How Bucks County murder victim's fiancé, son escaped after being held hostage for hours

The attackers final instructions were clear.  Wait two hours after they leave before she does anything.

Hours earlier, the woman and her fiancé, 48-year-old Joseph Canazaro, were in bed when two armed men slipped into their rented Hilltown home.

The intruders used zip ties to bind her arms and legs, and Canazaro's youngest son. The intruders tied up Canazaro's arms before leading him around the house demanding that he show them where he kept money and valuables.

Over the next four hours, the men held the family hostage as they ransacked the home stealing laptops, jewelry, casino chips and firearms.

The woman was raped then the men dragged her and the boy into the basement where they were left blindfolded, tied up in separate rooms, according to police..

Shortly after the men left the basement, the woman heard the front door close.  The home invasion was over.

But it was only the beginning of what would become a 10-year murder mystery for Bucks County law enforcement. While the woman and boy were found alive after the ordeal, Joseph Canazaro was not.

Earlier this month authorities finally arrested a suspect, Thomas Delgado, 50, at his Philadelphia home, eight days before the next anniversary of the 2013 crime.

What happened inside the Hilltown home

Shortly after 6 a.m. on Jan. 18, 2013, Canazaro who was in bed when his fiancé, who police have not identified, returned to the bedroom after watching his 15-year-old son get on the school bus.

The men entered the home, which sits on a 10-acres off Swartley Road, through the first-floor window in the master bedroom, police said.

The girlfriend initially confronted the men brandishing a .38-caliber revolver.  But she surrendered the weapon after the home invaders pointed two handguns at the couple.

“We’ve been watching your house from the woods for the last few weeks,” Delgado allegedly told the couple. “We know you have money. Just give us the money.”

Canazaro was a local business man and co-owner of Finn McCool’s Tavern in Ambler. But his other businesses had been sued dozens of times, often for failure to pay on debts, according to media stories.

Canazaro filed for bankruptcy in 2008 to get out from under $10 million in debt including nearly a million dollars owed to casinos in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and Mississippi.

Both suspects wore black neoprene half face masks and dark clothes with hoods, according to the girlfriend.  One spoke with a heavy Asian accent and the other sounded like he was from Philadelphia, the girlfriend told police.

The girlfriend did not recognize either man, police said.

When Canazaro's 12-year-old son, who was home sick, heard the commotion and entered the master bedroom Delgado grabbed him. He held a 6-inch fixed blade knife against the boy's face, before tying him up, according to court documents.

From underneath pillows and blankets, the girlfriend could hear Canazaro being walked around the home by one man. The second man, Delgado, remained in the bedroom with her and the boy, the affidavit said.

At one point, the woman alleges Delgado dragged her into an adjacent bathroom.

“Don’t fight me. Don’t scream, your son is in the other room. You don’t want him to hear you,” he told her, according to police.  “Stay quiet. Nobody has to know. I don’t want to have to come back and kill you.”

Delgado allegedly tried to rape the woman, but he was unable because her legs were bound,  He dragged her to the bedroom floor and removed the zip ties on her legs

“Don’t do it,” the woman screamed, according to the affidavit.

His girlfriend and son escape. But where was Joseph Canazaro?

After the rape, Delgado placed the woman back on the bed with the boy and re-tied her legs together.

The men dragged her and the boy to a basement room where Canazaro stored long guns.

The girlfriend was moved to a rear utility room in the basement, covered with a dark cloth,

After hearing the front door close, the she freed an arm. She crawled across the basement and upstairs to the kitchen where she used a pair of shears to remove the rest of the zip ties.

Once free, she returned to the basement room where the 12-year-old was held. She removed his plastic ties and a pillow case covering his head.

She hid him in a space behind a set of doors, before returning upstairs to look for Canazaro..

But she only found the family dog, Lola.

The intruders took her iPhone, along with Canazaro's, so she tried calling 911 on a cordless phone before it died.

When she found her car keys, she got the dog and the son and they fled to her vehicle.

In the driveway, she noticed that the black 2006 Lincoln Mark LT pickup truck that belonged to Canazaro was gone.

Hilltown police find Joseph Canazaro, then his stolen pickup

The woman drove to a nearby business, where she called a friend told him what happened and then drove to his home.

Shortly after 10 a.m. Bucks County 911 dispatch took a report of an armed home invasion in Hilltown, the affidavit said. The girlfriend said that she feared her fiancé was kidnapped and the suspects were going to force him to empty his bank accounts, police said.

Minutes after the call, Hilltown Township police arrived at the property.  They found Canazaro dead in the garage.

He was face down, his hands bound with zip ties.  An autopsy determined he had been stabbed multiple times.

Later that day, the stolen pickup was found 15 miles away in Quakertown, parked behind a restaurant in a West Broad Street shopping center.

Surveillance video from a business showed the stolen pickup drive behind the restaurant and park at 10 a.m. A maroon sedan immediately parked next to it, police said.

The footage showed the driver in the maroon sedan retrieving items from the pickup bed and putting them into the second car.  The pickup truck driver gets out and enters the maroon sedan, which then drives away.

Detectives found a pair of white cotton garden gloves and blue rubber palms near where the vehicles were parked, the affidavit said.  An FBI analysis found they contained unknown male DNA.

How DNA and phone numbers cracked Bucks County cold case

The home invasion murder was a major crime in the sleepy rural Upper Bucks community. Local church congregations held prayer vigils outside the crime scene.

“We learned the home was targeted by the wanted suspects, but what we don't know is why,” the Canazaro family wrote in an online memorial post.

Six months later, detectives continued sifting through hundreds of pieces of evidence and interviewing witnesses, but still had nothing solid pointing to suspects, according to news accounts.

A big break in the case came in 2019, when two Bucks County Detectives took another look inside Canazaro’s pickup.

They found a black neoprene half face mask, like the type the attackers wore, and a pair of gardening gloves stuffed between the front passenger seat and center console.

The items were sent to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico Virginia for analysis. A year later, the FBI lab reported DNA evidence for a male was found on the face mask.

A genealogical comparison suggested a possible genetic match between the sample and a man named Thomas Delgado, who had multiple Philadelphia addresses and a violent criminal history.

Authorities would learn in 2022 that Delgado apparently had a connection to Canazaro when a new forensic extraction was completed on 10 of the 11 cellphones police removed from the home in 2013.

Hilltown Township Police Detective Louis Bell reviewed the downloaded cellphone data and found five calls Canazaro received from a phone number associated with Delgado. The calls took place between August and December 2011, the affidavit said.

Additional phone records also linked Canazaro’s cellphone with 45 calls between June and November 2011 from a phone belonging to a relative of Delgado who he apparently lived with, authorities found.

A warrant for Delgado’s arrest was issued in December, but authorities had the court seal it after learning he had multiple open warrants for probation violations, according to the motion to seal approved by Bucks County Judge Wallace Bateman Jr.

The U.S. Marshals Service in Philadelphia arrested Delgado at his Collins Street home on Jan. 10.  He faces more than two dozen felony counts including homicide, rape, burglary and robbery and related misdemeanors.

He remains incarcerated without bail in Bucks County Correctional Center.

More on the murder of Joseph Canazaro 10 years later, detectives say Upper Bucks County killers won't evade capture much longer

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Hostage ordeal, police investigation detailed in 2013 Hilltown murder