Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

MIAMI - After years of a domineering husband putting her in her place, the Miami woman was starting the first day of the rest of her life with a new hairstyle and a manicure.

Maggie Locascio had finally taken the step. The next day, the divorce would be on its way to being final, a last deposition in court.

As she drove her Mercedes back to the nice house in Coral Gables, we don't know if she was thinking about the end of her 28-year marriage or her next chapters.

Her son, Ed Locascio Jr., had been urging her to call the marriage quits for years.

Ed Locascio, Jr.: She cried a lot about it. But afterward, I think she knew it was for the better.

But once the garage doors closed, Maggie Locascio only had a few minutes of life remaining.

Homicide detective John Butchko found a disturbing crime scene when he arrived at 2806 Granada.

Det. Butchko: There was an alarm that sounded, which indicated that the victim was in the house with the alarm on. It was a very bloody, violent scene. There were bloody footprints into a kitchen and bloody fingerprints on a wall.

Maggie lay dead on the kitchen floor. She'd been bludgeoned in the head -- an awful wound -- then stabbed, kicked, even choked by her killer.

Butchko: There was indication that the victim resisted, that she fought back.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline NBC: So it could have been a home intruder at that point?

Butchko: Yes, it could have been. However, there seemed to be more to it than that.

An icon of the cruelty of this murder, a barometer of the rage in that kitchen, was a black metal police baton found on the floor. It had been used to bash in Maggie’s head.

Murphy: Did the nature of the death tell you anything about who the perpetrator was?

Butchko: Yes. It seemed to have been done in anger. It appeared to be somebody that would have some sort of relationship, as opposed to a stranger."

Her son, Eddie Jr., was in medical school running some lab experiments that night so he didn't get home to Coral Gables until after 10. By then, there were flashing cop cars, gawkers, and police lines.

Eddie elbowed his way to the front.

Eddie Locascio Jr.: Finally, I asked, “Where the hell is my mother?”

The son didn't get any answers.

Video   Locascio: 'I am innocent'   Edward Locasio protests his innocence in the murder of his wife, Maggie. Dateline NBC

He was taken to the police station, where detectives put him in a room and started asking him questions.

The detectives began to piece together the unhappy soap opera of the Locascio family.

Maggie, the 45-year-old victim, had been an accountant with a master's degree. But had mostly been a stay-at-home mom since son Eddie Jr. came along.

Edward Locascio Sr., the husband and father, was an accountant, too, and he'd done well with investments. A family with a net worth estimated at up to $6 million.

But the house was bitterly divided. Mother and son joined against a cold, abusive husband and father, at least by Eddie Jr.'s account.

Dennis Murphy: You call your father “Ed.”

Eddie Locascio Jr: Yes.

Murphy: Rather than “father” or “dad,” or “pops.”

Eddie Locascio Jr: Right.

Murphy: It seems a little bit funny, you know?

Eddie Locascio Jr: Yes.

There’s nothing funny at all about his childhood or his memories of his father, as he tells it. Ed Jr. was bookish, happy to find sanctuary in a library. The father berated him for not being more than a scrub on the track team he coached with fire-breathing intensity.

Eddie Locascio Jr.: One of the kids who he actually coached came up to me and told me, “You're so lucky to have a father like Ed." And I was absolutely shocked.

The obvious question to the detectives was: what's up with this husband, described as an abusive character, in the final stages of a bitter divorce. Did he have the motive and the rage to actually beat and stomp his wife to death?

Det. Butchko: Ed Locascio was abusive to her. He'd threatened her before.

Dennis Murphy: So in the ranking of possible suspects he's moved up ahead of the unknown intruder at that point?

Det. Butchko: He was a strong suspect.

The detectives asked the son who he thought might have done it and he didn't hesitate.

Eddie Locascio Jr: I think my exact words: “I can't believe the bastard finally did it.”

Dennis Murphy: “The bastard finally did it”? Meaning?

Eddie Locascio Jr.: Ed…

Dennis Murphy: Your father?

Eddie Locascio Jr: Right.

But Ed Locascio Sr. had an airtight alibi. He was at his condo on Miami’s South Beach when the murder occurred. A security camera picture proved it.

And something else: the cops had had extraordinarily good luck in finding a trove of evidence in a gym bag ditched in a neighbor's shrubs near the murder house.

There was DNA, and not the husband's; forensic clues were just waiting to be matched up with a killer out there.

Maybe it was the guy in the white pick-up who did an illegal u-turn out of the scene as officers screamed up?

Who murdered Maggie, of that very unhappy Locascio household?

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