Two arrested for fatal Seton Hall fire

She is still in bandages.Three and a half years ago. O Brother.

Not any more. Update in this Washington Post article.

Seton Hall Dorm Fire Coverup Suggested (June 14. 2003)

Mob informant's role in Seton probe

Stymied investigators cut deal for clues into who set fatal 2000 fire
Tuesday, July 08, 2003

About this report: This story was compiled through dozens of interviews with law enforcement officials and attorneys. Additionally, The Star-Ledger monitored the grand jury proceedings from October 2001 through June 2003. The story was reported by Kate Coscarelli, Kelly Heyboer, Brian T. Murray, Robert Rudolph and Guy Sterling. It was written by Mark Mueller.

Essex County prosecutors cut a deal with a Mafia hit man two years ago, securing his early release from prison in return for his help in making a case against two students later charged with setting the fatal Seton Hall University fire.

The arrangement with Thomas Ricciardi, a longtime informant who has admitted a role in nine murders, was one of several extraordinary steps taken by authorities to jump-start an investigation that had been hampered by a lack of both physical evidence and witness cooperation.

In the course of their 3 1/2-year probe, investigators re-created the fire at an abandoned Air Force base in South Carolina. They staged a sham raid on an off-campus bar to issue subpoenas to students suspected of knowing something about the blaze. They indicted another student's father in a 20-year-old murder case. And they bugged the house of one suspect and waged a lengthy court battle with his parents in an effort to force them to appear before a grand jury.

The investigation culminated last month with the arrests of Seton Hall senior Sean Ryan and former Seton Hall student Joseph T. LePore, both 22.

Ryan and LePore, longtime friends from Florham Park, are charged with arson, reckless manslaughter and felony murder for allegedly setting the Jan. 19, 2000, fire in a freshman dormitory, killing three students and injuring 58. Free on bail, both defendants maintain their innocence.

A third student and three members of LePore's family are charged with obstructing the investigation. They are scheduled to be arraigned July 30 in Newark, along with Ryan and LePore.

The high-profile investigation was marked by frequent setbacks and unconventional tactics, none more unusual than the employment of Ricciardi, once a high-ranking enforcer for the New Jersey faction of the Lucchese crime family. The arrangement between Ricciardi and the Seton Hall investigators was confirmed by Robert Cleary, the former U.S. attorney for New Jersey who ultimately agreed to seek Ricciardi's early release from federal custody.

Cleary said the Essex County Prosecutor's Office and the FBI contacted his office in 2001, saying they needed the assistance of Ricciardi in the case. In exchange for Ricciardi's help, they suggested efforts be made to reduce his 10-year federal prison term -- improving an earlier deal he had made with prosecutors to shorten his jail stay in exchange for his cooperation on mob cases.

Court records citing Ricciardi's assistance in the Seton Hall case have been sealed, and authorities refuse to discuss his involvement. But a law enforcement source who worked extensively on the case said Ricciardi's cooperation was instrumental in advancing an investigation that had bogged down.

Ricciardi's brother, Daniel "Bobo" Ricciardi, had been dating a woman close to the mother of one of the fire suspects. That connection helped the imprisoned mobster provide investigators with information about the origins of the Seton Hall fire and a conspiracy to cover up the crime, according to law enforcement sources.

For his efforts, Thomas Ricciardi was released from prison on Sept. 6, 2001, a year ahead of schedule. He is now in the federal Witness Protection Program.

In considering the request from acting Essex County Prosecutor Donald Campolo's office, the U.S. attorney who oversaw Ricciardi's cooperation now says it was a matter of balancing the "horrific nature" of the Seton Hall fire and the need for justice in that case against the release of an admitted killer.

"As a prosecutor," said Cleary, "you are frequently called upon to make the rather difficult decision of whether to give a break to one criminal in order to gain his help in prosecuting another."

Cleary who stepped down in January 2002 and now has a private law practice, said he weighed the need for Thomas Ricciardi's cooperation in the Seton Hall probe with "what you are giving up here, which is an added period of incarceration for someone who has also committed horrific crimes but who has already served substantial time."

