Christi’s Final Podcast: The Strange Case of the UConn Alumni Killer (15 min version)

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Tran­script:
Music/Intro 0:00–0:26
Christi: “Hel­lo, every­body! My name is Christi Throw­er-”
Julia: “and my name is Julia Cahoon-”
 Christi: “So, would you like to do the hon­ors?”
Julia: “Yea, we’ll start today off with a warn­ing.  Today’s episode con­tains true events of mur­der and kid­nap­ping, if you are sen­si­tive to this please don’t lis­ten.”
Details of the case 0:26–4:05
Christi: “UConn is, for­tu­nate­ly, not known for many mur­ders. From all my research I’ve only found two cas­es of homi­cide for alum­ni in recent years, one in 2009, and one in 2020. Today, we’ll be talk­ing about the one in 2020, cov­er­ing the case of Peter Man­fre­do­nia, who in 2020 sparked a mul­ti­state man­hunt, mur­dered two peo­ple, and took two oth­ers as hostages. 

But we won’t just be telling the sto­ry. We’ll also be look­ing into why he did it, what kind of per­son he is, and what led him to these crimes. None of this is meant to glo­ri­fy mur­der­ers, but rather to try to under­stand this one. I don’t men­tion any real names of vic­tims.”

Julia: “On Fri­day, May 22nd 2020, at around 9 am, CT state police received a 911 call from a res­i­dent of Mirtl Road in the Town of Will­ing­ton, CT, say­ing two men were bleed­ing on the ground in the street. On arrival, the cops found them “suf­fer­ing severe lac­er­a­tions to their facial and upper body areas to include sev­ered limbs.”

Christi: “The first vic­tim was a 62 year old who had his right hand sev­ered from his body, his right hand thumb and index fin­ger removed, his tri­cep sev­ered, and lac­er­a­tions to his head and mas­sive skull frac­tures.”

Julia: “The sec­ond man had seri­ous injuries to his head and the upper tor­so. He was trans­port­ed via life star to hart­ford hos­pi­tal and went through surgery and was sta­ble.”

Christi: “Neigh­bors said they saw a man on a red sports bike wear­ing dark clothes and a motor­cy­cle hel­met with the first vic­tim. The man attacked the first vic­tim using a “long object” and dur­ing the attack, vic­tim 2 approached to which he was attacked as well. The man then fled on his bike.”

Julia: “A samu­rai sword with a sil­ver blood-stained blade and dark han­dle was found near the scene in the for­est, along with its scab­bard. This was lat­er iden­ti­fied as the mur­der weapon. His bike was found 5 miles away aban­doned a few hun­dred feet off the street in the woods, which from the license plate, police found reg­is­tered to the name Peter Man­fre­do­nia.”

Christi: “They also found his blood-stained motor­cy­cle hel­met and t‑shirt near­by, which he was try­ing to wash off in a stream. The shirt read, in Chi­nese, “World Peace.”

Julia: “The police then searched for infor­ma­tion on  Man­fre­do­nia and dis­cov­ered the name and address of a known female acquain­tance of his. She said he’d stopped see­ing her recent­ly, gave them his address, and con­firmed that yeah, he did have the bike. And the samu­rai sword. And the World Peace shirt.”

Christi: “On the 24^th, the police found an aban­doned F‑150 reg­is­tered to a res­i­dent of Turn­pike Rd. When they went to the prop­er­ty, they found it was a mile from where Man­fre­do­nia had got rid of all his belong­ings. The cops knocked on the door to no answer, and broke into the house to find a 73-year-old man tied to a chair in the base­ment.”



4:05-roughly 8:00 Nar­ra­tion of Tom’s sto­ry
Christi: “We’ll call this man Tom (that’s not his real name).”

“Tom lives alone in his house. On Fri­day night, he had heard that the town over had a mur­der and that police were still search­ing for the sus­pect. He went to sleep in his reclin­er with his .22 Long Rifle on the guest bed right next to him.
At 5:15 am, Tom woke up to Man­fre­do­nia hold­ing a gun to the back of his head, and shout­ing at him to “not turn around or I’ll blow your fuck­ing brains out”.
He then yelled at him to turn around and put his hands behind his back. He zip-tied his wrists togeth­er and put duct tape over his eyes. 

