Christopher Porco

Christopher Porco (born July 9, 1983) is a convicted murderer, currently imprisoned for killing his father and attempting to murder his mother with a fireman's axe. He was tried in Orange County, New York, on charges of second-degree murder in the murder of his father, and second-degree attempted murder in the severe wounding and disfigurement of his mother, in Bethlehem, New York

The case against Porco received extensive coverage in local newspapers, including the Times Union and Spotlight newspapers, as well as in local television outlets. The case was also the subject of a one-hour documentary on 48 Hours Mystery entitled "Memory of Murder", broadcast by CBS in 2006, as well as an episode of the TruTV series Forensic Files that aired in 2009. Joan Porco maintained her son's innocence throughout the trial.

Background

On Monday, November 15, 2004, a New York State courts officer was ordered to the home of Peter and Joan Porco. Peter, a 52-year-old state Appellate Division court clerk, had not reported to his Albany office for work that morning. Upon entering the two-story home at 36 Brockley Drive, Delmar, the officer discovered Peter's lifeless blood-soaked body near the front door. An Albany County medical examiner would determine that Peter had sustained massive fatal head injuries. Joan Porco (née Balzano), a speech pathologist for Jefferson Elementary School in the Schalmont Central School District, Rotterdam,^[1] was soon discovered by police officers lying in the couple's blood-drenched bed, and had suffered severe head and facial trauma. She would lose her left eye and a portion of her skull.

A fireman's axe belonging to the Porcos, which was used in the attack, was found in the couple's bedroom. As Joan was rushed into emergency surgery, Bethlehem Police quickly focused their investigation on Christopher, the younger of the couple's two sons, then a student at the University of Rochester 230 miles away in Rochester. Less than two hours after authorities arrived at the scene of the attack, an all-points bulletin for Christopher was issued.

Porco was at the University of Rochester when his parents were discovered. He was accidentally notified of the attack by Simone Sebastian, a reporter at the Times Union, who attempted to contact Porco's roommate with questions about the family. He returned to Delmar that evening and was questioned about the attack by Bethlehem Police detectives.

Prosecution case

In the months following the attack, Porco's attorney Terence Kindlon criticized investigators, saying they were focusing narrowly on Christopher Porco as a suspect.

In late November 2004, outgoing Albany County District Attorney Paul Clyne convened a grand jury to hear testimony implicating Christopher Porco in the murder. Those who were reported to have testified in the closed-session hearing included Porco's friends from college, a university campus safety officer, as well as a former girlfriend. The grand jury would field more testimony before handing up an indictment against Christopher in November 2005, one year after the attacks.

Identification

Christopher Bowdish, a Bethlehem Police detective, stated that as medical personnel attended to Joan Porco at her home, he took a moment to ask her whether she could identify her attacker. Bowdish said that when he asked Joan if a family member had done it, Joan used her head to indicate "yes". Bowdish has maintained that when he asked her whether it had been her older son Jonathan, a Naval officer stationed in South Carolina during the attack, she shook her head indicating it was not, but that she nodded her head up and down indicating "yes" when he asked her whether Christopher was responsible. Joan Porco's alleged identification of her son Christopher may explain why Bethlehem Police pursued her son soon after the incident, rather than conducting a broader investigation of potential suspects. She also answered in similar ways to other separate questions.^[2]

The murder gained greater attention in the Capital District as Joan Porco, emerging from a medically induced coma, maintained that Christopher had nothing to do with her husband's murder. During videotaped testimony submitted to the grand jury in December 2004, Joan testified about her family but did not identify her son as an attacker. Nine months later, she wrote a letter for publication in the Albany Times Union about Christopher: "I implore the Bethlehem Police and the District Attorney's Office to leave my son alone, and to search for Peter's real killer or killers, so that he can rest in peace and my sons and I can live in safety."

Financial problems

It was quickly revealed to the news media that prior to the attack there had been tension between Christopher Porco and his parents involving money. A series of emails disseminated through the press show the growing rift over loans that Christopher took out to pay for his tuition at the University of Rochester as well as to finance a new Jeep Wrangler.

Following the Fall 2003 semester, University of Rochester officials forced Christopher Porco to withdraw from the school because of poor grades. When he was readmitted the following year, he took out a loan for $31,000 to pay his expenses, forging his father's name as a cosignatory. Unbeknownst to his parents, Christopher was attempting to pay for his Fall 2004 tuition with it. Earlier in the fall, he had told his parents he had been readmitted to the University of Rochester after the school determined a professor had misplaced his final exam from the previous fall semester. Peter and Joan Porco were under the impression that their son's tuition would be covered by the college.

Less than two weeks before his murder, Peter confronted his son about his dishonesty in an email and reprimanded him: "Did you forge my signature as a co-signer?...What the hell are you doing? You should have called me to discuss it...I'm calling Citibank this morning to find out what you have done and am going to tell them I'm not to be on it as a co-signer."

