A man who shot and killed his neighbor and his neighbor's girlfriend, as part of what residents say was a long running feud between the two men, claims he did so in self-defense.

The incident occurred shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday on the 4700 block of James Street in the Frankford section of Philadelphia. The 69-year-old man told police he had been arguing with his neighbor, identified by friends as 45-year-old Bob DePaul. The man claimed DePaul and his girlfriend, identified as 43-year-old August Dempsey, tried to climb his fence during the argument.

The man said he felt threatened and grabbed his gun. He then opened fire, shooting DePaul and Dempsey. They both died from gunshot wounds to the head. 

Sources told NBC10 the 69-year-old man called police immediately after the shooting. He was taken into custody but later released. No charges have been filed as the investigation continues.

Residents say the man and DePaul were once friends but had been locked in an ongoing feud over the past few years. At one point the man even put up a wall between his porch and DePaul's.

“I know they didn’t get along,” Anna Szymanski told NBC10. “I don’t know why. But he was always nice to us.”

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Dempsey, a mother of two, worked for the Philadelphia Parking Authority while DePaul, a father of four, worked as a maintenance worker. Thomas Flanagan, a friend of DePaul’s, told NBC10 he is outraged that no charges have been filed.

“I don’t believe this guy’s out of jail,” Flanagan said. “Because it ain’t right. Why would he shoot his girlfriend? I don’t understand that.”

“I love him to death. I’m gonna miss him very much. I just want to see justice done. That’s it.”

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office is currently investigating the shooting and deciding whether or not charges will be filed.

For Jeff Mudgett, one day in early May was a moment of truth, or at least the next step in his pursuit of the truth.  Years of research and debate were coming down to this day in a Yeadon, Pennsylvania, cemetery.

“It was straight out of Alfred Hitchcock. It was scary,” Mudgett said.

Anthropologists and archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania were excavating the gravesite of Mudgett’s great-great grandfather Herman Webster Mudgett, more infamously known as serial killer and con-man H.H. Holmes.

“He’s evil personified! And I decided rather than running away from it, I decided to try to make something worthwhile of coming up with the truth,” Mudgett said.

Some credit Holmes with killing more than two hundred people in the late 1800’s.  Most of the killings are believed to have taken place in a building Holmes owned in Chicago, dubbed the “Murder Castle,” events described in the 2003 bestseller "The Devil in the White City." But Holmes was only convicted of one murder. In 1895 he was put on trial in Philadelphia for the murder of his business partner Benjamin Pitezel and was sentenced to die by hanging.

This is where Mudgett and others say the mystery begins.

According to newspaper accounts, Holmes was marched to the gallows at Moyamensing Prison where he was hanged. The prison was located on 1400 South 10th Street in Philadelphia before it closed in 1963 and was demolished in 1968. Holmes’ body was eventually interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon. Holmes requested his casket be encased in concrete so no one would steal his body. However, an 1898 newspaper article sparked the conspiracy theory that Holmes somehow escaped death at Moyamensing and ended up in South America.

Fast-forward to 2017 with Mudgett standing in what many believe to be the grave of his murderous relative. Descendants of Holmes were granted permission by a Delaware County judge to exhume the remains.

“It actually brought tears to my eyes,” Mudgett said. “And I was sitting there, trying to figure out, ‘why am I crying for this monster of a man?’”

As they dug, the group found a wooden box.

“We dug down to 10 feet and we found a fake pine box,” Mudgett said.

Mudgett told the NBC10 Investigators there was nothing in the box and he was ready to give up but the team continued to dig. Next, they ran into the cement reported on in 1890s newspaper accounts.

"And we found the cement sarcophagus, which many of the newspapers described back then. That’s when the hard work began,” Mudgett said.

After breaking through the cement, the team from Penn found what they were looking for.

“They carefully opened it up and we found a skeleton of a man, which we removed and took to the university,” Mudgett said.

Before the remains were taken away, Mudgett held the skull in his hand.

"To see that skeleton and that skull with the brains still inside, which is a phenomenon that the scientists still haven’t explained, scared the heck out of me," Mudgett said.

Once the remains were taking to Penn, the tests began to see if the bones belonged to Holmes.

“We were there when they took the DNA samples from the skull and, you know, put them in the proper packaging. They took some comparison DNA from me,” Mudgett said.

