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After four young men had been missing for days, a 20-year-old man confessed to killing them and burying their bodies at his family's sprawling farm in the US state of Pennsylvania.
- Four men, all residents of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, disappeared last week
- Police identified one victim, said other remains were found in grave on the DiNardo family farm
- In exchange for the cooperation prosecutors take death penalty off the table, lawyer says
Police have been digging on Cosmo DiNardo's family farm in the summer dust and heat, using plywood to shore up a deep, tent-covered trench where Bucks County district attornet Matthew Weintraub said dogs managed to "smell these poor boys 12 feet [3.5 metres] below the ground".
The remains of Dean Finocchiaro, 19, have been identified, though authorities said other remains were found in the hole.
Jimi Patrick, 19, has been missing since last Wednesday. Mark Sturgis, 22 and Thomas Meo, 21, have been missing since last Friday.
Authorities have not revealed any details about how the victims found in the grave may have died or how they got there. The prosecutor had said he thought a backhoe may have been on the property.
The mystery of the four men's disappearances has transfixed the Philadelphia area over the past week.
"It's been very unnerving. It's very spooky," said Laura Hefty, who lives a few kilometres from the gravesite.
"[People] feel incredibly sad. Some people are pretty angry, too, [asking] 'How did it get this bad'?"
Susan Coleman said she and her husband were in their backyard last Saturday when they heard several rounds of what they believed was shotgun fire coming from the direction of the DiNardo farm.
"This person was going bananas," she told phillyvoice.com.
Eric Beitz, who said he had hung out with DiNardo in recent weeks, told philly.com DiNardo routinely sold guns and on multiple occasions had talked "about weird things like killing people and having people killed".
"I'm sorry," a shackled DiNardo said as he left the courthouse.
DiNardo's lawyer Paul Lang said his client made the confession and told investigators where the bodies were buried in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.
"He confessed to his participation or commission in the murders of the four young men," he said.
"In exchange for that confession, Mr DiNardo was promised by the district attorney that he will spare his life by not invoking the death penalty."
DiNardo had been arrested on Wednesday and charged with stealing and trying to sell a car owned by one of the men.
Police found Meo's sedan on the farm early on Sunday morning and discovered the car's title, unsigned by Meo, along with his insulin kit for diabetes.
DiNardo had already been arrested on Monday at his home for owning a gun he was not allowed to possess because he had previously been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, prosecutors said.
A prosecutor said he was a danger to the community because he had been diagnosed as schizophrenic.
AP/Reuters
Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, law-crime-and-justice, crime, police-sieges, courts-and-trials, united-states