The following day, Peter Porco was notified that Christopher had also obtained a line of credit from Citibank to finance the Jeep Wrangler, again using his father's name as a cosignatory. Peter once again wrote to his son, who had not answered phone calls from him or Joan in weeks. In an email, Peter warned Christopher that he would not tolerate any more dishonesty: "I want you to know that if you abuse my credit again, I will be forced to file forgery affidavits in order to disclaim liability and that applies to the Citibank college loan if you attempt to reactivate it or use my credit to obtain any other loan." In the same email, Peter Porco welcomed his son to return to the family's Delmar home to resolve the matter, concluding his message by saying, "We may be disappointed with you, but your mother and I still love you and care about your future."

Porco's movements

Christopher Porco told investigators that on the night of November 14, 2004, he retired to a dormitory lounge at the University of Rochester to sleep and awoke the following morning. Bethlehem Police detectives and current Albany County District Attorney David Soares were steadfast that Porco instead drove more than three hours eastward to Albany in the early morning hours of November 15 to murder his parents.^[3] Investigators also contacted two New York State Thruway toll booth collectors who reported that they recalled seeing Wranglers matching the description passing through their stations. John Fallon, a toll collector at Exit 46 outside Rochester, recounted seeing a yellow Wrangler with large tires at approximately 10:45 p.m. on November 14. Karen Russell, who collected tolls at Exit 24 in Albany told investigators that she spotted a yellow Wrangler shortly before 2 a.m. on November 15 because of its "excessive speed" upon approaching the toll plaza..^[4]

Four security cameras stationed at the University of Rochester recorded footage of a yellow Jeep Wrangler fitting the description of Porco's vehicle leaving the campus at 10:30 p.m. on November 14 and returning at 8:30 a.m. on November 15. Prosecutors maintain that the attack on Peter and Joan Porco occurred in the early morning hours.^[5]

Porco's character

Sociopathy or psychopathy

Much attention has been focused on the personality of Christopher Porco. Police contended that his pattern of behavior is consistent with a diagnosis of psychopathy or sociopathy, two similar though not identical disorders characterized by traits such as egomania, pathological deception, scamming and defrauding others, and lack of conscience or remorse. For example, Porco lied to obtain both a car and tuition payments. Michele McKay, a law clerk who worked with Peter Porco, said he had described his youngest son as a sociopath. Several Albany-area psychologists and mental health professors have stated to the Times Union that Porco's behavior was consistent with that of a sociopath. In particular, they focused on a consistent pattern of lies Porco told to convince acquaintances that he was from a wealthy and influential family.

Additionally, Professor Frank Perri has argued that police interviews with Christopher Porco were seriously flawed because police questioning procedures seemingly failed to account for Porco's probable psychopathy. Psychopaths have unusual emotional responses and feel no remorse for their misdeeds, so standard police interview tactics are useless, as in the Porco case, where police failed to obtain any valuable information during questioning.^[6] According to Perri, police should study the Porco case to more productively interview potentially psychopathic suspects by using a non-confrontational approach rather than appealing to emotions.

Burglaries

During the course of their investigation, authorities determined that he had a history of anti-social behavior that included burglarizing his parents' home. In 2005, Bethlehem Police detectives travelled to San Diego, California, to retrieve a laptop computer that Christopher Porco had stolen from his parents in a break-in on July 21, 2003, while he was home from college. Porco had sold the laptop on eBay. Eight months earlier, on November 28, 2002, police contend Christopher also staged a burglary at his parents' home in which he took a Macintosh laptop computer and a Dell laptop computer. A camera reported missing from the burglary was recovered from the couple's front yard. One month before the attack, both Christopher and Jonathan Porco had their eBay accounts frozen because they shared the same Delmar address. Christopher had not sent several customers the items they had paid for from his account. During their investigation prosecutors discovered that Christopher posed as his own brother, sending emails to the customers explaining that his brother had died and was unable to deliver on the items.

Forgery

While away on a trip to England in March 2004, Christopher received an email from Joan Porco's account admonishing him for failing classes at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, NY. In the message, Joan and Peter complained to their son, "You just left and (we) can't believe (our) eyes as I look at your interim grade report. You know what they say, 'Three strikes and you're out.' Explain yourself." The email's subject header was "Failing Grades-You did it again!" Several days later, Christopher replied in a message to his father. Blaming the community college's office of registrar, he wrote, "[B]ut obviously they are incorrect...My lowest grade that I got on anything was a B on a physics test...Don't jump to conclusions, I'm fine." Porco earned readmission to the University of Rochester with a forged transcript from HVCC. Judge Berry refused to allow prosecutors to use the forged transcripts as evidence in their criminal case against Christopher Porco.

