. As he was processed, state troopers remained on guard in the cold to prevent the press or any intruders from gaining access to either the Mazzoli or Pioppi farms. At eight o'clock in the morning, Ernie was arraigned before municipal court judge George Shunk in Franklinville and was ordered held without bail for the grand jury. Refusing food for the first few days of his confinement, the prisoner seemed content to live on coffee and cigarettes. At the time, Ernie smoked about two packs a day. By the following Monday morning, his "hunger strike" was over, and the prisoner breakfasted on prunes, fruit juice, coffee, and toast. Settling quickly into the familiar routine of prison life, Ernie slept well each night, according to Warden William Mollineaux, and apparently enjoyed talking about his work as a repairman with the guards. He refused, however, to say anything more about the shootings, even to his own family when they showed up in the days that followed. Despite being pressed, Ernie gave only vague answers to their questions.
A few days after his arrest, Ernie was examined by two state psychiatrists, Dr. J. B. Spradley and Dr. Robert S. Garber, both affiliated with the New Jersey State Hospital in Trenton. Both doctors, who had previously judged Howard Unruh to be insane, declared that Ernie was "sane at all times" during the shootings. Ernie was cooperative for the most part with prison officials, but he continued to refuse to sign a formal statement admitting his guilt.
Two
days after Ernie's arrest, authorities visited the Rulis house in Cecil. After searching his room, they removed all of Ernie's property, including his foot locker, a suitcase, personal papers, and three gold rings, among them the wedding band he had received from Tessie. Four days after the shootings, Al Rulis was asked to go to the Malaga barracks where Troopers Morrissey and Myers took his statement. Rulis told the officers that Ernie moved into his home on the evening of October 14, bringing with him clothes and other property. According to Rulis, Ernie never mentioned any disputes with his in-laws during the four weeks that he lived in Cecil. Rulis told authorities that he remembered seeing Ernie with a .32-caliber pistol and added, "I think he showed me that Luger once."
Although the September session of the Gloucester County Grand Jury had already ended, the panel was recalled on Friday, December 1, at 1:30 P.M. to consider five murder indictments against Ernie, as well as indictments for the assaults on his wife and her cousin Jeannie. Only the names of the victims changed from one to the next on Indictments 56, 57, 58, 59, and 60, which read:
The State of NJ vs. Ernest Ingenito-September Term 1950
The Grand Jurors of the State of New Jersey for the County of Gloucester upon their respective oaths present, that Ernest Ingenito on the 17th day of November 1950 in the township of Franklin in the County of Gloucester aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of this Court, with force and arms, did willfully, feloniously and of his malice aforethought, kill and murder Michael Mazzoli in the peace of God and of this State then and there being contrary to the provisions of RS 2:138-1, and against the peace of this State and government and dignity of the same.
At the same time, Ernie was indicted by the grand jury on counts 61 and 62 of atrocious assault and battery for shooting Tessie and Jeannie.
Ernie declared himself too poor to pay for a lawyer, so Frank Sahl of Woodbury was appointed by the court on Decem ber 1 as his counsel. The defendant initially seemed grateful for the attorney's assistance. But Ernie's relationship with Sahl soon degenerated; it was marred by arguments and conflict, a pattern repeated from Ernie's past. The accused quickly came to see himself as more adept at the law than his attorney, who had been in practice for almost twenty years. As the trial progressed, Ernie began to nitpick some of his lawyer's decisions regarding how his defense should be presented. Despite the fact that Ernie later swore he was never told he could call witnesses to appear at his trial, an order signed by both Judge Elmer B. Woods and Judge John B. Wick, stated: "And it is further ordered that the said Ernest Ingenito have the State's Writ of Subpoena for the compulsory attendance of witnesses upon said trial." It seems unlikely that Sahl, a veteran attorney, would have failed to ask his client if anyone should be called to testify on his behalf. As a result, the order casts doubt on Ernie's later claims that the witnesses he would have called-who died before testifying in the years between his first and second trials-could have helped his case.
When he was arraigned on the morning of December 12, Ernie entered a formal plea of not guilty to the charges of murder and atrocious assault and battery before Judge Wick in the Gloucester County Court in Woodbury. During his arraignment, local newspapers reported that Ernie could barely be heard as he entered his "not guilty" plea in a courtroom empty of spectators. His demeanor was dramatically different from the cynical suspect who just two weeks earlier had challenged authorities to "give him the chair." A trial date of January 8, 1951, was set by the court.
Although the two charges from Atlantic County of atrocious assault and battery were still hanging over Ernie's head, officials there would later opt to not prosse, or not proceed, with the charges against Ernie for assaulting Frank and Hilda Mazzoli. The prosecutor's office there felt that Glouces ter County should have priority in prosecuting Ernie for the murders and assaults that occurred in that jurisdiction. It was believed that because of the nature of the charges against him in Gloucester County, there was no way Ernie could escape the death penalty. This dismissal would prove to be just one of several apparent missteps that both the prosecution and the judiciary would make in their overall handling of the case against Ernest Ingenito.
