I never met Vinnie Serra. But I always felt like I knew him. I always felt sorry for him.
Serra was shot to pieces one night in August 1974 at the side of Route 1 in Nobleboro. The college student from Medford, Massachusetts, thought he was doing a $2,000 hashish deal with friends. He was terribly wrong.
Serra was only 22. His family and friends erected a cross on the murder site. You see those roadside crosses all the time now. But Serra’s was the first I ever saw. When I drove home on Route 1 for 40-odd years, I always checked for “Vinnie’s Cross,” a sure sign that home was less than an hour away. I don’t know how that cross lasted so long. It was still there the last time I looked.
At first, that bullet-riddled body found in the grass was unidentified, creating heavy publicity. But within two weeks, the mystery was solved. Then the pair that ripped him off and killed him for a mere $2,000 were arrested as a result of their dumb mistakes.
The murder trial of Frank Cugliata and John Moraites, both from Medford, Massachusetts, was held the next year in Lincoln County Court in Wiscasset. Because of the intense local interest, I was assigned to cover the trial although it was a bit out of the Bangor Daily News’ coverage area.
Serra was a Northeastern University student, a facility where I had spent several wasted years. On the day the body was identified, I picked up a Boston phone book and started calling everyone with the name Serra, like any newspaper reporter would. On the second call, I got his uncle, much to my surprise. The uncle said Serra was “a good boy” and was never involved in drugs.
I felt like I knew him.
There is nothing more dramatic in the newspaper business than a murder trial. In that incredible moment, a defendant stands up in court to hear the jury’s verdict. No matter what anyone says, you never know what a jury is going to do. Not really. I was right about as many times as I was wrong on the verdicts. The defendant stands to hear the decision on whether he walks out the door and goes home for a beer or gets handcuffed on the spot and spends the next few decades in prison.
There was little drama in the trial of Cugliata and Moraites. The police had them cold because of a basic mistake. The jury deliberated only a little more than three hours. Guilty. The men were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Cugliata and Moraites had told Serra that they would sell Serra a 10-pound “brick” of hashish, but they had to go to Maine to get it. The three drove from Medford to Maine, stopping finally in Nobleboro. Serra must have sensed something was suspicious by then. The three men got out of the car, and Serra was shot with a shotgun, then a 9 mm pistol, at the side of the road. No one knows why they shot him at that moment, with Route 1 traffic so close. Maybe Serra was making a break to save his life. But a passing long-haul trucker on Route 1 saw the muzzle flashes and assumed someone was night hunting.
After the shooting, the truck driver saw the suspects’ car at the side of the road make a high speed U-turn behind him, then pass his truck, roaring south. The truck driver wrote down the license number to tell the game wardens, and then forgot about it. It was several days later when he heard about the Serra murder. It was an important break in the case because initially, no one knew the identity of the body and what had happened. The unidentified body had developed heavy newspaper coverage across the state. The truck driver saw the news reports and then called police. It wasn’t night hunting.
It was murder, and the suspicious car was registered to Cugliata. He denied being in Maine the night of the crime. Moraites said he and Cugliata had been playing rummy and listening to records that night.
But Cugliata and Moraites were arrested 11 days after the shooting. It wasn’t exactly a classic “whodunit.” A week after the murder when they found Serra’s car, they also found a note he left. He wrote that he was about to go to Maine with two men on Aug 14, 1974. He apparently had his doubts about the drug transaction.
The full text of the note, though not entirely admitted into evidence in the trial, read “Split with John … and Frank … [last names misspelled] at 9:00 PM 14th of August. In case of no return, check them for responsibility, Carrying $2,000,” according to court records in a 1977 denial of the two men’s appeals.
Somehow, Cugliata got paroled after serving only 10 years of the sentence. His parole was revoked last year after his parole officer found three loaded guns at his Porter, Maine, residence. He was sentenced to an additional three-year term.
Moraites was transferred to a prison out of state, and no information about him was available.
I never met Serra. But I always felt like I knew him. I would always wave and say “Hey” every time I drove by his cross in the grass in Nobleboro.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the BDN in Rockland for 30 years.