Cape May on the Jersey Shore harkens to a different America – a n America of the movies, white picket fences, large Victorian homes and breathtaking views of Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

This was April Kauffman’s world.

The vivacious blond was a popular radio talk show host, veterans advocate, and she was married to a wealthy doctor. Sounds pretty fabulous, right?

Doctor was a sleazeball

The riptide in this sun-kissed picture was the husband, Dr. James Kauffman . The good doctor was a Grade-A sleazeball and if his wife knew of his predilections, she didn’t let on.

Despite his dough, for Kauffman, like a lot of rich guys, it was never enough. So, he had a business on the side: he was in bed with the Pagans Motorcycle Club, pushing painkillers for them to sell to hopeless junkies on the eastern seaboard.

Here’s the scheme: the dirty dentist would take a $100 for the pills then charge his “patients'” medical insurance. Bikers get the pills and clientele, the doc rips off Medicaid.

The Pagans are among the oldest American outlaw motorcycle gangs and considered one of the big four. Formed in Maryland in 1957, they were mostly non-violent until the mid-1960s when drugs became big business and the Mid-Atlantic area became their heartland.

One biker named Ferdinand Augello, 62, was a former Pagans Jersey Shore chapter president. His nicknames were “Freddy Crime World” and “Miserable.” He was hooked up with the good doctor.

April Kauffman found out about the painkiller pushing scheme and immediately decided she wanted out of the cratering marriage. April was very different from her hubby.

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Claimed he was a Green Beret in Vietnam

She was a staunch defender of American servicemen and women, and was heavily involved in veteran’s charities. Worse than the pill pushing, April discovered her husband had lied about serving in the military.

He outlandishly fibbed that he had been a Green Beret in Vietnam . It was a lie she could not get past.

“April became aware that Dr. Kauffman had never served in Armed Forces and was not a veteran in any capacity,” a warrant stated.

“It is known that April was devastated by this revelation and it is believed that she threatened to use this information to procure a beneficial divorce from him.”

As his facade of virtue and heroism imploded, hanging over the doctor’s head was another powerful card stashed up his wife’s sleave. She knew all about the dope ring and would use it during divorce proceedings.

Worse, April could go to the cops and that would be that for Dr. Kauffman and his biker buddies. Never mind a bachelor apartment with a hot plate, the result would be long jolts in prison.

That was something her husband – and his greasy partners – could not let happen. He told his biker confrères he wasn’t about to “lose half his empire.”

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Botched murder attempt

If you’ve never heard of the Pagans, know this: They are bad hombres who make the Hells Angels look like friendly faces at a PTA meeting.

The one-percenters make their dough in prostitution and drugs and are scattered along the U.S. eastern seaboard. They are prodigious meth cookers.

James Kauffman’s business partner Augello approached his brothers in colours proposing that April should be iced. They paid a loser named Francis Mulholland $20,000 to put April in a box. But the heroin-addicted Mulholland only grazed the radio host in May 2011.

A year later, he was dead with a needle in his arm and April was still alive. Augello decided if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.

On May 10, 2012, April Kauffman, 47 years old, was found in her home. She had been shot numerous times.

Detectives always look at close family members first in a murder investigation and Dr. James Kauffman was an excellent place to begin their probe. Cops turned the burners on high and soon, the doc was under intense heat and sweating bullets.

His drug racket was a shambles and the pressure was causing him to come apart at the seams. Despite the homicidal road map landing on the weeping widowers’s doorstep, the case went cold.

Two things turn a cold case hot: New technology or a witness’s change in circumstances. It was another biker staring at the hard end of 40 years in the joint who flipped.

In January 2018, Kauffman, Augello and other members of the ring were arrested and charged with first-degree murder, drug-trafficking and a litany of other crimes.

Kauffman wasn’t like the other kids. He was soft as a kitten, a weakling. He was no Green Beret and couldn’t even handle the county jail. Five weeks after being busted, he tied together two sheets and hanged himself in his cell.

‘Miserable Freddy’ was on the hook

“Ultimately, Dr. Kauffman was tried by a higher jury, and it cost him his life,” one prosecutor said. “He couldn’t live with the weight of the evidence that would have been presented against him on this date.”

Five others did plea deals. That left “Miserable Freddy” on the hook.

His defence painted him as nothing more than “a big talker” who was broke-ass poor.

It took a New Jersey jury just two hours to convict Augello. In December 2018, he was sentenced to life in prison.

“April Kauffman, grandmother, friend, a champion for veterans’ rights, murdered in her bed,” District Attorney Seth Levy said. “And yes, this defendant was absolutely responsible for that.”

He added: “When you move the pawns out of the way, all you have staring back at you is ‘Freddy crime wave’, ‘Miserable’ Ferdinand Augello.”

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun