Cosmo DiNardo's Descent Into Madness

Cosmo DiNardo and his mother on prom night

By Ralph Cipriano
for Philadelphia magazine

In the middle of a murder rampage, Cosmo DiNardo had an appointment to see his psychiatrist. So on the afternoon of July 6, 2017, the 20-year-old from Bucks County dutifully climbed in the front passenger seat of his mother's SUV, and they headed south on I-95, toward West Philadelphia.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Christian Kohler specialized in evaluating and treating young people dealing with an initial onset of mental illness. He'd been seeing Cosmo since November 2016 and was treating him for bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder and schizophrenia. He'd had him committed to a mental hospital -- though Cosmo had been released -- and was medicating him with anti-psychotic drugs . . .

Even as he sat in the waiting room that day at Penn, killing time before he saw Kohler, Cosmo used his iPad to google the "Soup Maker Cartel," a Mexican drug syndicate known for making "soup" out of some 300 murder victims by dissolving their bodies in barrels of acid.

This was the frightening mind-set of the young man Kohler would see that day. But the psychiatrist seemed unaware that he was dealing with a time bomb. In his notes, Kohler wrote that his patient posed "no clear risk to self or others. So Cosmo walked out of Kohler's office and drove home with his mom . . . The rest of the story can be read here.