Antoinetta Baldassarre a Staten Island housewife pleads guilty to first degree manslaughter of her husband after claiming she’d been the victim of ongoing domestic abuse.
Antoinetta Baldassarre a 69 year old Staten Island housewife on Monday pled guilty to the first degree manslaughter of her then 80 year old husband with a crow-bar at the family home in 2014.
At the time of her arrest, Baldassarre, told cops after bludgeoning her husband, Frank, to death, that she had been the victim of ongoing abuse. Officials said Baldassarre set fire to their garage after the beating, and was charged with arson along with her husband’s murder.
In exchange for her plea, a report via statenisland live told of Baldassarre, facing 15 years in prison and five years parole when she is sentenced on May 30.
The woman had faced 25 years to life if she went to trial and was convicted.
‘I think 15 years is a fair offer, and I could impose that in good conscience,’ state Supreme Court Justice William E. Garnett told the defendant. ‘But I could not, in good conscience, go below 15 years.’
According to court documents, Baldassarre pummeled her husband multiple times in the head and across his body with a crowbar on Oct. 7, 2014, before setting fire to a vehicle located inside a detached garage at their Victory Blvd. home.
‘This defendant has pled guilty and will be held accountable for the violent and brutal crime she committed,‘ said Staten Island DA Michael McMahon.
Matters came to the fore after firefighters raced to the Tompkinsville house just before noon to put out the garage blaze.
As they searched the house for possible victims, they found Francesco ‘Frank’ Baldassarre dead in the bathtub. He died from blunt-force trauma to the head and body, police said.
Antoinette Baldassarre was discovered in the garage with duct tape on her hands.
Officials said she was trying to make the murder look like a home invasion gone awry.
‘I was sick and tired of his abuse,’ she told investigators, according to police sources.
When Judge William Garnett told the defendant to expect a sentence of at least 15 years, Baldassarre said ‘I already did 46 years,’ a reference to the alleged marital abuse, according to the Staten Island Advance.
A report via cbs cited neighbors saying they weren’t aware of any marital problems between the couple.
Told neighbor Kaityn Connors in 2014, ‘They were outside every single day planting their flowers and everything’.
Not necessarily understood is why the wife never left her husband or had previously reported the husband of the alleged transgressions against her….also not necessarily understood is what led the wife after 46 years of finally purging herself of her abuser?
