Suspect in Connecticut slayings captured

WILLINGTON, Conn. — Update 10:10 p.m. EDT May 27: Peter Manfredonia has been captured, Connecticut State Police said Wednesday night.

He was found in Hagerstown, Maryland. He was not injured and no officers were either during the arrest, police said.

Original report: Officials with the FBI have joined a three-state manhunt Monday for a college student suspected in a kidnapping, a home invasion and the deaths of two people, according to multiple reports.

Authorities in Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania earlier announced they were searching for Peter Manfredonia, 23, who authorities identified as a suspect in a slaying and a serious assault reported Friday in Willington. Manfredonia is also suspected of a homicide reported Sunday morning in Derby, authorities said.

Connecticut State Police said Manfredonia is considered armed and dangerous and may be equipped with pistols and shotguns that he’s suspected of stealing during a home invasion Friday night in Willington, the Hartford Courant reported. He was last seen Sunday in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, according to investigators.

The Connecticut Post reported the FBI joined the manhunt on Monday.

Manfredonia is suspected of killing Ted DeMers, 62, and assaulting a man identified to the Courant as one of DeMers’s elderly neighbors. The victim’s wife, Cynthia DeMers, told the newspaper that her husband and their neighbor offered to help Manfredonia after seeing him walking on a road to where he said he had parked his motorcycle.

“It could have been anybody who offered him a ride,” she told the Courant. “It could have been any of my neighbors’ husbands. It just happened to be mine.”

DeMers was pronounced dead at a local hospital. The other man suffered severe wounds described as sword or machete wounds, state police said.

Authorities said they were called early Sunday to a home in Willington, where a man told police he had been held against his will by Manfredonia. He told investigators that the 23-year-old University of Connecticut student left with food, several guns and his truck. Authorities said the truck was later found abandoned.

Later Sunday, authorities said they found an acquaintance of Manfredonia’s dead in his home in Derby. He was identified as Nicholas Eisele, 23, according to the Post.

Authorities learned Eisele’s car was missing after the incident, during which Eisele’s girlfriend had also been abducted, the Courant reported. Eisele’s girlfriend, who was not identified by name, was found safe and identified Manfredonia as her abductor, according to the newspaper.

Police said on social media that they found Eisele’s vehicle in New Jersey near the Pennsylvania state line.

Manfredonia is a 2015 graduate of Newtown High School and a senior at the University of Connecticut majoring in finance and mechanical engineering, the Post reported. Police describe him as a 6-foot-3 white man.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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