Carmine Bruno was murdered by his wife Mary Bruno and their lodger Dennis Roy

On January 5, 2010, Carmine Bruno was beaten to death with a baseball in his house near Wilmington, North Carolina. The killer wielding the bat was his lodger Dennis Roy, who was having an affair with his wife, Mary Bruno.

Roy was angered by insulting and foul-mouthed comments directed at him by Carmine. He said Carmine had also threatened to beat him up.

On the night Carmine died, Roy and Mary were outside the home smoking cigarettes when the lodger said of Carmine, “I wish he was dead.” Mary allegedly responded, “people die all the time.”

At this point, Roy retrieved a baseball bat from his room before finding Carmine asleep on a sofa in the living room. After receiving a nod of the head from Mary, he proceeded to beat Carmine to death.

Mary Bruno assisted Dennis Roy in tidying up the crime scene

They moved Carmine’s body into the kitchen and wrapped the corpse in a shower curtain, and then dumped it in the garage. The following day Roy and Mary continued cleaning up the scene of the crime.

A couple of days later, Mary telephoned her brother and spoke to him in what he would later describe as a hysterical manner. Unsure of what was bothering his sister, he called the emergency services, who visited the Bruno residence and discovered Carmine’s body.

Mary told the police that she had been given drugs and had spent the days after her husband’s murder in an incoherent state.

Dennis Roy was arrested for murder and was put on trial that March. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

Throughout Roy’s trial, it became clear that Mary Bruno was not as innocent as she had made out to police. In June 2012, she finally pleaded guilty to being an accessory to murder and was sentenced to 7 to 10 years in prison.

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Snapped: Mary Bruno airs at 6/5c on Oxygn.