Ernie Ingenito following his arrest. GLOUCESTER COUNTY PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE
"Will you make me something to eat?" Ernie had asked.
Although she was a little surprised by his request, Kay prepared chops, french fries, and all the trimmings for him. Ernie cleaned his plate with the heartiness of a condemned man eating his last meal. He was getting ready to have a cup of coffee when Henry Sr. pulled into the driveway and blew his horn. Kay recalled that their boarder was outside for about forty-five minutes with his visitors and didn't say anything when he came back in. He disappeared back into his room, and around 4:30, freshly showered and dressed, Ernie left the house wearing his checked suit and an orchid gray lounge shirt. Kay was a little surprised because these were his dress clothes, not what he usually wore to work. When Ernie arrived back at the house around 8 P.M., Kay was too distracted by putting her children to bed to notice his actions. She recalled that he wasn't in the house long and that he looked "happy enough" when he left. As far as Kay was concerned, it was just another day.
Although Hannold was only prosecuting Ernie on a single count of murder, his next witness managed to convey the full horror of what had happened that night on Piney Hollow Road. When Jino Pioppi first took the stand, he calmly described life on the family farm where he had worked since quitting school at age sixteen. He testified that he had not seen Ernie since early October, because he was "always working out in the fields." About a week before the shootings, the two men had run into each other at Reed's gas station, but only exchanged a brief greeting. Preoccupied with farm-related matters, Jino never thought anything further about it. According to him, the evening of November 17 had started out no different from most nights on the farm.
Jino's composure suddenly shattered, and he sobbed as he recalled the carnage that followed after his sister appeared at their door. He testified that when he had dialed the operator, he pushed back the flowered curtain in the doorway and saw Ernie with a "long gun" shooting his mother and wife.
"I ran out," Jino said. "Pearl was sitting on the couch and John had left the house as soon as he came in. He left by the side door."
Jino said he heard four or five shots before he returned to the house to collect his children. As Ernie ran out the front door, Jino carried his two younger children out the kitchen door to drive them to safety. Pulling the car into the yard, Jino testified that he saw no sign of Ernie, but did see his brother's body sprawled across the front lawn. After leaving the children with his sister, Jino returned to the farm but did not enter the house. When the state police arrived, he walked with them to the Mazzoli home and saw Tessie on the floor in front of the television set, crying, with Michael lying on the couch in the small sitting room. Jino told the court he then picked up both of Tessie's sons and took them away.
During cross-examination, Sahl asked if Jino had ever argued with Ernie prior to November 17, or if the defendant had ever had a disagreement with Marion. Jino responded that he had gotten along with Ernie, but Marion sometimes quarreled with him. Although Ernie seemed to enjoy little Mando's company, Jino noted, referring to Jeannie, "He never liked the girl."
Tessie had managed to present a stoic front to the packed courtroom up until her uncle's testimony, but his vivid description of what occurred that night finally made her break down.
"They should have killed him!" she cried hysterically in front of the crowd, covering her face with her hands as she wept. As she was led from the courtroom, Tessie screamed again as she looked at her estranged husband, seated at the counsel table.
Tessie's outburst was not the only dramatic moment in court that day. When Armando Pioppi took the stand, his words were translated by Camden resident Sabba Verdiglione, a veteran interpreter who had worked with the courts for more than twenty-five years. Armando, the head of the Pioppi household, testified he had lived on Piney Hollow Road for forty years, after a stint in the coal mines when he first arrived in America. Recalling the night of November 17, Armando said he came from his bed attired only in his underwear when he heard the sound of gunfire. Armando told the court that when he went downstairs, he came upon the murdered bodies of his wife Theresa and his daughter-in-law Marion. When he realized young Jeannie was still alive, he carried her into the living room and placed her on the sofa. Armando related that he then saw his daughter Pearl dying of multiple bullet wounds on the floor in the dining room. As he walked across the street in search of Mike Mazzoli, Armando found his son John lying in a gutter between the driveway and the edge of Piney Hollow Road. Across the road, Mike was already dead, while his granddaughter Tessie lay seriously wounded. Although Tessie tried to get him to call the police, Armando went back to his own home, where Pearl was finally able to tell him what happened.
