Calzacorto gets life sentence
CLEARWATER, Fla. -- A former Donora man under a cloud of suspicion in the 1986 slaying of his police lieutenant father was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for murdering a Florida woman.
Brian Calzacorto avoided the possibility of execution because jurors concluded his victim was already unconscious when he raped and stabbed her 16 times in the heart, they said after a five-hour sentencing hearing.
Murder victim Laurie A. Colannino did not suffer enough for her killer to qualify for the death sentence, jurors decided in a 7-5 vote.
Circuit Judge Brandt Downey, who under Florida law must give great weight to the jury's recommendation, immediately sentenced Calzacorto to life in prison.
Jurors who did vote for the death penalty said they were even more disappointed at the outcome after learning afterward -- from the judge -- that Calzacorto, 39, remains the only named suspect in the 1986 shooting death of Donora police Lt. Alfred Calzacorto Sr.
Downey previously had ruled that it would be too prejudicial for the Colannino jury to hear about the unresolved Pennsylvania case.
After the sentencing, however, Downey took time to answer questions from six of the jurors who lingered at the courthouse.
The jurors said they were comforted to learn that life in prison will be very unpleasant for Calzacorto. They said Downey tried to explain the legal reasons why they could not be told of the elder Calzacorto's slaying. The judge also told them the law allowed Calzacorto's mother and sister to testify at the sentencing hearing, while the Colannino family had to sit silently in the audience.
"The testimony from his mother was very powerful,'' said a juror who did not want to be named. "Still, this girl, 23 years old -- alone in her own apartment, the safest place you can be -- was strangled, stabbed and raped.''
Juror Shannon Easler said she voted for death, and felt even more strongly about it after hearing about the unsolved Pennsylvania case.
"I don't think justice was done,'' Easler said.
"Our hearts were torn out by this,'' juror Todd Lindgren said.
On the witness stand yesterday, Mary Ann Calzacorto made an impassioned plea for her son's life.
"I am asking you to spare his life. I love him,'' said the woman, who now lives in Tampa. "I'm 73 years old, and I don't know how much time I have left on this earth.''
Mary Ann Calzacorto described for jurors how Brian and his twin brother, Alfred Jr., grew up as well-behaved children in the small-town atmosphere of Donora.
Brian was an altar boy and Cub Scout who played catcher in both Little League and later at Robert Morris College, the woman said.
"After college he decided to come to Florida,'' she said.
Brian Calzacorto left his native Donora on the day his father was killed and later settled in Clearwater, where he lived in the same apartment complex as Colannino. The waitress and part-time aerobics instructor's front door could be seen from Calzacorto's apartment, and she was known to leave her door open so her cat could come and go.
A boyfriend discovered the woman's body the afternoon of Jan. 2, 1990. She had been strangled and stabbed 16 times in the heart, and there was semen on her body that detectives believed contained the killer's DNA.
Calzacorto did not become a suspect in the case until 1994, when detectives on the Pinellas County Sheriff's cold-case squad began looking at every man who lived at Colannino's apartment complex. They zeroed in on Calzacorto after learning of his father's unsolved homicide but were stonewalled when he refused to submit to DNA testing.
Detectives were unable to solve the case until early 2001, by which time the science of DNA testing had advanced to the point where they no longer needed the suspect to submit to a blood test to get a sample large enough to test against the semen.
By then, all they needed was a trace of saliva. And they got it by rooting through Calzacorto's trash for items such as cigarette butts and part of an electric razor.
But what might have been an open-and-closed case was complicated by the fact that Brian's twin brother, Alfred Calzacorto Jr., has identical DNA and lived about 20 miles away in Tampa at the time Colannino was killed. But they eliminated him as a suspect after becoming convinced Alfred Jr. was at work in Tampa during the short time frame in which Colannino was killed.
All five jurors who agreed to be interviewed yesterday said Calzacorto might have been found innocent if either he or his identical twin had acknowledged having sex with Colannino, thus explaining why semen matching the brothers' DNA was found on the body.
Had either brother acknowledged the contact, it would have jibed with the defense contention that Colannino's boyfriend killed her in a jealous rage after discovering she had been with one of the brothers, jurors said. But on the witness stand last week, both Calzacorto twins denied knowing her or having any contact with her.
Lindgren said the contrast between the identical twin brothers was striking.
"It was like a good twin and an evil twin, like Cain and Abel,'' the juror said.
Unlike in the Colannino case, Calzacorto became a suspect in his father's slaying almost immediately after it was discovered to be a homicide. He was at the home alone with his father on the morning of the slaying, and there was no sign of forced entry or burglary.
State Trooper Edward Pauley, who headed the original investigation, testified at a coroner's inquest that he could find no motive for the killing. But he did say there was friction between the father and son, who had recently graduated from college but did not have a job.
During the inquest in January 1987, Mary Ann Calzacorto, Alfred Jr., three daughters and two sons-in-law exercised their Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions 130 times among them. The coroner's jury later recommended Brian Calzacorto be charged with homicide and that family members be prosecuted for allegedly covering up the crime.
A handful of family members were charged, but none were convicted, and Brian Calzacorto was never charged.
