[dramatic music]
‐ It is incredibly rare
for criminal defendants to take the stand.
It's a risk very few take.
At stake, one's freedom or even their life.
This is James Scandirito Jr.,
a Florida man charged with the murder and dismemberment
of his 74‐year‐old father, Skip.
‐ Panicked and scared,
and thought I had to move my dad's body.
‐ He's decided to take that gamble.
Will it help him convince the jury he's not guilty?
‐ You didn't kill him? ‐ I did not kill my dad.
‐ Or will it come back to haunt him?
Take a courtside seat
with the prosecutor, the victim's sister,
the legal analyst,
and a lead detective.
I'm Dan Abrams, and this is "Under Oath."
‐ Raise your right hand. ‐ Do you solemnly swear...
‐ I'm being honest with everything I say to you.
‐ Do solemnly swear...
‐ The whole truth and nothing but the truth.
‐ I would like to testify.
‐ The testimony you are about to give...
The whole truth and nothing but the truth...
‐ So help you God?
♪ ♪
‐ I'm gonna have to
dismember my dad
to be able to move him out of the house.
♪ ♪
‐ James Scandirito Jr. stands accused of murdering
and dismembering his 74‐year‐old father, Skip.
Scandirito claimed he discovered
his father already deceased
and, in a drug‐induced panic,
that he made the fateful decision to cut up the body
and conceal the crime.
Scandirito's facing the death penalty.
He's fighting to save his freedom and maybe his life.
He decides to take the stand in his own defense
and tell the jury firsthand
what happened that fateful night.
But to do so,
he'll have to admit to some of the ghastly crime,
and the jury will have to decide,
did he or did he not murder his father?
♪ ♪
‐ Every murder has at least one motive.
Prosecutor's theory was twofold.
Jimmy Scandirito hated his father.
Jimmy Scandirito had a big motive
to get money, an $800,000 inheritance.
‐ The defendant is a man
who is fueled by greed.
♪ ♪
James Scandirito II did everything
he possibly could
to get away with murder,
and at the end of this case,
we will ask that you find him guilty of first degree murder
and abuse of a dead human body.
‐ The defense's argument
was that Jimmy Scandirito
was in a drug‐induced haze.
He was a drug addict,
and when he was confronted
with his father passing away
and having a heart attack,
he absolutely, categorically panicked
and made a bad decision
to dismember his father and bury him.
‐ If Jimmy had needed anything,
Skip would've provided it to him.
He made some terrible decisions,
some criminal decisions in this case,
but murder is not one of them.
‐ James Scandirito Jr. was Skip's only son.
The defense has an obvious challenge.
The idea that a son could chop up his father
is too horrific to contemplate.
But prosecutors had the burden
to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
As the trial proceeds,
both the defense and prosecution
will look to family history to make their case.
♪ ♪
‐ Skip, we call him Skip,
was my oldest brother.
Jimmy was an only child, his only son.
‐ You know, we were, like, best friends.
You know, we played golf, you know,
almost every week
while I was living here in Florida.
I love my dad.
‐ Skip became an attorney,
and he was a district judge in Michigan
in Mount Clemmons, Macomb County.
Him and his wife, Terri,
retired to Boca Raton, Florida.
They had a little house and a pool and everything.
And they just really lived a very good life.
But Jimmy was never as driven as Skip.
Skip was very driven.
Worked from the bottom up,
and Jimmy just wasn't ambitious.
He just wanted things handed to him.
He went kinda from job to job.
Very much of a mama's boy.
Terri would tell me many times
that Jimmy hates Skip.
I mean, he was hard on Jimmy,
but Jimmy was also very entitled.
♪ ♪
When Terri died in 2017,
I think Skip just was getting ready to cut him off.
"Enough's enough, Jimmy.
You have to make your own way."
‐ When Terri Scandirito died, her estate went to her husband,
Skip Scandirito, and so Skip would've been responsible
for doling out any of that money.
Our theory was that Jimmy Scandirito
did commit a homicide on his father
and thought it was financially motivated.
♪ ♪
‐ The weekend of March 28th
through April 1st of 2018,
Skip Scandirito had a relatively packed weekend.
His good friend, Gary Goodin,
was coming into town.
That Sunday was Easter Sunday as well.
‐ But as Scandirito explains it,
this was no ordinary father/son relationship.
Jimmy and Skip were best friends.
In addition to the occasional golf game,
they would, every now and then,
smoke pot and do cocaine together.
Now, this is important to explain what Jimmy claims
happened that very weekend.
♪ ♪
‐ I come inside, I guess, you know,
somewhere around 11:30.
I come around, I see him.
He's on the floor, kind of on his side,
kind of with his head rested against the couch.
And I yell, "Dad, are you okay?"
And no response.
Um, thought maybe he just passed out or something,
so I kinda grab him and shake him a little bit
and nothing.
There was no pulse at all.
He had knocked over all of the cocaine.
It was on the floor. It was on the couch.
It was on him.
He was just kind of laying in it.
‐ No, no, no, no.
I was more buzzed, drunk,
and high and stoned than he was.
