MAN'S DRUG USE SPARKS DEADLY CHAIN OF EVENTS

Manslaughter Alleged In Friend's Beating Death

Cocaine always seems to get Jack Cuccia in trouble.

He gets ripped off trying to score, or some greedy drug buddy plows through
his stash, or he buys coke that has been stepped on so many times he can
barely catch a buzz. His habit has led to numerous run-ins with the law,
such as the case three years ago when somebody accused him of stealing 11
crab traps and officers found four rocks of crack during a routine pat
down. That led to a felony conviction for possession and one year of
probation, which was almost revoked after two subsequent coke busts, but
those cases never made it to court.

Cocaine isn't even his drug of choice, Cuccia said. Pain pills, prescribed
for old shoulder and knee injuries, are his real downfall, he said, and for
the past two years he's been trying to kick that habit with methadone
treatment. But earlier this month, a late-night urge for a hit of crack
thrust Cuccia into the worst predicament of his life.

Cuccia, 49, killed a woman. As the case stands, he is accused of
manslaughter in the beating death of Lucy Ceperiano, also 49, an
acquaintance he invited into his Lake Terrace home in the early morning
hours of May 2.

In many ways, Cuccia and Ceperiano were caught in a similar rut of
addiction, except that Cuccia's rut is lined with family money and a
showcase house overlooking Lake Pontchartrain and the means to hire
expensive private attorneys when he gets into trouble.

Cuccia worked for years in his father's grocery business, but most of his
young adult life revolved around the wild life of drag racing and water
skiing and partying. He settled down for a spell when he got married and
had a daughter, but when he got divorced 12 years later, the reckless
behavior -- and drug consumption -- resumed.

Ceperiano, on the other hand, was a waifish street character who often was
seen wandering around the Fair Grounds neighborhood with her little white
dog Kokomo. Friends say a long-ago heroin addiction kept Ceperiano tethered
to methadone and she usually had a can of beer in her hand.

Cocaine and other drugs were considered a luxury in Ceperiano's
hand-to-mouth world, friends said, an indulgence she accepted if it
happened to come her way.

Cuccia said he and Ceperiano sparked a hello-goodbye friendship several
years ago when they frequented the same methadone clinic. Occasionally,
they would cross paths on the street or through mutual party buddies.
That's what happened last month, and it left Ceperiano dead and Cuccia
facing up to 40 years in prison if convicted as charged.

It was all a tragic nightmare, Cuccia said in a recent interview he granted
"to set things straight." He's not a violent person, he said, and
Ceperiano's death wasn't an instance of domestic violence, as some people
in his upscale neighborhood have whispered.

"I mean, I liked Lucy. I considered her a friend," Cuccia said. "I'm sorry
the whole thing happened. It was just a bad situation all around." The
episode started, Cuccia said, when he drove his red Camaro Z28 to a spot
near the Fair Grounds where he knew he could buy a $20 rock. He came across
Ceperiano. She was on a bicycle, and she looked bad, he said, skinny and
disheveled and maybe even a bit desperate.

She asked for money, and he gave her $5.

Later, at about 1 a.m., Ceperiano called and asked if she could come by.
She said she didn't have a place to stay, which was partially true, but
Cuccia figured she was more interested in smoking the cocaine he just bought.

Cuccia doesn't know how she got to the house, a red-brick ranch model full
of '60s-era touches like skylights and mod furniture. But there she was.
Beatrice, a once-homeless alcoholic who is Cuccia's live-in housekeeper,
was awake, but Cuccia's elderly father, Jack, was asleep. Cuccia said he
shared his drugs with Ceperiano and told her she could crash at his place
for the night.

Then something odd happened.

Cuccia was dozing off in his bedroom. Ceperiano was chilling in another
part of the house. Beatrice, who was making cornbread in the kitchen, said
she heard a loud noise in the carport. When she peeked out to investigate,
she saw a man crouched by the driver's side door of Cuccia's car, she said.
When he saw her, he bolted into the night, disappearing across the storm
levee on the opposite side of the street, she said.

A neighbor noticed the commotion and called the police, who arrived a short
time later and took a report. The time of the call, according to a police
log, was 4:13 a.m.

"The funny thing is, I heard Lucy talking real loud just before the big
noise," said Beatrice, who asked that her last name be withheld. "First she
said she was talking to Jack, but Jack was asleep. Then she told me she was
singing. At the time, I didn't think much about it, but later we started to
suspect what might have happened."

What Cuccia and Beatrice say they now believe is that Ceperiano was working
in tandem with somebody to steal Cuccia's car. They admit they have no
proof and, of course, Ceperiano isn't around to defend herself. But they
said they base their assumptions, in part, on the events that unfolded
hours later.

In separate accounts given by Cuccia and Beatrice, it was about 1 p.m. the
next day when everyone, still groggy from the night before, started to wake
up. Beatrice said she went to the bathroom to take a Valium but found her
vial of pills missing. She said that she and Cuccia approached Ceperiano
and spotted the pills in her pocket.

Sharing drugs is one thing, Cuccia said, but stealing drugs is another.