Armando's reserve broke when he was asked about his son John. Staring coldly at the defendant, the old farmer said, "You tell me this is the man that killed him." When the prosecutor asked again about his oldest son, Armando said, "He was at the side there and I left him and I hollered and I say, `He also kill my John. Mother, he also kill my John."' Sahl declined to cross-examine the witness, whose words had obviously shaken a number of those present in court. More than a few heads nodded sympathetically when Armando left the witness stand, but the patriarch of the Pioppi clan wasn't quite through. As he passed the defendant's table, Armando had to be restrained by court officers as he stretched his knotted hands toward Ernie and cried in Italian, "Assassin! Assassin! If I could have you in my hands I would choke and kill you!" Ernie, who kept his gaze fixed on the judge's bench during the outburst, didn't turn his head as the older man was led from the courtroom.
Nine-year-old Jeannie Pioppi, a bright-eyed brunette, solemnly repeated the oath to "tell the truth, and nothing but the truth" when she was sworn in later that day. The fourthgrade student from Lake School told the court that she had taken Holy Communion when she was eight and attended mass at Our Lady of Victories Church every Sunday, unless she didn't have a way to get there. Despite Sahl's objection to her testimony, Jeannie took the stand and calmly re-created the events of November 17 before an enthralled courtroom. Most of the spectators and some of the jury members grew teary-eyed as she related how the peace and quiet of the household had been shattered with Aunt Pearl's appearance at their door. Jeannie testified that she heard the shooting at the front door a few minutes later. She watched as Pearl sprang up from the sofa in the sitting room and then turned to see Ernie step over her grandmother's body and into the entry hall.
The child followed as Pearl ran into the dining room, but her aunt turned and pushed Jeannie ahead of her, apparently hoping that the heavy wooden dining room table would offer the little girl adequate protection. The defendant later testified that he shot Jeannie when Pearl tried to use the girl as a human shield as she fled. But Jeannie probably was shot once as Pearl attempted to shove her out of harm's way. Stunned by what was happening, Jeannie may have been cowering next to the table rather than taking shelter beneath it when she was shot a second time. After her aunt dove into a dining room closet, she saw Ernie stalk toward it and fire through the door. As Pearl gripped the knob from the inside, the accused yanked the door open. With greater poise than some of the adult witnesses, the child testified that when Pearl raised her arms to protect herself, Ernie lowered his weapon and took aim. Jeannie told the court Ernie "had a little gun" that he pushed under Pearl's arms.
"Aunt Pearl had her arms folded over her chest," she said, demonstrating how her aunt looked as she recalled the scene. "Ernie stuck the gun under her arms and kept shooting."
He continued to fire at close range after Pearl fell to the floor, Jeannie testified. Ernie was still shooting as the child ran from the room. According to the Vineland Times Journal, at one point, the little girl left the witness stand and pointed her fingers like a gun into the prosecutor's chest to show how Ernie shot his mother-in-law. The child became so engrossed in telling the story that, until Hannold prompted her, she forgot to add that sh
e had been wounded as well.
"Were you shot?" asked the prosecutor.
"Oh, yes, I was," she said.
Tears continued to flow in the courtroom when ten-yearold Barbara Mazzoli, the daughter of Frank and Hilda Mazzoli, testified about Ernie's visit to her home in Minotola later that night. Barbara cried as she told the court how Ernie shot her parents. Although Sahl once again objected to the child's testimony, the fifth grader who attended St. Michael's Church in Minotola with her family each Sunday related in detail how Ernie came in through the kitchen door with a gun in his hand. She testified that the defendant shot Hilda while she was putting away the groceries, then turned the gun on Frank when he appeared in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. When Ernie shot her father, he barely missed Barbara's three-year-old brother, who was clinging in fear to his father's leg.
"Ernie said, `I got the others and I have to finish you,"' the child testified.
The next witness that day was Dr. Oliver Edwin Owen, the Philadelphia pathologist who presented the results of the postmortem he had performed on Pearl Mazzoli on November 18 at the DeMarco Funeral Home in Vineland. After describing the number of bullet wounds and their locations, he said that Pearl had died of "multiple gunshot wounds of the jaw, of the extremities and torso."
