Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Bruce Cucchiara

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

When 57-year-old Bruce Cucchiara was gunned down in the parking lot of a New Orleans East apartment complex in 2012 his murder devastated his family and stumped law enforcement. The father and business man seemed to be well-liked and on a positive path as he coasted toward retirement. He was also worth $5 million in life insurance. For more than a year CounterClock's Delia D'Ambra has investigated the case and unraveled a web of bizarre information and circumstances about his life and those who benefitted from his death. The geographical and political setting of the murder has a dark history of corruption, fraud and violence and at every turn Delia discovers Bruce's complicated business life may have put him in the crosshairs of several bad actors. From allegations of a setup and ties to organized crime to Bruce being a key witness in a multi-million-dollar lawsuit to random robbery...each scenario is something the New Orleans Police Department can't rule out. Now, 11 years after his brutal slaying the questions still remain, who murdered Bruce? Why was he even in New Orleans East? Where is the murder weapon? Delia has discovered new information, tracked down witnesses and revealed secrets within the victim's closest circle that will blow this unsolved case wide open. CounterClock Season 5 is the most extensive and explosive investigation to-date with more than two dozen interviews and over a thousand documents that tell a stranger-than-fiction story about a very real crime. Binge all 14 episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And I don't have a full episode for you today, but I do have an interesting story that is gonna take you down a rabbit hole. Britt, do you remember? I need you to think way back before a whole pandemic ago, which feels like a lifetime.

Oh God, okay. Back in 2019, you and I went to like a conference in New Orleans, do you remember? Yes. Okay, so when we were there, there was this young woman who was going around, she had all these yellow Manila folders and she would like stand in line to meet with,

like people from Dateline, meet with reporters, meet with anyone she could and like hand them this yellow folder. Do you remember that? Yeah, she met with us. Yes, so she handed us this yellow folder and you and I, she basically said in this folder, my father, Bruce Cacherra, was murdered.

She said, but it's not what anyone thinks it is. She says, they think it was this robbery gone wrong, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, they wanted to steal from him, but she said it is so much more than that. That's not it, everything's in this folder. Yeah, she's like, I think I'm close and I think that if the right person looks at it,

they're gonna see that the story is so much bigger than that. And so, again, I didn't know what to think in the moment. I took the folder, I promised her I would look at it and I mean everything I say. And so you and I went, I don't remember where we went. We sat down at some booth and I just have this memory of us.

Yeah, I remember. Okay, so we're sitting at the booth, we're going through the folder and it is a bunch of news articles. Something did look fishy, but again, this was years ago. We didn't have the team that we have now. I knew that my skillset I couldn't dive in and solve the crime.

We're like, this is something and we are not the people for it. Yeah, but I couldn't just like toss the folder. I couldn't throw it in a waste bin and like forget about her. There was something about her, the way she was so desperate for answers, the way she was willing to show up for her dad.

There was so much urgency and importance, yeah. Yeah, so I didn't know what it was or what I could do, but I remember keeping the folder as even I moved like out of my house and into our first office and then I kept it in this drawer at my office and years go by and one day I'm doing this like spring cleaning or whatever, I don't even know why.

I'm like cleaning out my drawers and I come across this yellow folder and it just so happened that Delia was in town that that time, like training one of our new reporters or something. And I was like, hey, Delia, like long shot, but can you just look at this? Like is there something there?

And this was just when again, the reporter she was training, we were just starting to get a crime junkie reporter. I was like, maybe this is like an episode of crime junkie. Just take a look, see what you think. And man, if like, I swear Delia is a lightning rod for wild cases. She deep dives a little and Delia comes out

and she's like, this is my next season of counterclock. Oh my God. She said, everything is so twisted. There are some of the most like highly powerful political people who are like attached to Bruce Kichera who she's like, I can't get straight answers from. She spent a year deep diving into this case, working with Caitlin,

that young woman who handed us the folder all those years ago. And Britt, she is finally ready to tell everyone what she found. Does this mean we get a new season of counterclock? Counterclock season five on the murder of Bruce Kichera is out right now. You can binge all 14 episodes

wherever you listen to podcasts. I promise you, do not sleep on this. Don't do a ton of things like take some notes. This is a complicated case that Delia breaks down in such a digestible way. But you aren't gonna believe it. It's one of those stories that you're like, if it were fiction,

I don't think that you would think it was real. So go listen, you're gonna be as obsessed as I was. I just, it's weird how this whole crime junkie thing came full circle. And listen, I think Delia's gonna solve it.