MOUNT HOPE - Four bodies, believed to be those of the Middletown men who disappeared in April, were found Tuesday on a Mount Hope property occupied by the retired police officer who federal prosecutors have charged with murdering them, officials have confirmed.

Related: Retired cop charged with killing four Middletown men in Chester





MOUNT HOPE - Authorities Tuesday mounted a massive evidence-gathering operation at the 170-acre property in the Town of Mount Hope where Nicholas Tartaglione, the retired Briarcliff Manor police officer accused of killing four Middletown men in April, has been living.

Authorities said Tartaglione killed four Middletown men who had been missing since April.

Late in the afternoon, Chester police confirmed that four bodies had been found at the site.

About 40 police vehicles, including two mobile crime labs, lined the section of Old Mountain Road that runs in front of the property at 419 Old Mountain Road in the New Vernon section of Mount Hope. At least two excavators worked at the property. A woman in an FBI jacket arriving early in the afternoon told the state police trooper guarding the main driveway she was there to "help with the dig."

Police on scene wouldn’t provide details, but they said the operation started in the early morning hours, before 7 a.m. State police blocked off all access points to the Tartaglione property, calling it a crime scene. Police shuttled personnel on and off the property using ATVs.

At about 3 p.m., law-enforcement personnel, including staffers from the FBI’s New York Office of Special Operations, began leaving the site, carrying large plastic garbage bags. They would not say what the bags contained. In addition to state police and FBI personnel, Orange County sheriff’s deputies and Town of Mount Hope police were also on the scene.

An hour later, two pickup trucks towing large, black trailers labeled “evidence response” pulled out of the main driveway and left the property. Then police personnel started clearing the scene.

The property sits on a hill overlooking Old Mountain Road. A white farmhouse is located behind a stone wall. A blue-and-yellow New York state historical marker, placed by the Mount Hope Historical Society, identifies the property as the one-time Harding Farm, established in 1759 and named for Maj. Abraham Harding, who served in the Revolutionary War.

dbayne@th-record.com

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