(U-WIRE) COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Only two people close to the investigation know the identity of the tipster who ended a nearly yearlong search for the man who, in a fit of drunken anger, set 22-year-old University of Maryland student Michael Scrocca’s College Park-area home ablaze. Leading investigator Detective Ben Brown said Mary Scrocca, Michael’s mother, will not reveal the name of the student who called police after an acquaintance told her details about that evening.
“She won’t even tell me,” said Tony Scrocca, Michael’s father.
The search for culpability in their son’s senseless death is finally over for the family. They have dropped the civil lawsuits against the College Park Volunteer Fire Department and Michael’s fraternity, Delta Tau Delta. After years spent seeking answers and explanations, the identity of the person who unraveled the mystery is unknown to most.
The meeting between the student tipster and the person who heard about the evening’s fatal results from a co-worker of Daniel Murray — the 21-year-old cell biology major who lit a broom on fire and threw it on a couch on Scrocca’s porch — took place shortly before the one-year anniversary of Michael’s death. Fraternities and sororities held a fund-raiser for a memorial fund his family had established. Private investigators hired by the family questioned students. The memory of the finance major’s death was fresh on people’s minds.
“I think everything together somehow just kept it alive enough that some person that apparently didn’t even know Mike knew that it was around the one-year anniversary of that happening, and that sparked the conversation that ultimately led to this,” said Brian Scrocca, Michael’s brother.
The tipster casually met with a person who apparently heard an account of the evening from a co-worker who knew about Murray’s involvement in the April 30, 2005 fire that killed Scrocca. Murray, who was heckled by partygoers at the Princeton Avenue house, encouraged co-workers at R.J. Bentley’s to go back to the house with him. When they refused because he was very drunk, Murray returned alone to the home where a sleeping Michael Scrocca would draw his last breaths of the smoke that killed him.
All of this got back to the student tipster through a mutual acquaintance of the tipster and the co-worker. When the tipster asked why police weren’t notified, the person suddenly said the story was false.
The student tipster said “‘No, you didn’t make up a story like that,’ so [the tipster] called the [person] that apparently Dan Murray had told, and said ‘You have until Monday to call the police or I’m going to,’” Mary Scrocca said. When no one called police, the tipster did.
About three weeks after the tip, police arrested Murray in May in front of H.J. Patterson Hall as he walked to class. He confessed to police that he had set the fatal fire, though later his attorneys would try to argue that detectives had coerced the confession. By April of next year he took a plea deal and was sentenced to 37-and-a-half years in jail.
The inability to appeal the ruling made a plea bargain an appealing prospect, said Tony Scrocca. The family plans to be at every parole hearing to ensure that Murray serves his full sentence.
“This is a lifelong commitment for the three of us,” said Mary Scrocca, as she stood with her husband and son in a parking lot on the campus. They came to Saturday’s football game to watch one of their nephews who plays for Villanova. Tony, a cigar in his mouth, sat comfortably with family and friends as they roasted skewers on the barbecue and drank beers among the other tailgaters.
It was a very different moment from the time Tony Scrocca handed out reward fliers at the entrance of Byrd Stadium during a football game two years ago. The family spent a year waiting for just the kind of hero, as Tony Scrocca describes the student tipster, to come forward.
The student “did something that nobody else had the guts or the fortitude to do,” he said. The student “came forward and did the right thing, and wanted nothing at all in return.”
The student tipster refused the reward money offered by the family and the police. The student made a simple decision to alert police, said Mary Scrocca, who spoke with the student on the telephone. It was a simple choice to do the right thing, just as theirs had been. They sought answers for months, and had faith when Brown told them from the very beginning that “something would happen” around the one year mark, said Tony Scrocca, “And he was right: Detective Brown was right.”
They don’t know much about the student whose courage unraveled the mystery, but they don’t need to. It’s enough for them to know that Daniel Murray is finally behind bars after he spent a year of walking to class, enjoying the company of his girlfriend and spending holidays with family while their own son lay beneath the earth of a New Jersey cemetery.