Edgar Diaz was a seventeen year old teen killer from New Jersey who would stab his mother to death in a parking lot. According to court documents Edgar Diaz would stab his mother multiple times and banged her head off the cement causing her death. Edgar Diaz would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to eighteen years in prison
Edgar Diaz 2023 Information
Edgar Diaz is being housed in the juvenile division of the New Jersey Department Of Corrections
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A Manchester teen who admitted fatally stabbing his mother in front of his 4-year-old brother with a knife he made in high school shop class begged for a second chance before a judge sentenced him Friday to 18 years in prison.
Superior Court Judge Wendel E. Daniels imposed the prison term on Edgar Diaz, who was 17 when he killed his mother, 44-year-old Margarita Diaz, in front of a Toms River medical office on Aug. 7.
“That person that night was not me,” an apologetic Diaz told the judge before he learned his sentence. “It’s just not who I am.”
Diaz said he had dreams of marrying his girlfriend, buying a home, working as an auto mechanic and becoming a U.S. citizen.
“All I’m asking is for a second chance — a second life,” he told the judge.
Diaz broke down in tears as he recalled a recent dream he had where he was playing soccer in the rain and he received a call on his cellphone. It was his mother.
“I told her that ‘I’m sorry, can you forgive me?’” Diaz said, wiping tears from his eyes with a handcuffed hand. “She said ‘Yes.’”
He said his father still visits him at the juvenile detention center and the two often speak by phone.
His father, Edgar Diaz Sr. asked the judge for leniency. He said his young son, who witnessed his mother’s killing, persistently asks him when his older brother is coming home.
“My son, he’s a good young man. He was a very good kid — playful, loving,” he said, speaking through an interpreter. “We’re just asking for you to grant him a second chance at life.”
Diaz Sr. broke down in sobs as a translator relayed his son’s sentence in his native Spanish.
In handing down the sentence, Daniels noted that Diaz launched a “vicious attack on his mother.”
“You still have a life,” Daniels told Diaz. “Your mother does not. It’s up to you to make the most of it.”
Madeline Buczynski, assistant Ocean County prosecutor, said the court needed to focus the victim, and not a “dream version” of her. She said Diaz’s actions “silenced” his mother.
Buczynski described Margarita Diaz as a hard-working and devoutly religious woman who believed in parenting with “tough love.” She drilled into her teenage the son the importance of school, work and church.
Edgar Diaz believed she was overbearing. Prior to the stabbing, Margarita Diaz and her son were arguing because she was angry he was chatting with a stranger on the internet, Buczynski said.
That argument prompted Edgar Diaz to repeatedly slash and stab his mother with a crudely made knife and later beat her on the pavement of the medical office parking lot, the prosecutor said.
The victim was killed for “parenting her child,” Buczynski said.
“Margarita Diaz gave him life,” she said. “He ruthlessly took hers.”
Diaz’s attorney, Bill Smith, asked for a 10-year sentence, noting that family and friends describe him as a respectful and loving young man who generally had a good relationship with his mother. He even had been named “student of the month” at Manchester High School just months before the killing.
He wasn’t known to be aggressive and violent, and didn’t have any prior criminal history, Smith said.
“It is very difficult to comprehend how an incident like this can occur between mother and son,” he said.
Diaz will have to serve 85 percent of the term before he can be considered for release on parole, under the state’s No Early Release Act.
The sentence was two years shorter than what was called for in a plea bargain.
In entering his guilty plea, Diaz told the judge he fatally stabbed his mother in front of his 4-year-old brother, with a knife he made in a high school shop class, and later made up a story about his mother being attacked by a man dressed all in black.
A heated argument preceded the stabbing outside the Deer Chase Professional Park on Route 37 in Toms River, he said.
The argument started when he returned home from working on painting projects with his uncle, Diaz said at the plea hearing. A few hours later, he, his mother and 4-year-old brother drove from their home in Manchester to the Deer Chase Professional Park in Toms River to see his father, who was cleaning an X-ray office there, he said.
The argument continued along the way, he said. When they arrived at their destination, Edgar Diaz, seated in the back seat next to his younger brother, plunged his homemade knife into his mother’s chest, he said.
Edgar Diaz told the judge at the plea hearing that he didn’t have a clear memory of the incident and couldn’t say how many times he stabbed his mother. His next memory was getting out of the car and seeing her lying on her back on the pavement outside the vehicle, he said. Then, he said he heard a noise.
“I heard crying inside the vehicle,” he said at the plea hearing. “It was my brother.”
