Christopher Porco
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The average American is caught on surveillance cameras up to 75 times each and every single day. You're likely completely unaware that cameras are recording your every move, even right at this very moment. A camera records a man driving a yellow Jeep Wrangler away from the location he claims to be at.

Several eyewitnesses spot him barreling towards the toll stations that he pays in cash. He disarms a family's alarm system. He cuts the phone wire. He attacks a couple while they're sound asleep in bed with a three-foot axe. One survives the vicious and brutal attack, while the other doesn't.

Is it possible that DNA forensic evidence can catch something that a surveillance camera can't? This week on Forensic Tales, we tell the complete story of Christopher Porco. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. As always, I'm your host, Courtney. Each Monday, we release a new episode that discusses real, bone-chilling, true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case.

Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases have been left sitting on the shelf collecting dust in the cold case division just waiting to be solved by forensic science. Now, let's get to this week's episode, which just so happens to be yet another listener request.

In Del Mar, New York, a suburb just outside the city of Albany, lived Peter Porco and his wife, Joan Porco. Not only was 52-year-old Peter Porco a loving husband and father, he also held a very prestigious job working for the Supreme Court of New York State. He spent his entire career in the legal profession and was very successful in the field.

He was absolutely ecstatic to work as a law clerk for an appellate judge in New York State Supreme Court because it was a highly sought after position that, well, frankly, not many people even get the chance to interview for. So for Peter Porco, this was an amazing opportunity to begin winding down his professional career in the legal field.

And this is why no one could ever suspect what was coming for Peter Porco and his wife, Joan. On November 15th, 2004, Peter Porco didn't show up to work at the Supreme Court in Albany like he did every single morning. Peter would have called or emailed or at the very least tell someone that he wasn't coming into work that morning.

Right away, his co-workers were alarmed because Peter was never absent from work. He was a very reliable person and he was always on time. So the court officer that works with Peter at the courthouse decided that it would probably be a good idea just to go over to Peter's house and check up on him because it was so out of character for Peter.

But the court officer could have never prepared himself for what he would find once he arrived at Peter's residence that November morning. The New York State Court Officer, Michael Hart, arrived at Peter Porker's home located at 36 Bronco Drive in the city of Del Mar at 1135 a.m.

The court officer arrived at the home, parked his vehicle, and started to make his way up to the two-story home. As the court officer got closer to the Porcos family home, he could see that right there on the front door that the key was still inside of the lock. And as he got even closer, not only could he see that the key was still inside the lock,

but that the front door was actually left slightly open. The hair on the back of the court officer's neck begins to stand straight up as he begins to worry that something might be really wrong. So he starts to look around the front door and out on the front lawn, and he can see blood drops right there across the front doorsteps leading up to the house.

By this point, the court officer knows that something is wrong. The officer knows that something terrible has happened, but he has to know exactly what he is dealing with here. So he decides to step over the bloody drops on the front steps, and he slowly opens the front door that is already slightly ajar. Once inside the Porcos residence, he encounters a bloodbath.

He takes another step inside and right there to his right, he sees 52-year-old Peter Porco's lifeless body. The court officer immediately calls for backups and paramedics. He has no idea if Peter is alive or if the person who did this is still inside the house. Backup officers and paramedics arrive at the home and they make their way upstairs and into the master bedroom.

This is where first responders encounter Peter's wife, Joan, who is clinging to life. Paramedics immediately step in and try to provide medical attention. They first try to apply an oxygen mask to her face to ensure that she can breathe. But as officers attempt to put on the mask, they realize that her face is so badly injured that they can't even find her mouth.

Right there, next to Joan Porco, laid a three-foot axe. Joan Porco, who was just barely clinging to life, was rushed to a nearby emergency room in Bethlehem, New York. When she arrived at the emergency room, she was immediately rushed into surgery, and doctors were pretty uncertain that she would even survive. Joan was so brutally attacked that morning that she was hardly recognizable.

While Joan Porco was rushed to the emergency room for surgery in an attempt to save her life, the medical examiners transported the lifeless body of Peter Porco to the morgue. The Albany County medical examiner performed an autopsy on Peter to get a better idea of exactly what happened in the house that fateful morning.