“He took him down­stairs. Peter pre­pared his things, took care of Tom’s needs, made sure noone would come look­ing for him, and watched tv with him. They end­ed up build­ing a sort of rap­port with each oth­er. At one point, Peter even start­ed talk­ing about his fam­i­ly, and men­tioned that he had a “close friend” but gave no details. Lat­er that day, they had a con­cern­ing con­ver­sa­tion:” 

Affi­davit: “I asked if he wants to talk about what took place with the mur­der and he told me that he hadn’t slept for 5 days and that he just flipped. He said he didn’t know why he did it and that he was remorse­ful for it. I sug­gest­ed that we call the author­i­ties and try to work some­thing out for him. He was calm and apolo­getic but couldn’t explain why he did that. I asked how old the guy was that he got into the con­fronta­tion with and he said he wasn’t that old. He said that he couldn’t believe that he could do that but then his demeanor switched imme­di­ate­ly. I was try­ing to be very care­ful in what I asked because there were things that he wouldn’t talk about. While we were talk­ing he was very care­ful about what he would say and it seemed like he didn’t want to face the real­i­ty of what hap­pened. We were talk­ing about the mur­der of the man in Will­ing­ton from the day ear­li­er and he talked about it as if he were the per­son who com­mit­ted the mur­der but he wouldn’t talk about any spe­cif­ic events regard­ing the mur­der itself or what hap­pened before or after­wards. Although I did ask if he had a cell phone and he told me he did, but he ditched it because he expect­ed the police to trace it. I had sug­gest­ed he turn him­self in again and he made it clear that wasn’t an option. He told me he was going to have two good weeks and then he fig­ured it would end in either a shootout, the death penal­ty, or life in prison. The tone of the con­ver­sa­tion changed and Peter seemed irri­tat­ed so I didn’t push things any fur­ther so he went back to the couch and we con­tin­ued watch­ing movies on the TV.”

“The next day, Tom’s friends were com­ing over so Peter had to go. Peter told Tom his plans and start­ed get­ting ready to leave. This excerpt is from when Tom woke up:” 
“When Peter came back, his whole demeanor was dif­fer­ent. He bound Tom to the chair tighter and pushed him clos­er to the TV so he couldn’t see what he was doing. “I could tell his whole demeanor was dif­fer­ent and it was all busi­ness with him. We had a good rap­port the pre­vi­ous day and as he was bind­ing me so tight that I thought I wouldn’t ever get out I made a com­ment that maybe he should just shoot me and he said back ‘You want me to shoot you’ so I knew I couldn’t joke with him any­more. He was still in front of me tying the ropes tighter and when I looked at him he had the same blank stare that he had the day before.”

Peter told Tom if he made any move­ments there’d be seri­ous con­se­quences. He said if no one found him by 10 am he’d call the police at noon time and tell them he was down there. He then shut off all the lights, got in the car, and drove off. Fast for­ward two days and Tom is found by the cops.”
Rough­ly 8:00-roughly 10:00
Christi: “While thank­ful­ly Tom is ok, this is unfor­tu­nate­ly not the end of Manfredonia’s crime spree.
On May 24^th, also two days after he left Tom, he went on to go back to the Der­by home of his afore­men­tioned “one friend”, who was just 23 years old, and fatal­ly shoot him. They had grown up togeth­er since pri­ma­ry school and had sup­pos­ed­ly been best friends ever since. He then forced his girl­friend into his car and fled the state.”
Julia: “He dropped her off unharmed at a rest stop near Pater­son, New Jer­sey, with her car, a 2016 Volk­swa­gen Jet­ta, before tak­ing an Uber to a Wal­mart in East Strouds­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia. He then stole anoth­er car and aban­doned it in Cham­bers­burg before tak­ing anoth­er Uber to Hager­stown, Mary­land where he was caught with­out a fight near a truck stop.”
Christi: “Lat­er, accord­ing to CBS News, “Man­fre­do­nia’s lawyer, said Man­fre­do­nia was hav­ing men­tal health prob­lems at the time and it was dif­fi­cult for him to get help dur­ing the first months of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic.”
“His men­tal health issues weren’t being addressed and unfor­tu­nate­ly he had a psy­chot­ic episode,” said the lawyer.”


10:00–14:00 INTERVIEWEE and ques­tions

Christi: “So, while I was up late mak­ing this episode, there were some moments I would say out loud “what the hell?” because of how absurd it was get­ting. I gave the case to Alexan­der Hamil­ton, the leader of the True Crime Club, to look over. He had some insight I found quite inter­est­ing. Alex, what the­o­ries did you have on why Peter act­ed the way he did?”

