Murderer to be released on parole, Benedict DiPiazza
FRANKFORT, N.Y. -- "Outrage, disgust, disappointment," that's how Herkimer County District Attorney, Jeff Carpenter, feels about notorious killer, Benedict DiPiazza, getting parole.
Carpenter thinks the community is safer with DiPiazza behind bars. And just one year ago, the New York State Parole Board agreed.
"....And your release would be incompatible with the welfare of society and would so deprecate the serious nature of the crime as to undermine respect for the law,'" said Carpenter, reading from the Parole Board's 2022 denial of DiPiazza's parole.
"That was one year ago. What has changed in that defendant in one year that would go from that statement, to 'we're going to grant you parole"? asked Carpenter.
It was 1964 when a 20-year-old Benedict DiPiazza gunned 17-year-old Noreen Jones down at the Frankfort Village Offices, adjoining the police station.
"She dove behind a desk. He leaned over the desk and unloaded the gun," says Jones' cousin, Allen Irons, who was 10 years old at the time, and came upon the scene minutes after the crime. His mother was with Noreen, and fought valiantly to save her niece.
"There was a brand-new blender in a box that one of the clerks had bought for somebody's wedding gift, it was sitting there, and she was hitting DiPiazza over the head with it as he was firing," said Irons.
Time doesn't heal all wounds. What a 10-year-old boy saw in a building on a corner in Frankfort 58 years ago, is still burned in that boy's now-70-year-old mind.
"My mom came out of the police station covered in blood. I thought she had been shot. She was totally, just totally covered in blood, from her hair to her face to her chest," said Irons.
DiPiazza was paroled in 1999, but soon violated and went back to prison.
"He proved that he could not be a law-abiding member of society. So why are we giving him a second shot at it?" asks Carpenter. "I will do everything in my power to make sure once he is released that he does not come back to Herkimer County, that he's not allowed to be anywhere near the surviving members who live in our community and I'm going to do my best to keep them safe."
Di Piazza is scheduled to be released from prison on or about April 11.