The medical examiner counted 16 wounds to Peter's head, wounds that were consistent with an axe. Crime scene investigators arrived at the home on Broccoli Drive shortly after Joan was taken to the hospital that morning. And when they arrive at the house, they are absolutely shocked by what they see. The entire Porco residence looked like it was covered in blood.

For many of these crime scene investigators, this would be one of the most gruesome crime scenes that they will ever encounter in their careers. There was so much blood everywhere that at first, they couldn't even believe that Joan even made it out of that house alive, even though they weren't sure that she would survive in surgery.

One of the very things that crime scene technicians observe in the Porco's master bedroom is the blood spatter all over the bedroom walls. Blood spatter can tell a really clear story about a crime scene. It can tell things like where and how someone was attacked or what type of wound would cause the pattern.

Blood spatter analysis is an extremely useful tool, especially in homicide cases like this. So the crime scene investigators could tell by the pattern of the blood spatter that Joan Porco had been struck in the head at least three separate times by her attacker while she was asleep in bed.

The axe that was found next to Joan in the couple's master bedroom projected blood across the walls and ceiling of the room each and every time that she was struck. Based on the amount of blood and the blood patterns in the master bedroom, investigators were certain that Peter and Joan were attacked in their bedroom while they were both sound asleep.

But if this was true, investigators were wondering, why was Peter Porco's body found downstairs near the front door? Now, I'm going to warn you that this part of the story is absolutely insane. And you guys, it's a little bit graphic. But it turns out that sometime after the violent and vicious attack in the master bedroom,

Peter had awoken even after being struck 16 times in the face and head with an axe. Not only did Peter get up after this unimaginable attack, but he actually started to go about his regular morning routine. He got himself up out of bed. He walked to the closet where he put some clothes on over his head and wounds and

And then he made his way downstairs, just like what he would do on any other morning. Once Peter gets downstairs, he makes himself some coffee, has breakfast, and again, just like any other morning. At this point, he even opens the front door and heads outside to get the morning newspaper.

While he was coming back to the front door with the morning newspaper under his arm, he realized that the front door had locked behind him. So he bends down and gets the hidden key from underneath the flower pot. He puts the key inside the lock and heads back indoors. This is exactly where the court officer would find him when he arrived later on that morning.

Once inside from getting the newspaper, Peter Porco finally collapses due to the 16 axe wounds that he suffered to his head and to his chest. Peter did all of this while mortally wounded and he had absolutely no idea. So how exactly could this even happen?

When I heard this story for the very first time for myself, I was wondering how in the world could someone do all of this without even realizing that you've been attacked 16 separate times with a three foot axe.

Well, here's how. So when Peter Porka was attacked with the axe, the top part of his brain, known as the neocortex, was severely damaged. And this part of our brain controls things like our thoughts, our reasoning, and even our language. But the paleocortex of his brain, which is located right underneath the neocortex,

had suffered basically zero damage during the attack. Our paleocortex, on the other hand, controls our primal and survival instincts. So this explains how and why Peter was able to get himself out of bed and continue to go on with his normal morning routine. Because that particular part of his brain, the part that controls our survival instincts, wasn't damaged.

He was completely unaware of his injuries even after being struck 16 times with the axe, which explains why he went about his morning routine that morning instead of calling for help. Immediately after discovering Peter and Joan, the police began their investigation to find out who could have done this to the couple and why.

And the police find out that Peter and Joan have two sons together, Christopher and Jonathan. And just like in any murder investigation, the police want to make contact with those who are closest to the victims because they're the ones who would have likely the most motive to harm them.

So police quickly rule out Jonathan as a potential suspect in the case because he was actually serving in the military at the time of the crime and he had an alibi that placed him many miles away from his parents' home and that he had several people who could vouch for him at the military base.

So once Jonathan is ruled out as a potential suspect, police quickly shift their attention to his brother, Christopher. But police wouldn't have to wait long before they heard from Christopher himself. At 3.09 p.m., the very afternoon that the attack took place at the Porco's residence, Christopher Porco called the Bethlehem Police Department from his dorm room at the University of Rochester.

