TRENTON – Attorney General Stuart Rabner and Criminal Justice Director Gregory A. Paw announced that Louis Auricchio, who was convicted in 1994 by the state Division of Criminal Justice of murdering Genovese crime boss John DiGilio, was released from federal prison in Virginia today and is being transported to New Jersey to complete his 30-year state prison sentence.

State investigators from the Division of Criminal Justice are escorting Auricchio, 48, from U.S. Penitentiary Lee in Jonesville, Va., to New Jersey, where he will be processed by the state Department of Corrections at its Central Reception and Assignment Facility in Trenton. Aurricchio is being flown to Philadelphia. Corrections officials at the secure reception facility in Trenton will determine where Auricchio will complete his state prison sentence.

Auricchio, formerly of Holmdel, was a Genovese crime family soldier looking to increase his power at the time that DiGilio’s body was found floating in the Hackensack River on May 26, 1988. DiGilio had been shot five times in the head and had been missing for three weeks.

The murder remained unsolved for several years, but an investigation by the New Jersey State Police and the Division of Criminal Justice uncovered detailed information that led to a state indictment of Auricchio in 1993 on charges that included the killing. In March 1994, Auricchio pleaded guilty to first-degree state charges of aggravated manslaughter and racketeering.

Auricchio admitted that he conspired with other members of the crime organization to kill DiGilio. He said he shot DiGilio several times in the back of the head with a .38 caliber handgun from the back seat of his own black Lincoln Continental, driven by George Weingartner, a former Bayonne police officer.

Later that year, the Division of Criminal Justice indicted Weingartner, Angelo Prisco and 11 other associates on racketeering and other charges, including a count of tampering with evidence against Weingartner for helping to clean and subsequently destroy Auricchio’s Lincoln.

On June 10, 1994, Auricchio was sentenced to 30 years in New Jersey state prison on the murder charge, with a minimum of 15 years without parole. He was sentenced to 20 years, 10 without possibility of parole, on the racketeering charge, with the sentences to run concurrently with each other and with a federal sentence for racketeering that was imposed one month earlier.

Auricchio had already been serving time in federal prison for tax evasion.

Weingartner committed suicide during his trial in 1998. He was found in an idling car in the garage of his Brick home, asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. Prisco pleaded guilty in 1997 to state charges of conspiracy to commit racketeering and arson for hire and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. A number of their co-defendants were also convicted.

Lt. James Mulholland of the State Police, now retired, Supervising State Investigator Robert Hayes and former Assistant Attorney General Donald Campolo led the state investigation into the DiGilio murder. Deputy Attorney General Charles Grinnell handled Auricchio’s guilty plea. Assistant Attorney General Robert Leaman handled the Prisco, Weingarten and related cases.

>> View photo of Auricchio (from federal prison)