But Mudgett’s crusade to see if Holmes was actually buried in the grave has another angle.

"Here was a moment that could possibly change American and English history. And it was staring us in the face," he said.

Mudgett believes his great-great grandfather is not only H.H. Holmes but also Jack the Ripper.

"As of yet, I still haven’t seen anything which would cause me to change my mind regarding my theories that H.H. Holmes was Jack the Ripper," he said.

While there is skepticism among Holmes experts about the Jack the Ripper theory, it is another reason Mudgett and his team spent time searching for and finding the tomb where Holmes was believed to be buried.

The great-great grandson is currently starring in a History Channel show entitled “American Ripper.” The premise of the show has Mudgett connecting the two notorious killers as the same man.

“Jack the Ripper was the J-V compared to H.H. Holmes. In my opinion, the world should be trying to prove Jack the Ripper was H.H. Holmes, not me proving Holmes was Jack the Ripper,” Mudgett said.

The last piece of the puzzle seems to be the DNA taken from the found remains and Mudgett. Those results are not yet in.

"I have my beliefs, I have, you know, doubts. I want to see those DNA results to come up with a firm conclusion," he said. "I’m waiting for them right now. I could get a phone call as we speak, right now."

As for the remains, a lawyer for Holmes’ descendants told a judge they are still at Penn awaiting more testing. He believed they could be returned to Holy Cross Cemetery in late July.

The 11-year-old New Jersey girl whose body was found on a building roof hours after she vanished from her home died of a stab wound to the neck, the medical examiner said Monday. 

The medical examiner has also ruled Abbiegail Smith's death a homicide, confirming what investigators said last week. 

The girl was taking trash out to the dumpster at her Keansburg apartment complex when she vanished Wednesday night, authorities said last week. Her mother reported her missing an hour later.

The following morning, Abbiegail's body was found partially clothed and wrapped in a comforter on a roof behind the building where she lived, law enforcement sources tell News 4. The sources said her hands had been bound. 

An upstairs neighbor, 18-year-old Andreas Erazo, was arrested on murder and weapons charges in the killing. 

Erazo hung his head and said nothing during his first court appearance Friday afternoon. The girl's mother, a nurse, said to him at the end of the proceeding, "I hope you rot in jail. My one and only daughter. Rot in jail." 

Erazo is being held in jail without bail. He'll get another detention hearing next Wednesday. If convicted of murder, he faces a minimum of 30 years in prison without parole and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. 

Investigators questioned several people in Abbigeail's death before arresting Erazo. Another neighbor told News 4 he was suspicious about a building resident he saw talking to Smith Wednesday before she vanished. It's not clear if that man is Erazo.

A 19-year-old man who sparked an hourslong standoff after he allegedly robbed a woman in New Jersey last Friday was arrested Monday when he fell through a ceiling and into a police officer's arms at his home, police said. 

Officers from the Rahway Police Department and the Union County Emergency Response Team had staked out a home on the 100 block of West Main Street Friday as they searched for four suspects in the gunpoint robbery. Nearby homes were evacuated as a precaution. 

The suspects weren't located at the time but Rahway police on Monday went to the Bryant Street home of one suspect, Edson Dorsainvil, and spotted him walking in.

He tried to hide himself in an attic crawl space as officers went into the home, police said, but he fell through the ceiling into the living room, right into the officers' waiting arms. 

Dorsainvil is being held at Union County Jail on first-degree armed robbery and related weapons possession charges.

Anyone with more information is asked to contact Rahway Police at 732-388-1553. 

As police swarmed the area last Friday, roads around the Union County Arts Center on Irving Street were closed, and a business owner told News 4 that she was ordered to stay inside.

"They have just all the streets blocked off, you have all the cops, the fire department, the Rahway emergency service, Linden, Rahway police," the business owner said.

Terrified neighbors hid out in their homes and broadcast the police response live on Facebook.

"I heard the police bullhorn," said Kevin Caldwell. "Ask the people, 'If you're inside the building, come out now.'" But after busting down the door of an apartment with a battering ram and throwing in a flash grenade, police didn't find the people they were looking for — just tenants of the building, according to the source.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is facing defeat Tuesday morning in the Republican Party's fight for a health care overhaul. NBC10's Matt DeLucia tells us what is next in the health care showdown.

