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Cop Killer Paroled!!
http://www.bergen.com/news/halfwayr200101281.htm ^
Posted on 01/30/2002 9:16:30 PM PST by Coleus
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Comment #61 Removed by Moderator
To: xcon
Let's think about this, infraction free in prison, drug abuser. You seem not to be able to understand how they square up. Duh, drug abuse could be referring to prior to incarceration. Duh, the article says he was in rehab during his prison stint:
Trantino's adjustment to life in a halfway house might not be a complete shock. An acknowledged drug abuser, he has been participating in a drug-treatment program called Nu Way at South Woods State Prison. There inmates attend self-help and therapy groups that are similar to halfway house programs.
Considering he's been in prison for 38 years, it's a bit hard to believe that he only did drugs before the prison sentence. I stand by my original statement that his 38 years in prison have NOT been "infraction free," since he obviously has been doing drugs while in jail.
Comment #63 Removed by Moderator
To: xcon
When would he have a chance to go to drug rehab other than in prison? Just because he went doesn't mean he was consuming them in there. I consider myself an addict, but I haven't used any mind or mood altering substances for over 15 years, so does that mean I am no longer an addict? If you really believe that he only used drugs 38 years ago, before entering prison, never did drugs while in prison, and only went to rehab (a modern program which wasn't around in 1963) to reinforce his quitting a habit which you think he gave up 38 years before, then you'll believe just about anything!
Comment #65 Removed by Moderator
To: Coleus
Once again America embraces evil in its midst after a temporary parting.
To: ThreePantherEightyDuce
"I am deeply troubled by pieces I have read about inconsistencies in the jurisprudence product that can and has put innocent people on death row."
Excuse me but is there one shred of evidence that this poster child for human depravity is innocent?
67
posted on
02/19/2002 11:01:55 AM PST
by
lawdog
To: xcon
Might want to check the facts about rehab in prisons and when they started. AA was in the prisons as early as 1943. Furthermore, why couldn't he had gone to AA/NA mtgs in prison and when they actually got around to implementing a formal rehab program attended then? There's a difference between drug "rehab" programs as we know them, and AA. The term "rehab" didn't even enter the lexicon until the 70s or so, way after this guy was imprisoned. And anyway, it stretches credulity to believe that this guy wasn't doing drugs while in prison.
The guy should still be locked up as far as I am concerned, but don't knock people stopping using dope. There are the ones who do anything to look good for parole, privilleges etc, but I do know some who actually stop and stay quit because it is a problem rather than because it makes them look good. I do volunteer work in the local prisons dealing with substance abuse and job skills and the subject tends to grab my attention.
That's good that you're doing that volunteer work, thanks for your service. The point that I've been making from the beginning was that, contrary to what his apologists say, this guy was NOT "infraction free" in prison. He was/is in drug rehab, which means, given the time that he was in prison, that he was doing drugs then. It's one thing for defenders of this cop killer to say that this guy turned his life around during his incarceration. But it's dishonest for them to say that his time was "infraction free," unless you consider that consuming illegal drugs is neither a crime, nor a violation of prison rules.
To: xcon
Might want to check the facts about rehab in prisons and when they started. AA was in the prisons as early as 1943. Furthermore, why couldn't he had gone to AA/NA mtgs in prison and when they actually got around to implementing a formal rehab program attended then? There's a difference between drug "rehab" programs as we know them, and AA. The term "rehab" didn't even enter the lexicon until the 70s or so, way after this guy was imprisoned. And anyway, it stretches credulity to believe that this guy wasn't doing drugs while in prison.
The guy should still be locked up as far as I am concerned, but don't knock people stopping using dope. There are the ones who do anything to look good for parole, privilleges etc, but I do know some who actually stop and stay quit because it is a problem rather than because it makes them look good. I do volunteer work in the local prisons dealing with substance abuse and job skills and the subject tends to grab my attention.
