Addressed in small spurts over hours of Grand Theft Auto, baseball banter and simulated MLB gameplay, Battiloro offers only glimpses into the circumstances of his suspension and his state of mind before the killings. — Pixabay
Before Vincent Battiloro was charged with intentionally hitting and killing two 17-year-old girls at 70 mph (112.6 kph), he shared rambling livestreams that included his need for “vengeance” against one of the girls.
For hours at a clip, the 17-year-old from Garwood played MLB games, ranted about sports and politics and occasionally veered into darker topics to his more than 40,000 followers.
The rants posted on YouTube included “false allegations” involving “child porn,” and a girl from school who was causing him legal trouble. By Friday afternoon, YouTube had taken his account down.
Angry over being suspended, he blamed the girl and her mother and wanted “vengeance,” he said in a Sept 23 livestream, less than a week before the fatal crash.
While live on camera and using a “burner” phone he bragged couldn’t be traced, he ordered two pepperoni pizzas, sent to their home, “cash on delivery.”
“Have fun with your pizza, you (expletive),” he said as a friend chuckled.
Then he went back to playing MLB games for his live audience.
Family and neighbours now say Battiloro had been stalking 17-year-old Maria Niotis, even staking out her home, in the months before he struck and killed her and her friend Isabella Salas as they rode an e-bike in Cranford on Monday.
The revelation that the teen girls could have been deliberately targeted rocked Cranford, a quiet Union County suburb where a makeshift roadside memorial marks the crime scene on Burnside Avenue.
Battiloro faces two counts of murder. No announcement has been made about whether prosecutors will seek to try him as an adult.
In a bizarre, 20-minute livestream recorded the day after the girls’ deaths, the Battiloro repeatedly claimed there was “more to the story” as an audience of hundreds heckled him with comments like “murderer” and “when’s the jail stream?”
“I’ve been through way too much,” he told his audience matter-of-factly.
“I’m a nice kid. I’m 17 years old with a good family by my side. And these allegations that have been ruining everything, is a shame.”
Niotis’ family in a statement called Battiloro “a coward of a man, who had been plotting this attack against Maria for months, carried out this horrific act, taking not only her life but also Isabella’s.”
A NJ Advance Media review of video and transcripts covering more than a dozen hours of Battiloro’s voluminous livestreams showed a teen aggrieved over a suspension for what he claimed were false allegations of distributing “child porn.”
“I got a bunch of allegations being handed to me, of crazy (expletive), stuff I will deny for 50 years to the end of my life,” he told the chat in a May 13 stream. “Ridiculous allegations that this girl is making against me.”
Addressed in small spurts over hours of Grand Theft Auto, baseball banter and simulated MLB gameplay, Battiloro offers only glimpses into the circumstances of his suspension and his state of mind before the killings.
But the footage – some of which was taken down immediately after the incident, but some of which was still publicly available Friday morning – could end up crucial evidence in a criminal trial.
In one stream, posted Sept 23, he showed off an iPhone he said he was converting to a “burner,” using VPN technology to mask his number while he made harassing phone calls to the Niotis family.
“I think Maria is hungry,” he says more than two hours into the video, walking his viewers through his plan to order pizzas to the girl’s home as “vengeance” for getting him in trouble at school.
“You should not have accused me of sending porn, and you should not have dragged me into creating a police report,” he said, referencing not just Maria but her mother by name.
“You made a bad decision making a bad name of myself.”
Later in the stream, he claims Maria mocked conservative influencer Charlie Kirk’s murder by resharing something critical of him on TikTok.
“Whenever Maria sees the pizza guy come, better think of Charlie Kirk for making fun of his death,” he says, according to the video. “Stupid clown. Just remember that.”
It’s unclear what, exactly, precipitated the feud.
The crash occurred in front of Maria’s grandmother’s home, according to the grandmother, who spoke to NJ Advance Media on the condition that her name not be published.
She said the girl’s mother had contacted police numerous times about Battiloro, but nothing was done.
Battiloro referenced a police investigation on his live stream several times this summer, NJ Advance Media’s review found.
“Because I got into her relationship business and now the school – and now I’m gonna tell you all this – cops got involved and the school got involved in this shit and, somehow, they’re believing this crap,“ he said, according to the video.
“So they suspended me basically indefinitely until they figure it out, which makes, again, makes no sense.”
But by June, he said police told him “that the case is going to be dismissed and I am not going to be facing any charges” during a livestream playing the game Fall Guys.
He compared himself to ex-Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer, who was suspended over sexual assault allegations in 2021 but never criminally charged.
“I’m basically cleared of any wrongdoing. Says a lot. Says a lot. If they’re closing the case on me for this and they’re bringing me back to school, it says a lot of how much I was innocent in the first place and how people are trying to treat me like Trevor Bauer to make me feel like the bad person.”
On his livestreams and social media posts, Battiloro also expressed admiration for Andrew Tate, a controversial online influencer who is accused of running a criminal sex trafficking ring in Romania.
Despite being banned from multiple platforms for his provocative statements, many of them demeaning women, Tate nevertheless holds enormous sway over an audience of millions of mostly young men.
In one video, dating back to July 2023, Battiloro jokes that the female characters in a video game version of the gameshow Deal or No Deal – are imprisoned.
“They’re all held hostage,” he said of the smiling video game characters, dressed in neon green strapless dresses. “They’re all going to get raped by Andrew Tate.”
This, he later clarified, was a “joke.”
“For legal reasons, that’s a joke,” he said. – nj.com/Tribune News Service
