South Jersey Man Sentenced To 90 Years In Prison For Baseball Bat Killing, Prosecutors Say

Larry Brown, 29, was sentenced on Tuesday, Aug. 20 to 90 years in prison, Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia Bradshaw said in a news release. A jury found him guilty in March of a dozen charges including first-degree murder.

Brown was convicted of killing 34-year-old Cecilio Luciano inside a home on Bentley Avenue in Beverly City. Officers responded to the house at around 1:15 a.m. on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, after learning Brown killed Luciano and was inside with a woman and four children.

Brown refused to leave the home and was in a roughly seven-hour standoff with police. The woman and children left the home unharmed over several hours before Brown surrendered at around 8:30 a.m.

Brown, who mainly lived with a relative in Burlington Township, was arrested. State police discovered Luciano’s body inside the home and an autopsy ruled he was killed with a baseball bat.

A Change.org petition in Luciano's memory said Brown intended to kill him and the murder wasn't a crime of passion.

"While he was jealous of the relationship between Cecilio and the mother of [Brown's] three children, he did not unknowingly walk into the home and catch the two together," petition organizer Annalee Avila wrote. "Instead, when he saw Cecilio was in the home, he fixated on the thought and premeditated on committing a crime of murder. He committed first-degree murder; endangered, terrorized and the welfare of his own three children and Cecilio’s son, had a loaded gun within less than 450 feet from a school zone, and was in violation of probation."

Along with murder, Brown was also convicted of five counts of first-degree kidnapping, second-degree unlawful possession of a handgun, third-degree endangering the welfare of a child, third-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, third-degree certain persons not to have weapons, third-degree making terroristic threats, and fourth-degree unlawful possession of a weapon.

Brown must serve 73 years in prison before he's eligible for parole.

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