Converging factors in the Porco case included the following: fraud against the family; Christopher's being confronted about his fraud by his father; and Christopher’s sociopathic traits. A forensic review of the Porco case and other parricide cases that have occurred when fraud detection was a primary factor was published in the forensic literature,^[7] as have analyses of the importance of homicide detectives' considering fraud detection as a motive during murder investigations and planning an interview strategy of the murder suspect based on his or her character.^[8][9][10]

Defense case

Defense attorney Terence Kindlon emphasized that the Bethlehem Police Department had no physical evidence linking Christopher Porco to the attack on his parents. No fingerprints were recovered from the fire ax found at the scene of the crime.

In statements to the press and criminal proceedings, Kindlon has suggested that the Bethlehem Police Department had made Christopher Porco's guilt a foregone conclusion. During his opening remarks to jurors on June 27, 2006, Kindlon described the Bethlehem Police as a department "that chases skateboarders away from the 7-11 ...This is not the FBI."

Kindlon's co-counsel and wife Laurie Shanks has also maintained that police overlooked the possibility that Peter Porco's death was the result of retaliation against his uncle Frank Porco, a captain in the Bonanno crime family in New York City. Frank Porco had served two years in prison for loansharking and extortion, although Shanks incorrectly told jurors that he had been indicted for his involvement in a murder. Shanks noted that Frank Porco's nickname with the mob was "The Fireman", which could have had something to do with the type of murder weapon found, a fire ax. He had served in the New York City Fire Department.

Trial and conviction

The trial was moved to Orange County after a New York State appeals court ruled that a change of venue was necessary to ensure Porco received a fair trial because of the intense pre-trial media coverage in the Albany area. Orange County criminal court justice Judge Jeffrey G. Berry, who presided over the trial, allowed still cameras in the courtroom during proceedings, a rarity in New York State, which gives judges great discretion over the electronic recording of cases. The judge did allow videotaping of the summations of both defense and prosecution lawyers. The announcement of the verdict was also videotaped.

On August 2, 2006, the prosecution completed its case against Porco, and the defense's case, which was much briefer, began.^[11]

On the morning of August 10, 2006, the jury began deliberations. Later that day Porco was found guilty of second degree murder and attempted murder.^[12]

On December 12, 2006, Judge Jeffrey Berry sentenced Porco to 50 years to life on each count totaling a minimum of 50 years in prison. Judge Berry was quoted as saying, "I fear very much what happened in the early morning hours of November 15 is something that could happen again."^[13]

Porco was initially sent to Downstate Correctional Facility in the Town of Fishkill. In 2007 he was moved to Clinton Correctional Facility in the village of Dannemora to serve his prison term.^[14] Porco will be eligible for parole in December 2052.^[15]

In popular culture

• The CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Bloodsport", aired October 29, 2009, features an attack similar to the one Christopher Porco was convicted of. A college football coach is attacked in his bed during the night. Much like Peter Porco, the coach receives massive head injuries and blood loss from the attack, but still manages (as if on autopilot) to get up in the morning when his alarm goes off, going downstairs, pouring coffee and making breakfast before going outside to get the paper, where he finally collapses from his injuries. More directly, the CSI: NY episode "Damned If You Do" centers on the son of a couple brutally attacked in their home. The father dies of his injuries, while the mother lives and indicates at the scene that her son was their attacker, later recanting and defending him against the police investigation.
• James Patterson's book The 8th Confession of the Women's Murder Club series features an almost identical case. A woman having money problems murders her parents for the inheritance, but her mother barely survives. While her mother names her daughter as the attacker at the scene, after her recovery she claims she does not remember the attack and stands by her daughter's innocence. The book even cites similar evidence, such as eyewitness testimony of the daughter's car from a neighbor and tollbooth workers.
• Porco was the subject of the Lifetime movie Romeo Killer: The Chris Porco Story, which first aired on March 23, 2013.^[16] Porco obtained an emergency court order delaying the showing.^[17] The court order was overturned on March 21, 2013, by the New York State Court of Appeals, signaling a legal victory for the Lifetime Television Network.^[18][19][20]
• Joyce Carol Oates' book Evil Eye: Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong features a novella that borrows heavily from the details of the Porco case. In the story, a student (Bart Hansen) travels from Syracuse to Rensselaer to commit a violent attack on his parents. The novella includes the same murder weapon, alleged motive, and precipitating incidents (such as earlier burglaries, forged transcripts, and conflict over debt), but differs in one important way; in the final verdict, Bart Hansen is acquitted of the criminal charges that he is facing.^[21]
• An episode of Forensic Files, entitled "Family Ties" (season 13, episode 25), was about the Porco case.

References

External links

• Christopher Porco Murder Trial special report at timesunion.com—Includes transcripts, biographies, photographs, and trial-related video.
• Porco Trial stories, photos, videos and documents from Spotlight Newspapers coverage.
• "Memory of Murder"-- A 48 Hours Mystery
• Porco Trial Archive on CBS6Albany.com—Archived Video from CBS 6's coverage of the Porco Trial
• Tru TV Crime Library Article on the Porco case.