He was reported as saying, quote, Christopher had actually spoken to an officer named Brianna Tice. And Officer Tice told him, Which seems pretty weird to me that Christopher decided to call the police department that afternoon regarding his parents.

But before he called the police department that afternoon, Christopher had actually texted his girlfriend, Sarah Fisher, and told her that he hadn't heard from his parents all morning and that he was starting to worry about them. Christopher calls the Bethlehem Police Department again at 4 p.m. that same afternoon and reaches the same police officer that he spoke to about an hour before.

But this time, the officer transfers Christopher to Bethlehem detective Charles Rudolph, and he offered to meet up with Christopher at the Albany Medical Center where his mother, Joan, was being treated after the attack. So Christopher shows up at the hospital and learns about his father's brutal murder and how his mother was fighting for her life in surgery.

But little did Christopher know was that the Bethlehem Police Department and Detective Rudolph already had their eyes on him. It turns out that Christopher Porco wasn't exactly the world's greatest son. Although Peter and Joan Porco were pretty well off, they had a nice family home, but they weren't exactly what you would call over-the-top rich.

But their son Christopher really played himself off like he was some super rich college kid. He would brag all the time to his college classmates and girls about how much money he had. And he would spend all of his money buying nice things like clothes and jewelry, really as a way to appear much richer than he really was.

Besides the facade that he was a super rich college kid, he really wasn't doing too well in school. He was failing most of his college classes and was basically on the verge of being kicked out of the school because his grades were so terrible. In fact, in March 2004, Christopher's parents, Peter and Joan, were on vacation in Europe when they received an update from the school regarding Christopher's grades.

So like any mother would do, Joan sends Christopher an email while in Europe that basically calls him out on his terrible grades. The email, which had the subject title, Failing Grades, You Did It Again, read, quote,

A few days later, Christopher responded to his parents' email, basically saying that the interim grade report was wrong and that the lowest grade he's received is a B on a physics test.

He goes on to tell his parents that everything is perfectly fine and tells them not to worry so much. Peter and Joan were really upset with Christopher around this time because they continued to pay for his tuition at Hudson Valley Community College and he kept failing all of his classes. His parents really worried that with grades like this, he would never be able to get back into a university.

And by this point, Christopher had already been forced to drop out of the university because of his poor grades. And frankly, they were kind of tired of paying for college if Christopher wasn't going to take his classes a little bit more seriously. But the problems between Christopher and his parents didn't start with his poor performance in school.

Christopher had some pretty troubling issues with his parents in the past. Christopher had actually taken out a loan in order to buy a bright yellow new Jeep Wrangler and help pay for costs of tuition. And he actually took out the loan by forging his father's signature as a co-signer on the loan.

In total, he took out about $31,000 in order to pay for all of his expenses, including the fancy new Jeep. Just two weeks before Peter and Joan were attacked in their home, Peter found out about the loan while running a credit report. And let's just say Peter was furious with his son Christopher.

And I can't say I can blame him because I have no idea how I would respond if I had just found out that my son forged my signature and took out a $31,000 bank loan behind my back.

So Peter is super upset with Christopher and he sends him an email that read, quote, Did you forge my signature as a cosigner? 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 I'm going to tell them that I'm not going to be a cosigner. End quote.

Keep in mind, pretty much all communication between Christopher and his parents is over email because by this point, he had basically refused to speak with his parents over the phone. By the next day, Peter learned more about what his son had actually done.

In addition to the loan, he found out about a line of credit that was open to purchase a new Jeep Wrangler, also with a forged signature. So he sends his son another email that read, quote,

And that applies to the Citibank college loan if you attempt to reactivate it or use my credit to obtain another loan. The email went on to say, quote, we may be disappointed with you, but your mother and I still love you and care about your future, end quote. So Peter and Joan are obviously super disappointed with their son, like any parent would be.

But just like most parents would do, they still really care about him and want what's best for him and his future. I think this shows a pretty deep amount of love and compassion by Peter and Joan to still let their son know that they love and care about him even after doing something like this. I know that I would be pretty pissed if my son ever did something like this.

