Charles Cuozzo was trying to protect his kid brother when he was shot in the chest and killed by a man who robbed the family’s Capitol Hill grocery store nearly four decades ago. The hefty case file from 1968 lists droves of suspects and witnesses, but police never nabbed the killer.
On a hot July afternoon in 1968, 50-year-old Charles was in the meat freezer in the rear of the store while his younger brother, Dominic, worked the cash register out front, according to police reports.
At about 2:30 p.m., a man entered the grocery at 900 South Carolina Ave. SE and pulled a .32-caliber semiautomatic handgun from a brown paper bag. The suspect pointed the gun at Dominic and ordered him to empty the cash register.
As Dominic handed the suspect $30 from the drawer, Charles came from the rear of the store and tried to take the gun from the man, according to an older Cuozzo brother, Tony.
The suspect fired three shots and hit Charles in the chest once, said Detective James Trainum, who heads the Violent Crime Case Review Project for the D.C. police. The robber then fled, and he was last seen getting into a 1966 white Chevy, Trainum said.
“There were tons of suspects,” Trainum said. “[Police] must have investigated anybody and everybody who was locked up for robbery.”
Trainum said the police also had “tons of witnesses, but they were just never able to get anyone to make an ID.”
The year Charles was killed, the Cuozzo family shut down its grocery store after 50 years of service.
In 1968, police offered a $1,000 reward for Charles’ killer; now, the reward is $25,000.
“We are looking at all these old cases — like this one — that may have some potential,” Trainum said.
“A lot of times people may know someone may have been involved, and they just assume the case is closed … that we are not interested anymore.”
But, he said, “we can still take [the suspect] to trial if we can get an arrest at this late date.”
Anyone with information on the case is asked to call 202-359-9454 or send an e-mail to [email protected].
