{"id":10202,"date":"2023-01-18T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10202"},"modified":"2023-01-30T08:03:21","modified_gmt":"2023-01-30T13:03:21","slug":"annals-of-new-jersey-crime-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10202","title":{"rendered":"Annals of New Jersey Crime, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yesterday\u2019s post<\/a> described the murder of Atlantic County, N.J., man John Kingsbury and the flawed investigation into his death, in which martial arts gym owner Michael Castro was the chief suspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Castro\u2019s Day\u2014Make that Decade\u2014in Court<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 5, 2013, 15 months after John Kingsbury\u2019s murder at his Atlantic County home, the county prosecutor authorized charges of murder and felony murder against Michael Castro. While Castro languished in jail for 15 months, his lawyer diligently picked apart the prosecution\u2019s case. He made plenty of holes in it, and a judge dismissed the murder indictment in June 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2016, the investigators obtained a second murder indictment. By that time, new evidence suggested that two people connected to Castro\u2019s martial arts gym might have committed the crime or participated in it, further muddying the waters. Castro wasn\u2019t jailed this time, but required to wear an ankle monitor for the next 15 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A man known to both Castro and his friend Lauren Kohl (whose missing gun apparently was the murder weapon) was driving Kohl\u2019s Jeep Wrangler back and forth near the Kingsbury home shortly before the murder occurred there, and his alibi for the actual presumed time of the murder didn\u2019t hold up. Investigators waited another 19 months to confront him about these actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A teenager whom Reporter Rebecca Everett describes as \u201cCastro\u2019s martial arts prot\u00e9g\u00e9\u201d matched a witness description of a person seen near the house. He had no alibi for the afternoon of the death. Again the investigators dawdled, and when they asked for the youth\u2019s cellphone data two years later, the company no longer retained it. By May 2017, prosecutors believed they could not win the case against Michael Castro and dropped the charges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Impact on Michael Castro<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years of uncertainty had taken a toll on Michael Castro. He\u2019d filed a civil rights lawsuit in 2015, put on hold when the second indictment came down. After the dropped charges, his lawyer dug in, finding in his investigation of the investigation \u201ca pattern of deliberate misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such suits rarely succeed, but in 2021, a U.S. District Judge decided the problems were big enough that a jury should decide. New shortcomings in the investigation emerged\u2014failure to document meetings, text exchanges, and steps in the investigation, including interviews and the results of a photo lineup. Those flaws were on top of the mishandling of evidence, inadequate case preparation, and damaging delays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a rare outcome in such suits, Castro received a $5 million settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in the Court of Public Opinion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Castro made a 37-minute YouTube video posted August 2021. In it, he talks about his initial surprise at being considered a suspect, his arrest more than a year later, and his months in jail and with the monitor. He talks about his abusive mother, his absent stepfather, the ten different schools he attended, his military service and resultant PTSD, and his persistent financial problems. Twice accused of murder, yet never convicted, he can\u2019t escape public suspicion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Says the dead man\u2019s son, Glenn, \u201cThe whole thing\u2019s awful. And it\u2019s gonna go on till the day I die. And in theory, it may go on till the day my children die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did Michael Castro get away with murder, or is he another victim?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parts 1 and 2 of this story are based primarily on reporting by Rebecca Everett for the Trenton, N.J., Times.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday\u2019s post described the murder of Atlantic County, N.J., man John Kingsbury and the flawed investigation into his death, in which martial arts gym owner Michael Castro was the chief suspect. Castro\u2019s Day\u2014Make that Decade\u2014in Court On April 5, 2013, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"If \"justice delayed is justice denied,\" this case proves the point. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,54,35,104,1596],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-detective","category-real-life","category-the-morgue","category-true-crime"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Ey","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10202"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10206,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10202\/revisions\/10206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}