This week NBC10 is helping families avoid the brain drain that happens when kids are out of school. NBC10's Pamela Osborne tells us how to turn a summer trip to the store can turn into a fun learning experience that will keep young minds churning.

A shirtless gunman shot a woman in the neck as she drove along a Philadelphia street Tuesday morning then got in another car and fled.

Philadelphia Police detectives searched for clues after the 42-year-old woman was shot at N 11th and W Rockland streets in the city’s Logan neighborhood around 7:35. Her car came to rest along 11th Street and it appeared the woman was operating the vehicle at the time.

Medics rushed the victim to nearby Einstein Medical Center in critical condition, police said. 

The gunshot appeared to come from a man wearing no shirt and blue sweat pants who fired a weapon from about a half block away on the 4800 block of Marvine Street, police said.

After the shooting the shirtless man got into a gold Lincoln Town Car and drove off, investigators said.

No word yet if the woman was the intended target.

Tom Smith put up a Christmas light display for the past three decades, but he died earlier this month. Now, his family says they will continue that tradition that draws people to his Delaware home.

A Philadelphia father who claimed his 2-year-old suffered a deadly fall now faces murder charges.

Quadium Bass said he was playing video games in their home on the 1600 block of N 57th Street around 1:10 p.m. Friday when he heard a thump then realized his son, 2-year-old Bashir Mungin-Bass, had fallen down the steps, Philadelphia police said.

Officers responded to the home for reports of a person screaming. Bass told officers he performed CPR on the boy before officers arrived, police said.

Medics rushed the unresponsive child to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia where Bashir died about an hour later.

It was later discovered that Bashir died from “blunt trunk extremity trauma to the body,” police said Tuesday.

A judge arraigned Bass on murder and child endangerment charges Tuesday morning and denied the 24-year-old bail. Online court records don't list an attorney who could comment on Bass' behalf.

Montgomery County is attempting to fight deaths from opioid overdoses by instructing citizens in administering the lifesaving drug Narcan.

Also referred to as Naloxone, the opiate antidote is designed to block the effects of the abused drug and reverse the symptoms of an overdose. While it is available over the counter in Pennsylvania, it can be difficult to administer without proper training.

Montgomery County's Department of Public Safety has prepared 9-1-1 operators to give instructions over the phone on how to administer the life-saving drug.

It is recommended that citizens should purchase Naloxone as a precaution for loved ones struggling with addiction.

Officials are hoping that a quicker response to overdoses will save the lives of opioid abusers across the county.

A proposed renovation to McMichael Park in East Falls is causing controversy among residents. The proposed change would bring a play area to the park, but the opposition believes this will take away from the natural look of the park.

Only feathers and blood were left behind when someone took off with some very expensive exotic birds from a Berks County petting zoo.

Oley Turnpike Dairy reported that the birds were taken from their cages on Sunday, July 16.

Oley Turnpike Dairy is a three-in-one experience. It's an ice cream shop, restaurant and petting zoo all in one. The zoo has a variety of animals including monkeys, goats, parrots, emus and llamas. On Sunday, someone cut the chicken wire in the bird house and four of the dairy's petting zoo animals were taken. Only one lonely parrot was left in the room.

Have you seen the missing birds? Owners at the dairy are hoping someone can help get them back.

Romeo and Juliet are a breeding pair of yellow headed amazons who the dairy has had for four years.

Sunny, a yellow sun conure has been with the dairy for 20 years.

Mr. Grey is an African grey parrot that has been at the dairy for over 25 years.

The staff may have a hunch on where their birds are. Because the birds are worth a lot of money, potentially 34-hundred dollars, they believe they are either being sold at an auction, the black market or underground websites for illegal exotic pets. 

The missing birds bit the bandits, and now police are testing the blood.

"Whoever came in, they got him pretty good. They put up a good fight," Julie Stewart of the Oley Turnpike Dairy Zoo said.

Anyone with information about the Romeo and Juliet, Sunny or Mr. Grey are urged to contact the dairy at 610-914-9214 or 610-689-0660.

A motorcyclist died after losing control of his bike and being struck by at least two motorists who kept on driving along Interstate 95.

Medics pronounced Christopher Cooper, of Philadelphia, dead along Interstate 95 east of Newark after he was thrown from his 2001 Suzuki GSX motorcycle around 9:50 p.m. Sunday night, Delaware State Police said.

