2 men convicted in slaying of South Jersey woman during burglary
Deanna Scordo, 45, was shot dead during a burglary at her family's blueberry farm in Winslow Township
Two men have been found guilty by a Superior Court jury of murder in the fatal shooting of a Winslow Township woman during a 2017 burglary, authorities said Friday.
Tyler Dralle, 22, of Vineland, and Kwamere Benjamin, 19, of Delaware, were convicted on Thursday of the fatal shooting of Deanna Scordo, 45, at her family’s blueberry farm in the 700 block of Bairdmore Avenue.
Dralle and Benjamin were found guilty of felony murder, murder, armed robbery, armed burglary, conspiracy to commit burglary, unlawful possession of a weapon, and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement released Friday.
Dralle, who played football at Buena Regional High School, had been driving his girlfriend and her brother to work at the blueberry farm for several weeks and decided to target the farmhouse, a prosecutor explained at a court hearing, NJ.com reported.
Around 3:50 a.m. on June 25, 2017, Dralle and Benjamin broke into the house and shot Scordo three times in her bedroom before fleeing with $276 in rolled coins, prosecutors said.
Sarah Scordo, Deanna’s niece, said in an email Friday night that the men took a lot more: $4,700 in cash, a rifle, a shotgun, the rolled coins, and bank papers.
Detectives later identified Dralle in a surveillance video using a Coinstar machine at a Vineland supermarket just hours after killing Scordo, the Courier-Post reported. Investigators found a $90 receipt for the coin-machine transaction in Dralle’s car.
Dralle had deleted about 8,000 text messages from his phone before surrendering it to police, the prosecutor said at the hearing. Investigators were able to recover some of the messages and learned that Dralle and Benjamin had been talking about robberies and guns for months.
Dralle and Benjamin, who had been on trial since mid-November, are scheduled for sentencing hearings on Feb. 28.
Both men face up to life in prison.
Scordo was the administrator of Spectrum Rehabilitation, LLC since 2007, her obituary stated. She was a fan of the San Francisco 49ers and the University of North Carolina Tar Heels. She attended Tar Heel basketball home games every year.
“Although we will never get her back, we are so happy that justice has finally been served,” said Sarah Scordo. “We promise to live her legacy for her and smile through the toughest of times.”