Besides the forged loans, police also learn about several other notable things in Christopher's past. Police learn about two separate burglaries at the Porcos family residence. In 2003, just one year before the attack, Peter broke into his parents' house and stole a laptop. After stealing the laptop, Christopher then turned around and sold it to someone in San Diego on eBay.

The laptop was eventually recovered by police in San Diego when it was discovered that the laptop was stolen from the Porcos' residence. Police investigators were able to track it back to Christopher because of the eBay account that he had created when he sold the laptop. Police learned about another incident on November 28, 2002.

When Christopher staged a burglary at his parents' home and stole a Macintosh laptop computer and a Dell laptop, a camera that was also reported stolen by the Porcos, was found in the couple's front yard, presumably to make it look like a burglary.

About one month before the attack, Christopher and his brother Jonathan had their eBay accounts frozen by the company because a number of complaints were made by customers. Customers complained that they were buying items from Christopher and Jonathan, but they would never receive them for what they paid for. Both accounts shared the Del Mar address where Peter and Joan lived.

It was later discovered that Christopher had actually used his brother Jonathan's name on the eBay account without Jonathan even knowing. Christopher had even sent the customers an email saying that the reason why that they weren't receiving the items that they purchased because his brother Jonathan had passed away, which obviously was completely made up.

As police learn all of this about Christopher's past, they start looking at him even closer than they did when he first called into the police department. But just because he's pretty much a terrible son and a terrible person doesn't mean that he had anything to do with what happened that morning at his parents' house.

So police decide to sit down and talk with Christopher to get his version of events and pretty much find out where he was the morning of the attack. By this point, Joan had actually fully recovered from the attack. Although it had left her severely disfigured, she even lost one of her eyes in the attack.

And if you guys see photos of Joan Porco today, you can really see the damage that was done by the axe that morning. But miracles do happen, and she was able to survive the insanely violent attack. So besides the fact that police believe that Christopher is a terrible son,

Another reason why they want to talk to him is because the morning of the attack, the first responding officer had actually asked Joan if she knew who did this to her. And even though she was severely injured and was unable to even speak, she actually shook her head up and down when asked if she knew who attacked her and her husband.

The responding officer then asks, was it your son Jonathan? Joan shook her head side to side, no. Next, the officer asks her if it was her other son, Christopher. Joan shook her head up and down, yes. Mind you, this detective isn't the only person who was inside the master bedroom that morning.

Paramedics and other first responders were also in the room because they were treating Joan for her injuries. So they also reported seeing her shake her head up and down when asked if her son Christopher had attacked them. So police finally get the chance to sit down with Christopher and ask him about where he was the morning of November 15th.

Christopher tells police that he was a little over 200 miles away from his parents' house at the University of Rochester. The police ask him if he ever left campus that night, and Christopher says no, that he actually stayed on campus and slept in the common area of the university.

When asked why he didn't sleep in his dorm room that night, he said he gave up his bed because his roommate was planning to have a guest over. He told police that he slept in the common area all night and he fell asleep while studying and that he could have several people confirmed to police that he was there all night and didn't leave campus.

So police decided to pull the surveillance footage of the area that Christopher said he was. And they were looking through the surveillance tapes. They see Christopher leaving campus in his bright yellow Jeep Wrangler. Keep in mind, I've read reports that as Americans, we can be caught on surveillance footage up to 75 times each and every day.

So when Christopher says that he never left campus that night, police check the tapes just to make sure. And it turns out Christopher was lying.

So the police confronted Chris about what they saw on the surveillance tape, and Christopher changed his story and said, Oh, you know what? I totally forgot. I left the common area that night to move my Jeep because I couldn't leave it parked on campus overnight.

which at face value, that seems pretty legit to me because I was a college student in a dorm once upon a time and I totally get having to move your car because you're probably too broke to afford a parking pass on campus. The problem is, is that Christopher already told police that he 100% did not leave campus that night. But now he says, oh yeah, I did leave the campus to move my car.