Cooper was in the left center lane of I-95 northbound where the highway goes under the State Route 1 flyover ramp when he for some reason lost control and laid his bike down, investigators said. The motorcycle went on to slam into the concrete barrier dividing northbound and southbound traffic while Cooper came to rest on the roadway.

A silver 2014 to 2016 Mazda 3 and a 1998 to 2002 Honda Accord then struck Cooper as he laid on the highway, police said.

Both drivers kept going northbound despite likely front-end damage to their vehicles, police said.

Cooper wasn’t wearing a DOT-compliant motorcycle helmet at the time of the crash, state police said. Speed is believed to have played a role in the crash.

Police asked anyone with information about the deadly crash to call Sgt. P. Dzielak of the Collision Reconstruction Unit at Troop 2, (302) 365-8484, of submit a tip online.

Demand in the Philadelphia suburban housing market is just as strong as it is in the city. However, many are having a tough time finding a home in this market either because home prices are too high or homes are going so fast.

That's the situation Perri and Robert Silverstein find themselves in. The couple recently moved back to South Jersey from Chicago and are on the hunt for their first home.

"Definitely a little bit of a come back to reality kind of feeling," Perri Silverstein said.

The Silversteins know this market is a seller’s market and that the perfect house comes at a premium due to low housing inventory.

"I'm sticker shocked," Perri Silverstein said. "A lot more than I was ever expecting. I mean just from last year alone, prices are jumping up."

Nevertheless, houses are going fast. According to Bright MLS, the organization the Greater Philadelphia Association of Realtors uses, in South Jersey, the number of homes that have sold in the first three months of this year are up 24.7 percent in Camden County and 16.2 percent in Burlington County. In Pennsylvania, sold houses have gone up 2.8 percent in Montgomery County, nine percent in Delaware County and 9.9 percent in Chester County.

“If we go into a house and they love it, I tell them this house is probably not going to be here if you don't make an offer," said Jon Cohen, a realtor with clients on both sides of the river.

Cohen said that the high price and pace in Philly’s housing market is definitely having a trickledown effect on the suburbs.

“I’ve helped a few people who were originally looking in the city and then decided to expand and look in Haddonfield and Collingswood,” he said. “They might have spent nine months looking in Philly and they end up buying in South Jersey."

The Silversteins, unlike some of Cohen’s clients, are prepared to stick it out and find the right house for them. 

"It hasn't been tough yet," Robert Silverstein said. "But we don't have a house yet. I'll let you know when we do, how tough it gets."

Cosmo DiNardo, who has confessed to a murder spree that left four young men dead and buried on his family’s sprawling Bucks County, Pennsylvania, farm, says he previously killed a woman and man in Philadelphia, law enforcement sources tell NBC10.

DiNardo told Bucks County detectives he killed the woman in the basement of a Philadelphia home, the sources said. He also allegedly offered the nickname of a man he claims to have murdered.

However, the dates, times and locations of the 20-year-old suspect’s alleged previous killings remains unknown, sources said.

Sources said Philadelphia and Bucks County detectives have been communicating about DiNardo’s claims.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said Tuesday morning his detectives would be "remiss" to not look into the admitted murder suspect's assertion.

"In order for us to lend any credence to it we would have to talk to him directly," Ross said. "When you're dealing with someone who is pathological like that you don't know where he is coming from."

Prosecutors said DiNardo, a college dropout who has been described by sources as a small-time marijuana dealer, is schizophrenic and was not allowed to have firearms. He was involuntarily committed to a mental institution in the past, though details of his institutionalization are unclear.

DiNardo, of Bensalem, and his 20-year-old cousin, Sean Kratz, remain in the Bucks County jail charged with murder and related crimes in the deaths of Jimi Taro Patrick, 19; Dean Finocchiaro, 19; Mark Sturgis, 22; and Tom Meo, 21.

DiNardo confessed to the crimes as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.

An intense, meticulous search of the 90-acre farm in Solebury Township stretched on for days last week as local, state and federal investigators hunted for the men who began to disappear on July 7.

Prosecutors twice arrested DiNardo as they closed in on finding the men and linking their disappearance to him. The burned remains of Finocchiaro, Sturgis and Meo were found buried more than 12 feet underground in a common grave last Wednesday.

