YORK COUNTY, Pa. — The state’s top prosecutor found major concerns with how police handled the Robert Vicosa murder-suicide case, but those details will not be shared with the public. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) sent a detailed letter to the York County District Attorney outlining “major concerns with certain lapses and decisions leading up to this tragic situation.”
The attorney general closed its investigation after Marisa Vicosa, the mother of the two young girls killed by Robert Vicosa, withdrew her criminal complaint against York Area Regional Police Chief Tim Damon. The complaint accused Chief Damon of stalling enforcement of an emergency protection from abuse order that Marisa had filed against Vicosa.
FOX43 received a portion of the attorney general’s letter, which stated that Marisa withdrew her private criminal complaint because the form had been handed to her in error and that she “simply sought to have the court order properly served.”
The OAG investigation was able to develop at timeline of events related to Robert Vicosa, Tia Bynum and the tragic murder of Vicosa’s two young children. The OAG sent that information to York County District Attorney Dave Sunday because it may be of use to “the enforcement of the law and the development of appropriate law enforcement policies to aid in the prevention of such tragedies in the future.”
The district attorney said most of the letter released to FOX43 is redacted because it is a “record relating to or resulting in a criminal investigation.” FOX43 filed several Right-to-Know requests with various law enforcement agencies for emails, documents, police body camera footage and surveillance video related to the murder-suicide. Our requests were denied because the records “relate directly to potential evidence in a criminal investigation and contains confidential victim information.”
There are still many questions about whether the kidnapping and killing of Vicosa’s two young children could have been prevented. Vicosa was at the center of a four-day manhunt in Pennsylvania and Maryland. It took York Area Regional Police more than 18 hours to execute a search warrant at Vicosa’s home, the last known location of the two young girls.
By the time officers arrived at his home, Vicosa had already taken off with the young children. Investigators say Vicosa, a former Baltimore County Police Officer, killed his friend, Tia Bynum, who was also a Baltimore County Police Officer, and his two children before turning the gun on himself.
Maryland State Police confirmed their investigation is closed and the case has been classified as a murder-suicide. We are still waiting on details from that report.