And you get paranoid sometimes when you do cocaine,
so my first reaction was, "Oh, no, I'm gonna get in trouble
"because he died
snorting my cocaine."
I was panicked and scared
and thought I had to remove my dad's body.
That I'm gonna have to dismember my dad
to be able to move him out of the house.
♪ ♪
‐ For the prosecution,
it's a son taking the life of his father.
That's an aggravating factor.
"He did it for money, the inheritance."
Those are reasons why
those prosecutors sought the death penalty.
There was not a mountain of evidence.
There was a continent of evidence
that shows premeditation and planning.
But when Jimmy Scandirito took the stand,
he was sincere, he was remorseful,
he was utterly embarrassed
about what he did to his father.
‐ By taking the stand,
James Scandirito is prepared to tell his grizzly story.
Could Scandirito just be guilty
of dismembering his father
but innocent of murder?
Would the jury believe him?
‐ A saw. A hand saw.
‐ Yes.
‐ I did not kill my dad.
[dramatic music]
Just passed out onto the table.
‐ So you thought that he had perhaps overdosed,
and did that worry you?
‐ I was very worried.
I was panicked and scared
and thought I had to remove my dad's body.
That I'm gonna have to dismember my dad
to be able to move him out of the house.
‐ In a rare move, James Scandirito Jr.
is taking the stand in his own defense.
He claims he discovered his father, Skip,
already deceased,
and though he admits to dismembering his father
in a drug‐induced panic,
he is adamant that he is not guilty of murder.
The story Jimmy Scandirito initially told police
would create another challenge.
♪ ♪
‐ The Boca Raton Police Department received a call
about a missing person.
I initially went to the residence
of Skip Scandirito,
and I met with the victim's son, Jimmy,
and Skip's buddy, Gary Goodin.
They reported to me that they hadn't seen Skip for a while,
and they wanted to report him missing.
‐ The idea was put forth by Jimmy Scandirito
that his father had gone kayaking.
‐ The victim's vehicle was a small SUV.
That was located at Delray Beach.
‐ I happened to find a receipt from Home Depot
on the passenger floorboard.
I thought it was a little unusual,
I guess you could say.
It had shown the purchase of a hand truck and a gas can.
We took the next step
to pull some of Skip's financial records,
and upon reviewing,
we discovered that there were some credit card charges.
So we went and pulled the video.
We see Jimmy Scandirito
using his father's credit cards
to purchase a crime scene cleanup kit.
That started this investigation
going from a missing person's investigation
to something else at that point.
‐ Now Jimmy Scandirito was undoubtedly the prime suspect.
♪ ♪
‐ After Skip had been reported missing,
we had our surveillance team covertly following Jimmy.
Jimmy's actions were so bizarre
that we knew that we were working on
obviously something very serious.
We observed Jimmy walk onto a large abandoned golf course
not far from Skip's residence.
There were sand traps, there were lakes.
‐ I basically decide that I need
to bury the torso
and the lower extremities
somewhere out in the golf course.
I know it's an abandoned golf course.
‐ He spent 45 minutes on the golf course,
and then he returned to his vehicle
dragging some suitcases.
And then threw them in a dumpster
not far from the golf course,
so we instantly secured that dumpster area.
‐ When they lifted the suitcase out,
immediately they noticed that there was a strong odor
coming from these suitcases.
There were maggots.
There is what appear to be bodily fluid.
‐ Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office took their K9 dog
onto the golf course.
They were able to unearth
two body parts
in a shallow grave on the golf course.
The decision was made to arrest Jimmy Scandirito
for the homicide of his father.
‐ Skip Scandirito is believed to have died
the night of March 28, 2018.
It's clear that Jimmy Scandirito
took drastic measures to conceal the crime.
His attorneys know that appearing truthful
to the jury is critical,
so he'll have to take the jurors
through the ugly events of the night in his own words.
♪ ♪
‐ Yes.
I...
basically come to the realization
that I'm not gonna be able
to load my father's body
into the back of his truck
if I'm going to bury it or remove him.
‐ A saw. It's a hand saw.
‐ The arm, let's say, is finally dismembered.
It kind of falls
into the garbage bag.
Eventually ended up putting 'em all into three suitcases.
‐ Describing those details
was an intentional strategy by the defense.
They contend that Scandirito's actions
are those of a drug‐fueled man
who panicked and then hastily buried his father.
‐ They found him in the golf course.
It wasn't all of him. Parts were missing.
‐ The area from the neck
including the head on up was missing.
Both upper extremities, right and left,
they were gone.
And then from mid‐thigh on down, that was gone.
So all we had left was from about here
to mid‐thigh.
What was left here, the trunk,
was actually bisected into two pieces.
So you can essentially see
where a saw, something like a hand saw, was used
to dismember the body.
‐ Even if the jury believed
Scandirito was a grief‐stricken son,
they would have to consider, if he was capable
of such horrors, what else he was capable of.
‐ Certainly made some bad decisions.
‐ Horrible decisions. ‐ Okay.
But you did not participate in any way at all
with the death of your father?
‐ I did not.
[dramatic music]
‐ Facing the death penalty,
James Scandirito Jr. is taking the stand
to fight for his life.