After that, he knocked on the glass door of the building where his father worked and told him “something happened.”
When police responded to the lot of the medical park shortly before 9 p.m., they found Margarita Diaz unresponsive. A neighbor had called 911 to report she heard people screaming and fighting inside a car parked near the complex.
In an extended interview with detectives, Edgar Diaz told them the man dressed in black approached their vehicle, mumbling and asking for help. He told them that when his mother rolled down the car window, the man started beating her and then pulled her out of the driver’s side door and stabbed her, according to a police affidavit. Diaz claimed he tried to help his mother by punching the stranger in the back.
Diaz became a suspect after investigators noticed inconsistencies in his story and couldn’t find any evidence to substantiate it.
Diaz was arrested Aug. 13 and charged as a juvenile. He was just a few weeks away from the start of his senior year at Manchester High School, where he had made the knife he used to kill his mother in a shop class during his freshman year.
Authorities in January sought to prosecute Diaz as an adult, and they initially charged him with murder, weapons offenses and endangering the welfare of a child.
The murder charge was downgraded to aggravated manslaughter as part of a plea bargain in which the other charges were dismissed
Justin Robinson was fifteen years old when he lured a 12 year old girl to his garage and murdered her. According to court documents Justin Robinson and the 12 year old girl Autumn Pasquale were familiar with each other. On the day of the murder Justin Robinson lured Autumn Pasquale to his garage where the 12 year old was beaten to death. Justin Robinson seventeen year old brother Dante Robinson would be arrested for helping his brother hide up the problem. This teen killer would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to seventeen years in prison with the first fourteen year old being mandatory
ust about everyone in New Jersey has heard about what happened to Autumn Pasquale, a spunky 12-year-old with a sprinkle of freckles and brilliant blonde hair.
They’ve heard how she climbed on her white BMX bike on a Saturday afternoon nearly 5 1/2 years ago, pedaled away from her High Street home and disappeared. Thousands in the small borough of Clayton and nearby towns searched backyards and fields, only to find her body two days later crumpled in a blue recycling container in front of a vacant home.
Less than 72 hours after Autumn was last seen, police announced the arrests of two teenage brothers, 15-year-old Justin and 17-year-old Dante Robinson. Prosecutors said the brothers lured Autumn to their home across town and killed her in a scheme to steal parts from her bike. In the waning days of 2012, the tragic story from this small corner of the state was bandied across the nation as a cautionary tale.
For the first time since 2013, when Justin Robinson was sentenced to 17 years in prison in her killing, both Robinson and his mother, Anita Saunders, have agreed to talk publicly about what happened the day Autumn died. Separately, they sat down with NJ Advance Media to tell their side of the story.
While Autumn’s family and many others believe the crime was simply a cold-blooded killing, Robinson insists the story reported for five years is a distortion of what really happened.
Justin Robinson sits at a table in a small meeting room at Garden State Youth Correctional Facility in Chesterfield, Burlington County, where he’s been for the past 4 1/2 years and will likely be until at least 2027.
He pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, after initially being charged with murder. His brother Dante, also charged with murder, admitted to fourth-degree obstruction, and was jailed for 11 months.
Dressed in a beige prison uniform, the now 21-year-old spoke calmly for about 40 minutes about what happened in 2012.
Justin Robinson doesn’t deny strangling Autumn in his parents’ basement on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012, and then hiding her body.
“I’m deeply sorry,” Robinson says. “I didn’t really want this to happen. If I could take it back I would.” But, he says, “I didn’t kill her for no bike.”
Autumn, he says, wasn’t a stranger. The high school freshman knew her older sibling and he would see Autumn, a seventh-grader, at school. Both Clayton Middle and High School share the same campus. “We used to talk in the hallways.”
Autumn was an outgoing, straight-A student and a tomboy. She loved her BMX bike and playing soccer. She was a dancer and cheerleader before soccer and softball drew her attention.
When she posted on Facebook about needing someone to install new rims on her bike, Robinson said he offered to help. On a Friday night, the two made small talk on Facebook messenger for about two hours.
“Can u put my stuff on mh bike tmw pls,” she asks.
“K can u meet me somwhere close cause i cant really walk tht well,” he responds. He had a childhood ankle injury that sometimes made it difficult to get around, his mother explained.
At another point in the conversation, he asked Autumn if she was single. “Ya,” she replies. He told her he thought she was attractive.
Autumn Pasquale and Justin Robinson communicated via Facebook the night before her death.
Breaking the rules
Robinson knew his mother and stepfather, Richard Saunders, were going to be a few blocks away Saturday afternoon, at the high school where one of his five brothers was playing in the Homecoming football game.
