Pennsylvania: Laura Acampora, accused of gruesome dog-fighting ring in family home, pleads guilty. Her husband Shane Santiago still facing charges.

PENNSYLVANIA --  A woman who with her husband ran a dog-fighting business from the West Brandywine home they shared with five children pleaded guilty Tuesday and agreed to testify against her husband should he go to trial.

Laura Acampora, 34, who has been held in Chester County Prison since the couple’s arrest in December, entered pleas to three counts of animal cruelty, and one count each of endangering the welfare of children, corruption of minors, and criminal conspiracy.

Laura Acampora

Senior Judge Thomas Gavin, who will sentence Acampora at a later date, told the defendant bluntly that he had received multiple letters from people expressing outrage over the case and demanding a strict sentence. Although he characterized the allegations against her as “horrific,” the judge said he would not react emotionally when deciding what her punishment would ultimately be.

“There is nothing I can do to stop people from sending me letters,” Gavin told Acampora as she stood before him with her attorney, Stuart Crichton of West Chester, during the plea hearing. “But I will sentence you based on the facts and not be swayed by what people are telling me.”

Assistant District Attorney Priya DeSouza, who is prosecuting the case, told Gavin in her presentation of the plea that she would present victim impact letters from people in the community who were shaken by the allegations involved – including the death and torture of dogs – as well as photos of the dogs, tools that were used in training the dogs, and the residence where the family lived and held the dog fights.

Acampora did not address the judge other than to answer his questions about whether she knew what she was doing by entering the guilty pleas. In exchange for her agreement to cooperate with the prosecution, she was granted bail and released from prison.

She and her husband, Shane Santiago, were charged after investigators found the family business following a series of discoveries of dead dogs in the West Brandywine area.

Two pit bulls were found, one maimed and one burned, alongside area roads. One, named Radar, who was found badly mauled in February and left for dead in a roadside ravine.

Another pit bull was found dead, caged and burned along Route 82 in West Brandywine in September.

At the time of their arrests, District Attorney Tom Hogan said that the dog was burned alive after it was used in dog fighting. The juvenile pit bull was found just miles, and on the same road, as Santiago’s residence.

“We knew that somewhere in western Chester County a dog fighting ring was going on,” Hogan said, explaining how authorities focused on Santiago and Acampora. “When we got into that home, what we found was a nightmare,” Hogan said. “This was a full scale operation of not only dog fighting, but dog training, dog breeding, and dog killing.”

Investigators learned that up to 16 pit bulls were kept in the home at one time. They discovered a full-scale training operation, including a treadmill and other tools used to encourage the dogs’ aggression.

An “arena” was discovered in the home’s basement. Plywood barriers were set up around the fighting area, and blood spattered the walls and floor.

“The carpet was covered in the blood of the dogs that fought there,” Hogan said at the time.

In her recitation of the facts involved in the plea, DeSouza said that not only did the couple host dog fights in heir home, but that they exposed their children — ages 3 to 15 at the time — to the training, and in the case of the eldest, to the fights themselves.

“Her children cared for the pit bulls that were being trained to attack other creatures,” DeSouza read in a statement to Gavin about the case. “On one occasion, one of the pit bulls bit the eldest child in the home. Shane Santiago killed this pit bull by hanging the animal from a rope inside the basement (on the couple’s North Manor Road home),” she said.

Shane Santiago

“On another occasion, Santiago killed a different animal by hanging (it) in this same basement when that animal failed to win a fight,” she said. Detectives found a photograph of the dead dog on Acampora’s cell phone, along with videos of pit bulls being trained.

DeSouza also described for Gavin the arena in the basement that the couple prepared for use as a dog-fighting ring. Bloodstains found on the carpet, wooden planks, and walls there were gruesome evidence of what had gone on.

Acampora “admits that she knowingly participated in the hosting and training of dogs for the purposes of fighting them and that she did so for gain and amusement,” DeSouza said.

Based on the fact that Acampora has no prior criminal record, with the exception of summary retail theft chares, the guidelines that Gavin will use to form the basis of a sentence start at three months in prison, although he could require that all the sentences be served consecutively for a term of a year or more in state prison.

Santiago’s trial on the charges is scheduled for November.

(Main Line Media News - October 04, 2013)