WESTBURY, N.Y. – The purported mastermind behind a cocaine distribution network within Penn State University fraternities is now behind bars.

Attorney General Sunday declared that 24-year-old Agostino Abbatiello, originating from Westbury, New York, voluntarily surrendered to authorities on Tuesday morning.

Upon his surrender, Abbatiello was arraigned on multiple felony charges and was denied bail after failing to attend his scheduled court appearance the previous day, according to the attorney general.

Abbatiello was among 13 other men who were charged with offenses in the case.

He and his family live in the affluent Westbury village community on Long Island. 

A man who identified himself as Abbatiello’s father, Mario, briefly spoke with reporters at the family home Tuesday after asking for their cameras to be turned away. 

“I have no comment,” he said, instead deferring to his son’s attorney, whose name he gave as Phillip Misorti. “We have no comment,” he said. 

News Media spoke to neighbors Abbatiello family home. One person told said that Abbatiello’s father owns an asphalt business and the family has been well off.

“He had a good job in accounting, his father said he had a nice job in accounting,” he said. “He was doing well.”

Abbatiello had two other siblings around the same age, he added, who may have been a little spoiled. 

“They were all taken care of, spoon-fed,” he said. “They weren’t the kind of kids to take the garbage out or shovel the snow.”

Another said she didn’t know the family well and that they’d moved into a home formerly owned by her late close friend. 

“They are pretty nice people next door, pretty obliging if I need anything,” she said, adding that she was shocked to see the news Tuesday morning.

The cocaine distribution ring allegedly occurred from 2023 through 2024 within off-campus fraternity houses belonging to Delta Upsilon and Sigma Chi.

A criminal complaint alleges Abbatiello was continuing to deal the drug as soon as February of this year. 

Court docs also allege the suspect made tens of thousands of dollars in profit from transactions. 

For example, in one transaction a codefendant told investigators he purchased over $50,000 worth of the drug from Abbatiello through cash and digital transactions.

More alleged purchases of the drug from another co-defendant paid to Abbatiello are listed in the complaint: 

• 500 grams for $18,000 on March 19, 2024
• 1 kilogram for $22,000 around July 12–13, 2024
• another 1 kilogram for $22,000 around September 21, 2024

Investigators say during that March transaction a photo from a co-defendant’s phone allegedly shows “several pledges of Delta Upsilon” who were packaging the cocaine into smaller baggies for distribution.

Pledges within the fraternities were ordered to cut and pack kilos of drugs as part of “indoctrination” rituals, Attorney General Sunday said. 

The complaint alleges Abbatiello used personal debts to draw others into his drug operation, including making one fraternity brother deliver cocaine after he couldn’t repay a $1,500 spring break loan and another sell cocaine after owing him thousands of dollars.

Penn State students made up the majority of the alleged cocaine sales, Attorney General Sunday said. The drug was reportedly being trafficked from Philadelphia and New York.

“We are pleased to report that the most significant members of this cocaine-trafficking organization are accounted for, and will have their fair process in court. These are very serious charges and the next steps will be preliminary hearings,” Attorney General Sunday said.

News Media has reached out to Abbatiello’s attorney.

In a shocking incident at the US-Mexico border, federal prosecutors reported the arrest of a woman from Tijuana after a significant discovery by US Customs and Border Protection. The authorities found a staggering 69 live animals, including dangerous vipers, caimans, and even a baby crocodile, all allegedly crammed into pillowcases that were sealed shut with tape. These shocking occurrences unfolded within a hidden compartment of her Volkswagen, according to information released by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California.

Identified as 66-year-old Georgina Bribiesca Chavez from Tijuana, she was taken into custody on August 10 while attempting to cross into the United States through the bustling San Ysidro Port of Entry, as confirmed by the Justice Department.

During an initial checkpoint stop, Chavez reportedly informed a CBP officer that she had nothing to declare. However, a routine check against records unveiled an active warrant linked to an ongoing wildlife trafficking probe.

Customs officers subsequently confiscated the Volkswagen, although the startling find of the animals did not occur until they conducted a thorough inspection the next day.

Within the rear compartment of the vehicle, cleverly concealed by factory design, officers uncovered pillowcases that had been securely knotted and taped shut. This concealed stash revealed the extent of the alleged smuggling operation.

One of the pillowcases was moving.

