WASHINGTON — It took almost three pages of a sentencing memorandum for Montgomery County prosecutors to describe the dozens of bloody wounds suffered by Richard and Julianne Vilardo in their Rockville home, the night they were murdered by next-door neighbor Scott Tomaszewski.
Tuesday afternoon, Tomaszewski will be sentenced in circuit court for the murders of Dick and Jodie Vilardo in their Ridge Road home on May 9, 2015. Tomaszewski pleaded guilty in September 2016.
Hours after killing the couple, Tomaszewski joined his parents on a luxury cruise to Alaska. He was arrested when the ship was docked in Juneau, with a blood-covered knife and money with blood on it in his wallet.
In the sentencing memo, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy asked that Tomaszewski be ordered to serve life in prison with no chance of parole — the maximum sentence allowed by Maryland law.
“Richard and Julianne Vilardo were savagely taken away from this world and from everyone that loved them,” wrote McCarthy. “Especially their children, Andrew and Katherine, who discovered them after the fatal attack.”
The couple’s adult children found their parents after they failed to arrive at a Mother’s Day brunch.
“No mercy was shown to Richard and Julianne,” wrote McCarthy. “Maryland has already shown the defendant mercy by deciding he will not suffer the same fate as his victims.”
“The defendant has already received more mercy than his actions suggest he deserves.”
Prosecutors said Tomaszewski planned the murder by asking his girlfriend if she had a hockey mask he could borrow and doing Google searches on the day of the murder about how to open a locked window from the outside.
Tomaszewski posted Facebook messages on the day of the murder in an attempt to develop an alibi, prosecutors said: “My deepest sympathies go out to our neighbors who were found deceased today.”
In requesting life with no chance of parole, McCarthy listed other similar high-profile murders in Montgomery County. Brittany Norwood was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for the 2011 murder of Lululemon co-worker Jayna Murray, and Renee Bowman received two life sentences for killing her two adopted daughters and storing their bodies in a freezer.
McCarthy said the brutality of the crime should be considered when determining Tomaszewski’s sentence. “The defendant butchered his neighbors whom he had known the majority of his life and for no apparent reason,” wrote McCarthy.
In asking for life with no chance of parole, McCarthy said the penalty would be just: “That is the sentence that justice requires, Richard and Julianne are owed, and Tomaszewski deserves.”