Campolo declined to discuss the Seton Hall case or the Ricciardi brothers' role in the investigation.

Charlotte Smith, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor, said, "We will not comment on the investigation except that which was already discussed publicly, and we look forward to the trials."

TROVE OF INFORMATION

Thomas Ricciardi, 51, had a history of cooperating with law enforcement. In 1993, shortly after his conviction in state court in the golf-club-beating murder of a reputed Lucchese associate, Vincent Craparotta, Ricciardi entered into a federal plea agreement charging him with a single count of racketeering.

As part of the agreement, he acknowledged playing a role in nine additional murder conspiracies.

In exchange, Thomas Ricciardi provided authorities with a treasure-trove of information that led to the dismantling of the powerful Lucchese family in New Jersey and the imprisonment of its top leaders, boss Michael Taccetta and chief lieutenant Michael Perna.

Ricciardi also was instrumental in gaining the convictions of a host of lower-rung members of the Lucchese, Genovese and Colombo crime families, authorities have said.

In 1996, Ricciardi was sentenced to dual 10-year terms stemming from the federal racketeering charge and his state conviction in the Craparotta case. The sentences were merged to run concurrently in 2001.

While Cleary would provide no details of Ricciardi's cooperation in the Seton Hall investigation, a law enforcement source who worked closely on the case said information developed by Ricciardi helped authorities obtain a warrant to place listening devices in the LePore home.

Investigators broke into the LePores' Florham Park house in 2001 to plant a listening device while the family was spending the day in New York, according to a law enforcement source. Conversations recorded in the home, along with information obtained by Ricciardi, helped form the basis for the obstruction-of-justice charges brought against the LePores.

Like Ricciardi, his younger brother Daniel, 48, had served as a federal informant, winning a reduced sentence to a racketeering charge in 1997.

Facing up to seven years in prison for participating in a mob scheme that bilked the city of Newark out of millions of dollars, Daniel Ricciardi received 21 months following the intervention of federal prosecutors.

During the Seton Hall probe, he was dating a woman close to LePore's mother, law enforcement sources said. Daniel Ricciardi provided his imprisoned brother with statements allegedly made by Maria LePore about the fire, its origins and attempts to cover up her son's role, according to the sources.

The sources said the younger Ricciardi also willingly acted as an agent for the prosecutor's office, at one point pressuring the LePores to approach the prosecutor's office.

Daniel Ricciardi, who has since moved out of state, could not be reached for comment.

Joseph T. LePore's lawyer said the college student may have been introduced to Daniel Ricciardi once, but was not close to him. His father's attorney declined to comment on whether the rest of the family knew the Ricciardi brothers.

Lawyers for the LePore family, however, said the use of a confessed mob hit man and his brother show how anxious the Essex County Prosecutor's Office was to get indictments in the Seton Hall case.

"If they did base any part of this case on 'Bobo' Dan Ricciardi or Tom Ricciardi, that just shows how desperate they are and reinforces the fact that they have no case against anybody," said Sal Alfano, an attorney representing the father, Joseph E. LePore.

William DeMarco, lawyer for the son, added: "It's something I would never expect-- the state of New Jersey, law enforcement, using this stool pigeon. It's outrageous. They had to reach into the bowels of the earth to get Bobo Ricciardi. ... If they have a clean case, keep it clean."

PROSECUTION WITNESS

Thomas Ricciardi's involvement in the Seton Hall case runs deeper than his role as an informant.

During the investigation, authorities said that another Seton Hall student who was a friend of LePore and Ryan, Santino "Tino" Cataldo, knew more about the fire than he was telling. In July 2001, days before Cataldo was scheduled to testify before a grand jury in the case, authorities arrested the student's father, Alfonso "Tic" Cataldo, on a 20-year-old Mafia-related murder charge.