Emotions were still running high on Friday, January 12, when Theresa Pioppi's brother, Dominick Biagi, was sworn in. In broken English, Biagi told the court he had lived with his family on Piney Hollow Road "off and on" for about ten years. The witness cried heavily as he told the court about the horror he discovered at the Pioppi farm around 9:20 on the night of the shooting. He described the bodies of his sister Theresa and her daughter-in-law Marion. After running across the street to the Mazzolis' home, Biagi returned to the Pioppi house. When he found his niece, Biagi said, "All I could see of Pearl was bullets and blood."
New Jersey state trooper Donald Smalley was then sworn in as the next witness for the prosecution. The five-year veteran testified that he was on duty at the station record desk on the night of November 17, 1950, answering the telephone and entering calls in the station's log book. The phone rang around 9:00 P.M.; after the initial cry for help, he heard the phone drop and no one returned. At the prosecutor's request, Smalley had measured the distance from the Pioppi farm to D'Augustine's appliance store to demonstrate that Ernie easily could have driven to the store in a matter of minutes. But Sahl objected strenuously when Hannold introduced the testimony, arguing that the information was not relevant.
After Smalley was excused, Tpr. George Yeager took the stand. While the prosecutor and defense counsel had not hesitated to challenge each other's statements during the trial or object to witness testimony, their first overt disagreement occurred over the account given by Yeager. After relating how he and Tpr. Herbert Kolodner had been dispatched to the scene, the two-year veteran testified they had discovered bodies and wounded victims at both the Mazzoli and Pioppi homes. Yeager, who was driving the patrol car, told the court that he saw a figure, later identified as John Pioppi, lying partly in the driveway when they arrived. He said he later moved the body slightly out of the way to allow other police cars and ambulances access to the driveway of the Pioppi house.
When they entered the Pioppi house, Yeager stopped to examine the body of Theresa before he checked on Marion, who was lying nearby. At that point, Yeager said Armando came down the hall and indicated that the officers should go across the street to the Mazzoli house. Yeager and Kolodner, accompanied by Armando, walked over to the other house, where they found Tessie lying just inside the front door. Sahl objected strenuously when Yeager began to tell the jury about his conversation that night with Ernie's wife, after he took her son Michael from her lap and placed him on a nearby sofa. In a sarcastic tone, Hannold declared, "Ernest can say anything but his wife can't." The defense attorney's retort was inter rupted by Judge Wick, who sustained Sahl's objection since Tessie, in fact, was prevented by law from testifying against her husband.
Yeager testified that as he walked across the living room, he noticed Mike's legs extending past the doorway of the dining room. After discovering baby Ernest still lying safely in his crib, the officers reassured Tessie that help was on the way. They returned to the Pioppi house, where they found Jeannie lying on the sofa by the bay window in the sitting room. Armando then guided the officers toward the dining room, where his daughter Pearl, Yeager said, "was lying on the floor moaning and rolling around." When help arrived, Yeager said that he accompanied Tessie, Pearl, and Jeannie to Newcomb Hospital, where he stayed until 3:00 A.M. in an effort to get further information from them. While he spoke to Tessie and Jeannie, Pearl died before Yeager could interview her. His story was corroborated by Kolodner, a rookie with six months on the job, when he took the stand later that day.
The newspapers noted that Tessie was in court that Friday, seated in her usual place. Ernest Ingenito Sr. and his daughter, Mary Jane Wald of Philadelphia, sat about five feet away from her, listening to the testimony.
When Sgt. George DeWinne took the stand, Sahl objected immediately to his testimony because the sergeant included information about the other slayings that had occurred that night. Although Judge Wick overruled the attorney's objection, he did agree that testimony had to relate in some way directly to the shooting of Pearl Mazzoli; it could not just be offered to show the defendant's state of mind. DeWinne then identified some of the ammunition that had been presented into evidence as taken from the Mazzoli and Pioppi homes on the night of the shootings. He was followed by Tpr. Leonard Cunningham, who related what he had seen during the initial investigation on Piney Hollow Road. Cunningham then described what hap pened after he and his partner, Tpr. Raymond Vorberg, were dispatched to Oak Road, where they later captured Ernie. Cunningham identified the weapons shown in court as the same ones they had taken from the defendant on the night of his arrest, noting that they had all been loaded at the time.