And he knew his mother had a strict rule for her boys: No girls in the house when their parents were away. But he broke that rule.
Autumn’s final message to Robinson came shortly before 3 p.m. Saturday. She had biked the half mile from her home to his street and was trying to find his house. “K ill b there just stay there,” she wrote.
Saunders shared those messages with NJ Advance Media, which she said were part of discovery in the case against her son. The messages show two kids planning to meet up, not the prelude to a premeditated crime, she said.
In the basement of his house, Robinson said Autumn offered him $10 to install the rims.
After he was finished with her bicycle, he asked for the money. She said she didn’t have it with her.
Autumn Pasquale died in the Robinson home on East Clayton Avenue. (File photo)
“You can’t get the bike unless you give me the money,” Robinson recalled telling her.
But she had no plans of leaving without her bike and Autumn began hitting him, Robinson claims.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he says. “I didn’t want to hit her physically. I just threw my hands around her neck and I just choked her until she stopped hitting me. When she went limp, I let her go.”
She died, investigators said, from “blunt force trauma, consistent with strangulation.”
s Autumn’s lifeless body lay on the basement floor, Robinson said he went into a “frantic panic mode” as he tried to figure out what to do next.
“A lot of people thought I planned it,” he says. “There was nothing planned about this. There was never no intention to lure her or kill her for her bike. No traps. Nothing.”
His tone remains calm and focused as he explains his next actions.
Robinson thought about how to get her body out of the basement.
“At first I got a trash bag and that didn’t really work,” he said.
Then, he went to the vacant house next door and retrieved the recycling container. He struggled to bring her body up from the basement and some of her clothing came off as he pulled her up the stairs, he said. Investigators later found the clothing in a trash bag in the family’s kitchen.
Robinson dropped her body in the recycling container and wheeled it back to the neighbor’s house.
When his parents returned home around 4 p.m., his mother asked him why he was sweating. Robinson assured her that everything was fine.
In reality, he said he felt like he was caught in a bad dream.
“I was just really numb,” he said. “I was really just trying to wake up.”
In an apparent effort to cover his tracks, Robinson sent another Facebook message to Autumn that night, “Just got home sorry tomrow,” following by a later message saying “hey wassup.”
Autumn’s father, Anthony Pasquale, reported her missing around 9:30 p.m. Saturday. In the two days that followed, her family, friends and complete strangers mobilized a massive community search for a girl in a yellow T-shirt, navy sweatpants and bright blue high-top sneakers.
State Police flew helicopters, K-9 units were brought in and school kids handed out fliers.
After investigators learned that Justin Robinson was the last person in contact with Autumn before she disappeared, police visited the Robinson home. Robinson told them he only spoke with her outside, according to one investigation report. Then he denied she had been there at all.
Based on his shifting stories, detectives asked both Justin and Dante, their mother and stepfather to come to the police station for an interview on the evening of Monday, Oct. 22
That night, while the Robinson family was being interviewed, police found Autumn’s body.
When Justin and Dante learned this, they “became upset and angry,” according to an investigator’s statement.
A patrolman on duty said he prayed with Justin in the station’s processing room. During their prayer, “Justin asked if Jesus would forgive him, and told them he strangled Pasquale in the basement of his residence,” according to the police report.
Dante was upstairs in his room listening to music when Autumn was killed, Saunders said.
He told investigators he heard Autumn scream, but “I didn’t think nothing of it.”
Apparently unaware of what happened in the basement, Dante said he yelled from his room to “hurry up and get that girl out of here before mommy got home.” Dante saw his brother a short time later and asked him if she had left. He said she had.
An investigator’s report describes the moment Justin Robinson confessed to the killing.
Dante later pleaded guilty to obstruction, was sentenced to six months and released on time served in 2013. The obstruction charge stemmed from Dante supposedly blocking investigators from seeing that Autumn’s bike was in the house, Saunders said, but she denied that he had done this.
“Dante did 11 months for something he didn’t do,” she said.
Saunders insists Autumn’s death was an “accident.”
“Something went wrong between two kids,” she said. “It was a genuine accident that wasn’t planned. … She was not leaving her bike. You had two kids and they’re both trying to stand their ground.”
None of the prosecutors in Gloucester County or Camden County, where the case was later transferred, would talk about the Robinson family’s claims.
The Clayton community grieved Autumn’s death publicly. Thousands attended her funeral and various memorial events. A scholarship was established in Autumn’s memory and a memorial park on East Avenue was dedicated in her honor.