"I asked Bea to check her to see if she stole anything else," Cuccia said.

In Ceperiano's purse and pockets, Beatrice said she found jewelry, perfume,
Valium, Xanax, deodorant. That's when Ceperiano went wild, they said.

"She was like a wildcat," Beatrice said. "She started lunging and
struggling, screaming and clawing. That's when she grabbed the screwdriver."

Cuccia said it was a Phillips screwdriver, a sharp one, and that Ceperiano
was thrusting it at him. He said he reacted by picking up a flashlight and
hitting her in the face. He said Ceperiano slumped to the ground, but only
briefly, before she started lashing out again. At that point, he said, he
hit Ceperiano in the head "a couple of times" to subdue her.

"I'm not going to hit her for nothing," Cuccia said. "I slapped her a
couple of times to calm her down. She was trying to rob me. I certainly
wasn't trying to hurt anybody."

But Ceperiano was hurt, far worse than anyone realized. According to a
preliminary police report, it was about 2 p.m. when Ceperiano ran outside
screaming for somebody to call the police. When officers arrived, they
"observed the victim to be bruised to the facial area. EMS unit arrived on
the scene, but victim refused aid," the report said.

The officers issued Cuccia a municipal summons for simple battery and drove
Ceperiano to a relative's house on Fortin Street, the report said. From
there, she sought out some friends, who urged her to go the hospital.
According to the police report, she checked herself into Mercy Hospital
that evening.

Ceperiano was only at the hospital for a few hours before, inexplicably,
she was released. By the time she was rushed to the hospital the next day,
friends say she was having seizures and fading in and out of consciousness.
Blood was trickling from her ears and nose.

"When you see a woman beat up like this, it scares . . . you," said Steve
Mernin, a friend with whom Ceperiano had been staying on and off in the
weeks before her death. "I've been in bar fights all my life, and I've
never even seen a man beaten like this."

When Ceperiano died May 5 after brain surgery, her friends were shattered.
When they began pondering the questions swirling around her death, they
grew bewildered and angry.

"How can you issue a summons for a beating that's bad enough for someone to
die?" Mernin asked. "Why didn't they (police) insist on taking her to the
hospital? Why was she allowed to leave the hospital? These are questions
that make me mad. I don't have the answers, but I do know how bad she was
beaten, and it was terrible."

Upon Ceperiano's death, police booked Cuccia with manslaughter. He was
freed within 24 hours after paying about $8,000 for a surety bond to cover
his $75,000 bail.

The patrol officers who initially responded to the scene were not allowed
to comment for this story. Nor was the homicide detective who has taken
over the case. But Sgt. Denise Miles, a police spokeswoman, defended the
department's actions. The officers at the scene decided not to arrest
Cuccia on a state battery charge because at the time, "the incident
appeared to be a simple battery," Miles said. "As a result, the officers
used their discretion and issued him a summons."

In booking Cuccia with manslaughter instead of murder, Miles said, "The
investigation revealed no specific intent to kill her, and that's one of
the elements of manslaughter." The district attorney's office, which is
reviewing the case, could upgrade or downgrade the charge.

Cuccia said he was shocked to hear of Ceperiano's death.

"I was sick all day. I didn't think I hit her that hard. And for someone to
die, man, I don't know."

Even so, Cuccia thinks he should be cleared of any wrongdoing.

"This is the worst thing that's ever happened, but I don't know what else I
could have done," he said. "It was self-defense."

Cuccia's attorney, Robert Toale, declined to comment.

Ceperiano's friends, meanwhile, have tried to make sense of the tragedy by
celebrating her life rather than mourning her death.

When Patty Chaplain began talking about an appropriate way to remember the
neighborhood "flower-child gypsy," various people came out of the woodwork:
barflies from nearby Liuzza's, bohemian street wanderers, people who shared
a beer with Lucy but never knew her last name, much less that she had two
grown children and a 5-year-old granddaughter.

Chaplain and her sister Robin decided to hold a memorial service at Alcee
Fortier Park, the small triangular patch of green on Esplanade Avenue where
Ceperiano spent entire afternoons sitting and playing with Kokomo.

"I don't know how the whole thing came together, but we posted fliers and
different people donated stuff and somebody got in touch with her family,"
Patty Chaplain said.

When the gathering came together June 1, the organizers were stunned when
two dozen people were at the park waiting, and even more surprised when two
dozen more people joined in as the poems and speeches and songs began. Two
flutists played "The Sounds of Silence" and "Blowin' in the Wind." Dozens
of people stood by with single-stem flowers in plastics vases.

They planted a red-leafed Japanese maple tree in a small garden patch
facing Grand Route St. John and placed a small cement bench next to it.
Later, when they can raise the money, they plan to engrave the bench with
the words: "Love, Life, Laughter. Lucy."

"Some of her friends may have been loser-types," Patty Chaplain said, "but
they loved her, and they cared for her."

Cuccia said he heard about the service through acquaintances he and
Ceperiano shared. He said he didn't dare attend. In fact, he said, he has
decided to stay inside his house until his next court appearance July 9.