NJ Teen Who Killed 4 Family Members Found Guilty On All Counts

LONG BRANCH, NJ — A jury found the Long Branch teen who fatally shot four members of his own family on New Year’s Eve guilty on all charges, rejecting an argument by defense lawyers that Scott Kologi was criminally insane.

After a two-week trial, the jury found Kologi, now 20, guilty of all charges the Monmouth County prosecutor brought against him, including four counts of first-degree murder.

The jury reached their guilty verdict after deliberating for several hours Thursday.

Kologi is facing up to four life sentences in state prison, meaning he will most likely be sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a New Jersey state prison, and not a mental health hospital.

Sentencing is scheduled for June 30.

A key element to the trial involved prosecutors arguing that Kologi knew right from wrong when he shot his mother, father, older sister and grandfather's companion inside the family home that night in 2017.

But defense witnesses testified that Kologi was diagnosed as having schizophrenia; that his mother refused to let him talk to a therapist (despite his requests to) and that he heard voices and visions his entire life, starting at age 6. Those voices grew increasingly demonic as he got older and told him to hurt his family, the teen boy told psychiatrists who interviewed him after he gunned down his four family members.

At the start of the trial, Kologi pleaded not guilty by reasons of insanity.

“The jury’s verdict confirms that Scott Kologi was responsible for his decisions and actions on the night that culminated with him killing four members of his family,” Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor Lori Linskey said Thursday. “This trial hinged on issues of mental health and the responsibility of this defendant ... In recognizing the criminality of the defendant’s actions, we also recognize that this is a tragedy for all of the family members who are left to mourn this tremendous loss. This office will continue to hold the perpetrators of gun violence responsible.”

Kologi was 16 years old the night he killed his four family members about 20 minutes before midnight on December 31, 2017, a Sunday. When Long Branch Police got to the family's Wall Street home, they found Kologi's mother, Linda, 44, and father, Steven, 42, shot dead upstairs, and the bodies of his sister 18-year-old Brittany Kologi and his grandfather’s companion, Mary Schultz of Ocean Township.

Kologi was arrested at the scene, where the Century Arms C39v2 semi-automatic rifle used in the shooting was also recovered. Kologi's older brother Steven legally owned the gun, which is a knock-off of a military grade AK47, and he kept it in the family home.

When he was first interviewed by detectives in the hours immediately after the shooting — with Steven weeping by his side in the interview room — Kologi freely admitted to police he shot his family. With no emotion in his voice, he described to police how he put on sunglasses, a long black leather jacket and put earplugs in his ears and then waited in the dark for his mother to come up the stairs and get him just before the clock struck midnight on New Year's Eve. He shot his mother five to seven times as she walked into his bedroom, and then shot his father when he ran upstairs to see what happened, according to the Asbury Park Press. He then went downstairs and fired at his older sister and Schultz, killing them both. Steven's girlfriend was also in the home. She hid behind the fridge in the kitchen and called 911, according to the Asbury Park Press.

He told police he had previously watched YouTube videos on how to use the rifle.

In the trial, the jury learned Kologi was a lonely teenage boy. As a child, he had been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. He did not have a girlfriend, although he told detectives he wanted one and he did not have a driver's license. At 16, he still believed in Santa Claus; he still slept in his parents' bed every night because he was scared of the dark. He needed his mother to help dress him in the morning, according to Law and Crime, a true crime TV show that covered the trial.

Before the killings, Kologi confided in his mother several times that he felt a desire to shoot or harm his parents and the rest of his family, reported the Asbury Park Press. He even repeatedly asked his mother if he could talk to a therapist about his "bad thoughts" and she said no, reportedly telling him "Because they'll take you away from me, and do you really want to go to the looney bin?"

His aunt, Michelle Molyneaux, who lived with her husband in the basement of the family's home, previously told police she had heard her nephew say several times he wanted to kill his family members; "That he didn't want to hurt anybody, but he said someday, he might have to," reported NJ.com. She said she urged her sister, Linda Kologi, to get the teenage boy mental help.

Maureen Santina, a forensic psychologist and witness for the defense who examined Kologi after the murders, said that in the months before the shootings, Kologi briefly received medication to treat schizophrenia, as well as antidepressants.

But he stopped taking the drugs as his family did want him to keep taking them, she said.

The Kologi murder trial was prosecuted by Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutors Sean Brennan and Caitlin Sidley. Kologi was represented by Richard Lomurro and Emeka Nkwuo of Freehold.

"This is a case that needed to be tried, and a jury needed to make this case a lesson about mental health, gun safety and open minds, making sure people get mental health treatment before this happens," Lomurro told the Asbury Park Press after the guilty verdict was delivered.

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