...Prosecutors allege that Galtieri waited in the park-and-ride's lot for five hours to murder Ms. Kane because he was enraged over a million-dollar divorce settlement awarded in 2003. The settlement included $400,000 in damages tacked on by a judge who determined that Ms. Kane was a battered wife...Judge tosses some statements made by husband accused of killing Staten Island wife
by Staten Island Advance
Wednesday May 14, 2008
[Excerpts] Nothing a former cop said to investigators after he asked for a lawyer following his arrest on charges of murdering his ex-wife in Staten Island will be admissible during trial, a judge ruled. But any statements John Galtieri made to police prior to his request for an attorney when he was read his Miranda rights following his arrest in South Carolina last year are fair game... Galtieri, 61, a former NYPD sergeant, is accused of murdering his former wife, Jeanne Kane, as she sat in her vehicle waiting to pick up her daughter at a Pleasant Plains park-and-ride Jan. 30 last year. Prosecutors allege that Galtieri waited in the park-and-ride's lot for five hours to murder Ms. Kane because he was enraged over a million-dollar divorce settlement awarded in 2003. The settlement included $400,000 in damages tacked on by a judge who determined that Ms. Kane was a battered wife. The day after Ms. Kane was found dead in her car with a gunshot wound to her head, Galtieri was picked up in South Carolina on I-95 as he was driving back to his home in Punta Gorda, Fla... [Full article here]
Million-dollar motive for former cop in ex-wife's murder
ReplyDeleteStaten Island Advance - SILive.com, NY
by Jeff Harrell / Staten Island Advance
Sunday January 18, 2009, 7:32 AM
The accused killer limped slowly into the courtroom a few days ago with the help of a cane.
John Galtieri wore a pressed black suit, white shirt and tie to hear Justice Stephen J. Rooney set Tuesday as the day jury selection would begin in his murder trial.
But the businessman's attire did little to disguise the graying, bespectacled shell of one of NYPD's former Finest who never got the memo that nobody is above the law.
By day, Galtieri used to protect the city as a police sergeant.
Then, court records show, he went home and beat his then-wife Jeanne Kane like a punching bag.
Small wonder that Ms. Kane, who performed with her identical sisters as The Kane Triplets on several notable TV shows during the 1950s and 1960s, gave up her singing career right before she and her sisters were supposed to tour with Frank Sinatra in the 1970s.
There wasn't enough makeup to hide the bruises of a controlling husband under the bright spotlight of a Sinatra stage.
Mercy arrived when they got divorced.
In 2003, Ms. Kane walked away with $1 million, including $400,000 in damages and a bulk of Galtieri's NYPD pension.
The judge admitted he was more impressed with Ms. Kane's resolve in staying in a tortured marriage than he was with case files showing that Galtieri's right hook found his battered wife's pretty face way too often. Galtieri was not amused.
When he opened the mail and saw a check for $7 -- which was $2,770 less than the police pension check Ms. Kane received -- Galtieri wrote "[bleep] you" on the bottom of the check and sent it back.
On the morning of Jan. 30, 2007, Galtieri, who had since remarried and moved to Punta Gorda, Fla., drove to Staten Island's state Supreme Court, St. George, to file a lawsuit against the NYPD pension fund and seek out a process server.
When he couldn't find a server, he decided to head home to Florida, but not before picking out a spot underneath the West Shore Expressway on Woodrow Road to take a nap in his car -- a silver Chrysler Concorde.
At least that's what the former cop told Det. Guy Gazzillo.
A surveillance camera at a Pleasant Plains park-and-ride caught Galtieri's Chrysler hanging out in the lot at about 12:30 p.m.
Five hours later, the same camera recorded a brilliant flash of light emitting from what appears to be the muzzle of a gun fired into a Volkswagen Jetta from the driver's side of a grayish-silver car like Galtieri's Concorde.
The tape also snapped the vehicle moving counterclockwise to the other side of the Jetta before a second flash lights up the driver's side again.
It's too grainy to positively identify the shooter. But it's as clear as a sunny day without a cloud in the sky as to who took a bullet in the head while sitting in that Jetta.
Jeanne Kane was waiting to pick up her daughter. Police the next day were tracking Galtieri's cell phone when they got a hit from a transmitter tower in Florence County, S.C., and nabbed the suspected killer on I-95 as he drove back to Florida.
