Louis Vincent Esposito is escorted out of a police vehicle to his arraignment. (File/News)

By Debbie Wachter and Annabelle Chipps, New Castle News

Louis Vincent Esposito was found guilty of killing his mother and landlord and attempting to kill his Dewey Avenue neighbor, a jury decided Friday.

Esposito will face a maximum of two lifetime sentences plus 23 to 47 years in prison without parole in Friday afternoon’s decision in the weeklong homicide trial. Lawrence County Common Pleas President Judge J. Craig Cox presided over the case.

Esposito was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, one count of attempted criminal homicide and attempting to escape.

He stabbed his mother, Margaret Kahrer, to death 19 times, his landlord John Micco 17 times and non-fatally shot his neighbor Kevin Ross on May 12, 2021. The jury, made of six men, six women and two alternates, delivered a verdict after 82 minutes.

Sentencing will occur in 60 to 90 days.

Nearly 40 people anxiously awaited the decision outside the courtroom. Once inside, the crowd held its breath until Esposito was found guilty on all counts.

At that moment, Micco’s family began to cry tears of relief. “We got justice. I’m so happy,” one family member whispered in the courtroom.

Esposito did not show emotion regarding the verdict. When police moved to take him into custody, he briefly walked toward a door before police grabbed him and put him in handcuffs.

“Without people like you, our world could not function,” Cox said to the jury.

All jurors, including the foreman, declined to comment on their decision.

Family members, friends and Dewey Avenue residents tearfully hugged in the hallway after the verdict was announced.

Several people told The News that Esposito’s brothers were in attendance this afternoon.

The brothers also wiped away tears when the verdict was delivered, then declined to comment on the situation.

“We’re all living and he can’t take our power away,” Micco’s daughter-in-law, Heather, said.

She claimed the people of Dewey Avenue are “all just good people who had a monster come to live there.”

“He deserves to suffer a long time in jail,” she said. “Death is too easy.”

Micco’s granddaughter, Allie Micco, noted that her family is even stronger in the wake of this incident.

She is seven months pregnant with Micco’s great-granddaughter, which the family considers a blessing.

“We’re closer than ever before,” Allie Micco said.

The defense claim was that Esposito was legally insane when the crimes were committed.

Possible outcomes were guilty, not guilty, not guilty by reason of insanity and guilty but mentally ill, according to Cox.

The jury was sent to deliberate after the attorneys presented closing arguments to the jury, first by defense attorney John Bongivengo then by District Attorney Joshua Lamancusa for the prosecution.

“I have to get up here and concede that Mr. Esposito did the acts,” Bongivengo told the jury.

Using the words “senseless,” “unprovoked,” and “brutal,” he said, “Senseless, isn’t that kind of the point? That somebody isn’t operating under their full senses?

“His mother was nagging him, so he stabbed her 19 times? That’s not the behavior of a person of sound mind,” Bongivengo said.

“And Mr. Ross, all he did was take him to the store and he got shot.”

His arguments attempted to discredit testimony of the prosecution’s expert witness, Dr. Phillip J. Resnick of Cleveland, a forensic psychiatrist and medical doctor, who said he interviewed Esposito and Esposito told him he had been using crystal methamphetamine for six months prior to the murders and that he used it that night.

“What if he wasn’t on meth?” Bongivengo said, noting Esposito had not been drug tested that night.

Lamancusa opened with, “They want you to think about all the misdiagnoses,” he told the jury.

“This case is actually a lot simpler than (Bongivengo) wants you to believe. This is a first-degree murder case, all day long.”

He declared that Esposito was not on meth that night, arguing his actions were deliberate and he knew that he did something wrong.

He covered up the Ring camera before he stabbed Micco then hid, said Lamancusa, who prosecuted the case with Assistant District Attorney Emily Sanchez-Parodi.

“He tried everything he could come up with and did everything he could to get away with murder,” Lamancusa said.

He described Esposito’s actions at the city police station as “a charade,” saying “he was looking for a lifeline to get out of that room. There was method to that madness.”

He first faked a seizure, then he feigned being unconscious, and took off his shirt and tore it, tried to remove his pants because you can’t run with a lot of clothing, Lamancusa reasoned. He then urinated in a waste basket and tried to urinate on the officer’s shoes, and he tried to escape and even tried pulling the fire alarm, he said.

Dr. Alice Applegate, a licensed forensic psychologist called as the defense expert witness, “diagnosed him with something no one had ever diagnosed him with before,” not his own psychiatrist, or Social Security doctors, Lamancusa said.

“She didn’t give him the right diagnosis,” he said, pointing out, “She’s the defense’s doctor. She couldn’t even explain what a forensic psychiatrist is,” and she never attained board certification, he said.

Dr. Resnick said in testimony that you don’t evaluate from his state of mind a year down the road, but at the time of the incident, Lamancusa continued. “Dr. Resnick told you (Esposito) didn’t have a qualifying mental disease (for legal insanity). He knew what he did was wrong.

“Ladies and gentlemen, he is not insane,” he concluded.

Annabelle Chipps is a recent graduate of Slippery Rock University and one of 10 Pittsburgh Media Partnership summer interns.