The chief witness in the mob case, lawyers say, was Thomas Ricciardi. On April 24, 2001, while still in federal custody, Ricciardi testified before the grand jury that indicted the elder Cataldo, according to a knowledgeable source.

Lawyer Thomas Cataldo, who represents his younger brother, contends investigators were so desperate for a break in the case that they arrested his father to pressure his brother, in the apparent hope that Santino Cataldo would turn on his friends.

Authorities ultimately charged Santino Cataldo with witness tampering and obstruction of justice in the Seton Hall probe.

"They were trying to pressure my brother into telling them something that wasn't true, and when he didn't, they indicted him and our father," Thomas Cataldo said.

"Is it a coincidence that (Thomas Ricciardi) was released early?" the lawyer asked. "He testified before the grand jury and he gets out earlier. Is it a coincidence that my father was arrested two days prior to the day my brother had been subpoenaed to testify? They can't all be coincidences."

Essex County prosecutors previously have called the connection between Santino Cataldo's testimony and the arrest of his father "ludicrous."

Thomas Cataldo said the convicted mob killer's credibility will be a key issue in the case against his father.

"He's carrying more baggage than Newark Airport on the day before Thanksgiving," the lawyer said.

MEETING OVER DOUGHNUTS

The entry of the Ricciardi brothers into the Seton Hall investigation came at a time of mounting frustration for authorities.

From the day of the fire, investigators suspected arson. They said a paper banner had been placed atop a couch in Boland Hall's third-floor lounge and set ablaze. They believed the fire quickly spread to two other couches, filling the hallways with blinding, toxic, smoke.

Within two days of the fire, they knew the lounge had been the scene of an impromptu party in the hours before the fire, and they knew the names of some of the students who were there: Ryan, LePore, Cataldo and another boyhood friend, Michael Karpenski.

Cataldo and Karpenski left the building at least an hour before the fire. A time-stamped White Castle receipt and surveillance videos from the university and the restaurant in Orange proved the pair were nowhere near Boland at the time of the fire, according to their attorneys.

Investigators eventually came to believe that Ryan and LePore set the fire after Cataldo and Karpenski left Boland Hall.

The indictments released last month contend that two days after the fire, the four men plotted a cover-up at a meeting. Law enforcement sources identified the meeting place as a Dunkin' Donuts in Madison, not far from the Florham Park homes of LePore and Karpenski.

In the days that followed, the indictments state, all four young men gave false statements to police.

On Jan. 23, police questioned Ryan for nearly three hours. Eventually, authorities said, he admitted ripping the banner off a bulletin board. But he vigorously denied setting the fire.

"This boy was interviewed extensively the weekend after the fire and he willingly waived his rights to talk to them," said Ryan's lawyer, Michael Bubb. "He was questioned for hours by the State Police, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office and South Orange police. It is not like he wasn't cooperative. But he denied any knowledge of or culpability for the fire, and he has been consistent in that statement for 3 1/2 years."

LePore, who was interviewed the following day, also never wavered in denying he set the fire.

"The state says my client was one of the last two kids in the lounge that night. I know he left, and I don't think the state knows who was in the lounge after that," said DeMarco, LePore's lawyer. "My client went to bed after he left the lounge. If he was going to do something like set a fire, that'd be the last place he would have gone."

Investigators weren't convinced. Interviews with students, including those in Boland Hall's lounge that night, kept yielding conflicting details, leading them to focus on Ryan and LePore.

Working from a floor plan, investigators wrote the names of students in every room. They also tracked the building's entry logs and added names of visitors to their list. For those on the third floor, investigators drew arrows on the floor plan to map how people moved throughout the night, according to investigators who worked on the case in the early stages.

Every lead, no matter how seemingly insignificant, was pursued.

"Everybody understood that we needed to solve it," said Jim Chelel, who oversaw the South Orange Police Department's detective bureau during the probe and who now serves as the department's acting director.

A month after the fire, with no confession, no physical evidence and a murky picture of the events in the third-floor lounge, investigators decided on a more unusual approach, one they hoped would demonstrate the seriousness of the probe and shake loose information.

