Ricky Kasso was 17 and living in Northport, a harbor town on the North Shore of Long Island, when Suffolk County detectives arrested him in early July 1984 in the killing of Gary Lauwers of Northport in June. On Friday, July 6, he was arraigned on a murder charge in Suffolk County District Court and held without bail. The next day he was dead. He died by suicide in custody on Saturday, July 7, 1984. He never entered a plea to an indictment, no grand jury ever voted one against him, and no court made any finding about him. In law he died an accused man.
The case reached a national audience because Suffolk County police, in the first week of July, described the killing as the work of a devil-worship cult. Within days the district attorney was saying something quite different, and no court ever tested the claim. By the end of that month the only person left to answer for the death in a courtroom was a second youth whom police had at first said took no part in the killing itself.
The case broke open on Sunday, July 1, 1984, when police received an anonymous call about a death in Northport. Over the next days detectives from the county police homicide squad, working alongside the Northport Village police, questioned several young people from the town. Gary Lauwers had been dead for some weeks by then, and the inquiry confirmed his death that Wednesday, July 4.
From those interviews detectives built an account of a night in June. Police said that a group of about a dozen young people had been present, that Kasso was the one responsible for the killing, and that an 18-year-old who was with him had not taken part in the killing itself. A third youth, 16, who police said had seen what happened without taking part, gave detectives a statement and was expected to be the prosecution's principal witness. Kasso and the 18-year-old, police said, had had no settled place to live for about a year.
Detectives arrested the two older youths. Both were arraigned on murder charges in Suffolk County District Court on Friday, July 6, and both were held without bail. Police said more arrests might follow and that the case would go before a grand jury the following week.
By then Kasso already had a case pending. The Suffolk County sheriff said on July 7 that he was awaiting trial on a charge brought in April 1984 over an incident at a cemetery. That charge, too, was never tried.
The two youths were taken to the county jail that Friday afternoon. Kasso had not been placed on suicide watch, and the sheriff's office said afterward that he had shown no undue stress and had been treated like any other inmate. He died by suicide on Saturday, July 7, 1984. The sheriff's office then put the 18-year-old under constant observation.
His death ended the case against him. The charge on which he had been arraigned was never put to a jury. Nothing police said he had told them was ever offered in evidence, and no witness against him was ever cross-examined.
The county grand jury began hearing testimony in Riverhead on Tuesday, July 10. About a dozen witnesses were expected, among them the youth police described as an eyewitness and several others who, police said, had known about the killing and had not told anyone in authority. A spokesman for the district attorney declined to say how long the testimony would take or to identify any witness, noting that grand jury proceedings are secret. Several of the young witnesses had received threats by telephone and were given police protection, with a Northport Village patrol car assigned to watch over them. Some of them were understood to have been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony.
The grand jury acted quickly. Shortly before noon on Wednesday, July 11, it returned an indictment charging the 18-year-old with murder in the second degree, alleging that he had acted in concert with Kasso. The district attorney announced the indictment himself. It did not set out the role the youth was said to have played, and by then the police account of that role had hardened: where detectives had said on July 7 that he had no part in the killing itself, they now alleged that he had encouraged it and taken part.
Kasso, already dead, was not named as a defendant.
On Friday, July 13, 1984, the 18-year-old appeared in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead. Through his lawyer he pleaded innocent to the indictment charging second-degree murder. Defense counsel told the court that Kasso had been the killer and was now dead, and that the youth before it was being made to carry the weight of a case that belonged to someone else.
The prosecutor answered that the statements of witnesses, together with the defendant's own admissions, made a conviction highly probable. He told the court that the youth had been living in a car at the time of his arrest and would likely flee if released. The court held him without bail.
From that day the prosecution went forward without Kasso.
Within a week the case looked different from the way it had been first presented. The district attorney said later in July that he did not believe the killing had followed any satanic code, and he described the teenagers' imitation of a devil cult as juvenile. The Northport Village police chief, who had heard Kasso's statements in the first days of the inquiry, said publicly that the group was made up of misfits rather than devil worshipers. Police said the group had also been linked to an incident in a local park some three years earlier.
The killing of Gary Lauwers was never the subject of a verdict against Kasso. The religious or group character police gave it in the first days of July 1984 was an allegation, disputed within the month by the district attorney and the village police chief, and never found by any court. The police account of the co-defendant's part changed between July 7 and the indictment of July 11.
April 1984: Kasso is charged over an incident at a cemetery.
June 1984: Gary Lauwers is killed in Northport.
July 1, 1984: Police receive an anonymous call about a death in Northport.
July 4, 1984: The inquiry confirms the death of Gary Lauwers.
Early July 1984: Suffolk County detectives arrest Kasso and an 18-year-old after questioning several young people.
July 6, 1984: Both youths are arraigned on murder charges in Suffolk County District Court and held without bail.
July 7, 1984: Kasso dies by suicide in custody, before any indictment.
July 10, 1984: A Suffolk County grand jury begins hearing testimony in Riverhead.
July 11, 1984: The grand jury indicts the 18-year-old for murder in the second degree, acting in concert with Kasso.
July 13, 1984: The co-defendant pleads innocent in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead and is held without bail.
Late July 1984: The district attorney says he does not believe the killing followed any satanic code.