There was an inverse response by the community to the Robinsons. In the hours after their arrest, rumors spread swiftly. Some claimed Autumn was raped, even though investigators found no evidence of a sexual assault.
There were rumors that Justin Robinson was laughing at a vigil for Autumn, even though the brothers were already at the police station the night the vigil was held.
The boys’ own father, Alonzo Robinson, told the Star-Ledger after the arrests that his sons were known bike thieves. Robinson was estranged from his kids and ex-wife.
It wasn’t true, Justin Robinson said. His mom had bought him a $500 Subrosa BMX-style stunt bike for his birthday, so he says he had no need to take from others.
When announcing the brothers’ arrests, prosecutors said their mother had contacted police to say she found something suspicious on one of their Facebook pages that led her to think they may be involved. Saunders denies this ever happened.
Anthony Pasquale sought legislation — called Autumn’s Law — that would hold parents criminally responsible when their kids commit violent crimes. The bill hasn’t received legislative support.
He didn’t have much to say after being told about the Robinson family’s recent comments. “They know how I feel,” he said.
Saunders said the prosecution of her son’s case and ongoing litigation prevented her from speaking out publicly at the time.
“I was told that I could not talk because we were not sure if he was going to go to trial,” she said. “After a couple of years, I felt like it is what it is. I cannot bring Autumn back. I cannot bring my son back from prison.”
Criticism of her family and what she describes as lies about her son’s mental status forced her to finally speak up, she said.
Saunders and Justin Robinson dispute the idea that anything that happened in the house before Saunders divorced the brothers’ father in 2006 would lead the kids to be violent.
“None of my kids have any kind of learned behavior to where they could do harm to people,” Saunders, a funeral director, says. “I took a strong resentment to that.”
Robinson denies that he has any disorder, despite his public defender’s revelation in a 2013 hearing that he was diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental disorder, intellectual disabilities, low-IQ, post-traumatic stress disorder and attention deficit disorder.
Before Autumn’s murder, Saunders says she believed everyone in Clayton, a town that’s about 70 percent white, got along. After Autumn’s death, her perceptions about the town of 8,000 changed.
She said people drove past their home yelling racial epithets and throwing trash in her yard, and talked on social media about burning down her house and killing her family.
“Everybody made it a racial thing,” she said.
Others wanted to buy the family’s home from the borough, Saunders said. “They just assumed that I was behind on my taxes,” she said, adding that she wasn’t.
‘I pray for Autumn’
During Saunders’ regular visits to see her son in prison, she says she has seen him mature. Religion has played a big part in that process, she said.
“He told me, ‘Mom, I pray for Autumn,'” she said. “He even prays for her family. That just knocked me off my feet to hear him say that.”
Religion, he says, is also the reason why he stopped participating in any psychological care in prison. This care was directed as part of his sentencing.
“I didn’t need anymore,” he says. “I got deep in my religion. It opened my eyes a lot … it brings me peace.”
When he looks to the future, Robinson speaks about attending college and pursuing a career. He’ll be 30 by the time he’s eligible for parole, according to Department of Corrections records.
He doesn’t, however, plan to return to Clayton. “There’s really nothing for me there anymore,” he said.
Before returning to his cell, Robinson asks for forgiveness and insists he’s not a “stone-cold murderer.”
“It was an honest mistake. I’m being punished for it,” Robinson said. “I hope they can just forgive me. It’s hard to forgive a person when they take one of your loved one’s life. I want them to know that I really am sorry.”
Sean Lannon who was wanted for his alleged involvement in five murders has been arrested in St. Louis Missouri. According to police in Missouri he was arrested without incident. Reports have indicated that Sean Lannon is wanted for questioning for a murder in New Jersey and for four more in New Mexico. The murder victim in New Jersey was described as a long term acquaintance of Lannon. The four murders in New Mexico consisted of Sean Lannon ex wife along with three others. According to officials in New Mexico the bodies of Jennifer Lannon, 39, Matthew Miller, 21, Jesten Mata, 40, and Randal Apostalon, 60 were found in the parking lot at an airport in Albuquerque. Police have said some of the bodies had been dismembered. Sean Lannon was also wanted for forcing his way into a home in New Mexico and attempting to force his way into another. Sean Lannon and his ex wife Jennifer divorced in 2019
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Authorities are asking for the public’s help in locating a suspect in a New Jersey killing who is also a person of interest in a quadruple homicide in New Mexico.