His decision to do that leaves him open
to cross‐examination by the prosecution,
and they intend to make the case for murder
by laying out a financial motive.
♪ ♪
‐ Your mother was concerned
about your relationship with your father.
She made your father promise
to good care of you when she passed.
‐ Yeah, he's difficult.
‐ Especially that month, right? ‐ Yes.
‐ At the timeframe that this incident started,
Jimmy was broke.
Jimmy had about $3 or $4 in his checking account.
‐ You said that you had bad credit?
‐ Yes.
I've had bad credit since college.
‐ He was spending a lot of money.
He was living way beyond his means.
‐ I don't.
‐ I believe so.
‐ Where Jimmy kind of went off the deep end
was when his mother died.
His father basically cut him off.
‐ Boca police say they learned
Scandirito Sr. had some 800 grand in accounts
where his son was the beneficiary.
And police said Junior
had already tried to cash out $9,500.
‐ No. I would never think that way.
♪ ♪
‐ Arms, legs, and head.
‐ Both the tarps were in the garage.
‐ Yeah, and I had a poncho on.
‐ I was just horrified.
I never thought that
anybody in our family would ever do that
to another person, let alone their father.
‐ The dad dies, you call 911.
You don't go to Walmart and get saws
and hack them up and hide the body parts.
‐ I made a bunch of stupid decisions.
I'm not a, you know, career criminal
that plans, you know...
‐ I had money.
‐ Skip Scandirito's cause of death
was homicide by the specified means
because I don't have the rest of those body parts.
Alligators in Florida,
they do prefer decomposed meat.
So his body parts could easily be inside
an alligator somewhere.
‐ With no head or limbs to examine,
proving how Skip Scandirito died is difficult,
but there is one key piece of evidence
discovered by the medical examiner.
‐ Skip Scandirito had no cocaine in his system at all.
The drug use has nothing to do with his death.
‐ James Scandirito testifies in great detail
that his father was doing cocaine
the night he supposedly died,
but the autopsy report suggested otherwise.
‐ I don't believe he ever did cocaine,
and everybody knew he didn't.
♪ ♪
‐ Jimmy, he had fled Southeast Florida.
He had travel plans
to potentially fly
from Miami to the Cayman Islands
to Columbia.
He had researched private jet companies,
and he had a U. S. passport.
It looked like he was trying to flee the country.
‐ James Scandirito is fighting for his life.
He puts it all on the line
relaying the gruesome details
of how he dismembered and buried his father.
But he stopped short of confessing to killing him.
‐ I did not kill my dad.
‐ Will the jury find his testimony convincing?
Will his decision to testify save his life
or seal his fate?
‐ As the jury left the room to deliberate,
it is a scenario
that is completely out of your control.
The most that you can do is hope
that you presented the best case that you could.
♪ ♪
[gavel bangs]
‐ All rise. Court is now back in session.
[dramatic music]
‐ James Scandirito spent days testifying
to the gruesome details
of dismembering and burying his father,
who he claims was already dead.
Now the jury has the final word.
♪ ♪
‐ Mr. Scandirito,
you will rise to receive our jury's verdict.
‐ We the jury find as follows:
as to count one, we find the defendant...
not guilty.
As to count two,
we find the defendant guilty
of abuse of a dead human body.
‐ It worked.
James Scandirito's testimony
convinced the jurors that he was only guilty
of the charge of abuse of a dead human body
but not guilty of murder.
‐ So say we all, this 21st day of March,
2019, in West Palm Beach,
Palm Beach County, Florida,
signed jury foreperson.
‐ The prosecution thought they had a slam dunk case,
but Jimmy Scandirito rolled the dice,
and he put a rope through a needle.
‐ When they read the verdict
and said that Jimmy
was not guilty of murder,
I was very disappointed.
I just couldn't believe
that he could just get away with it.
‐ But sentencing is still to come,
and the judge had a lot of leeway
on what kind of time
James Scandirito could spend behind bars
for the crime he was convicted of.
♪ ♪
‐ Scandirito's testimony clearly swayed the jury
but maybe not as much the judge,
who was determined to throw the book at him
for the heinous crime of dismembering his father.
‐ When I saw Jimmy was gonna take the stand,
I knew that he was gonna have to tell details
about the dismemberment.
I thought, "That's gonna be the nail in his coffin,"
but it didn't turn out that way
because the jury believed him.
‐ I think Jimmy Scandirito got away with murder.
♪ ♪
‐ The prosecution could not prove exactly what killed Skip,
and without that information,
the jurors decided that James Scandirito
could not be convicted of murder.
‐ If William Shakespeare were alive today,
there would be a play called "Jimmy Scandirito."
I think Jimmy Scandirito
is the luckiest man in the United States of America.
The jury has spoken.
‐ James Scandirito Jr. is serving his 15 year sentence
in Graceville Correctional Facility.
When released, Scandirito will likely be 64 years old.
♪ ♪
Defendants are never forced to take the stand,
but that decision is likely the biggest one
they ever make.
For "Under Oath," I'm Dan Abrams.