After listening to a week of testimony, a Pinellas judge took 15 minutes to find Tomasz Kosowski guilty of the 2023 murder of Largo attorney Steven Cozzi.
The case was unique for a host of reasons. Kosowski, an Ivy League-educated plastic surgeon, chose to represent himself. He opted to waive a jury and have Judge Joseph Bulone solely decide the verdict. And while prosecutors presented forensic and digital evidence linking Kosowski to the crime, Cozzi’s body was never found.
In the gallery Wednesday, three rows were packed with Cozzi’s family and friends, many of whom wore bowties to honor him. His mother, Lois, donned a red one with polka dots. His husband, Michael Montgomery, wore maroon.
They let out a collective sigh of relief as the verdict was read. Lois Cozzi put a hand on her son-in-law’s back as he sobbed.
Kosowski, clad in orange jail clothes, stared straight ahead with an impassive face.
The state has asked Bulone to impose a death sentence. After lunch Wednesday, the judge listened to prosecutors argue the aggravating factors that would justify such a punishment.
Bulone ruled that the state proved two of three factors, paving the way for the death penalty.
The judge found the state proved that the killing was committed for financial gain and in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner. But without a body, he said, it can’t be proven that the killing itself was particularly heinous.
Kosowski, 47, did not make any arguments in favor of a life sentence. Bulone will wait until after a hearing next month to issue his sentence.
Prosecutors say Kosowski killed Cozzi in the men’s restroom of the Blanchard Law firm on March 21, 2023, before loading the body onto his truck and disposing of it in a remote dumpster.
Cozzi, 41, was representing defendants in a medical billing lawsuit Kosowski filed against a former employer and related businesses. He began representing himself in the lawsuit in 2022, and witnesses testified that he developed an increasingly aggressive attitude toward Cozzi.
Two months before Cozzi’s disappearance, the doctor confronted him in the same restroom where prosecutors say he was killed. Kosowski called Cozzi a “scumbag,” family and friends testified. Later that day, Kosowski searched for Cozzi’s address online, testimony revealed.
During his closing argument Wednesday morning, Assistant State Attorney Nathan Vonderheide said Kosowski “systematically and methodically” planned the murder.
A week before Cozzi vanished, a worker found a man in a surgical mask hiding in the law firm’s electrical closet. Kosowski’s phone connected to the law firm’s Wi-Fi on two days in March when no meetings for the lawsuit were scheduled.
A gray Toyota Tundra that a witness testified he sold to Kosowski was seen on surveillance footage entering the law firm’s parking lot at about 8:30 a.m. on March 21, 2023.
A man was seen entering the unlocked building with a box slung over his shoulder. Vonderheide said the box was holding a Gorilla-brand collapsible cart that Kosowski had purchased on Amazon.
“From 8:34 to 9:50, I can’t tell you what he was doing in that law firm, but I can tell you he’s hiding out somewhere,” Vonderheide said. “He’s lurking somewhere in there.”
Cozzi opened his office door to go to the restroom at about 9:50 a.m. He was never seen again. His laptop was left open in the middle of an email, and his wallet, phone and keys remained strewn on his desk.
“I can’t tell you precisely what that man did in that bathroom,” Vonderheide said, referring to Kosowski. “But I can tell you there was a violent event that occurred in that bathroom.”
He reminded the judge that Cozzi’s blood was found on napkins in the trash can. That a mixture of his blood and Kosowski’s DNA was found on the restroom door.
A couple of hours later, the man left, lugging a wagon covered by a red blanket. Vonderheide said he loaded the cart onto the bed of the truck, which investigators later found in Kosowski’s garage. Cozzi’s DNA was found in the trunk.
Vonderheide said Kosowski’s “obsession with the civil case” allowed investigators to determine that he was sitting in the law firm’s parking lot after Cozzi’s disappearance. He said Kosowski joined a scheduled telephonic hearing minutes after loading the wagon with Cozzi’s body onto the bed of the truck.
