FLORIDA TODAY reporter recalls grisly 2013 Brevard murder on episode of Oxygen's 'Snapped'

A Florida man kills his 70-year-old mother and, with the help of his girlfriend, leaves her dismembered body in a ditch by the side of a road south of Palm Bay.

The man flees to New York, where law enforcement officials from the Sunshine State track him down in Brooklyn for questioning — and he and his girlfriend eventually face charges in the elderly woman's murder.

More: A Brevard County-based "Snapped": Ilene Lazar and Francis Riccio

Sound like the gory makings of a TV crime show?It is — and the gruesome 2013 murder will be featured this weekend on a new episode of the Oxygen True Crime network's "Snapped: Killer Couples" series. The episode is centered on Francis Riccio — who murdered his mother, Maureen Riccio of Mims, in March 2013 — and his girlfriend, Ilene Lazar, who aided in the cover-up.

FLORIDA TODAY's breaking news reporter J.D. Gallop, who has long covered crime on the Space Coast, is featured in the show, which airs at 6 p.m. Sunday on Oxygen.

At the time of the crime, Gallop received a tip about a body being discovered near a rural stretch of road in Micco and pursued the information. Brevard sheriff’s agents were still searching for the deceased's family members days after the discovery, he said.

“It’s a sad story about what happens when family dysfunction and toxicity win out,” said Gallop, one of the reporters who covered the homicide.

“What this case shows is the good detective work carried out by the sheriff’s homicide team along with their determination to find justice for the victim."

Francis Riccio, then 48, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in December 2015, after pleading guilty to first-degree premeditated murder and abuse of a dead body.

Police said that Riccio had gotten in an argument with his mother, with whom he'd been living, when he killed her. He had been stressed over her increasing medical issues and his inability to find a care facility where she could live, according to police.

Lazar was sentenced to five years for accessory to murder and fabricating physical evidence.

The show, with interviews that include Tod Goodyear and Marlon Buggs, then homicide agents with the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, was filmed last October in Titusville. Members of the Riccio family were also interviewed.

More: Not all fugitives return to Brevard

As a reporter, "you have to look beyond the statistics," said Gallop.

"Cases like this remind you that these are real people, dealing with real-time problems, who for whatever reason lose control and fall along dark paths.”

Gallop has years of experience talking about murders, and the people who commit them, in front of TV cameras. In a 2019 appearance on the Investigation Discovery channel's "Twisted Sisters," he shared insight into the arrest of Betty Jo Fowler of Palm Bay, who was charged with vehicular homicide in the 2010 death of her sister-in-law after a night out on the town at a local American Legion Post.

The episode, titled "Drowning in Despair," included comments from the detective who solved the homicide and Gallop, who broke the initial story.

Britt Kennerly is education/breaking news editor at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Kennerly at 321-917-4744 or bkennerly@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @bybrittkennerly Facebook: /bybrittkennerly.

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: FLORIDA TODAY reporter recalls 2013 murder on Oxygen TV's 'Snapped'