Scott Foxworth was a 24-year-old pizza delivery man for Godfather’s Pizza in Charlestown, Ma in 1978 when he was first charged with murder, in the shooting of a young sailor assigned on the USS Constitution. The area in 1978 wasn’t the gentrified place it is today and there was a certain amount of street crime. Credit cards weren’t in common use and delivery people carried cash on their rounds. As was common in the area delivery people frequently were armed and Foxworth was no exception. One of the stops in Foxworth’s deliveries were the sailors stationed on the USS Constitution. They actually lived in the barracks next to the ship. Tonight they had ordered a bag of sandwiches just like the many other nights when they ordered takeout from Godfather’s Pizza. Scott had a young boy from the neighborhood along the ride. The kid would run the order to the door, collect the money, and if there was a tip, he would maybe give the kid some of the tip. Between the two they could get a few extra deliveries in for the night.
Foxworth, the kid, and the sandwiches arrived at the Constitution barracks Sunday evening on April 9, 1978 around 10:30PM. Nothing much was going on and the sailors were hanging out, sitting around on the interior stairs and hallways just waiting for the sandwiches to arrive. The kid took the sandwiches in and when he tried to collect, some of the sailors pretended they weren’t going pay him. They were in a teasing mood although they all knew they had to eventually pay up. The kid didn’t play along and instead went out and told the driver. Jeff Foxworth was not one to shy away confrontation as he had been raised on the streets of Charlestown and knew how respond to a challenge. He simply went to the door and demanded payment.
Somebody may have made a remark about a “townie” or maybe not. In any case, a young sailor Seaman Louis Gentile decided to confront Foxworth. Just what the confrontation was about is not known as everyone agreed they had to pay for the sandwiches. In the ensuing scuffle Louis was shot in the neck. After the shot was fired, one Richard Birchmire (Birch the cook) choose to run outside armed with a beer-bottle which he hurled at Foxworth in the fleeing car. Birch then quickly ran around the other end of the building yelling at the gate guards to close the gate. They did not respond quickly enough and Foxworth escaped only to be arrested by police when he returned to Godfather’s pizza at the end of his deliveries.
The trial lasted several days, Foxworth claimed he was using Gentile as a hostage as he feared an attack by a group of sailors and the gun had gone off accidentally in the struggle. Scott Foxworth was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to spend five years in prison. The Navy decided to improve relations with Charlestown and the word was out “No more disrespect to townies”. These days the sailors stationed on the Constitution and the townspeople get along fine. Normally, this would be the end of Foxworth story but he ended up costarring in an even stranger tale.
Foxworth Back in the News An interesting summary of the second most foul murder Foxworth was involved in. A most wasted life
n 2006, on January 13, one Edward Schiller was gunned down in a Newton parking garage. It didn’t take the police too long to unravel the plot. Edward Schiller had been having an affair with another man’s estranged wife. The husband believed his almost ex-wife would return to him again if the boyfriend was out of the picture. A mutual friend introduced Scott Foxworth to James Brescia, the ex-husband, and a murder-for-hire plot was agreed to. The murder was successful but the coverup was not. Foxworth was convicted of first-degree murder in 2009 and is currently serving a life sentence.
Brescia admitted he paid Foxworth to kill Edward Schiller, 39, of Framingham, in the parking garage of the Newton insurance agency where Schiller worked. Brescia pleaded guilty before a Middlesex County jury reached a verdict in the case. The case was appealed but then Brescia pleaded guilty to second-degree murder admitting he paid Scott Foxworth $10,000 to kill his estranged wife’s old high school flame in Newton in 2006.