Louisiana Voice

New Orleans police may have a new lead in the decade-old unsolved murder of Covington businessman Bruce Cucchiara in the parking lot of a New Orleans East apartment complex while he was looking at potential real estate investment property.

Or do they?

A NOPD bulletin, issued in November but which surfaced only recently, has revealed that the department is seeking the whereabouts of a Baton Rouge couple described as “persons of interest” in the cold case of Cucchiara’s murder, which occurred in April 2012.

Police are seeking the whereabouts of Richard Chambers, 31, and Joyce Whitfield, 64, in the belief that they may have knowledge vital to the investigation. The COUPLE is believed to be in the Baton Rouge area.

The problem is that police are aware that Cucchiara’s cell phone was found in Whitfield’s possession just weeks after Cucchiara’s murder and Chambers fits the description police have of the man who shot Cucchiara so it’s not like the names of Chambers and Whitfield have only recently come to investigators’ attention.

A former law enforcement official familiar with the case noted that the terms “person of interest” and “suspect” are synonymous. “To me, a person of interest once meant a beautiful woman. Today, it’s just a nice synonym for suspect.

“If [Whitfield] was found with his cell phone shortly after his murder, that makes her a suspect,” he said. “If she bought the phone from someone, she’s subject to being charged with possession of stolen property and should be able to give a description, if not a name, of the person who sold the phone to her.”

In August 2015, a little more than three years after Cucchiara’s murder, Richard Chambers, Sr., 68, of LaPlace and a former deputy commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Insurance, was SENTENCED to 30 months in prison, fined $10,500, and ordered to forfeit $11,241 after he pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in connection with his position with the state.

It was not immediately clear if the two Richard Chambers are related.

A $27,500 reward for information leading to the capture of Cucchiara’s killer(s) was posted shortly after his April 24 murder in 2012.

One person whose name keeps SURFACING in the investigation is Cucchiara’s business associate Jared Caruso-Riecke, who was holding a $5 million life insurance policy on Cucchiara at the time of his death. Caruso-Riecke, who is a member of the State Police Commission – appointed by Gov. John Bel Edwards – sued New York Life Insurance Co. on Aug. 7, less than four months after Cucchiara’s death to obtain the benefits of the insurance policy even though investigators had not cleared him as being implicated in the killing. Caruso-Riecke filed his suit in Baton Rouge’s Middle District of U.S. Federal Court instead of New Orleans which normally would have been the proper venue for a St. Tammany Parish resident.

Jared-Riecke has been embroiled in a number of legal conflicts and has business ties to known ORGANIZED CRIME FIGURES, including Dudley Geigerman, III, grandson of Dudley Geigerman Sr., who was New York Mafia leader Frank Costello’s brother-in-law and who worked as collector for Costello’s slot machines throughout Louisiana. Geigerman, in turn, was partners with convicted organized crime figure Anthony Tusa in several St. Tammany and Jefferson Parish adult entertainment/video stores.