Brutal New York Double Murder a Complete Failure of the Law

New York is a state that prides itself, in part, on its gun control laws. They’re pretty sure they’re doing everything they can to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, despite making arrests all the time of people who are armed despite not being able to legally be so. It’s a weird kind of cognitive dissonance, really.

And then the Ivy League tends to be a little snooty about how they’re better than everyone else, as a general thing. They also seem to be filled with people who love gun control.

These are two reasons why this story, which was sent to me on Thursday, strikes an interesting cord. It’s a horrific crime, but the details are troubling for more than one reason.

A Cornell University administrator shot and killed his 11-year-old daughter and ex-mother-in-law before killing himself last Friday, police said. The incident occurred shortly before noon on Jan. 3 in Brighton, a suburb of Rochester, N.Y.

Lawrence Mancuso, 53, was the assistant dean of Human Resources at Cornell’s Industrial and Labor Relations School according to a Cornell spokesperson. He was hired two years ago, according to a school social media post.

He has been on leave since October 2024, though university officials did not disclose a reason for his absence. Mancuso’s staff profile has since been removed from the university’s website.

On Jan. 4, Brighton police investigators said Mancuso was responsible for the murders of his 11-year-old daughter Anne Mancuso and her 78-year-old maternal grandmother, Mary Liccini.

Police scanner recordings show the girl had sought help from neighbors after suffering gunshot wounds. She was hospitalized but later died of her injuries, police said. Liccini and Mancuso were pronounced dead on the scene.

An administrator at an Ivy League school kills his 11-year-old daughter and his ex-mother-in-law, then kills himself. It’s horrifying.

I guess that’s why New York has such strict gun control laws, right? He must have used something other than a gun, right?

Well, no. I mean, the whole story says he shot them. The daughter sought help while suffering from gunshot wounds. A firearm was used.

So how were gun control laws so useless? Because, like so many other criminals, Mancuso simply evaded them.

Catholdi said Mancuso carried out the attack with firearms he had stolen from a nearby relative, who had owned the guns legally. Mancuso stole a total of four guns, Catholdi said, all of which have since been recovered.

That’s right, he stole them.

For the record, though, he had no criminal history, which means he could have bought the guns if he so desired, but he opted to steal them from a relative instead.

Then kill two people and himself because he couldn’t have reversed the order and saved everyone a lot of heartache.

Unfortunately, he didn’t.

On every level, this is a failure of the law. Gun control didn’t work in any way, shape, or form, simply because the criminal stole the guns so he wouldn’t have to contend with the legal hurdles created and ostensibly designed to keep him disarmed. They did not.

This case is horrifying, but it’s also just a drop in the bucket of gun control failures in New York.

It also shows those who fill the roles of Ivy League administration aren’t somehow better than the rest of us, no matter what some of those people might seem to think.