So right away, things aren't looking too good for Christopher and his alibi the night of the attack. So police know that Christopher did leave campus at least one time that night. According to Christopher, he left in order to move his Jeep that was parked on campus. But police started to really question whether his alibi that night was as airtight as Christopher wanted them to believe.

Police discovered some pretty interesting things at the Porco residence after the attack. First, they learned that Peter and Joan had an alarm system on their house. And on November 15th, the morning of the attack, the alarm system had been disabled at 2.14 a.m.

And the code that was used to disarm the system was the same master code that the family always used. So by using the master code, you would have to assume that whoever disarmed the alarm system that morning knew the code going into the house.

Police also noticed that the alarm system box looked like it had been damaged, like someone had tried to smash the box. Which is interesting because obviously the person who broke into the Porcos residence smashed the box thinking that it would eliminate the data, like when the system was disarmed and what code was used.

But this part of the alarm system doesn't actually store data in the box. It's actually transmitted to a cloud that is monitored by the alarm company. So smashing the box in this case was pretty pointless. So police confronted Christopher about the alarm system that was disabled the morning using the master code. And he actually tells police that his father, Peter...

would sometimes disable the alarm when he would take the family dog outside to go potty, so it's possible that his father disabled the alarm to take the dog outside and just forgot to arm it again.

Which again, I guess that's possible because when I wake up in the middle of the night to do something, I know I'm practically sleepwalking. So I can understand why someone might not remember to arm the system.

And this could explain why the alarm was disabled, leaving the possibility that someone broke in undetected after the alarm was disabled. But this wasn't the only thing that pointed towards Christopher Porco. Christopher admitted to police that he did actually leave campus the night of November 14th, but only to move his car off campus.

But police wanted to see if they could verify this part of his story. So they started looking at the route Christopher would have driven from his school to his parents' house if in fact he did drive out there that night. So police got their hands on four security cameras at the University of Rochester where Christopher attended classes.

The cameras recorded a yellow Jeep, just like Christopher's, leaving the campus at 10.30 p.m. on November 14th and returning to campus the following morning at 8.30 a.m. If Christopher had only left campus to move his car, you would expect to see him reappear maybe 10 or 15 minutes after 9.30 p.m.

But they don't see him anywhere on any camera footage until 8.30 a.m. the following morning. In the minds of police investigators, this certainly fits the time frame in which the attack could have taken place.

So the next thing investigators wanted to do was see if they could find anything along the route that Christopher would have taken to get to his parents' house, nearly 200 miles away from the university.

The only route from campus to his parents' house included a pass over a tolled highway, meaning you either have to have one of those toll passes on your vehicle or you have to stop and pay the toll in cash with an attendant. So police go to the toll station and figure out who was working late on November 14th and early on the morning of November 15th.

and police meet a New York State toll collector by the name of John Fallon. John Fallon was working exit 46 of the toll highway the night of Sunday, November 14th, the night before the attack of the Porcos. And when police sit down and talk with John, he tells police that he definitely remembers a yellow Jeep Wrangler coming through the toll, and a young white male was the driver.

The Jeep passed through the toll and paid cash around 10.45 p.m. Now, okay, I know what you're thinking. How could a toll worker possibly remember the car when hundreds, if not thousands of cars passed through the toll? How could he possibly remember seeing a yellow Jeep Wrangler that particular night?

Well, it turns out the night around the time the yellow Jeep approached the toll station, the attendant John Fallon was actually just a few feet away smoking a cigarette. And John told police that he distinctly remembers this car because the toll attendant supervisors would often drive through the tolls trying to catch the workers doing something that they weren't supposed to be doing.

like taking a smoke break. So when the yellow Jeep Wrangler approached John, at first he thought it might be one of his supervisors trying to catch him doing something. He said that once the car approached the toll station and it wasn't a supervisor, the driver paid cash and just drove off.

John said the driver of the Jeep was, quote, a white male in his early to mid-20s with a baseball cap on. Unfortunately for investigators, there wasn't any surveillance cameras that captured the yellow Jeep passing through the toll.

