Detective Testifies That Accused Killer of Parents Said He Was Framed by Sister

By MICHAEL HEUSNER

A Queens’s man charged with killing both his parents in 2012, called a police detective and told him that he had been framed by his sister and brother-in-law for the murder of his father, according to police.

Gregory Cucchiara, charged with killing both his mother and father in separate incidents in 2012, remained silent in an orange Department of Corrections jumpsuit as two detectives who had questioned him before he was arrested testified in Queens Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Detective David Rein testified that he had questioned Cucchiara on August 21, 2012 in connection with the death of his father whose body was discovered two days earlier. After the questioning, detective Rein said he got a phone call from Cucchiara at the precinct in which he accused his sister Francesca and his brother in law of killing the father because “she didn’t want him to suffer anymore”.

He then advised the detective to “go over the scene with a fine tooth comb,” as his brother in law “watched a lot of CSI, and could make things look different than they actually were.”

A second detective, Joseph Grinder, testified that when he first met with Cucchiara two days after the killing he noticed scratches on the defendant’s face. When questioned about the scratches, Cucchiara claimed that he was involved in a fight with a group of men who taunted him while watching him pick up bottles from the street.

Cucchiara, who wishes to represent himself during his trial, had a lawyer present during the hearing. He has gone through at least three lawyers, after not getting along with any of them. Cucchiara is charged with two counts of second-degree murder, assault and obstructing governmental administration. He has been in prison since November, 2012.