News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 10, 2005

BEVERLY MAN CONVICTED IN CONNECTION WITH
1996 KILLING OF MEDFORD WOMAN

Boston, MA... A federal trial jury today convicted a former Beverly resident of conspiracy to commit witness tampering killing, and being an accessory after the fact to witness tampering killing in connection with the 1996 murder of a Medford woman.

June W. Stansbury, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in New England ,United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan; John Blodgett, Essex County District Attorney; Martha Coakley, Middlesex County District Attorney; William J. Hoover, Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in New England, and Colonel Thomas G. Robbins, Superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, announced that DEREK CAPOZZI, age 32, and formerly of Beverly, Massachusetts, was convicted by a trial sitting before U.S. District Judge Rya A. Zobel of Conspiracy to Commit Witness Tampering Killing, and Being an Accessory After the Fact to Witness Tampering Killing. The jury acquitted CAPOZZI of one substantive count of Witness Tampering.

The evidence during the two-week trial showed that in 1996 CAPOZZI joined an existing drug organization headed by Paul A. DeCologero, of Burlington, Massachusetts. When guns stashed by members of the organization were discovered by police and federal agents at the Medford apartment of then nineteen-year-old Aislin Silva, Paul A. DeCologero ordered that she be kept away from law enforcement officers for a week, and then ordered that she be killed in order to protect himself and his organization from her possible cooperation with federal authorities as a witness against his organization. CAPOZZI was convicted of joining the conspiracy to kill Aislin Silva, and then being an accessory after the fact to her killing, based on evidence that he helped dismember her body with two other members of the DeCologero organization and dispose of it in a burial site that has never been located.

Judge Zobel did not schedule a date for sentencing at this time. CAPOZZI faces a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison on the Conspiracy conviction and up to 15 years in prison on the Accessory After the Fact conviction. He also faces a maximum fine of $250,000 on each of the charges.

This case is just one part of a larger case charging Paul A. DeCologero and other members of his drug organization with RICO, robbery, drug, firearm, and witness tampering offenses. The trial of the remaining defendants is expected to take place in January 2006.

A joint investigation was conducted and continues by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, with the assistance of the Massachusetts State Police and the Medford, Woburn, Lowell, and Wilmington Police Departments.