The murder of April Kauffman

For more than five years there was no arrest. According to testimony and reporting from Ferdinand Augello's 2018 trial, the break came through a drug investigation and an informant. On June 13, 2017, investigators arrived at Dr. James Kauffman's Egg Harbor Township practice with search warrants. He displayed a gun and threatened suicide, and he was jailed on weapons charges; his attorney said later that he feared arrest for his wife's murder. By the time charges were filed, a former Pagans Motorcycle Club official, whom the defense described as a gang official turned informant, was working for the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office. He had a detective sergeant as his handler and set up meetings with Augello while wearing a recording device. A detective testified that the informant was shown a letter Kauffman's attorney had sent the prosecutor's office in 2017, naming Augello and Francis Mulholland as possible suspects, and asked to show it to Augello. According to trial reporting, it led to several conversations and to a plan to kill the doctor in jail. The informant said that plan was him flying by the seat of his pants, and the defense argued the evidence pointed to him. The last recorded conversation took place at Augello's home on January 6, 2018. Three days later Prosecutor Damon Tyner announced murder and racketeering charges against Kauffman and Augello and named Mulholland, who had died in 2013, as the gunman. At trial, Joseph Mulholland, who drove Francis Mulholland to the house for $1,000 and was never charged in the murder, and Augello's former wife, who delivered an envelope from the doctor on the morning of the killing, testified for the state. The jury convicted Augello after two hours.