Lawyer: Prosecutor Knew Of Planned Hit On Radio Host

James and April Kauffman

Did the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office have knowledge of a low-level drug dealer "looking for someone to help a local doctor kill his wife" before April Kauffman, wife of endocrinologist James Kauffman, was murdered in May 2012?

According to philly.com, that was the bombshell argument made by Public Defender Mary Linehan on the first day of the long-awaited trial in the murder of April Kauffman. Linehan represents Ferdinand "Freddy" Augello, also known as "Miserable," a  former president of a New Jersey Shore Pagan's Outlaw Motorcycle Club and the sole surviving defendant charged in Kauffman's slaying.

Freddy Augello

James Kauffman, 69, a prominent doctor whom the state says contracted with Augello to murder his wife in their Linwood home, killed himself in January while being held at the Hudson County Jail. Kauffman was first arrested on gun charges on June 13, 2017, after a standoff at his office. He and Augello were charged in the murder on Jan. 9.

"They've known since 2012," Linehan told a Superior Court jury on Monday. "The Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office had this information arguably before April Kauffman's death and positively after April Kauffman's death."

The 47-year-old radio host for WOND radio was found shot to death on May 10, 2012, in the bedroom of the couple's home.

The office, she said, did not act on that information for six years, even as a drug ring run out of Kauffman's Egg Harbor Township office continued to thrive.

"What the state has done and what the state has failed to do," Linehan said, "it's time for the accounting to be done."

Damon Tyner, the Atlantic County prosecutor who took over the investigation in 2017, declined to comment on Linehan's allegation. His office has been under a gag order in the case imposed by the judge after Tyner appeared on ABC's 20/20. Augello, who was posting on Facebook, is also under a gag order.