The bags were taken to the San Diego Zoo, where workers found 60 abronia lizards, four venomous yellow-blotched palm pit vipers, three caimans, a baby crocodile and an indigo snake, according to the DOJ.

Prosecutors said Chavez never told officers about the animals, leaving them inside the vehicle for nearly 24 hours in the August heat. All three caimans died.

The other animals were stable and remained in the zoo’s care as of last week.

Chavez pleaded not guilty to a federal wildlife trafficking charge and was ordered held without bond.

Her alleged trafficking partner, Salvador Pelayo, 28, of Chula Vista, was arrested in July and has also pleaded not guilty.

The arrests followed an approximately 18-month undercover investigation by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, though prosecutors allege Chavez and Pelayo had trafficked wildlife together since 2023 and made tens of thousands of dollars selling exotic animals.

During one alleged undercover transaction in March 2025, Chavez delivered four protected Mexican box turtles to an agent for $2,600 cash shortly after crossing the US-Mexico border.

All four turtles later died after being transferred to the Oakland Zoo, prosecutors said.

The turtles were already in poor health when they were acquired during the undercover operation and were believed to have been wild-caught and suffering from respiratory disease, according to prosecutors.

Pelayo is separately accused of using the alias “Jose Lopez” to ship four protected Mexican and Yucatan box turtles to an undercover agent in New York.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Office of Law Enforcement is investigating the case with assistance from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Chavez and Pelayo face Lacey Act trafficking charges carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

A psychologist who spent time with Lindsay Clancy just days after the tragic incident where she took her children’s lives has disclosed fresh insights into her harrowing account of hearing voices instructing her to commit the act.

As the murder trial of the mother of three unfolded in its fifteenth day at Plymouth County Superior Court, Massachusetts, her defense centered around claims of postpartum psychosis took the spotlight.

Lindsay Clancy, a 36-year-old former nurse, faces three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of her children—Cora, age five; Dawson, age three; and Callan, just eight months old—within their Duxbury, Massachusetts home on January 24, 2023.

Clancy used exercise bands to strangle her children in the basement before attempting to end her own life by slitting her wrists and neck and jumping from a bedroom window on the second floor. Although she survived the fall, she was rendered paralyzed from the waist down.

While acknowledging the deadly act against her children, Clancy has entered a plea of not guilty due to insanity, asserting that she was engulfed by intense postpartum psychosis and depression during that period.

Inside the courtroom on Tuesday, jurors heard testimony about the moment that Clancy first told her then-husband Patrick Clancy that she had heard a voice. 

Dr Paul Zeizel, a highly experienced, well-respected forensic psychologist who works with Clancy’s defense attorney Kevin Reddington, testified that he visited Clancy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital days after the killings.

He first visited her on February 4, 2023 – 11 days on from the killings – at Reddington’s request because the defense attorney had taken on her case and was concerned about her mental health and the fact that she had been allowed no visitors.

Dr Zeizel testified that he had to get a court order to be able to enter Clancy’s hospital room, where he found her handcuffed to the bed.

Clancy had only just had a breathing tube removed and had been on a lot of medication, so was ‘foggy.’

‘She didn’t know where she was. She wasn’t sure what time it was. She knew who she was,’ he recalled. ‘She remembered what had happened but was very foggy.’

Clancy asked him if she could use his cell phone to call Patrick, who she had not seen or spoken to since that tragic evening. 

Dr Zeizel let her, so long as the call was on speakerphone.

Clancy called Patrick but he did not pick up.

Two days later, when Dr Zeizel visited again, Clancy called again from her hospital bed. That time Patrick picked up.

It was during that call that Clancy told her husband that a man’s voice had commanded her to kill the children and herself. 

‘She had said that she heard a male voice ordering her, telling her that she didn’t have any choice, but she had to kill her children and then kill herself,’ Dr Zeizel testified.

In the call, Clancy also told Patrick ‘that she loved him very much,’ he testified.

Patrick had previously testified about the phone call when he took the stand on the opening days of the trial.

When Reddington asked the psychologist if he told Clancy to claim to have heard voices, Dr Zeizel insisted ‘absolutely not.’ He said he had let her call her husband ‘out of human compassion.’

Dr Zeizel’s testimony comes days after an explosive moment in the courtroom where a police officer admitted the state had pursued a theory that the doctor coached Clancy to claim that she killed her children because she was hearing voices.

Prosecutors have repeatedly raised questions about when Clancy first mentioned hearing voices.