That's good that you're doing that volunteer work, thanks for your service. The point that I've been making from the beginning was that, contrary to what his apologists say, this guy was NOT "infraction free" in prison. He was/is in drug rehab, which means, given the time that he was in prison, that he was doing drugs then. It's one thing for defenders of this cop killer to say that this guy turned his life around during his incarceration. But it's dishonest for them to say that his time was "infraction free," unless you consider that consuming illegal drugs is neither a crime, nor a violation of prison rules.
Comment #70 Removed by Moderator
To: xcon
One thing we do agree on is the most important thing of all, He should not be out of prison!.
Absolutely! How in the world does somebody sentenced to death manage to not even serve a full life term. This guy wanted to move to Staten Island, where he has family members. SI, of course, is also the home of more cops and firefighters than anywhere else in the city. Not a wise choice for him to live there!
To: breakem
Free Charlie Manson -he never actually killed anyone!But he responsible for someone from Hollywood being killed !Liberal SOBs will fight to keep him in jail-even though I dont agree under these other situations it is time to let him out. Wonder why Ed Asner and his group hasnt stood up for Good Old Charlie?
72
posted on
02/19/2002 11:50:13 AM PST
by
gunnedah
Comment #73 Removed by Moderator
To: GailA; Remedy; *Donut watch
74
posted on
03/10/2003 4:58:14 PM PST
by
Coleus
(RU-486 Kills Babies)
To: unamused
One begets the other - sadly enough.
75
posted on
03/10/2003 5:02:31 PM PST
by
lodwick
(America - Love it, leave it, or youcanbitemyASS, and then leave.)
To: All
Trantino lecturing ex-convicts
![](http://www.northjersey.com/lib/get_page_image.php?qstr=ZmdiZWw3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTYzODAzODQmc2ViYWdjbnRyZWVFRXl5MSZ2em50cjdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5MjcwNw==) |
Photo by: BETH BALBIERZ Thomas Trantino in a photo shortly after his release in February 2002.
|
CAMDEN -When Thomas Trantino gives lectures to groups of former convicts about adjusting to life on the outside, they tend to sit up and listen.
After all, Trantino knows of what he speaks.
Imprisoned for 38 years in the shooting deaths of two police officers, Trantino was released on parole last year. Like many paroled felons, he found a society unwilling to have anything to do with him, much less give him a chance at a fresh start.
The 65-year-old Trantino, who murdered two Lodi police officers in 1963, decided to use his experiences in a constructive way. With help and funding from the Haddonfield Quakers, Trantino now runs a program that provides support and counseling to former prisoners and other at-risk individuals.
"Beyond Prison Walls: Friends Transition Support Services" operates out of a renovated brownstone on Cooper Street in Camden. The program is augmented by attorneys, family therapists, teachers, psychologists, and criminologists who volunteer their time.
Among Trantino's duties are giving one or two talks a week.
"I've done almost everything, including change," he told the Courier-Post of Cherry Hill. "A lot of them say, 'If this guy can do it, so can I.' I'm the worst of the worst."
Trantino was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, but that sentence was commuted in 1972.
He was denied parole nine times before the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered him moved to a halfway house last year.
The challenges of re-entering society are many, according to experts. Housing, work, family dynamics, addictions, and the difficulty of reconnecting to the world can be overwhelming.
According to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, almost two-thirds of inmates released from state prisons are rearrested within three years of their release.
"We tend to look at ex-offenders as only a negative influence on our communities," said Jeremy Travis, a senior fellow at the institute and a former New York City deputy police commissioner. "In fact, some of them can be a very positive force to support others like them as they struggle to readjust after prison."
Trantino sees his program as a crucial part of that equation.
"You want people to know that they have the power to change," he said. "We're just helping them to do what they know they can do."
76
posted on
05/18/2003 6:26:45 PM PDT
by
Coleus
(God is Pro Life and Straight)
To: Coleus
Do you know if any of the other four killed again?
77
posted on
05/18/2003 6:45:29 PM PDT
by
philetus
(Keep doing what you always do and you'll keep getting what you always get)
To: philetus
I'm not sure, I doubt it.
