Andy Thibault

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Cool Justice 
Drug Immunity Zone In Greenwich?
By ANDY THIBAULT, Columnist
Law Tribune Newspapers
September 26, 2005

John J. Bria III, 19, joined a fitness club and hired a personal trainer while studying music production in Florida. Friends and family described him as health conscious.

The young man grew up in the Byram section of Greenwich, on the New York border. This part of Greenwich is much like any town: Houses are close together, families know each other and they work at real jobs. Byram is not a high-income area -- unlike other parts of Greenwich that help make Connecticut the top per capita income state in the nation. Some of Bria's friends were from Byram and others were from that larger universe where parents run bug chunks of the country, from Wall Street to Hollywood.

Bria earned an associate's degree. He sent out resumes while working for his father's landscaping business. He had an internship at a recording studio. Prospects looked bright.

It all changed forever beginning on Jan. 15, 2004. Bria was not known to be a major drug abuser. But, in the next 24 hours, plenty of drugs - including Prozac, cocaine, marijuana and Clonezepam, an anti-seizure medication- were brought to the Bria house.

One of Bria's friends, Savannah Lamotte, would tell police about their activities that evening: "Maria and Jason picked me up around 9 p.m. … We went to Shell and got some cigarettes, and then we went somewhere to shoot some heroin. We then went to get some cocaine …We went back to Shell and got some other stuff, and we went to shoot up some more heroin somewhere. The we went to John's house. When we got to John's house, Katie, Megan and John were all there."

Katie Hanscom, Megan Caron and Jason Cunningham were high school friends of Bria. Maria Scinto, also in the group, is from nearby Port Chester, N.Y.

Cunningham would tell police that during the day, Bria "was feeling really high from the pills that Megan had given him."

As the night wore on, most of the group left. Cunningham stayed behind, calling his mother about 4 a.m. She arrived to pick him up about 8:30 a.m. Bria had been dead for several hours by that time. Jason told Bria's father that his son was still sleeping.

"John was always a late sleeper, so I didn't think anything of it," the father told me. John Bria Jr. had arisen about 6 a.m. to work on files in his home office. He took a nap later that morning and arose mid-day. After taking a shower, he tried to call his son on the intercom. He went downstairs and saw his son's door wide open. John Bria III was lying on the bed on his left side with his head on the pillow. He was fully clothed. There was a small silver pipe on his pillow next to his head. There were no ashes on the pillow.

It looked like the room had been set up. Credit cards were left conspicuously on a nightstand, on an armrest, on an amplifier. Several ashtrays were empty or wiped clean.

An autopsy revealed heroin and cocaine in Bria's body. The medical examiner who conducted it resigned in disgrace after taking a bribe in another case. His findings have been challenged. Later tests found codeine in Bria's body. More lab results are expected.

The Bria estate has sued the partygoers and Cunningham's mother for, among other things, failing to notify anyone that young Bria had overdosed.

The family is also pressing Greenwich police to re-open the investigation. Police found a sealed cellophane wrapper containing 19 Prozac pills and 6 Clonezepam in the Bria bedroom, along with eight glyceine bags containing drug residue. In some cases these facts could generate arrests on charges from drug possession and sale up to homicide.

Could the Bria youth have been saved? It's possible. Are the police intimidated because Caron's father, Glenn Caron, creator of the TV series Moonlighting, is a Hollywood big shot? It wouldn't be the first time Greenwich cops backed off from a celebrity.

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