Following Cunningham's testimony, other troopers took the stand to identify different bullets and shell fragments that had been collected from the Mazzoli and Pioppi homes. When Det. Carl Dereskwicz was sworn in, the defense counsel attacked his testimony because the fingerprints he had taken from objects at the scene did not all relate to the shooting of Pearl Mazzoli. Despite Sahl's claim that the detective's testimony should be inadmissible, he was overruled by Judge Wick. During the trial, it was obvious that Ernie was paying close attention to the testimony. Reporters observed that he took a lot of notes and frequently consulted with his lawyer. While he constantly shot glances back toward his wife, Tessie scrupulously avoided his gaze.
Veteran state trooper William B. Piana, a detective corporal stationed in Hammonton, told the court about Ernie's interrogation, which had occurred in the early morning hours of Saturday, November 18. Ernie listened attentively as Piana testified. According to the detective, after Ernie had been brought to the Malaga barracks, the prisoner said, "Why don't they put me in the electric chair and get it over with?" The detective noted that Ernie admitted he had gone to the Mazzoli home that night, but "they wouldn't let me see the kids." The defendant also told Piana that his wife had previously said he would have to "see Lipman and pay $20 a week support and get a court order" to see the children.
Piana said that Ernie admitted he followed Pearl to the Pioppi home "to get my mother-in-law. She had caused me a lot of trouble." During the interrogation, Ernie reportedly said that while he knew he had shot the adults, he didn't remember shooting nine-year-old Jeannie Pioppi. The detective testified that Ernie said he went to Minotola to "get Hilda" who had been doing "a lot of talking about me." Although Ernie had been forthcoming to the state police, Piana said that after Gloucester County detective George Small entered the room where the accused was being held after his arrest, Ernie said, "I got nothing to say. I did it and that's all there is to it." Afterward, Ernie became uncooperative with authorities.
Piana said that Ernie was carrying a total of
166 live cartridges in his clothing, found when he was searched at the Malaga barracks. Such a large amount of ammunition could be considered excessive, especially in view of the fact that Ernie claimed he only brought the guns along to scare his in-laws. If his actions were not premeditated, why had he spent the preceding weeks buying so much ammunition? This was a question that the defense counsel apparently never addressed. The detective testified that Ernie said he spent his time "just riding around" after he left the Mazzoli home in Minotola.
Sahl tried to have Piana's testimony stricken from the record, basing his motion on the claim that earlier statements attributed to Ernie by Piana had not been made voluntarily. According to his lawyer, the defendant had been "hounded and harassed" during a grueling, nonstop interrogation. But the trooper indicated that the questioning had not gone on for the entire time that Ernie was in custody. Hannold raised the point that Ernie had been questioned for a total of less than five hours, which was a relatively short time given the serious nature of the charges. Judge Wick denied Sahl's motion, asserting that the statements, in his opinion, had been made voluntarily.
Lt. Hugh J. Boyle, who had served twenty years with the New Jersey state police, was the last witness called that day. He testified that he had been able to match spent shells from the crime scenes with three of the four guns owned by Ernie. Boyle, who was assigned to the Crime Laboratory of the State Bureau of Identification in Trenton, explained how each gun had an individual "fingerprint" that matched the marks found on different shells found at the scene. He proceeded to identify the bullets that were submitted into evidence by the prosecution as having come from the guns used at the Mazzoli and Pioppi homes. Boyle testified that the bullet removed from Pearl by Dr. Owen the day after the shooting was fired from the .30-caliber U.S. Army carbine found in Ernie's car the night he was captured. The carbine was capable of firing fifteen shots before it needed to be reloaded. According to Boyle, a bullet removed from Tessie's shoulder at Newcomb Hospital had been fired from a .32-caliber Harrington and Richman semiautomatic revolver, another gun in Ernie's possession. The lieutenant testified that a bullet found between the undershirt and back of Mike Mazzoli at the Barclay Funeral Home in Clayton was shot from a .38-caliber German-type revolver, commonly called a Luger. Ernie owned such a gun. Sahl declined the opportunity to challenge Boyle's testimony.
Rain of Bullets: The True Story of Ernest Ingenito's Bloody Family Massacre Page 11