On Feb. 18, 2000, a caravan of police raided The Hall, a Newark bar packed with about 400 people, mostly students from Seton Hall in nearby South Orange. In all, 37 students and six employees were charged with various violations, including underage drinking, underage possession of alcohol and serving underage patrons.

But the real purpose of the raid was to round up Seton Hall students to talk to a grand jury about the Boland Hall fire. Authorities issued subpoenas to a dozen students, including Cataldo and several of Ryan's Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers. LePore and Ryan were not subpoenaed, though they were among those arrested for underage drinking and alcohol possession. The charges were later dropped.

Prosecutors tried to bring the dozen subpoenaed students before a Newark grand jury the following week, but a swarm of media attention prompted authorities to send the students home. Over the next few weeks, the students gave their statements in less-public settings.

THE SIMULATION

By the summer of 2000, investigators turned to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency in Maryland, for help. The institute, which was already working on a dormitory safety project, analyzed the evidence in the Seton Hall fire and did burn testing in its labs.

The institute's fire experts also found a military base in Myrtle Beach, S.C., with an abandoned dormitory similar in size and construction to Boland Hall.

Between Sept. 9 and Sept. 14, 2000, the fire scientists used the abandoned building to re-create Boland Hall's third-floor lounge, affixing posters to the walls and bringing in the same kind of couches, said Michael Newman, a spokesman for the institute.

To start the fire, an agent with the federal bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ripped a piece of the paper off the board, set it on the couch and lit it with a match, Newman said.

"They did that because this is the way they suspected ... the Seton Hall fire started," Newman said.

Essex County and ATFE investigators were on hand to watch the imitation lounge burn in three separate tests as water-cooled cameras taped the blazes and thermal sensors recorded the temperature. The tests provided the strongest evidence yet that the fire was intentionally set, the prosecutor said at the time.

While the final report on the fire testing was being completed, investigators tried pressing the mothers of Ryan and LePore for information. A week before Thanksgiving 2000, Essex County detectives surprised Ryan's mother, Michelle, at her Florham Park house, lawyers for the Ryan family said at the time.

Bill Strazza, Michelle Ryan's lawyer, said his client had no information on the case except her son's insistence that he had nothing to do with the fire.

During a 20-minute meeting, detectives urged the mother to persuade her son to cooperate with the investigation, telling her Ryan knew more than he was saying, the lawyers said.

A few weeks later, investigators visited Maria LePore while she was at work in a Morristown law office and made a similar plea.

BUGGING THE HOUSE

By January 2001, the acting Essex County prosecutor was ready to declare publicly what he had long suspected, that the Boland Hall fire was the result of arson. Just before the fire's first anniversary, Campolo said tests concluded that an open flame, probably from a lighter or a match, ignited a piece of paper on a couch in the lounge.

But after interviewing nearly 220 witnesses and taking 150 sworn statements, Campolo said he was still not ready to make arrests.

Members of the public, the media and the families of those killed or injured in the fire wanted a resolution.

"I heard the complaints," recalled Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura. "At times, it was hard for me to go someplace without somebody saying something. People were anxious and frustrated."

But, Fontoura said, "when you have witnesses who are not as cooperative as you'd like, that only makes your job more difficult."

Investigators intensified their pressure on the families of Ryan and LePore.

In February 2001, prosecutors subpoenaed Ryan's parents, Michelle and Timothy, who appeared before a sitting grand jury in Newark.

Prosecutors also subpoenaed LePore's immediate family: his father, his mother and his sister, Lauren.

At the same time, the Ricciardi brothers were funneling information to investigators, paving the way for the listening devices to be planted in the LePore home by the summer of 2001.

The obstruction-of-justice indictment against the LePores relies heavily on conversations obtained in the home. It lists nine occasions in which family members allegedly discussed lying to police or misleading the investigation.

