Crime Revisited 21 Years After Attack : Violence: Danny Centrone was left brain-damaged after a gang beating in 1972. Last month, he died choking on steak. His impaired ability to eat has been linked to the attack.

The three men who bashed a teen-ager senseless with chains and boots were convicted long ago and did their time. But for their victim and his parents, the sentence was life.

On Nov. 6, more than two decades after the attack by motorcycle gang members left Danny Centrone brain-damaged, he died choking on a steak sandwich. He was 38.

The medical examiner’s office may declare the death murder and a prosecutor could decide once again to charge the three onetime Warlocks gang members in the 1972 beating.

“The worst part of this is the victim served a worse sentence than the perpetrators,” said Greta Centrone, Danny’s mother. “They served their sentences, lived their lives. But Danny just went on and on.”

Delaware County Medical Examiner Dimitri Contostavlos expects to rule on the case before year’s end.

“Physically there’s no question: He had an impaired ability for eating and a tendency to choke that stemmed directly from his assault,” Contostavlos said. “My gut instinct is to certify it as a homicide.”

Such a ruling could prompt Dist. Atty. William H. Ryan Jr. to reopen the case, though the prosecutor said he’s never known another like it.

Danny Centrone was 17, a basketball player and an aspiring carpenter when his life took its terrible turn the night of July 19, 1972.

He was hanging out with friends in a shopping-center parking lot in this working-class Philadelphia suburb. Some Warlocks drove up and fanned out, demanding revenge from the youth who had beaten one of their members.

It wasn’t Danny. They chose him anyway.

“His only mistake was not running fast enough,” said Danny’s sister Christine, 24.

The beating left Danny with a fractured skull, damaged organs, a back full of stab wounds and a devastated brain.

He lay comatose for 19 days. When he emerged, he couldn’t talk. Then came therapy, retraining, frustration. Finally he went home.

“The boy that everybody knew as Danny Centrone wasn’t there anymore,” said Theodore Pastore, the investigating officer and now police chief of the community of 7,200.

Danny regained some speech, but it was slurred and labored. He had little muscle control, and his short-term memory was nearly gone. When he became angry and unable to find the words, he’d punch fist into palm.

“He was a prisoner in his own body. Everything he learned in high school he remembered. But his body wouldn’t respond,” his mother said. “He was 17 forever. He just stopped.”

William Franchi, Robert McCabe and Augustus Wayne Lochman were convicted in the beating and sentenced to seven to 14 years. Franchi and McCabe are now 41 and served about 14 and 13 years, respectively. Lochman, who protested his innocence during his 6 1/2 years in prison, is 42.

Today, Franchi is in federal prison on an unrelated drug conviction. Attempts to reach McCabe and Lochman were unsuccessful; telephone books do not list their names.

After the attack, Danny’s parents struggled to care for a boy lost on the verge of manhood who suddenly needed constant supervision.

Thinking of what might have been was hard on his father, Joseph Centrone, a construction worker.

“For me to go out and watch boys Danny’s age grow up, see them with a wife and a kid, see them on the job. . . . I had such plans for Danny,” Centrone said. Danny stayed home with his parents for 19 years until he began to deteriorate. In 1991, they placed him in a nursing home. He died during a weekend visit home.

Although Centrone wants his son’s attackers tried for murder, his wife is less sure.

“The hatred’s gone. The bitterness is gone,” Greta Centrone said. “And they’re still horrible. That’s their punishment.”

Her son is at peace, she said, adding: “If the system can work properly this time, then let it be.”