Nanuet Man Accused in 4-Murder Drug Conspiracy

NANUET, NY — A Nanuet man who worked as a school security guard in Hastings-on-Hudson was arrested Thursday for a quadruple homicide. The killings were connected to a drug conspiracy, prosecutors allege. According to the indictment, Joseph Biggs was working with Nicholas Tartaglione, the ex-Briarcliff Manor cop accused of the crime in December.

Biggs was charged in a 17-count Superseding Indictment, along with Tartaglione, for their participation in a conspiracy to distribute five kilograms and more of cocaine and for the murders of Martin Luna, Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna, and Hector Gutierrez in furtherance of that conspiracy. The new indictment also includes firearms and kidnapping charges against both men in connection with the murders.

“As alleged, Joseph Biggs, a school security officer, participated in the brutal drug-related kidnapping and murder of four people in a bar in Chester, New York," Acting U.S. Attorney Joon H. Kim said in the announcement. "Murders are always frightening, but when allegedly committed by people entrusted with the safety of others, it is all the more disturbing.”

Some of the victims, police say, were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. According to prosecutors, Tartaglione and Biggs lured Martin Luna to a bar called the Likquid Lounge, where he was held captive and killed. The other three victims – Urbano Santiago, Miguel Luna, and Hector Gutierrez – accompanied Martin Luna to the bar, and they were then held captive, shot, and killed.

Biggs, 55, was taken into federal custody this morning. He was presented in White Plains federal court today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith McCarthy and ordered detained. His case has been assigned to United States District Judge Kenneth M. Karas.

Tartaglione has been in federal custody since his arrest.

Kim praised the outstanding investigative work of the FBI, the New York State Police, and the Village of Chester Police Department. Mr. Kim also thanked the City of Middletown Police Department for its assistance in the case.

Life in prison is the maximum penalty for each of the 17 charges in the indictment. They are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Tartaglione's time as a Briarcliff Manor cop was full of controversy. A confrontation with village gadfly Clay Tiffany at Scarborough Park reverberated for years of lawsuits. He also fought with the village police department over a case which he had manipulated to get a friend of a friend off a DWI charge. He was a plaintiff or a defendant in four suits with the village.

Biggs was involved in a milder altercation in 2015, when an argument over a basketball game apparently degenerated into a family feud at a Nanuet fitness center.