A Norfolk Superior Court judge denied new requests to release Walpole murder suspects Daniel Bradley and Paul Moccia on bail Monday, but did accede to defense attorneys’ wishes on another front, as he set a trial date of July 26.
Judge Kenneth Fishman decided that Bradley, 48, of Westwood and Moccia, 49, of Dedham will have a final pretrial conference July 12, before their trial begins two weeks later. They have been in custody since last June, when they were arrested and charged with the murder of Angel A. Ramirez, 37, a Framingham construction worker and suspected drug dealer.
Moccia was unable to pay about $70,000 in drug money he owed Ramirez and so decided to kill him, according to the prosecution.
The two defendants pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder at their superior court arraignment in September.
Monday’s hearing had been set for discovery compliance in the case. Assistant District Attorney Robert Nelson said he has not yet supplied the defense with one item, a surveillance video in the possession of the Wellesley Police Department. Nelson said the video shows Paul Moccia arriving in Ramirez’s pickup truck to meet his brother, Robert Moccia, in Wellesley on March 20, the night Ramirez disappeared.
But the hearing’s focus quickly shifted to Bradley’s bail, after his attorney, Kevin Reddington, asked to revisit it. Reddington said that at the time of the superior court arraignment there was a “hysteria of media coverage,” but the actual information he had access to on the case “was virtually nil.”
News accounts last year highlighted Nelson’s initial description of the crime, in which he said that Moccia shot Ramirez, before Bradley took the body into his family’s Walpole concrete business, R.J. Bradley Co. Inc., where it was dismembered and “cooked.” In September, Nelson revised that account in court, stating that both men shot Ramirez, that Bradley cut up the body, and that an incinerator was used to dispose of it.
Responding Monday to Reddington’s reference to “buzzwords” in the media, Nelson said, “That was the buzzword at the time, that they had cooked his body.” But another interview of Robert Moccia revealed that the body was incinerated, he said.
Reddington said he has now received “the final package of discovery,” including all the police reports and grand jury notes. He said Ramirez was reported missing by one of his girlfriends, and that the Guatemalan immigrant picked up his friend Benicio from Logan International Airport, “and then he disappears.”
Reddington said for the bail statute, the decision hinders on the strength of the government’s case. Reddington said he now sees in the discovery materials that – according to Robert Moccia – Paul Moccia told him that he was involved in the killing of Ramirez, and that “my client was involved in the disposal of the body.” Paul Moccia is the only person to give a statement “that implicates my client in any way in this case. Mr. Bradley makes no admissions,” Reddington said.
Reddington said investigators found some “very slight” blood splatter evidence in Walpole, and a drop of blood on Bradley’s boot in his Westwood home. DNA results indicate that it was in fact Ramirez’s blood that was found in the Walpole garage, which had concrete cutting equipment, Reddington said.
But he argued this case is totally unlike a previous one in Norfolk Superior Court in which a man cut up his wife with a Sawzall, and the jury could know for certain that the victim was dead. In this case, finding a couple of drops of blood on the premises in no way “proves that this is a homicide,” Reddington said, adding that he doubts the government will provide more evidence.
“They don’t have a body. They don’t have any proof that Mr. Ramirez is dead,” Reddington maintained, repeating a theme that he and Moccia’s attorney, Steven Boozang, have frequently emphasized.
Both lawyers argued that the prosecution’s case is circumstantial, and that their clients have strong community ties. Reddington said Bradley “is squeaky clean.”
“There’s a family business that they have down in Walpole,” Reddington said. “He has a child, a little boy. He has a home.”
Reddington said Bradley and the child’s mother, Shannon Murphy, were not married, “but they did have plans to get married.”
In a phone interview, Murphy said she and Bradley were never engaged.
“I’m not marrying Danny, I’m not conspiring with anybody, I’m just raising my children. That’s all. That’s all I want to do,” Murphy said. “I need to keep my children safe. That’s my top priority.”
A Norton man, Jesse Sheridan, said previously that he and Murphy had a daughter, but she broke up with him in 2006, not long before she got together with Bradley. Nelson has said that Bradley helped Moccia with Ramirez in exchange for Moccia helping him to “take out” Sheridan.
On Monday, Murphy sought to distance herself from the case and any repercussions from it. But her name was brought up several times in court – including when Reddington referred to an interview in which she reportedly said that Bradley had purchased bleach and peroxide for the opening of his swimming pool, as he did every year.
Responding to Reddington’s bail argument, Nelson told Fishman that the facts he just heard were basically the same as those given to another judge in September, aside from the pool aspect.
Nelson recounted details from March 20, saying that Paul Moccia asked his brother to meet him in Wellesley by Routes 9 and 128. The surveillance video shows them leaving that parking lot for Framingham, where Ramirez’s truck was found the next morning, not parked in its usual spot, Nelson said. On their ride together back from Framingham, Paul Moccia told his brother how he and Bradley shot the victim, Nelson added.
The assistant D.A. also said that four to five spots in the Walpole garage tested positive for blood, and “that this area was washed down a number of times before police arrived” in early June to execute a search warrant.
In a sure preview of the trial, the two sides haggled over the credibility of Robert Moccia – a key source for the prosecution. When the judge asked Nelson how he knew that Ramirez was dismembered, Nelson said, “That’s the information that we have from Mr. Moccia’s brother.”
Boozang again verbally savaged Robert Moccia, saying he is a convicted felon, drug addict, and “a pathological liar.”
“If he tells you it’s raining, your honor, you’d have to put your hands up,” Boozang said. “Not a credible individual.”
“This case rises and falls on Robert Moccia,” Boozang said. If they cut up Ramirez, he argued, “there’d be blood all over the place – and there’s a couple of drops.”
Nelson said the credibility of Robert Moccia is for the jury to decide, but pointed out that the information he gave about meeting his brother in Wellesley was borne out by the video from the scene.
Both defense attorneys asked the judge for $100,000 bail with electronic monitoring for their respective clients.
Fishman denied the bail requests, but said the case should be moved quickly to trial, setting a schedule that does just that. Reddington asked for a June or July trial date, with Nelson requesting the first week in August, before they all settled on July 26.
Bradley is also due in court March 29, when Reddington will present a “severance motion” on his behalf.
Fishman said he is concerned about the length of pretrial detention, and indicated that if something happens that delays the trial, the attorneys could request bail again.
“The evidence is far from overwhelming. That’s true for both defendants,” he said.
Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.
