Rural Pennsylvania
This grisly story took place in a small rural Pennsylvania town called Damascus. Home to only 3,000 people, Damascus is the typical farming community where everyone knows each other's name.
The main characters of this spine-chilling story are Joe and Tony Cilino, two farmers who also happen to be brothers. Joe and Tony had always shared a close bond... until they eventually turned into rivals.
Madly In Love
It all began when Tony, the younger of the two siblings, started dating a teenage girl named Brooke Swingle. After going out for nearly three years, the couple decided to move in together and had a baby boy named Niko.
Everyone thought that Tony and Brooke made the perfect couple. "Tony seemed to give her that sense of security, and things seemed to be going pretty good for a while", Pennsylvania State Police Trooper John Decker said. However, it was only a matter of time before the passion began to fade.
Toxic Relationship
Shortly after becoming parents, their relationship started going downhill. "At some point that relationship went south. And as Brooke told me, it became abusive, verbally, somewhat physically", Decker explained.
Apparently, Tony started controlling Brook's every move. He would always request to be told where she was and who she was with, and sometimes he would even lock her inside the house until he came back from work.
Constant Surveillance
As time went by, his violent, possessive behavior only got worse. According to District Attourney Deborah Rothenberg, "He controlled literally every aspect of her life to the point where she wasn't allowed to work outside of the home".
On top of that, Tony would often threaten to beat her up whenever she tried to leave the house. He even went as far as threatening to kill himself if she kept on going out with her friends. But how long did Brook put up with this?
Enough Is Enough
It wasn't long before Brooke decided she couldn't cope with his boyfriend's constant surveillance any longer. Tony controlled literally every movement she took, to the point that she had been forced to share a joint cellphone account with him.
Eventually, Brooke saw no other choice but to leave Tony and file a restraint order against him, taking their baby boy with her. "That, according to her, was really the only way she could feel safe again", said Trooper Decker. Brooke's nightmare, however, had barely begun...
Boiling With Rage
Tony went mad as soon as he found out that his girlfriend had filed a protection order against him. He rushed to the parking lot and raged out of control, screaming out all sorts of obscenities about Brooke.
According to a few neighbors, he also warned that he would kill her as well as whoever she was with. However, little did Tony imagine who Brooke had sought comfort in.
Tony's Elder Brother
Surprisingly, the first person that Brooke reached out to was Tony's 40-year-old brother, Joe. Joe helped her get back on her feet and offered to look for a new place for her to move in to. But why did she choose Joe, of all people?
As Decker points out, "Joe was someone that made Brooke feel safe. He wasn't an unknown to her. He was someone that she already knew, and it was someone she didn't have to be scared for her son to be around". But Brook's life was about to take an unexpected twist...
Unexpected Love
As Brooke spent more and more time with his ex-boyfriend's brother, the two started developing feelings for each other. Before they knew it, barely a couple of months after Brooke's breakup, the two started dating.
But as happy as she felt with her new boyfriend, there was something that kept tormenting her. What would happen when Tony found out? Would they manage to keep their relationship a secret?
Word Came Out
It wasn't long before Tony found out the truth. Even though Brooke had blocked him on social media, Tony saw a few pictures of them together on a friend's phone.
From the moment he saw those pictures, he started venting out to his friend, James, sending him endless violent text messages. "I'm going to kill him James. I have no choice", one of them read. At this point, the family feud was about to unleash itself.
Death Threats
Even though Tony's friends tried to calm him down, there was nothing they could do to hold in his rage. "Tony told people if he can't have her, then nobody else can have her", WNEP-TV reporter Jim Hamill said.
Without a doubt, Tony had developed a pathological obsession with Brooke and he just couldn't bear the fact that she had found love again. But since nobody took Tony's death threats seriously, no one expected what was about to happen.
Tony And Joe Cross Paths
On a Sunday afternoon, Brooke and Joe were driving back home with Niko in the back seat when they suddenly spotted Tony driving the opposite direction.