On June 13, the indictment states, LePore's father suggested the family leave the area to avoid his son's prosecution, according to the indictment. The following day, LePore's mother urged her son to "stay united" with his friends to thwart the probe, the indictment states.

A month later, the family began discussing how Lauren LePore would lie to the grand jury about what she knew of her brother's involvement in the fire, according to the indictment.

About the same time, both Ryan and LePore received "target" letters informing them prosecutors thought the students had information about the fire.

DeMarco, Joseph T. LePore's lawyer, said he doubts the summaries of the conversations as they appear in the indictment are accurately portrayed.

"I'd say they are grossly exaggerated, and I doubt their veracity," he said.

The family's lawyers also questioned the legality of planting a listening device in the LePore house.

"It's an extreme process to put a bug in someone's house and goes to the very essence of a person's right to privacy. If you don't have the right of privacy within your own home, where do you have it?," said Thomas Ashley, lawyer for Maria LePore. "I'm certainly going to want to know what probable-cause evidence there was to obtain this house bug."

Apparently unaware the family's house was bugged, Lauren LePore testified before an Essex County grand jury on Sept. 21, 2001. Authorities contend some of the answers she gave were lies.

She has been charged with perjury and aiding in a cover-up. Her lawyer, Gerald Fusella, denies she did anything wrong and says prosecutors are targeting the sister to pressure her younger brother.

The Essex County Prosecutor's Office has refused to say how the LePore family's conversations were obtained.

At his news conference announcing the indictments last month, Campolo spoke of a "covert phase of the investigation," principally in the summer of 2001.

The purpose of the covert phase "was to allow us to penetrate the ongoing conspiracy to impede and obstruct the investigation," the prosecutor said at the time, but he would not elaborate.

THURSDAY MORNING TESTIMONY

The 23 members of a special grand jury were picked on Oct. 12, 2001. Their first meeting was held six days later in the Essex County Courts building in Newark, behind closed doors in a windowless room on the drab fourth floor.

They heard from a parade of firefighters, police officers, fire experts and dozens of students.

With breaks only for holidays, the special grand jury convened every Thursday morning for months. But the case was taking longer than investigators planned, in part because of the lack of cooperation by witnesses and in part because of a reluctance by LePore's parents to testify.

In March 2002, Essex County Assignment Judge Joseph A. Falcone approved the first of a half-dozen three-month extensions to the life of the grand jury.

In May, Karpenski, the childhood friend of Ryan and LePore, testified for several hours.

Karpenski, a recent graduate of Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, was one of the last students to see Ryan and LePore before the fire. He used his appearance to clear up earlier testimony about the paper banner used to start the fire, according to his lawyer, Jack Arsenault.

"Mike does not know how the fire started or who was involved. Out of youthful misplaced loyalty, he at first deceived law enforcement about how a banner was pulled off the wall on the night of the tragedy. He much later recanted that testimony and testified before the grand jury truthfully," Arsenault said.

Throughout the special grand jury term, the prosecutor's office went to court to try to compel LePore's parents to testify. The parents' lawyers fought their subpoenas for months, arguing parents should not have to testify against their children. Their case went to the state Supreme Court in Trenton.

The parents lost their final appeal May 6 of this year, when the Supreme Court declined to hear the case and ordered the LePores to appear before the special grand jury. But neither parent ever appeared before the grand jury, said DeMarco, the son's attorney.

Asked why the parents did not testify if they had nothing to hide, DeMarco said: "Why make anything easy? And why should the parents put themselves at peril for anything they might say?"

Unknown to the LePores, they already had been indicted in September 2002 on obstruction-of-justice charges along with their son, daughter, Ryan and Santino Cataldo. The indictments remained sealed until last month.

This spring, the grand jury began winding down. It met for the last time June 5, when Karpenski testified for several hours to clear up some final questions from the jurors.

That afternoon, the grand jury voted to indict Ryan and LePore on arson, aggravated manslaughter and felony murder charges, ending 21 months of testimony. Karpenski, identified in the indictment only by his initials, was not charged in the case.

