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Their loved one’s unsolved slaying was handled by two disgraced detectives. Now, they just want the truth. | Mike Newall

“All this, it’s like Leslie didn’t matter. She didn’t matter at all. Just another nobody. I mean, who supervised these bums?”

Anthony (left) and Angelo Delzingaro hold a portrait of their mother, Leslie Delzingaro, who was shot death in a Philadelphia tavern nine years ago. Both detectives tasked with solving the unsolved murder have been arrested on corruption charges.
Anthony (left) and Angelo Delzingaro hold a portrait of their mother, Leslie Delzingaro, who was shot death in a Philadelphia tavern nine years ago. Both detectives tasked with solving the unsolved murder have been arrested on corruption charges.Read moreMARGO REED / Staff Photographer

Twice in the last six years, the DiFrancesco family have turned on the news to see not the face of a suspect arrested in their daughter’s slaying — but rather, the mugshots of the investigators tasked with solving it.

First it was Detective Ron Dove, who in 2013 was suspended from the force — and later arrested —for lying to investigators after his girlfriend murdered a man and he helped her flee the state.

Dove had been assigned to the case of the DiFrancescos’ daughter Leslie Delzingaro, a single mother of two shot by a stray bullet in an Olney tavern in 2010.

Unbeknownst to the family, the father of Dove’s girlfriend owned the bar where Leslie was slain, and there was concern that Dove might have tampered with that case and others connected to his girlfriend, too.

The DiFrancescos were shocked by the tawdriness of the Dove case, but not surprised that Dove might not have been on their side: They felt he’d been dismissive from the beginning, ignoring their phone calls and stressing that the bar owner was “a great guy.”

Dove eventually served a short prison sentence in his girlfriend’s case. His role in Leslie’s case was sent to Internal Affairs. And the DiFrancesco family waited.

Then, after all the attention surrounding Dove, a new detective showed up on their doorstep: Philip Nordo, a smiling, gregarious man who reminded them of Joe Pesci. He was a member of an elite special investigations unit in homicide.

Unlike Dove, he seemed to make an effort. He sought a connection through their Italian last names, calling Eileen, Leslie’s mother, "paisan.”

He came with a folder and photos, and a story. He told Eileen that her daughter, a decorative-lighting saleswoman who worked at the bar, was an accidental victim of a gang war — that the word on the street was that the masked man who pulled the trigger was in jail for life on a different crime, and that his accomplice was dead. He said he was trying to get the suspected shooter to confess but had had no luck yet.

After years of feeling ignored, after learning that the investigation in their daughter’s killing was embroiled in one of the worst corruption scandals to hit the homicide unit in decades, after not a word of apology or concern from police brass — that conversation, on Eileen and Angelo DiFrancesco’s patio, represented the sum total of the answers this family would get from the Philadelphia Police Department.

The DiFrancescos took what little explanation they had, and moved on in the broken, fractured way that families of murder victims do. They lived every day in Leslie’s memory.

And then they switched on Action News this week and saw Phil Nordo’s mugshot. He had been charged with sexually assaulting witnesses in his homicide cases, in jails and interrogation rooms. Prosecutors also accused him of forcing witnesses to sign false statements. Nordo has pleaded not guilty.

These detectives, of all people, the detectives at the heart of two of the most serious misconduct allegations in the homicide unit in decades, were the two people tasked with justice and closure for the DiFrancescos.

At this point, the family cannot say they are surprised. And who could blame them.

“All this, it’s like Leslie didn’t matter,” Eileen said. “She didn’t matter at all. Just another nobody. I mean, who supervised these bums?”

And whatever kind of closure they got in the last few years, they say, feels broken now. The family that for so long felt so ignored don’t know what to believe.

“Where was the oversight? Did they really even investigate the murder? How does this get swept under the rug?” asked Laura Davis, Leslie’s sister. If it hasn’t been, if someone is still working on the case, or what, if anything, Internal Affairs uncovered, the DiFrancescos have no idea. No one has ever called them.

“We haven’t heard anything in six years,” said Leslie’s older son, Angelo Delzingaro, 26. “We deserve more.”

Of course, they do.

I called Police Commissioner Richard Ross, who didn’t make excuses: “I have to apologize to that family for what they’ve gone through with these two detectives and more importantly, that they have not been contacted for the better part of six years. That’s unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances. We have an obligation to stay in touch with these families.”

He said the case was recently reassigned. Someone will be calling them, he said.

The family told me they understand there are killings that may never be solved, especially in a city with some 300 murders a year and a solve rate below 50 percent. They have made their peace with that.

“I think, a long time ago, we accepted we’d never get justice,” Laura said. “If it’s a cold case, it’s a cold case. That happens every day. But if it was never investigated right — then that’s not fair. It would mean a lot, to have someone call. Someone to call and apologize, to give us some answers. But we’d have to be able to trust them.”

And for the DiFrancescos, who have lost so much and who know so little, that’s a tall order.

The family’s phone rang Friday evening. It was a new detective. He apologized for taking so long to call. He said he’d be in touch.