“There’s no movement by him or that wagon during the court hearing because Steven is dead in the wagon in his truck,” he said.
The Toyota Tundra left the parking lot at 11:16 a.m. Footage from Pinellas transit buses tracked the Tundra’s movements toward Kosowski’s Tarpon Springs home.
A Flock camera snapshot gives the clearest image of what appears to be a body underneath the blanket in the bed of the truck.
Ring camera footage showed Kosowski leaving his home in his red Toyota Corolla five hours later. License-plate readers picked him up near a remote dumpster in Naples, where investigators say he stopped for about a minute before continuing to a residence he owned in Miami.
He drove back to Tarpon Springs four days later, stopping again at the dumpster. He was arrested upon his return.
A video played in court showed Kosowski in the back of a police cruiser, meticulously maneuvering his cuffed hands to the front of his body and slurping and biting his fingernails for several minutes. Prosecutors say he was trying to destroy forensic evidence of Cozzi.
Cozzi’s manner of death is unknown, but the state believes Kosowski injected him with a paralytic in the men’s restroom before killing him. They found a vial of the paralytic in his car, among myriad other items, including brass knuckles, a folding knife, duct tape and a “V for Vendetta” mask.
On Wednesday, Kosowski gave his own closing argument from the defense desk. He spoke slowly and softly for 20 minutes.
He challenged the state’s theory of the murder and whether Cozzi is even dead, pointing to credit card transactions made after his disappearance. (Cozzi’s husband told investigators the card was attached to some of their shared accounts.)
Kosowski said it would be impossible to lift the Gorilla cart with Cozzi’s body onto the bed of the truck unless you’re “an Olympic-caliber deadlifter.”
“The state would have you believe that everything is very cut-and-dry in this case,” he said. “The problem is that if everything is truly so tight that everything flows so logically, then the payoff is you find Steven Cozzi’s body in that landfill.”
He concluded by apologizing to Cozzi’s family for referring to him throughout the trial as a body.
“Steven Cozzi was fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of Jesus,” he said. “I sincerely apologize to the Cozzi family for referring to Steven in this manner and for not giving all due dignity to him as a child of God.”
After staying quiet for a few days, Kosowski spent the latter half of his trial challenging the state’s witnesses and prosecutors themselves.
He asked Vonderheide to step inside a trash bag to demonstrate whether a human body could fit in it.
He asked a blood-spatter analyst to say whether the blood in the bathroom was caused by Cozzi being “chopped into bits and pieces.”
He asked the medical examiner whether a nosebleed could’ve caused the bloodstains in the restroom.
He also asked two witnesses to lift a 195-pound person in a collapsible cart onto the prosecution’s desk, asserting the act required “Herculean strength.” The judge denied Kosowski’s requests for the demonstrations.
During the penalty phase Wednesday afternoon, five people read victim impact statements.
Cozzi’s father, George Cozzi, began by thanking the judge for giving his family a “long overdue conclusion (to) this horrific nightmare.”
“People like Steve are exceedingly rare,” he said. “My family and everyone who knew and loved him are devastated.”
His mother described how Cozzi blossomed into himself as he grew up. How he overcame challenges with asthma. How he could “turn a room into hysterical laughter just by recounting the day’s events.”
“So much future was there,” Lois Cozzi said.
The most emotional speech came from Cozzi’s husband, Michael Montgomery.
He said much of his grief can be summarized by missing “having my person beside me.” He described Cozzi’s humor and how he always brightened the room.
The last morning he saw his husband, Montgomery said, Cozzi’s last words to him were not “I love you,” but, “I can’t believe how expensive Costco was.”
Sometime before his death, Cozzi ordered him a Legend of Zelda video game he wanted.
After Cozzi’s celebration of life on his 42nd birthday in May 2023, Montgomery said he returned to an empty home. But on the doorstep was a cardboard box with the video game inside.
“I picked up his last gift and carried it into a house he would never come home to,” Montgomery said.