Alex: “So I’m study­ing phys­i­ol­o­gy and neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy and one of the things that we learned is that while you sleep, your brain is actu­al­ly extreme­ly active. It goes through a num­ber of process­es rang­ing from clear­ing out waste prod­ucts to solid­i­fy­ing mem­o­ries from the pre­vi­ous day. We all have prob­a­bly felt like we’re hit­ting our head against a wall try­ing to beat a boss in a video game or solve a prob­lem on your home­work and you decide to give up and go to sleep. When you reap­proach that prob­lem the next day after prop­er rest some­times it just comes with ease and you’re able to do it. And this is because while you thought you might’ve gave up, your brain didn’t. It was still pro­cess­ing that infor­ma­tion and those events while you were rest­ing.  After long peri­ods of sleep, how­ev­er, your brain doesn’t real­ly get a chance to elim­i­nate those waste prod­ucts or get a han­dle on what had just hap­pened from the pre­vi­ous day. So if you go too long with­out sleep, you can see hal­lu­ci­na­tions, and if it gets far enough, you could dis­so­ci­ate from real­i­ty entire­ly. This is some­thing called sleep depri­va­tion psy­chosis, and can take about 72 hours with­out sleep to kick in. Peter Man­fre­do­nia was alleged­ly awake for five days, or 120 hours. He may have been expe­ri­enc­ing an extend­ed peri­od of psy­chosis in the days lead­ing up to and as he per­pe­trat­ed these mur­ders. 

Christi: “Do you think any­thing could’ve explained why he oscil­lat­ed between cold-blood­ed killer and seem­ing­ly nor­mal?”

 Alex: “When some­body dis­so­ci­ates or los­es touch with real­i­ty, their actions can seem errat­ic or non­sen­si­cal. How­ev­er, in their mind, their actions make com­plete sense, or might not even be con­scious deci­sions they’re mak­ing. Because none of us were in Manfredonia’s head at the time, we can only spec­u­late how he was behav­ing and what he was think­ing. I think that he might’ve been approach­ing real­i­ty in the same way some peo­ple might approach a dream. For a dura­tion of time, he could be or appear to be lucid, or keep up with social norms, and behave “ratio­nal­ly”. But, then the psy­chosis could inten­si­fy, and cause him to behave unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly vio­lent and irra­tional. Some­thing inter­est­ing about sleep depri­va­tion-induced psy­chosis is that after a peri­od of 8–12 hours of sleep, even the most severe states of delu­sions could go away and you’d wake up essen­tial­ly lucid and back to nor­mal. This may explain why in the fol­low­ing legal pro­ceed­ings we see a per­son who is of seem­ing­ly sound mind, who may gen­uine­ly be remorse­ful for harm­ing the peo­ple that he did, and that this psy­chot­ic behav­ior seemed to appear and dis­ap­pear so quick­ly. 

Christi: “Inter­est­ing. And, last­ly, what are your take­aways?”

Alex: “Ulti­mate­ly, this is a tru­ly trag­ic case that has left many peo­ple harmed in its wake. If this insom­nia the­o­ry is true, it could give us insight into the inner work­ings of the human mind, and spark fur­ther research into the mech­a­nisms of sleep and its sig­nif­i­cance to our expe­ri­ence of the world around us.





Outro/Music
Christi: “Well, that was a lot to cov­er! This case was cer­tain­ly an inter­est­ing one and I implore you, the view­er, to look more into it if you’re inter­est­ed. While there can’t real­ly be a hap­py end­ing in a homi­cide, I think this one got the clos­est it could’ve, since he’s off the streets. As for his motives, we can the­o­rize, but I guess we’ll nev­er tru­ly know what was going through his mind at the time. Any­ways, that is all the time we have, I’m afraid! Have a great rest of your day, and stay safe out there. ”

Christi: “I’m Christi!”
Julia: “I’m Julia.”
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Music:
Freesound — Per­cus­sion Trail­er (short ver­sion) by Audio­Cof­fee


Sources:
Peter Man­fre­do­nia: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know (heavy.com) 
Case Files pro­vid­ed by the Con­necti­cut State Police Depart­ment – 0181886 and 0181889

Con­tact:
(Christi)
christi.thrower@uconn.edu
(Julia)
jrc23027@uconn.edu
(Alex)
alexander.hamilton@uconn.edu