DiNardo later admitted to killing the men after becoming upset with them during a drug deal. He pointed investigators to a wooded hill where Patrick's body was buried.

On Friday, police arrested Kratz at his Northeast Philadelphia home and charged him with criminal homicide in the killings. A preliminary hearing at the county courthouse in Doylestown for both Kratz and DiNardo is scheduled for Sept. 7.

On Tuesday, NBC10 spoke with Kratz's lawyer, Abby Leeds, in an exclusive interview.

"He's very quiet. He seems to be in shock," Leeds said. "It's very early in the game. Sean is presumed innocent. He deserves a very vigorous defense and we intend to give that to him. And don't forget, at this point, Sean's story and DiNardo's story don't match up."

Sturgis' family has retained personal injury law firm Ross Feller Casey, LLP to represent them since DiNardo possibly used family-owned weapons to commit the murders, the Philadelphia-based law firm said.

"We will likely never make sense of this ghastly murder spree, but we will not rest until we understand every detail, every nuance surrounding this horrific crime," Sturgis family attorney Robert Ross said. "The families of these young men deserve nothing less."

No lawsuit was immediately filed against DiNardo or his family, which has various real estate holdings.

The families of Finocchiaro, Meo, Patrick and Sturgis have announced funeral plans for family and friends.

Funeral services for Finocchiaro will be held Saturday in Levittown followed by private burial. His family asked that donation's in his name be made to NOVA, 2370 York Road, Suite B-1, Jamison, PA 18929.

Meo's funeral will be held Thursday in Northeast Philadelphia following a viewing Wednesday night and Thursday morning.

Funeral services for Patrick will be held Friday in Newtown followed by private interment. His family asked that donations in Patrick's name be made to Boys Town, 14100 Crawford St., Boys Town, NE 68010 or Nami-Bucks Chapter, 600 Louis Dr., Suite 106 Warminster, PA 18974.

Yellow ribbons now line the Newtown street where Patrick lived with his grandparents. On Tuesday night at 7:30, Holy Ghost Prep planned a prayer service in the 2016 graduate's memory.

A memorial gathering for Sturgis will be held Thursday night in Bensalem.

A Pennsylvania man was sentenced to the home invasion and botched robbery that ended with a fake bomb strapped to an executive at a New Britain, Connecticut, bank.

Michael Benanti was sentenced to four life sentences, plus an additional 155 years, for his conviction involving a violent bank extortion and robbery spree spanning four states. 

He was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit robbery and armed bank extortion, two counts of attempted armed bank extortion, one count of armed bank extortion, three counts of carjacking, three counts of kidnapping, three counts of being a previously-convicted felon in possession of a firearm, and ten counts of using, carrying and brandishing a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence

Last year in February, two masked men, Benanti and Brian Whitman, broke into a credit union manager's home in Bristol, strapped a fake explosive device to Matthew Yussman, a 46-year-old bank manager, and tied his mom to a bed, authorities said.

Yussman had been under investigation since he was found outside the Achieve Financial Credit Union in New Britain on Feb. 23, 2015, strapped with what appeared to be an explosive device.

"For the whole year, they treated my son more as a suspect than as a victim," Yussman's mother, Valerie Yussman told NBC Connecticut in an exclusive interview. "I no longer believe what they say, 'you're innocent until proven guilty', you are guilty until proven innocent."

Yussman's 70-year-old mother described finding her son face down in the garage at their Bristol home with his hands tied. She allegedly overheard two assailants saying they owed money and would kill Yussman and his mother if they didn't pay up.

"I heard them talk about explosives and I heard them taping it to my son," Valerie Yussman recalled about the night of the invasion. "I worried that, you know, would my son feel the bomb if it went off?"

Police said the intruders demanded Yussman drive them to Achieve Financial Credit Union in New Britain and empty the vault, but eventually the suspects fled with nothing.

Shortly after the incident, FBI started to investigate the case. 

Tennessee investigators said 45-year-old Witham and 43-year-old Benanti committed similar crimes in their state: multiple attempts to extort money from federal credit union employees by taking family members hostage.

Witham, of Waterville, Maine, also charged in the case, pleaded guilty in March 2016. He is scheduled to be sentenced on August 17, 2016, in U.S District Court in Knoxville.

Agencies involved in the investigation included the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and numerous federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies in Tennessee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Virginia and South Carolina

NBC10's Cydney Long goes inside the new facility that will help local entrepreneurs jump start their business.