And, during a tense cross-examination from Reddington last week, Massachusetts State Police Sgt Dan Lawlor was forced to admit that investigators discussed a ‘theory’ that the psychologist had planted the seed in Clancy’s mind after the killings.

The officer then also admitted that there was no evidence to support the theory – marking a blow to the state’s case.

Clancy’s assertion that she was commanded by a voice to kill herself and her children is a crucial element of the defense’s case – arguing that she was suffered auditory hallucinations from postpartum psychosis. 

Prosecutors, meanwhile, argue that she was of sound mind and planned the killings, calling several friends, family members and medical professionals to the stand to testify that Clancy never told them she was hearing voices prior to the killings. 

Dr Zeizel has met with Clancy over 45 times, many of them inside Tewksbury Hospital where she continues to receive treatment.

He testified that his mental health evaluation of Clancy found her to be an honest patient.

He also described how psychotic episodes can come and go.

‘People with psychoses have intermittent symptoms. They can be fine one day. Then the next day they can be hearing voices, seeing things, smelling things,’ he testified.

‘Hallucinations are like waves at a beach. They come and go.’

People in the grips of psychosis can also appear competent to people, such as being able to make phone calls and driving, he testified. 

On Tuesday, the first full day of the defense’s case, jurors also heard from Patrick’s mother Sue Clancy.

She testified that her former daughter-in-law was a loving mother who was ‘begging for help’ for her postpartum mental health issues in the months leading up to the killings.

In a stunning moment, prosecutor Shanan Buckingham also confronted the grief-stricken grandmother about whether or not she agrees that murder is a ‘mortal sin’ as a practicing Catholic.

‘You’re aware that murder is considered a mortal sin?’ she asked. 

Reddington quickly objected and Judge William Sullivan ordered the two sides to the bench.

He then instructed the jury to dismiss that comment and struck it from the record.

Throughout the day, jurors also heard from other defense experts.

Dr Elizabeth Laposta testified that Clancy’s injuries reveal she jumped head-first out of the window that evening, landing on her head on the frozen ground. 

Her testimony pushed back on the prosecution’s attempts to cast doubts on Clancy’s suicide attempt, suggesting that bloodstains on the shingles of the home suggest she clung to the window ledge and dropped rather than jumping out of the window. 

Dr Zeizel will return to the stand on Wednesday morning. 

If convicted of murder, Clancy will be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she will be sent to a psychiatric hospital where she could be released in future if she is deemed not to be a danger. 

According to recently released police documents obtained by ABC News, Brian Hickerson, the former boyfriend of actress Hayden Panettiere, was reportedly on-site at the time of her passing.

Alongside his brother Zach, Hickerson was at Panettiere’s South Carolina apartment when the tragic event unfolded, as detailed in a report from authorities in Greenville, South Carolina.

The report further revealed that Hickerson presented authorities with a “bag of medication” purportedly prescribed to Panettiere.

Emergency responders discovered Panettiere experiencing cardiac arrest at the Greenville residence on a Sunday afternoon, tragically pronouncing her dead about 40 minutes later.

According to the police report provided by the Greenville City Police Department, an officer was dispatched to a location on Easley Bridge Road in response to an EMS call regarding an unresponsive individual.

“The patient did not seem to have any obvious physical reasons to be unresponsive,” the officer wrote in the report.

“EMS attempted to perform life saving methods for an extended amount of time before they called a time of death. This was 1431 hours,” the report continued.

The officer then wrote in the report that they spoke with Brian Hickerson and his brother, Zach Hickerson, who was also on scene, while EMS “was working on the patient.”

Zach Hickerson described Panettiere as his brother’s girlfriend.

“I observed Zach to be very emotional while EMS were working on Hayden,” the officer wrote. “Brian did not become emotional until EMS declared her officially deceased. Medic 24 and S4 were on scene performing life saving measures.”

The officer added in the report that Brian Hickerson showed them the bag of medication that Panettiere was taking.

An autopsy, which was completed on Monday, found no signs of trauma, and a cause of death is still undetermined.

Panettiere was known for her roles in “Heroes,” “Nashville,” “Remember the Titans” and more. She was 36 years old and would have turned 37 this Friday.

Panettiere had been open about her battles with substance abuse and postpartum depression.

Her death came just days after an L.A. County judge denied Hickerson’s attempts to dismiss and reduce his past felony