The following week, the grand jury foreman handed up the indictments to an Essex County judge. Ryan and LePore were arrested the same day, snatched off the street by police officers and marched into the county jail in Newark, with their heads bowed. The judge set their bail at $2 million each.

Campolo unveiled the indictments on June 12. It had been 1,240 days since the fire.

Campus Fire Safety Right to Know bill gets new life

Thursday, July 10, 2003
BY ROBERT COHEN
STAR-LEDGER WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Spurred by the deadly Seton Hall University dormitory fire in 2000, lawmakers from New Jersey yesterday renewed a push for legislation requiring all colleges and universities to provide comprehensive fire safety information annually to the public.

The measure, sponsored by Rep. William Pascrell and Sens. Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg, all Democrats, would require colleges to report any fire-related campus deaths and injuries, and detail whether their residence halls, fraternities and sororities have sprinklers, fire alarms and smoke detectors.

"No student or family should be in the dark about a school's fire safety record," Pascrell said at a Capitol Hill news conference. "It should not take another catastrophe to ensure safety." Pascrell's 8th Congressional District includes part of South Orange, home of Seton Hall.

In the last Congress, the proposal was included in separate bills that passed the House and Senate but never received final legislative approval.

Pascrell and the other lawmakers were joined yesterday by Dana Christmas, who was a resident assistant at the university's Boland Hall and risked her life to save numerous fellow students from the Jan. 19, 2000, fire there.

The blaze killed three students and injured 58, including Christmas, who sustained burns over 60 percent of her body and was in a coma for two months.

"You have a right to know this information," said Christmas. "Do not allow your child to be subjected to a night of terror that will haunt them for the rest of their lives."

About 1,600 fires break out in dormitories and fraternity and sorority houses each year, with 65 percent of those taking places in facilities without sprinkler systems, according to the National Fire Prevention Association.

Besides at Seton Hall, fires in recent years have claimed lives at Bloomsburg University and the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; the University of California at Berkeley; the State University of New York at Binghamton and New York University; Millikin University in Illinois; the University of Dayton in Ohio; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Lee College in Tennessee.

Pascrell said the measure, called the Campus Fire Safety Right to Know Act, is designed to disseminate information to the public on fire safety conditions, pressure colleges to correct deficiencies and create political momentum for legislation that would require colleges to install sprinkler systems in dormitories.

A bill providing matching grants to colleges for sprinkler installation recently was introduced in Congress, but Pascrell said budget constraints make its passage unlikely. New Jersey is one of the few states with a mandatory sprinkler law for college dormitory rooms.

Pascrell said he hopes to attach the Right to Know measure to the Higher Education Act now under consideration in Congress.

The Right to Know Act, however, has drawn opposition.

"This legislation would require colleges and universities to invest in bureaucratic reporting rather than actual fire safety improvements," Tony Pals of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities said. "It would not make campuses safer and it would impose a costly regulatory burden."

Tim McDonough of the American Council on Education said his group shares the concern about fire safety. But he said his organization is worried about being saddled with an "unfunded mandate" and is taking a "wait-and-see" approach to the proposal.

Seton fire suspects' cell phones were tapped

Authorities notify Ryan, LePore and his parents of conversations intercepted in 2001

Saturday, July 12, 2003
BY BRIAN T. MURRAY
Star-Ledger Staff

Investigators in the fatal Seton Hall University dormitory fire wiretapped the cell phones of the two suspects in the case, along with the home phone of one suspect's family, according to Superior Court notification letters sent to the family members and friends whose conversations were picked up in the eavesdropping.

The wiretapping of Sean Ryan and Joseph LePore, both of Florham Park, was done in addition to the placement of electronic eavesdropping devices in LePore's home. State Police and investigators with the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, acting on a warrant, entered the LePore house on Wednesday to retrieve the bugs.

