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Frank
MASINI
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Rape - Robberies
Number of victims: 4
Date of murders: November-December 1991
Date of arrest: December 22, 1992
Date of birth: April 14, 1944
Victims profile: Anna Masini, 85 (his aunt) / Michael Krieger, 83,
and his wife, Betty, 78 / Angelina Ialeggio, 80 (a distant relative by marriage)
Method of murder: Stabbing with knife
Location: Essex County/Ocean County, New Jersey, USA
Status: Sentenced to two consecutive life terms, each with thirty years' parole
ineligibility, and to two concurrent terms of life with thirty years'
parole ineligibility on April 30, 1993
A Carpenter Is Suspected In 4
Killings
By Charles Strum - The New York Times
Friday, December 25, 1992
A 48-year-old carpenter from Livingston, N.J., has
been accused of killing an 80-year-old relative last December and is
suspected of killing three other elderly people he had known for years,
law-enforcement officials said today.
The handyman, Frank Masini, was arrested Tuesday and
charged in Ocean County with stabbing Angelina Ialeggio of Lavallette, a
distant relative by marriage. A stolen ring belonging to Mrs. Ialeggio
was found in Mr. Masini's home, officials said. Judge Peter J. Giovine
of Superior Court in Toms River ordered Mr. Masini held in $1 million
bail.
His lawyer, Keith Biebelberg of Springfield, said Mr.
Masini denied killing anyone. He described his client, who emigrated
from Italy when he was 17, as a hard-working family man with two
children who embodied the American dream.
Mr. Masini was charged separately today in Essex
County with illegal possession of .25-caliber and .35-caliber handguns
that were found in his home. A burglary conviction in 1966 prohibited Mr.
Masini from owning firearms. He was also charged with receiving stolen
property, the ring.
Killings Apparently Linked
At the hearing on the gun charge, an assistant Essex
County prosecutor, Norman Menz, asked Judge Joseph A. Falcone to set
bail at $1 million because of evidence that he said appeared to link Mr.
Masini to the other killings.
Mr. Menz said Mr. Masini was suspected in the
Thanksgiving Day killings of a West Orange couple, Michael Krieger, 83,
and his wife, Betty, 78. He said Mr. Masini had done cabinet work for
the Kriegers over the last 12 years. The fourth victim was Anna Masini,
85, a cousin who lived in Orange, where Mr. Masini had a workshop. She
was found dead on Nov. 27, 1991, the day before Thanksgiving.
Mr. Menz said the attacks were similar, involving
elderly victims, stab wounds and sexual assaults on each female victim.
Mr. Masini had also apparently done carpentry at the home of each victim.
And, Mr. Menz told the court, an impression of a shoe belonging to Mr.
Masini matched that of a print found outside the Krieger home.
But Mr. Biebelberg argued that without formal charges,
there was no reason to invoke such high bail. Bail was set at $50,000,
and Mr. Masini was held at the Essex County Jail. The prosecutor's
office declined to say when or whether it intended to file homicide
charges against Mr. Masini in the three Essex County killings.
Found
Stabbed on Thanksgiving
Mr. Krieger, a retired lawyer and finance company
executive, and his wife, a former schoolteacher, were found stabbed to
death on Thanksgiving night after a son called the West Orange police to
say the couple had not arrived at a family party in Manhattan.
The police in West Orange have said that there were
no signs of forced entry and that the apartment had not been ransacked;
the other crime scenes were similar.
The authorities have described the Kriegers as "security-minded"
and unlikely to admit strangers to their home, a possible sign they knew
the attacker.
With the exception of the stolen ring, there was no
evidence offered to suggest a similar motive for each of the slayings.
Frank Masini 1
Masini stopped at his eighty-five-year-old aunt's
home purportedly to use her telephone. While washing out a soda glass in
the kitchen sink, he saw a knife. He repeatedly stabbed his aunt in the
neck, killing her. He also vaginally and anally raped her.
Masini had no prior criminal history, but this was
one of four fatal stabbings he committed against elderly people in a
short timeframe. In the months before this murder, Masini claimed that
he experienced detachments from reality.
Masini pled guilty to murder and received a life
sentence with a thirty-year period of parole ineligibility.
The AOC coded as present the c(4)(g) (contemporaneous
felony) aggravating factor and the c(5)(d) (diminished capacity) and
c(5)(h) (catch-all) mitigating factors.
Frank Masini 3
Two weeks after killing his aunt, Masini was at the
home of an eighty-year-old relative. After talking with her in the
kitchen, he grabbed a knife from the kitchen counter, grabbed the victim
from behind, repeatedly stabbed her in the neck, sexually assaulted her,
and stole her ring. The victim died from the stab wounds.
Masini pled guilty to this murder and received
another life sentence and thirty-year parole bar, which ran concurrently
to the sentence he received for killing his aunt and to the consecutive
life sentences he received for murdering an elderly couple.
The AOC coded as present the c(4)(g) (contemporaneous
felony) aggravating factor and the c(5)(d) (diminished capacity) and
c(5)(h) (catch-all) mitigating factors.
Frank Masini (1 and 3), within a two-week
period in 1991, raped and murdered his eighty-five-year-old aunt and
also raped and murdered an eighty-year-old woman related to him by
marriage. Both victims were sexually assaulted and received multiple
stab wounds in the neck.
In addition, approximately one year later Masini
murdered an elderly couple for whom he had done carpentry work. Because
there was no sign of forced entry at any of the homes of the homicide
victims, suspicion focused on Masini who knew or was related to all the
victims.
Masini lived with his wife and two adult children. He
was a self-employed carpenter with no history of drug or alcohol abuse.
He claimed that in the months preceding the homicides he experienced "detachments
from reality," for which he sought no treatment.
In April 1990, he pled guilty to the murder of his
aunt and of the elderly couple and pled guilty in another county to the
murder of his eighty-year-old relative by marriage. Masini was sentenced
to two consecutive life terms, each with thirty years' parole
ineligibility, and to two concurrent terms of life with thirty years'
parole ineligibility. Other than the reference in the AOC's summary to
Masini's experiencing "detachments from reality," no other factors
surrounding those four homicides suggest an explanation for the
prosecutorial decision to proceed non-capitally against Masini.