Sean Lannon, 47, of Grants, New Mexico, is considered armed and dangerous and is wanted for questioning in a killing in East Greenwich Township on Monday, the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office announced.
Lannon is originally from the East Greenwich area and knew the victim in Monday’s killing, according to prosecutor’s office Chief of Detectives Tom Gilbert. Gilbert described the victim as an adult male, but declined to release additional details Tuesday.
Lannon is described as white, 5 feet 9 inches tall, 140-165 pounds, balding, with blue eyes. He may be driving a blue, 2018 Honda CR-V with New Jersey registration U71JXG.
He was possibly last seen on Monday at around 3 p.m. near the Walter Rand Transportation Center in Camden. The U.S. Marshal’s Service also announced a $5,000.00 reward for information leading to Lannon’s arrest.
Anyone with information about Sean Lannon’s whereabouts is asked to contact prosecutor’s office Sgt. John Petroski at 856-498-6238 or [email protected]. Anonymous tips may be sent to [email protected].
Information about the New Mexico killings was not included in the prosecutor’s announcement, but law enforcement officials there have released some information.
A foul odor led police to four bodies found in a parked vehicle at an airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Friday, according to news reports. Police identified the victims as Jennifer Lannon, 39, Matthew Miller, 21, Jesten Mata, 40, and Randal Apostalon, 60.
In a statement Tuesday, the Albuquerque Police Department confirmed Sean Lannon is “a person of interest” in the Friday slayings.
“APD is currently working with multiple agencies on this investigation. Lannon is also currently wanted out of New Jersey for questioning in another investigation,” the department said.
Three of the victims were reported missing in January from Grants, New Mexico, a small town about 78 miles west of Albuquerque.
Police in Grants said last month that Jennifer Lannon and Mata were wanted for questioning in Miller’s disappearance. On Feb. 26, police said Daniel Lemos, 45, was wanted for questioning in the disappearances of Jennifer Lannon, Miller and Mata.
A man sought in connection with a homicide in New Jersey and the deaths of his ex-wife and three other people in New Mexico has been apprehended in Missouri, authorities said.
Lannon is the suspect in a Monday killing in East Greenwich Township in South Jersey that claimed the life of a man whose identity has not been released by investigators.
When he was apprehended Wednesday by the U.S. Marshals’ St. Louis Metro Fugitive Task Force, Lannon was driving a blue Honda CR-V reported stolen in connection with the East Greenwich killing, officials said.
Lannon was also labeled a person of interest after four bodies were found Friday in a vehicle left at an airport parking garage in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is about 80 miles west of Grants. Three of those victims — Jennifer Lannon, 39, Matthew Miller, 21, and Jesten Mata, 40 — were previously reported missing.
Jennifer and Sean Lannon, who are originally from South Jersey, divorced in 2019, according to New Mexico court records, with a judge ruling in favor of Sean Lannon. The filing sought custody of the couple’s children
Authorities confirmed that the children are safe.
Sean Lannon is from the East Greenwich area, according to investigators. Jennifer Lannon previously lived in Clayton, West Deptford and Blackwood, according to public records searches.
In addition to the homicide case in New Jersey, prosecutors announced Tuesday evening that Lannon was charged with burglary and possession of a weapon after allegedly forcing his way into a home in Monroeville, Elk Township, while armed with a knife on Monday.
Albuquerque police are working with Grants authorities on the investigation of the three missing-person deaths, while Albuquerque detectives are investigating the death of the fourth victim found in the vehicle, 60-year-old Randal Apostalon.
Lemos was described at the time as armed and dangerous.
An aunt of Miller told TV station KOB4 in New Mexico that Lemos and Miller are related and that her nephew was “simply at the wrong place at the wrong time and simply giving somebody a ride.”
Authorities in New Mexico described the investigation as ongoing and have not disclosed how Sean Lannon may be connected to Lemos and how the victims there died.
On Tuesday, Gloucester County authorities announced that Lannon was a suspect in the New Jersey and New Mexico cases and cautioned he was considered armed and dangerous. The U.S. Marshal’s Service announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
Charges against Lannon in the East Greenwich homicide will be filed soon, Acting Gloucester County Prosecutor Christine Hoffman noted in announcing the arrest.
“The rapid and successful apprehension of Lannon is the direct result of excellent collaboration between a wide array of local, county, state and federal partners,” Hoffman said in a statement. “We are particularly grateful to the U.S. Marshal’s New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force/Camden Division as well as their parallel jurisdictions between New Jersey and Missouri for deploying their resources to rapidly apprehend Lannon, who was clearly a direct threat to the public.”
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