And now I'm not sure if that's because the tapes record over themselves or just simply the cameras weren't working properly that night. But anyway, the police didn't have any footage of the toll station that Sunday evening.

About three hours and ten minutes after the yellow Jeep Wrangler was spotted passing exit 46 towards the Porcos residence, a similar-looking yellow Jeep crossed exit 24 in Orange County Court in Goshen, according to toll attendant Karen Russell.

Karen told police that she remembers seeing a yellow Jeep come barreling towards her toll station just before her 2 a.m. break. Again, she totally remembers this vehicle because of how fast the driver was going. The toll attendant told police that she wasn't even sure that the car was going to stop and pay the toll because he was driving so fast.

However, the driver of the Jeep did stop and paid for the toll in cash. Police asked Karen if she remembers what the driver looked like, but she wasn't able to give much of a description except that it was a young white male. And again, just like before, police weren't able to get their hands on any surveillance footage of the second toll station either.

So by this point, we know that a yellow Jeep Wrangler with a young white male crossed the second toll station around 2 a.m. on the early morning of November 15th. We also know that the alarm system at the pork roast home was disarmed at exactly 2.14 a.m.

Police have now established a timeline up until 2.14 a.m., the morning of the attack, that places Christopher at his parents' house. The next thing investigators want to do is talk to any of Joan or Peter's neighbors to see if maybe, just maybe, they saw or heard anything that morning in the neighborhood.

And one of their neighbors reported that, yeah, he thought he remembered seeing Christopher's yellow Jeep in the family's driveway that very morning, which would again place Christopher at his parents' house that early morning and not on campus. A couple hours after the family's alarm system was disabled, the phone lines to the entire house were cut at 4.54 a.m.,

During this time is when police believe someone entered the Porcos' home and attacked Peter and Joan with the axe. And another thing to mention here is that the axe that was used in the attack actually belonged to Peter and Joan and was kept in the family's garage. So police knew that whoever broke into the home that night got the axe from inside of the home.

But police didn't believe that it was just someone who entered the Porcos' home the morning of November 15th. They believed it was their son, Christopher Porco. The police believed that they had established the perfect timeline for Christopher to drive to his parents' house, attack them with the axe, kill his father and severely injure his mother, and then drive back to the University of Rochester.

Cameras showed Christopher leaving campus shortly after 10 p.m., passed one toll at 10.45 p.m., another toll around 2 a.m., disarmed his parents' alarm system at 2.14 a.m., attacked his parents with the axe, then cut the phone lines at 4.54 a.m., and then drove back to campus, getting there just about 8.30 in the morning.

But establishing this timeline just wouldn't be enough to satisfy a jury at trial. So police turned to the forensic evidence to prove that Christopher Porco's guilt. Police knew they weren't going to be able to get surveillance footage of Christopher at the tolls, but they thought maybe they could get their hands on something else that would prove he passed through the tolls that night.

So Christopher didn't use his automated toll reader that night. He paid for all the tolls in cash. Investigators were hopeful that they could locate the toll ticket that Christopher would have exchanged with a toll attendant. So this is exactly what investigators start looking for. They get all the toll tickets from the night of November 14th and the morning of November 15th

and they match it to the times they believe Christopher crossed the tolls. Investigators were able to narrow down just a handful of toll tickets from that night that just may contain valuable DNA evidence that could prove Christopher passed the tolls that same night.

So the toll tickets were sent off to the crime lab where they were tested for any possible DNA evidence. And sure enough, they got a hit. Forensic scientists were able to pull a complete DNA profile from one of the tickets and it was an exact match to Christopher Porco.

Police now had the forensic evidence they needed to arrest Christopher Porco for the murder of his father, Peter, and attempted murder of his mother, Joan. But Christopher wasn't in jail long. Believe it or not, he had the support of his mother, who didn't believe that her son was capable of attacking her and killing her husband. And they were able to post bond and get him released from jail while he awaited trial.

While waiting for the trial of Christopher Porco to begin, prosecutors and investigators felt like they had a pretty strong circumstantial and forensic case against Christopher. They had the testimony of the toll attendants. They had the camera footage showing him leave and return to campus. And they had Christopher's DNA on the toll ticket.