While chatting up Colleton County Sheriff's Department Cpl. Wade Marvin, the former NYPD cop asked the South Carolina arresting officer about his dog, a half-German shepherd, half-Akita.
According to transcripts released in court, Galtieri told Marvin, "I had dogs in New York." Then he blamed the ex-wife he allegedly shot the day before for poisoning the dogs.
Evidently, Galtieri thought Staten Island Homicide Squad detectives Gazzillo and Thomas Joyce were there to keep him company when they went to South Carolina to extradite him back here.
He told Joyce that he loved guns, especially revolvers, according to transcripts. He said he read books on O.J. Simpson and a serial killer in Ohio while he was jailed in South Carolina.
Galtieri also admitted he wasn't happy about losing his pension to his ex during their divorce.
Then Galtieri made it perfectly clear that he missed the memo regarding silence being golden when you're under arrest.
"I'm in a lot of trouble," Galtieri told Joyce.
That was two years ago. Galtieri is now days away from going to trial for murdering Jeanne Kane.
Meantime, his attorney, David Schwartz, is mulling over newly released NYPD audiotapes in which police reportedly tracked a different car seen speeding away from the park-and-ride after Ms. Kane was shot dead.
Prosecutors say that driver was stopped on the expressway a few minutes after the shooting, questioned and let go.
Besides, they insist, Galtieri had the one thing nobody else seems to have when it comes to the life and murderous death of Jeanne Kane.
Motive.
A million bucks' worth.
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/milliondollar_motive_for_forme.html
Sinister words link ex-cop to wife's murder, detective says
ReplyDeleteThursday, December 06, 2007
By JEFF HARRELL
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE
"I'm in a lot of trouble."
Those were the prophetic words uttered by John Galtieri after he was arrested in South Carolina for allegedly gunning down his ex-wife in the Pleasant Plains park-and-ride last winter, an NYPD detective told a judge during a pretrial hearing yesterday.
Galtieri was picked up on I-95 as he headed back to his Florida home.
Detective Thomas Joyce of the North Shore's 120th Precinct detective squad in St. George also told Justice Stephen J. Rooney that Galtieri chatted him up during the train ride back to Staten Island following his extradition.
Joyce recalled that the 61-year-old former cop professed his love of guns ("I prefer revolvers"), noted he'd read about O.J. Simpson and a serial killer while jailed in South Carolina, and dished on his marriage to Jeanne Kane.
With Ms. Kane's identical sisters, Lucille Kane-Giordano and Maureen Poehlemann, sitting in the courtroom, Joyce recalled, "He said it was good in the beginning, but things got bad. He said that Jeanne got lazy. On a sweltering day when he built a deck, he said, 'She didn't have the courtesy to give me a glass of water.' "
Galtieri also brought up the Police Department pension he lost to Ms. Kane after they divorced. He told Joyce that he'd traveled to the city from Florida to file a lawsuit against the pension board before his wife was killed.
"He said, 'I was in Bayonne, not in Staten Island, at the time,'" Joyce testified.
Prosecutors allege that Galtieri waited in the park-and-ride's lot for five hours on the evening of Jan. 30 to kill Ms. Kane -- who was sitting in her car, waiting for her daughter -- because he was enraged over a million-dollar divorce settlement awarded to her in 2003. The settlement included $400,000 in damages tacked on by a judge who determined that Ms. Kane was a battered wife.
Ms. Kane knew fame in the 1950s and '60s, singing with her sisters as The Kane Triplets.
Colleton County Sheriff's Department Corporal Wade Marvin, the arresting officer in South Carolina, testified yesterday that police tracked Galtieri via his cell phone.
Marvin recalled that Galtieri wanted to talk about dogs. "He said, 'I had dogs in New York,' but his wife had killed them. He believed she had poisoned two of his dogs. He said his daughter took the rap for doing that, and that's why she wasn't talking to him."
Prosecutors say surveillance videotape of Ms. Kane's murder is definitive.
Galtieri's attorney, Mario Gallucci, admitted that video surveillance cameras captured Galtieri and his Chrysler Concorde in the park-and-ride lot at 12:30 p.m., but added, "There is no indication that he was there at any time after 12:30 p.m."
Gallucci also maintains that the tape is too grainy to permit identification of the shooter.
The attorney emphasized that no gunshot residue was found on Galtieri's clothes.
Jeff Harrell covers courts for the Advance. He may be reached at harrell@siadvance.com.
http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/1196946133172690.xml&coll=1