"Don't turn right, go straight", Joe told Brooke at once, hoping to avoid him. Brooke started speeding up the road, hoping to get as far away from Tony as possible. Had they gone unnoticed?
Dead End
Convinced that they had steered clear of Tony, Brooke was initially relieved, but what she didn't know was that Tony was hot on her heels just a few feet behind them.
As soon as Joe noticed that his brother's car was approaching them at a distance, she told Broke to turn up the first street to the right. But unfortunately for the couple, it wasn't a street, but a dead-ended driveway.
He Ran For His Life
Tony had the couple cornered. When they realized that they had no choice but to stop the car, Joe got out of the vehicle and ran towards the woods, hoping to avoid a deadly confrontation.
As Joe ran away, Tony pulled up right behind Brooke, got out of his car and walked up to the side of Brooke's window. He pulled a gun out of his sweatshirt, pointed it at her, and ordered her to roll the window down. What happened next?
Face To Face
Tony demanded that she tell him whether there was anything going on with Joe. Brooke, however, was too scared to move, let alone speak out the truth.
Just when Tony was about to smash the window into pieces and break into the car, Joe jumped out of the woods and ran towards him. Defenseless and trapped inside the vehicle, all Brooke could do was pray for the best.
The Sound Of A Gunshot
Joe tackled his brother to the floor and they started wrestling each other for the gun. "Blows are exchanged. Tony is pinned on the ground. As that scuffle goes on, Joe looks up at Brooke and says 'Get out of here, go call 911.'", Decker narrated.
Just as Brooke drove away with Niko in her arms on her way to the police, she heard the distant sound of a gunshot. Who shot whom?
911
Brooke dialed 911 the moment she heard the sound of the gunshot. Moments later, Trooper John Decker arrived at the scene. "I was able to see some blood in the driveway in this area, kind of a general pooling", he told Crime Watch Daily.
"Then there was a blood trail, kind of a speckled-type pattern that went along through here, up the driveway and then over to the house near the porch area", the investigator added. The moment he got out of the car, he realized which brother had been murdered...
Gruesome Discovery
Decker discovered a corpse lying on the porch of the house surrounded by a puddle of blood. The body was Joe's. He had been shot in the chest and had evidently died shortly after the attack. Upon further investigation, the police managed to reconstruct the events that occurred at the crime scene.
"Joe was able to subdue Tony so that Brooke could get away, but because of the wound that he sustained, he lost strength and eventually Tony was able to get away from him. Joe was able to drag himself onto the porch of that house, looking for help. He didn't find help in time and died as a result of his wounds", Decker explained. But where was Tony?
He Turned Himself In
As soon as his brother dropped dead right in front of him, Tony fled from the crime scene and rushed to his mom's house. Heartbroken and speechless, her mother convinced him to turn himself in to the police.
Two hours after the shooting, Tony showed up at the police station and, with his clothes still soaked in blood, confessed to his crime. It would only be a matter of time before he was put behind bars, but there would soon be another tragic twist to the story.
Shocking Revelation
Charged with criminal homicide, Tony was sent to trial. It wasn't until the hearings that everyone found out why Tony had known where to find his brother on the day of the murder.
As it turns out, his own mother had been the one who tipped him off to Joe's location. According to Tony's confession, he had told his mother he wanted to grab a beer with Joe, hoping she would reveal his whereabouts. Little did she know she was leading one of his two sons to his deathbed and the other one to prison.
Alleged Self-Defense
While Tony had initially confessed to his intentional homicide to the police, he now insisted that he wasn't sure whether he had actually pulled the trigger.
"He suspected the gun went off in the struggle somehow. He also claimed at some point that if he did pull the trigger, it was self-defense", said District Attorney Rothenberg. This was hardly believable, but did the judge buy it?
Life Behind Bars
In the end, the prosecutors dismissed Tony's allegations and the judge declared him guilty of third-degree murder. He was therefore sentenced from 16 to 34 years of prison.
When the verdict came out, Tony's murder became the talk of the town and received worldwide media coverage. Sadly, Damascus will always be remembered as the town where a family love triangle once resulted in murder and tragedy.