Bucks County detectives arrested a Port Richmond man in connection with one of the area’s most confounding cold cases

A Port Richmond man has been arrested in the 2013 slaying of a Bucks County restaurateur and businessman, one of the county’s most confounding cold cases.

Thomas Delgado, 50, was charged Wednesday with homicide, rape, burglary, kidnapping, conspiracy, and related crimes for allegedly breaking into Joseph Canazaro’s home in Hilltown Township, killing him, and raping his girlfriend in what investigators described as a targeted attack.

He remained in custody, denied bail. There was no indication that he had hired a lawyer.

The motive for the attack remained unclear Thursday. However, detectives said they recently learned that Delgado and Canazaro had been in touch with each other years before the attack.

Cell phone records indicated that a Samsung Galaxy belonging to Canazaro received five calls from a phone registered to Delgado between August and December 2011, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Delgado’s arrest. Other records showed that Canazaro’s Samsung also received 45 calls between June and November 2011 from a phone belonging to a woman Delgado lived with.

At the time of the burglary, Bucks County investigators said Canazaro owed millions of dollars to creditors, including several casinos.

Canazaro grew up around Lansdale and was a visible figure in the community. He co-owned Finn McCool’s Tavern in Ambler, owned several contracting companies, and had mortgages on properties including a Lansdale auto garage.

His oldest son, Joseph, said Thursday that he and his family had no comment on Delgado’s arrest.

Lou Busico, a lawyer who represents Canazaro’s girlfriend, said news of the arrest has left her with mixed emotions.

“The individual that I represent has been praying for over a decade that justice be done in this case,” Busico said Thursday. “She’s done her best to move on in life, but the events of that day will forever haunt her.”

During the January 2013 burglary, Delgado and another man — whom police have not identified — broke into the 4,000-square-foot-home that Canazaro rented on a 10-acre plot in Hilltown Township through a first-floor window.

Canazaro’s girlfriend, hearing them enter, went to confront them armed with a .38-caliber revolver, but saw she was outnumbered by the burglars, who were pointing their own guns at Canazaro, the affidavit said.

She later told police that the larger of the two men, later identified as Delgado, told the couple he had been staking out the house for weeks from the nearby woods.

“We know you have the money, just give us the money,” Delgado told her, according to the affidavit.

The two men then bound Canazaro, his girlfriend, and his then-12-year-old son with zip ties at knife-point. They placed his girlfriend and son face-down on the floor. The woman later told police she could hear the burglars walking Canazaro through the home, demanding to know where he kept his money.

While his accomplice continued the search of the home, Delgado took Canazaro’s girlfriend into a nearby bathroom and raped her, the affidavit said. Later, the men took her and Canazaro’s son into a basement room and left them there.

She was able to free herself and leave the room. She couldn’t find Canazaro, and noticed that his Lincoln Mark LT pickup truck was missing from their driveway. After securing the home, she drove to a neighbor’s house to call police.

Officers who arrived at the scene found Canazaro face-down in the home’s garage. He had been stabbed multiple times, and was pronounced dead.

In a search of the house, detectives discovered that the burglars had taken $500, as well as a Rolex watch, casino chips, multiple guns, a designer purse, laptops and iPhones belonging to Canazaro and his girlfriend, the affidavit said.

Hours later, detectives found Canazaro’s truck abandoned in the parking lot of a Friendly’s restaurant in Quakertown, the affidavit said. Surveillance footage from a nearby business showed a red Nissan sedan arriving at the restaurant not long after. The truck’s driver loaded several items from its bed into the sedan before driving away. The truck was left behind.

After that discovery, the case grew cold for nearly a decade.

Canazaro was about $10 million in debt when he filed for bankruptcy in 2008, according to court documents. At that time, he owed money to banks and the government, and nearly $890,000 to several casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Biloxi, Miss. Two check-cashing agencies also alleged that he cashed bad checks worth a total of $210,000, a matter eventually settled in bankruptcy court.

Those cases, and another one in which he defaulted on a $175,000 loan for mortgages on some of his properties, had all been resolved at the time of his death.

In 2019, investigators made a breakthrough while conducting a routine evidence review.

During that review, detectives from Hilltown Township found a facemask tucked in between the seats of the truck, the affidavit said. A year later, DNA testing linked Delgado to that mask and a rape kit from Canazaro’s girlfriend.

Detectives continued to gather evidence on Delgado, and found that he still lived in the Philadelphia area, according to the affidavit. Canazaro’s girlfriend told them she had never heard of, nor met, Delgado.

But, she told them recently, he matched the physical description of the man who had assaulted her all those years ago.