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Info Emerges On Westchester School Guard Linked To Quadruple Homicide

A Westchester County school security guard who calls Rockland County home is facing life in prison after being arrested and charged in connection to a quadruple homicide that had previously been tied to former Briarcliff Manor police officer turned drug conspirator Nicholas Tartaglione.

Joseph Biggs was implicated in connection to a quadruple homicide.

Joseph Biggs was implicated in connection to a quadruple homicide.

Photo Credit: Facebook
Nicholas Tartaglione with a K-9 officer in 2007 when Tartaglione was a member of the Briarcliff Manor Police Department.

Nicholas Tartaglione with a K-9 officer in 2007 when Tartaglione was a member of the Briarcliff Manor Police Department.

Photo Credit: File
The four alleged victims, clockwise from top left: Miguel Sosa-Luna, Martin Santos-Luna, Urbano Morales-Santiago and Hector Guitierrez.

The four alleged victims, clockwise from top left: Miguel Sosa-Luna, Martin Santos-Luna, Urbano Morales-Santiago and Hector Guitierrez.

Photo Credit: U.S. Attorney/Southern District

Last week, Joon Kim, the acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the arrest of Nanuet resident Joseph Biggs, who was charged in a 17-count indictment along with Tartaglione, for their participation in a conspiracy to distribute cocaine and four alleged murders.

Kim said Biggs, 55, worked as a security guard at a school in Hastings-on-Hudson, where he was arrested. Biggs reportedly worked within the Greenburgh-Graham Union Free School District. The attorney's office did not immediately disclose the name of the school, though the Hastings Union Free School District said Biggs did not work at any of its schools

According to a report from SeeThroughNY.net, Biggs worked in Hastings-on-Hudson for at least three years. He has also reportedly worked at a school in Dobbs Ferry, though not for some time. 

The new indictment included additional firearms and kidnapping charges against both men.

According to the indictment that was filed in White Plains Federal Court last year, Tartaglione killed Martin Luna, 41, Urbano Santiago, 32, Miguel Luna, 25, and Hector Gutierrez, 43, at the Likquid Lounge - a bar that his brother reportedly managed for a time in the town of Chester in Orange County - when a cocaine deal went badly involving at least one of the victims.

Biggs allegedly helped Tartaglione get the men to the bar where they were killed. A third suspect, Hudson Valley Strongman Gerard Benderoth, may have also been connected to the quadruple homicide. Benderoth committed suicide in Rockland earlier this year, shooting himself in the head when approached by law enforcement officials with local police and the F.B.I.

It is alleged that Tartaglione drove with the bodies for approximately a half hour from the bar in Chester to his farm in Otisville, also in Orange. Four bodies would be removed from his property the day after he was arrested.

Biggs was taken into federal custody on Thursday morning. Tartaglione has been in custody since being arrested last year.

Tartaglione and Biggs each face life in prison or the death penalty for a series of charges that include conspiracy to distribute cocaine, murder, use of a firearm in furthering a drug trafficking crime, kidnapping and interstate travel with the intent to commit a crime of violence. Both men are due in court later this year. 

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