Mass Pike tolltaker fired after being charged with gruesome murder to erase drugs debt

Paul Moccia, 48 a toll collector at the Massachusetts Turnpike has been fired. He's on trial for murder, accused of killing a Guatemalan cocaine dealer to erase drug debts of $70k. In district court in Wrentham MA Monday Moccia was accused by the prosecuting district attorney Robert Nelson of shooting drug dealer Angel Antonio Ramirez, 37, in the back with a .357 revolver, then - it gets gruesome here - disposing of his body by dismembering it and cooking the pieces to render them down.

Moccia destined to be middlenamed "The Cook" by reporters sold cocaine by the kilogram (2.2pds), the DA claimed though, he didn't specify if the toll collector sold the drugs out of this tollbooth on the Turnpike, or made his sales outside Turnpike premises and hours. A friend from school days and concrete supplier Daniel Bradley, 47, is also charged in the murder.

Investigators have Ramirez' blood samples from the accused boots and from places they say are consistent with their reconstruction of the crime.

Moccia's lawyer said that he was stunned by the accusations against his client who he said was "a good man" and "great great father." Moccia didn't have time to be dealing in drugs, he said because he worked long hours at the Turnpike to earn enough to look after two sons and a sick mother.

The Boston Globe reports Moccia earned $63,676 as a "toll taker" in 2008.

COMMENT: Is this another argument in favor of electronic toll collection? Seriously, the futile attempt to prohibit narcotics such as cocaine by law enforcement is doomed to failure like the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s. And it is just as mischievous as alcohol prohibition in granting criminals a privileged monopoly in the supply and distribution of a commodity in strong demand among a small minority of the population.

America pays a high price for the puritan heritage which seeks to ban bad things, celebrated ironically in the Puritan hat icon of the Turnpike itself. More sensible societies publicize the dangers of drugs, but don't delude themselves that laws, police, courts and jails can really suppress them. Americans are energetic, creative, generous people, but their greatest weakness is this flip side of idealism - naivety. editor (still a Brit)

TOLLROADSnews 2009-06-09 CORRECTION: we got the cooks mixed up, first up. Fixed 2009-06-10 10:10