DA says suspects 'cooked' remains of homicide victim
WRENTHAM - Two longtime friends were accused yesterday of killing a suspected drug dealer, dismembering the body, and then "cooking" the remains at a Walpole concrete business.
Daniel P. Bradley, 47, of Westwood and his high school friend - Paul Moccia, 48, of Dedham - pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges in Wrentham District Court and were ordered held without bail.
The two men, who became friends while attending Catholic Memorial High School in West Roxbury decades ago, are accused of conspiring to kill Angel Antonio Ramirez, 37, on March 20 in Walpole, said Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Robert Nelson.
Nelson said that Moccia owed Ramirez $70,000 in an outstanding drug debt and decided that he was going to kill Ramirez, 37, instead of paying him. Nelson said Moccia sold kilos of cocaine he received from Ramirez, a Guatemalan immigrant who obtained his cocaine from the West Coast.
Nelson said Moccia lured Ramirez to Walpole, shot him once in the back with a .357-caliber revolver, and then he and Bradley moved Ramirez's body to R.J. Bradley Co., a concrete business co-owned by Bradley.
Bradley then dismembered Ramirez's body and took one more step to eliminate any trace of the Guatemalan man's existence and his death, Nelson said.
"It was cooked," the prosecutor said of Ramirez's body.
Outside the courtroom, Nelson was pressed by reporters for details on how Ramirez's remains were destroyed.
"The word that we have is cooked," Nelson said, adding that more details were not available.
He said that while Bradley stayed in Walpole with Ramirez's corpse, Moccia lied to his brother, Robert, so his brother could unwittingly help return Ramirez's pickup truck to his Framingham neighborhood.
Paul Moccia met his brother in a Wellesley parking lot - and is seen on a surveillance video driving Ramirez's truck - and then drove to Framingham before getting in the car with his brother and driving off.
Robert Moccia has not been charged and was not aware of his brother's alleged murder plot, Nelson said.
In court, Bradley's face was a bright red, and he appeared sometimes to cry as he stood in the prisoner's dock, flanked by Paul Moccia, who seemed more in control of his emotions.
John Gibbons, one of Bradley's defense lawyers, said Bradley did not know Ramirez. He also said that Bradley and Paul Moccia were questioned repeatedly by investigators in the last several weeks, but that Bradley never fled.
"He wants to defend his name and his family's name," Gibbons said. "At the end, the evidence will show, the forensic evidence will show, that Mr. Bradley had nothing to do with this, had nothing to do, no involvement at all" with this incident.
Steven Boozang, Paul Moccia's lawyer, told reporters that he has known Moccia, a Massachusetts Turnpike toll taker, for 25 years and is stunned that he is accused of being a major drug dealer.
"He's just a good man and a great, great father," Boozang said of Moccia.
He said that Moccia has two sons and a sick mother and that he works as much overtime at the Turnpike as he can and spends the rest of the time with his family.
Boozang said Moccia would not have enough time to be a drug dealer.
Moccia earned $63,676 as a toll taker in 2008, according to Globe records. A Turnpike spokesman said yesterday that Moccia has been suspended without pay.
Since 2002, Bradley has worked as an assistant football coach at Xaverian Brothers High School, a Catholic boys high school in Westwood, where he lives with his fiancee and 2-year-old child.
Bradley joined the school's coaching staff one year after he was arrested in Walpole and charged with possession of crack cocaine, according to district court records.
Norfolk prosecutors dropped the case after a district court judge threw out the search on constitutional grounds, ruling that a Walpole police officer acted without legal justification to search Bradley and his car while parked in front of a department store on Route 1.
Xaverian declined to make staff available for interviews, but the school's headmaster released a statement expressing shock at the allegations against Bradley.
John Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com. 