And remember, they even had Christopher's mother, Joan, own testimony against her son right after the attack. When the first responding officer asked her if her son Christopher did this, she shook her head up and down saying, yes, it was.

Of course, now that Joan has fully recovered from the attack, she claims to not remember who did this to her and Peter and was completely adamant to investigators that her son was completely innocent. Before the trial began, prosecutors discovered that shortly before the attack, Christopher had consulted a financial advisor from a local bank.

He told the financial advisor that he was going to be coming into a large sum of money in the very near future and that he needed some financial advice on investments. Now, this is obviously horrible timing for Christopher and his defense because prosecutors argued that he killed his father and attempted to kill his mother for the life insurance payout that he would get upon their deaths.

Christopher Porco's trial began on July 27, 2006 in Orange County. During the defense's opening remarks, they told the jury that the Bethlehem Police Department who investigated the case really didn't have any physical evidence linking Christopher to the attack.

They argued that none of Christopher's blood, DNA, or fingerprints were found around the crime scene or even on the axe. Christopher's lawyers argued that the police failed to consider any other suspects in the case.

They even raised the argument that the attack was likely a result of retaliation against his uncle, Frank Porco, who just so happened to have ties to the Bonanno crime family in New York City. They said because Frank Porco's nickname in the mob was the Fireman and Peter and Joan were attacked with an axe, this could have been related to the mob attack.

And it couldn't have been Christopher. On August 2nd, 2006, the prosecution rested its case against Christopher Porco. Although they had the circumstantial and forensic evidence on their side, they still worried that the jury wouldn't be able to find Christopher guilty.

The jury literally sat during the whole trial and watched as Christopher's mother, Joan, sat right behind him, supporting her son every step of the way. During trial, Joan even took to the stand and said her son didn't do this and that she doesn't remember nodding her head that morning that her son did. So prosecutors were super worried that this may sway the jury when deciding his guilt.

On the morning of August 10, 2006, the jury began deliberations. That same exact day, Christopher Porco was found guilty of second-degree murder of his father and attempted murder of his mother. And a few months later, on December 12, 2006, the judge in Christopher's case sentenced him to 50 years to life on each count.

At his sentencing, the judge was quoted as saying, I fear very much what happened in the early morning hours of November 15th is something that could happen again, which to me says that if Christopher Porco was found not guilty of his actions on November 15th,

or if he was never arrested to begin with, who's to say that he wouldn't go back and kill his mother, which he certainly intended to do in the first place. Christopher Porco won't be eligible for parole until December 2052, so he's potentially looking at spending the rest of his life in prison. And to this day, his mother Joan stands right behind her son.

She believes that he is totally innocent and that it was someone else who broke into the home that morning and killed her husband and brutally attacked her. She refuses to accept the circumstantial or forensic evidence in the case and truly believes that the wrong person is behind bars.

I don't know what to make of that, and at the end of the day, I really feel bad for Joan Porco. I believe that she is a total victim in this case, and I know that her injuries were severe. I mean, again, if you see a photo of her nowadays, it's apparent that her injuries were extensive.

So I don't know what that does to someone's memory. And I don't know if you can fully trust the evidence that she shook her head up and down telling police that it was Christopher who attacked her. I mean, she was just hit in the face and head three separate times with an axe. And I don't know how your memory would be after something like that.

But even if you take that part out of the equation, the forensic evidence doesn't lie. The forensic evidence points to the fact that Christopher left his dorm room, drove to his parents that night. Christopher Porco certainly had the means and the motive to want to kill both his parents that night.

He lived a life that was obsessed with money and he would do absolutely anything to get his hands on more. There is an amazing Forensic Files episode on the case of Christopher Porco and they've even created a 2013 Lifetime movie on the case called Romeo Killer, The Chris Porco Story.

I would love to hear what you guys think about the case. So please connect with me on social media. We're on Facebook and Instagram. Or you can send me an email at Courtney at ForensicTales.com and let me know your thoughts on this week's case. ♪

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