185. Looks Like A Nightmare On Light Street - Jessica Rae Sacco And The Killer Juggalos

In March 2012, the quiet town of Urbana Ohio (about 50 miles west of Columbus) was rocked to its core when a local murder became national news – not just because of the horrendous nature of the crime, but the affiliation of the perpetrators with a loose-knit “family” whose insistence on loyalty turned twisted beyond belief.  The victim, 21 year-old Jessica Rae Sacco, was found by her landlord, dead in the bathtub of the Urbana duplex she shared with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Matthew Puccio.  Jessica had been suffocated to death, her body partially dismembered and left behind in the bathtub.  And it was the partial dismemberment of the body – and the story behind it – that made this case so horrifying – both in its cruelty and its evil, unforgivable, incomprehensible stupidity.  Jessica had fallen in with Puccio, who she met online and was four years her senior, shortly after the young woman – who was bipolar and on medication – had moved in to the duplex on Light Street in Urbana.  Puccio moved in, convinced Jessica to go off her meds, and quickly invited his friends Andrew and Kandis Forney to live with them in the small duplex.  Jessica and the Forneys did not get along from the beginning – and, now off her medication, life became miserable for Jessica.  She and Puccio fought often, and on that fateful March day in 2012, after another fight (the background of which is disputed), Puccio first stabbed, and then suffocated, Jessica.  But here’s where the story turns bizarre and into pure evil.  It turns out that Puccio, the Forneys and – hard to believe it’s true – the other couple Puccio texted for help after he’d stabbed Jessica – Sharon Cook and Christopher Wright – were all part of a minor cult who call themselves “Juggalos,” fans of the hip hop/metal band Insane Clown Posse.  The Juggalo culture, while mostly harmless, projects an ominous and foreboding front – and its secretive, loyalty-based sense of “family” has produced more than its share of criminal activity over the years.  In the case of what happened to Jessica Sacco, that loyalty went beyond mere criminality and over the cliff into unimaginable depravity.  Suffice it to say that the five friends hung out together for FIVE HOURS with Jessica wounded by a stab wound before Puccio finally suffocated her – and then the parts of Jessica’s body that weren’t found in her bathtub were scattered by Puccio and his Juggalo brethren in various locations for reasons that, given the fact that they left most of the body to be found in the duplex, make sense only to the deranged.  Join Melissa as she goes over the details of this truly disturbing murder – and the fate of each of the perpetrators – only one of which ended up with a life sentence – and decide for yourself whether justice has been served.