78
posted on
06/25/2003 7:54:38 PM PDT
by
Coleus
(God is Pro Life and Straight and gave an innate predisposition for self-preservation and protection)
To: All
40 years after killing, Tedescos sue Trantino
Friday, September 5, 2003
By AMY KLEIN STAFF WRITER
HACKENSACK - Forty years after Thomas Trantino and another man gunned down two police officers in a Lodi bar, the family of rookie cop Gary Tedesco is seeking justice.
Not the kind that comes from a criminal trial. The Tedescos already got that and - in their eyes - lost it when trantino was paroled from prison last year.
Now they want money.
In a wrongful death suit filed Thursday in Superior Court, Tedesco's mother and sister said Trantino owes them for the support, guidance, comfort, and advice they lost when the young officer was killed in 1963.
"He cared a lot for me. He wanted to do so much for me," said 88-year-old Sadie Tedesco, who still clutches the photo of her son taken three months before his death. "I haven't lived life since and I don't care."
Gary Tedesco was a 22-year-old probationary patrolman in August 1963 when he and Sgt. Peter Voto responded to a disturbance call at the now-defunct Angel Lounge on Route 46. The two were killed execution-style by Tedesco and his partner Frank Falco in what became one of New Jersey's most notorious homicide cases.
Falco was killed two days later when police tried to arrest him in New York City. Trantino surrendered and was sentenced to death by a Bergen County jury the following year. The sentence was commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972.
Trantino, now 65, was denied parole nine times before he was released in February 2002.
Attorney Mike Lubin, who is representing Sadie Tedesco and her daughter, Elaine Harvey, said family members pursued a lawsuit after the state in 2000 lifted the two-year statute of limitations families had to file wrongful death lawsuits in cases of murder or manslaughter.
"Although some may say he paid his debt to society, he has not paid his debt to the Tedesco family," Lubin said.
Harvey said her parents were too grief-stricken during the two years following Tedesco's death to file suit.
The suit doesn't specify a dollar amount. Lubin said he didn't know what financial assets, if any, Trantino has.
Harvey, who has been crusading against her brother's killer since she was 20, said Trantino may have money from a book he wrote while he was in prison, or could be on the verge of a potential windfall if a rumored movie about his life is made.
"I'm glad we finally had it done," Harvey said, after the suit was filed. "We are still heartbroken over the release of this killer."
A similar suit was filed last year by Voto's son, Jerry, who said his intention is to prevent Trantino from cashing in on his notoriety.
Trantino, who lived in a homeless shelter for a month after his release, has an apartment and a job, said his lawyer, Jeffrey Fogel.
"There's a long way before this case is over," Fogel said Thursday. "I feel bad for the family, and I feel bad that they can't put this behind them and that they're whole lives are devoted to this. I don't know what good it does."
E-mail:
kleina@northjersey.com http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2NDIyMjcz
79
posted on
09/18/2003 7:17:04 PM PDT
by
Coleus
(Only half the patients who go into an abortion clinic come out alive.)
To: All
A close look at Trantino case 40 years later
Monday, September 15, 2003
By JANON FISHER HERALD NEWS
Thomas Trantino should have died in the electric chair 40 years ago. If he had been put to death, his crime would have been forgotten. The families of the Lodi police officers that he killed might have felt some closure. It would have been a tidy and, some would say just, solution.
But he didn't die and he's still alive here in New Jersey. That's where things got messy.
David Stout's gritty and complex book, "Night of the Devil: The Untold Story of Thomas Trantino and the Angel Lounge Killings," explodes the myths of the case and then draws out a balanced, but never dispassionate, tale about a 1963 double homicide that is still making headlines four decades later.
In the first, and most readable, part of the book, Stout goes back over court transcripts and newspaper articles to understand the facts of the case. He interviews family members and participants to draw out the real story.
The myth behind the murder, which Stout traces back to the aging newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, is that the two cops were forced to strip naked and perform sexual acts on each other, after which they were pistol whipped and shot dead.
The origin of the story may have come from Winchell, but Stout lays the perpetuation of the myth on The Record.