Rosa's Fresh Pizza in Center City, which allows customers to pay it forward to those who can't afford to eat, announced they must raise the price of a slice of pizza from $1 to $1.25 starting August 1 due to an increase in the cost of ingredients. The owner of Rosa's appeared on "The Ellen Show" two years ago and was given a $10,000 check.

Fairmount Park is getting a zipline -- actually, a whole adventure park.

Treetop Quest will construct and run the zipline and ropes course in West Fairmount Park. The new "aerial adventure" park will include tarzan swings, tight ropes, treetops rope course and zip lines.

The half-a-million-dollar course with different difficulty and age levels is set to open to the public in Spring 2018.

In 2013, Philadelphia received back lash from the community for the same idea. The backlash was mostly due to environmental issues and park overuse.

Elizabeth Moselle of the Fairmount Park Conservancy told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the recently approved location of the course was supported by neighbors because it “isn’t really used. It’s just woods.”

Treetop Quest will help remove invasive plants, create new and maintain existing public trails and post environmental educational signage.

With all the work to be done, Philadelphia and Treetop Quest, which currently has locations in Mississippi and Georgia, has made a 10-year agreement that gives the city $20,000 a season as well as a four percent cut of the revenue.

The park will also mean new jobs. As part of the agreement, Treetop Quest must also hire at least 25 staff members from the community each year.

Last month’s search at the medical office of a doctor and husband of a slain New Jersey radio host is connected to a much wider probe into possible medical insurance fraud and kickbacks in the greater Atlantic City area, according to a high level law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation.

On June 13, Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office investigators along with FBI agents and Egg Harbor Township Police converged on the Egg Harbor Township office of Dr. James Kauffman, the physician husband of slain New Jersey radio host April Kauffman. NBC10 obtained body camera footage showing a standoff between Dr. Kauffman and police with the doctor yelling, “I’m not going to jail for this.”

Kauffman eventually surrendered and was taken for a psychological examination. Prosecutors said the search warrant was not related to the May, 2012 murder of his wife April Kauffman. On Tuesday NBC10 confirmed the search at Kauffman’s medical practice is linked to a prescription drug cost investigation in Margate City, New Jersey which also expanded to Atlantic City and Ventnor City.

NBC10 first uncovered a federal grand jury subpoena issued in June that ordered Margate City, New Jersey to turn over information about police, fire and other city employees who have certain prescription coverage as part of their health insurance plans. The subpoena, requested last month by the US Attorney’s Office and obtained by NBC10, asks the city to provide a listing of all police, fire and city employees who have express scripts, MedCo, and/or NJ Direct as part of their health insurance plans. It doesn’t reveal why however.

The subpoena comes after records, also uncovered by NBC10, showed a massive spike in brand name prescription drug costs by Margate City employees, from nearly $714,000 in 2014 to more than $3.3 million in 2015 with only a small increase in the number of prescriptions filled.

“That’s an awful big jump,” Margate Mayor Michael Becker said. “There’s something wrong there. Those are not normal increases.”

Marc Pfeiffer, the assistant director of the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University, also called the increase highly unusual.

“One of the possible reasons for that type of a jump is that you have employees who are gaming the system illegally,” Pfeiffer said.

A high level source within the city also told NBC10 a number of Margate municipal employees have been interviewed by the FBI. Federal authorities neither confirmed nor denied whether there was a connection between the drug cost increase and the subpoena.

Elected leaders in Atlantic City and neighboring Ventnor City also say their communities received similar court orders in June and that they complied.

“Fraud is fraud and it has to be dealt with very severely,” Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian said.

Mayor Guardian said he hasn’t received any information besides the subpoena but will follow its standard procedure if charges come down.

“Anyone that is indicted is immediately suspended without pay,” Mayor Guardian said. “But there’s five days that they can appeal that decision.”

Mayor Guardian told NBC10 records don’t show an unusual spike in prescription drug costs in Atlantic City. Ventnor officials say they don’t have that information but are investigating.

As for Kauffman, he remains in jail on weapons charges stemming from the standoff with authorities in June. NBC10 reached out to Kauffman’s lawyer about the search at his office being linked to the larger investigation in the three New Jersey cities. The lawyer told us he would not comment until he receives confirmation from a public official.