Ryan, LePore and their families were unaware of the wiretapping until "Inventory Notices" were delivered by certified mail to family and friends of the suspects on Thursday, according to attorneys. Signed by Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Falcone on Tuesday, the notices explained that the judge authorized the wiretaps on July 3, 2001, and that he sealed the tapes of the intercepted conversations after the wiretapping ended weeks later.

The letter also informed recipients that the eavesdropping was conducted to obtain "evidence of the crimes of arson, murder and conspiracy or evidence aiding in the apprehension of the perpetrators of the forgoing offenses."

Ryan and LePore, both 22, were charged with arson, felony murder and reckless manslaughter in indictments unsealed last month in connection with the Jan. 19, 2000, dormitory blaze at Seton Hall in South Orange. The two students were roommates on the third floor of Boland Hall. The suspects and a boyhood friend, Santino "Tino" Cataldo, also were charged with trying to obstruct the investigation by giving false information to authorities.

Additional obstruction charges were leveled against LePore in a separate indictment that also charged his mother, father and sister with obstructing justice and conspiracy during the investigation. The basis for those charges are conversations picked up by authorities from two electronic bugs devices placed in and near the kitchen of the LePore home in the summer of 2001, according to the indictment.

But it remains unclear whether anything of evidentiary value was obtained in the separate wiretaps conducted that same summer on Ryan's cell phone, LePore's cell phone and the home phone of LePore's parents, Joseph E. and Maria LePore.

"The wiretapping is not really a surprise to us with the revelation earlier this week that the LePore home was bugged," said John Grogan, one of Ryan's attorneys.

"Mr. Ryan has denied and continues to deny any involvement in the fire, and there's nothing in any of the indictments in this case that makes reference to this wiretap, so it remains to be seen what, if anything, is on the tapes."

Under state eavesdropping laws, everyone whose conversation is intercepted and monitored by a police wiretap or bugging device must eventually be informed of that event.

"Our interception notices came yesterday as well," said Salvatore Alfano, a lawyer for LePore's father, adding that he too was not surprised to learn of the wiretapping in light of the bugging.

According to the letters, the LePore family phone was tapped from July 6 to July 25, 2001, and LePore's cell phone was tapped from July 5 to July 24, 2001. Ryan's cell phone was initially tapped from July 5 to July 26, 2001, but authorities obtained a court order extending the eavesdropping until Aug. 15, 2001.

The listening device in the LePore home picked up conversations from June 13, 2001 until Aug. 13, 2001.

Wiretapping and bugging are strictly regulated activities in New Jersey.

Police must obtain a court order to conduct such surveillances by presenting some evidence of probable cause to a judge. In cases not involving racketeering, police eavesdropping is generally limited to 20 days by state law, which permits police to seek no more than two, 10-day extensions for their eavesdropping.

The law additionally states that notification letters shall be issued within 90 days after the bugging or wiretapping ends. There is a provision for authorities to obtain court permission to delay that notification, but attorneys involved in the Seton Hall case said they were not yet sure whether prosecutors were properly able to delay the notices for two years.

Charlotte Smith, a spokeswoman for the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, refused to discuss the wiretaps and bugs.

"We are making no comment beyond what was already publicly discussed," she said.

Staff writer Robert Rudolph contributed to this report.

» Seton fire judge considers appeals of potential jurors   (Saturday, 9/23/2006, Star-Ledger )
The judge overseeing the case against two former students accused of setting a fatal fire at Seton Hall University spent yesterday hearing excuses from dozens of potential jurors who said they could not sit through a six- to eight-week trial.

» Seton Hall jury in the works   (Friday, 9/22/2006, Star-Ledger )
More than 6 1/2 years after a fatal fire swept through a Seton Hall University dormitory, a judge today will take the first steps toward selecting a jury to hear the case against two former students accused of setting the blaze.

» Defense wants 2 Seton fire trials   (Wednesday, 9/13/2006, Star-Ledger )
Lawyers for the two former students accused of setting the fatal Seton Hall University dormitory fire six years ago asked for separate trials yesterday, just 10 days before the pair are scheduled to be tried jointly on arson and felony murder charges.