"I know how it happens," said Stout in a telephone interview. Stout is a New York Times reporter who worked for The Record in the early 1980s. "You get out the clips like a good reporter and do your research," he said. That's how the misconceptions of the past get perpetuated, he said.
True, the officers had been commanded to strip, Officer Gary Tedesco down to his underwear, officer in training Peter Voto was found in his undershirt and pants. But Stout points to the fact that the Bergen County Prosecutor at the time, Guy Calissi, never mentioned sex acts.
"Unless we assume that Guy Calissi held back some of the most horrifying elements of the case even while seeking a murder conviction and the death penalty, we can only conclude that there was no sexual harassment," writes Stout. None of the witnesses who took the stand mentioned it in their testimony.
Trantino's partner, Frank Falco, the who had one murder to his name already, was an enforcer for a mob loan shark. He had a history of forcing guys to strip when they couldn't come up with the money.
Stout also refutes the theory of Trantino as the trigger man of both murders.
After the shootings at the Angel Lounge, Trantino and Falco fled to New York City. Trantino ran to his parents' house in Brooklyn, but Falco hid out in a Manhattan hotel under an assumed name.
When police found out where he was hiding, he never made it out of the room alive, so Trantino got pinned with both murders.
Based on the number of guns at the bar (four) and the number of guns found (three) Stout surmises that Falco shot Tedesco and Trantino killed Voto.
According to the book, there was little nuance in the prosecutor's argument, and the defense attorney was preoccupied trying to keep his client off death row - unsuccessfully.
Trantino was found guilty with no leniency and sentenced to die. But fate intervened.
A series of appeals delayed Trantino's appointment with the electric chair long enough for the U.S. Supreme Court to step in. In 1972, the court found the death penalty unconstitutional and commuted all death row prisoners to life in prison.
Stout makes no bones about whose side he's on in this story. His sympathies are quite clearly with the families of the slain officers. Violence entered his own life when his aunt was killed by an ex-boyfriend.
"It would have been better if (Trantino) had gone to the electric chair," said Stout.
Still, in the second and third parts of the book he is able to take a step back and see the dilemma that was created by the high court's decision.
Without a death sentence, Trantino became eligible for parole in 1979. Had the prosecutor gotten a separate conviction for each murder, Trantino would not have seen parole for another 15 years. After all these years, the families of the victims and the law enforcement community were not ready to see this convicted murderer back on the street.
Here begins a 20-year struggle between the concept of rehabilitation and proper punishment. New Jersey law allows an inmate with a history of good conduct the eligibility of parole when a portion of his time is served.
Twenty years of parole board hearings and court appeals are hardly the staples of true crime books, but Stout is able to maintain a lot of the momentum established in the first part of the book.
He's also careful to keep the human element in the story.
He spends several chapters on the effect the murders had on the families and the police, who were traumatized by the killings, and shows the evolution of Thomas Trantino from a drug-addicted, violent criminal to a remorseless, self-absorbed inmate.
True, Trantino was a model prisoner; he counseled prisoners and was trusted by staff. But he never apologized or even admitted to his crime until recently.
In the early 1980s, the parole board voted to grant Trantino release, but the strong opposition and outrage from the law enforcement community pressured state officials not to grant parole. Politicians bent on election used the case to bolster their get-tough-on-crime images. It wasn't until 1997 that an appellate court judge's dissent created an opportunity for the inmate.
"I do not believe that defendant can be kept incarcerated indefinitely only because people outside the correctional system insist that he remain there," the judge wrote. "After all, the entire parole process is predicated on the belief in the potential for rehabilitation and redeemability of all people. Even Thomas Trantino."
Despite still strong protests and the emotional anguish of the victims' families, Trantino was eventually released.
The rule of law triumphed over politics - but is it justice?
Stout never answers that question.
"I don't know what the right answer is. He went in as a young man and came out a middle-age man, approaching old age," said Stout. "Was he punished enough? That question is impossible to answer."
Reach Janon Fisher |at (973) 569-7163 or
fisher@northjersey.com
80
posted on
09/18/2003 7:17:37 PM PDT
by
Coleus
(Only half the patients who go into an abortion clinic come out alive.)
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