John Jefferson
Left insert: Murder victim Joseph Canazaro. Right inset: Thomas Delgado. (Bucks County District Attorney’s Office). Background: Crime scene screenshot (Philadelphia FOX affiliate/YouTube).
A judge on Monday dismissed charges against a Philadelphia man for allegedly murdering his erstwhile employer in a home invasion, according to The Bucks County Courier Times. Earlier in the hearing, prosecutor Christopher Rees reportedly withdrew the linked rape-related charges against defendant Thomas Delgado, 51, because DNA tests excluded him from being the man who sexually assaulted the fiancee of slain victim, Joseph Canazaro, 48. Two of the total 34 charges did remain, but those only concerned the stolen 2006 black Lincoln Mark LT pickup truck. Rees ended up withdrawing those charges as well.
As far as the courts are concerned, authorities are back to square one in trying to prove who broke into businessman Joseph Canazaro’s home and stabbed him to death.
”We do have some missing pieces here,” Judge Regina Armitage reportedly said in court on Monday. “Serious missing pieces.”
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Two men, armed and masked, broke into the home in the 300 block of Swartley Road in Hilltown Township on Jan. 18, 2013, authorities said. They put local businessman Canazaro, his fiancee, and his 12-year-old son in zip ties, and one of them — allegedly Delgado — raped the fiancee.
The two attackers took guns, jewelry and money, and they fled in Canazaro’s pickup truck.
The woman managed to get out of her blindfold and zip ties, and she and the boy escaped from the basement. Authorities, however, found Canazaro in the garage. He was bound in zip ties and had been stabbed to death.
Authorities arrested Delgado, who reportedly has a history of violence crimes, in January. He allegedly admitted to investigators that he previously did manual labor for Canazaro.
DNA evidence linking him to the crime, however, ended up being tenuous at best. Authorities suggested that the rapist — described by the fiancee as possibly Hispanic — used a shirt to wipe himself after the sexual assault, but DNA did not match the defendant.
“The facts of the affidavit have been proven untrue,” public defender Caroline Crist reportedly said. “We firmly believe Mr. Delgado is innocent of all charges.”
Hilltown Detective Louis Bell reportedly testified Monday that prosecutors were waiting to confirm whether Delgado’s DNA matched material found on a mask located in the stolen truck, which had turned up abandoned at a Quakertown shopping center. The other suspect in the crime was Asian, investigators said.
Surveillance video showed the suspects transferring the stolen items from the truck into a Nissan sedan at the shopping center and fleeing the area, prosecutors have said.
Jason Kandel contributed to this report.
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