In 1993, 20-year-old Bobby Kent was murdered in Weston, Florida by seven people, including his childhood best friend Marty Puccio, reportedly because of his violent and abusive behavior.
Wikimedia CommonsBobby Kent was killed in 1993.
In 1993, seven people lured 20-year-old Bobby Kent to a construction site in Florida — and savagely killed him. What could be the motive behind such a brutal murder? In the words of the killers, Kent was a bully who had physically and emotionally abused many of them for years.
Several of the killers, including Kent’s best friend since childhood, Marty Puccio Jr., claimed that Kent was a cruel and domineering figure. Not only did Kent and Puccio have an abusive and contentious relationship, but Kent had also purportedly abused his ex-girlfriend, Ali Willis.
Puccio, Willis, and five others got together to kill Kent, in a brutal and shocking homicide that ultimately inspired the 2001 film Bully.
How A Childhood Friendship Turned Sour
Bobby Kent was born on May 12, 1973 to Iranian immigrants Fred and Farah (Khayam) Kent in Hollywood, Florida. But while Kent seemed like a well-behaved boy to adults, he showed a different side to his peers — including his best friend, Marty Puccio.
According to court documents, Kent and Puccio had known each other since third grade, and grew up on the same block in Broward County. The Sun Sentinel additionally reported that the two were “inseperable” and that, in addition to school, they went to parties together, worked out together, and were even arrested together on a handful of minor charges.
However, “bad blood” had quietly developed between the two. Puccio later claimed that Kent would “bully” and “pummel” him. Court documents compiled by Florida State University additionally claim that Kent once derived “amusement” by sicking his dog on Puccio, and on another occasion punched Puccio in the face when he drove his car up onto a curb.
According to Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge by Jim Schutze, there was also a homosexual element to Kent and Puccio’s relationship. The two boys pretended to be a couple in order to hustle gay men, Puccio made money through phone sex, and Kent tried to sell a pornography film.
Free Marty Puccio/FacebookMarty Puccio in the early 1990s.
“Bobby was almost pimping Marty and they were getting money that way, and who knows what [else] they actually did?” Larry Clark, who directed the 2001 film Bully, told the Los Angeles Times. “We don’t know. But I felt this was an interesting part of the story that I insisted be in the screenplay.”
Whatever their relationship, things grew more complicated between Puccio and Kent when they started dating women. In 1993, Puccio began dating Lisa Connelly, and Connelly set Kent up with her friend, Alice “Ali” Willis.
But it wasn’t long before Kent started abusing Willis. Then, a few weeks before Bobby Kent’s murder, Connelly asked Puccio about his true feelings toward Kent. And Marty Puccio told her about the years of abuse.
“That opened the floodgates,” Sheriff’s Lt. Richard Scheff told the Sun Sentinel. “Marty said how much he disliked Bobby.”
Marty Puccio told his girlfriend that he was tired of Kent pushing him around and insulting him. Connelly stated that she didn’t like Kent and that he scared her. According to investigators, Puccio and Connelly — and soon Willis as well — then begun to plot Bobby Kent’s murder.
The Murder Of Bobby Kent
On July 13, 1993, Connelly, Puccio, and Willis tried to kill Bobby Kent for the first time. They lured Kent to a construction site in Weston, but though Connelly had a gun, she seemingly lost her nerve. However, the killers were determined.
They recruited more people — Willis’ new boyfriend Donny Semenec, her friend Heather Swallers, Connelly’s cousin, Derek Dzvirko, and a self-proclaimed “hitman” and “tough guy” named Derek Kaufman — who would would become known as the “Broward Seven.” And the very next night, July 14, the killers put their plan into action.
ZUMA Press, Inc.Several of the “Broward Seven” and their lawyers following the murder of Bobby Kent.
They lured Kent to a construction site by telling him he could race Willis’ Mustang in a drag race, according to the Sun Sentinel. Kent arrived and met Willis, who was soon joined by Swallers and Semenec. The women distracted Kent, and then Semenec attacked by stabbing him in the neck.
Kent, noticing Puccio at the scene, yelled for his help, saying “Marty, Marty, help me.” But instead of helping Kent, Puccio stabbed Kent in the stomach, causing him to double over in pain.
“What I remember after that was [Kent] screaming at Marty, Bobby’s yelling at Marty: ‘Get him, get him. Do something, do something. He hit me, he hit me,'” Willis later told NBC Miami. “I remember standing there… To me, it looked like [Puccio] hauled off and hit [Kent]. I’ll never forget the look on [Kent’s] face when this happened. I looked down and there was blood everywhere … and he was holding his stomach … and I just froze.”
Then the others attacked.
They stabbed Kent with knives and beat him with a lead pipe and a baseball bat. Once Kent was unconscious and fatally wounded, they rolled his body into the swamp, where they hoped that alligators would finish the job.
The “Broward Seven” may have planned to take the secret of Bobby Kent’s murder to their grave. But when the gravity of what they’d done set in, Dzvirko confessed to his uncle — and then the full truth quickly came out.
Bobby Kent’s Murder Inspires ‘Bully’
Shortly after Bobby Kent’s murder, the seven people who had killed him were arrested. Kent’s family was astounded to learn that Puccio, Kent’s childhood friend, was one of the killers.
“After 14 years of friendship, I can’t believe this,” his father told the Sun Sentinel. “[Martin and Bobby] spent 99 percent of their time together. I fixed them sandwiches and dinners. They have been together since they went to Hollywood Hills Elementary School.”
For his part, however, Puccio claimed that Kent’s relentless bullying had driven him to murder. He was ultimately found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and sentenced to death, before his sentence was reduced to life in prison. Semenec and Kaufman were also sentenced to life in prison, and Connelly, Willis, Dzvirko, and Swallers, all served several years in prison, but have since been released.
But the legacy of their crime lives on. In 1997, Schutze wrote Bully: A True Story of High School Revenge, and in 2001, the story of Kent’s murder was adapted into the film Bully.
Wikipedia2001 film poster for Bully, a film inspired by the murder of Bobby Kent
While critics gave the film mixed to poor reviews, the late Roger Ebert was one of the film’s staunch proponents. He wrote: “Bully calls the bluff of movies that pretend to be about murder but are really about entertainment. His film has all the sadness and shabbiness, all the mess and cruelty and thoughtless stupidity of the real thing…. this is not about the evil sadist and the release of revenge; it’s about how a group of kids will do something no single member is capable of. And about the moral void these kids inhabit.”
After reading about the murder of Bobby Kent, and how it inspired the 2001 film “Bully,” discover the harrowing true stories behind “The Conjuring” films. Or, go inside the chilling true story behind the horror classic “The Exorcist.”