In the meantime, Sahl asked three psychiatrists to examine the prisoner on December 29, in preparation for the trial. A short, shrewd man with a high-pitched voice, the Woodbury attorney was known for his aggressive tactics in the courtroom. He wanted to be ready in case he needed to plead his client insane or temporarily insane. The psychiatrists included noted criminologist Dr. Ralph S. Banay, who had examined Ernie in 1944 while he was an inmate at the Army disciplinary barracks in Green Haven, New York. At that time, Banay was the head of the psychiatric clinic at Sing Sing; in 1950, he served as secretary of the Legal Aspects of Medicine for the American Psychiatrists' Association. The others were Dr. Baldwin Keys and Dr. A. M. Orenstein, both of Philadelphia and considered noted authorities in the field. The psychiatrists who had examined Ernie for the prosecution had declared that he was sane at the time of the shootings. The doctors for the defense would agree that while he was sane, Ernie showed definite signs of antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by a lack of skills needed to successfully survive in the outside world. At that time, a person with antisocial personality disorder was often referred to as a psychopath, or sociopath, and described as someone who often breaks the law and is irritable and aggressive-behavior that leads to fighting or assaults. Ernie, who had displayed such behavior in the past, had now proven that he was an accident who was no longer waiting to happen.
Newspapers throughout the United States plastered the tragedy across their front pages. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, they read about the "mad massacre" in the La Crosse Tribune, while the residents of Lowell, Massachusetts, devoured the tale of the killer vet in the Lowell Sun. In some papers, the story temporarily replaced articles about American troop movements in Korea, where the fighting showed no signs of stopping. Pulp magazines such as Confidential Detective Cases and Front Page Detective ran photo spreads that shocked and titillated readers' appetites with headlines like "Bride of Five Mad Deaths." Even Life, the most popular weekly magazine of the time, printed a story about the crime, while Stars & Stripes carried it to the troops overseas. In the weeks that followed, the shootings would be overshadowed in the national media by the conflict in Korea and, locally, by the arrival of a merciless storm that left 2,500 people homeless in Cumberland County. But as 1950 drew rapidly to a close, the face of just one reputed murderer dominated the news.
espite the national media frenzy, few spectators attended the opening of the trial of Ernest Martin Ingenito before Judge John B. Wick, on the cold winter day of January 8, 1951. Wick, the law partner of U.S. senator Robert C. Hendrickson, had only recently been assigned to the bench, but he already enjoyed a good reputation as a fairminded judge. This was the second murder trial of his career. Wick had previously presided over a case in which the defendant had been sent to the electric chair after being convicted of killing a Pitman girl named Alberta Sharp.
The Ingenito trial was held at the stately Gloucester County Courthouse, situated on Broad Street at the center of historic Woodbury, one of the oldest towns in New Jersey. The huge courtroom featured amphitheatre-style seating and a balcony that, in the coming days, would be filled to capacity. But that day, most of the seats were empty, except for a handful of interested onlookers and newspaper reporters assigned to cover the case.
The trial started at 10:33 A.M., when Ernie was transported from his cell at the Gloucester County Jail on nearby Cooper Street. Dressed in a tan gabardine double-breasted suit, he was led into the courtroom handcuffed to Undersheriff Thomas Lyons. Ernie sat quietly next to his lawyer, paying careful attention to everything that was going on around him. Newspaper reporters noted that his slightly heightened color was the only indication he might not have been as calm on the inside as he was on the outside. Watching from the courtroom were Landis and John Mazzoli, two brothers of Mike Mazzoli, Ernie's deceased father-in-law. No member
of the Ingenito family was present for the opening of the trial.
The day was spent primarily in selecting a jury that was acceptable to both Sahl and Gloucester County prosecutor E. Milton Hannold, who would present the state's case against the defendant. Hannold was a respected prosecutor and the brother of Harold Hannold of Woodbury, the Republican majority leader in the New Jersey State Senate. The first name drawn by Sheriff Wayne B. Ralston in the jury selection process was that of Aura resident Caldwell McCormack, who was challenged by the State because he told the court that he did not support use of the death penalty. The second potential juror, Mary Singleton of Woodbury, was dismissed for the same reason. Both the defense and the prosecutor continued to challenge additional jurors, dismissing those who voiced the opinion that Ernie was insane at the time of the incident, as well as anyone who professed to be friends with either the defendant's or the victims' families. Sahl and Hannold closely questioned every prospective juror regarding personal relationship with their in-laws.
The first juror was finally approved by both sides right before the lunch break at 12:10 P.M. Florence E. Henderson was a forty-nine-year-old widow from Woodbury who worked parttime as an office clerk. Since the attorneys were challenging so many potential jurors, Wick set a historic precedent that day when he decided the selection process would continue after normal hours. For the first time in more than 265 years, court remained in session until 9 o'clock, but only seven more jurors were picked by the end of the night. When the selection process was completed the following day, Henderson's fellow jurors and alternates included Sarah Clark, a homemaker from National Park with six children; Catherine Bradshaw, 59, secretary of the National Park Board of Tax Assessors and a Democratic Party worker; Catherine "Kitty" Gellenthin, Catherine Bradshaw's daughter, a divorced woman who also lived in National Park; Louise Schoener, 58, of Woodbury; James Dersch Jr. of Paulsboro; Merrit Scotten Sr., 57, of Pitman; and Dorothy J. Hiles of Clarksboro. The remaining jurors were Howard C. Jenkins Jr., an oil company employee from Paulsboro; Thomas C. Saulino of Gibbstown; Irene Robinson, a homemaker from Franklinville; Fred 0. Banscher, a retiree from Glassboro; Emma Lafferty, a Woodbury homemaker; and Horace Hopkins from Pitman. Edward Hagenbarth was named foreman. Judge Wick indicated he expected the trial would not last more than four days. He advised the jurors that they would be sequestered for the duration at the Pitman Hotel in the nearby town of Pitman. The forty-three-room hotel, built in 1901, was the only facility in the immediate area that was large enough to accommodate everyone.
Rain of Bullets: The True Story of Ernest Ingenito's Bloody Family Massacre Page 8