Andy Thibault

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Cool Justice, 
A Daughter's Quest For Justice
By ANDY THIBAULT, Columnist
Law Tribune Newspapers
May 2, 2005

Mary Pellicci, 7, sat at the dinner table with her Dad, Mom and two brothers. Her Dad had built the house on a secluded lot in the woods of north Stamford. It was 1972.

Joe Pellicci, she said, was a very loving father. He was jovial. He loved to play around. "I recall dinner times when he would fool around and tease us in a loving way."

Photos from this era show young Mary adoring her Dad, the former baseball and basketball player for St. Basil's Prep and J.M. Wright Technical School, still trim and muscular in his slacks and t-shirt. He was 31 years old. It was the way things are supposed to be.

A year later, Joe Pellicci would be gone forever.

Joe Pellicci, a co-owner of the renowned Pellicci's restaurant, was reported missing and found a month later in North Salem, N.Y. with two bullets in his head. A blanket was tied around his head with a cord. Police are not sure whether he was killed in Stamford, Greenwich or New York. But, detectives say they have known the identity of Pellicci's killer or killers for more than 30 years.

Distinctive fibers from the blanket and the cord were found in one suspect's car. This suspect still lives in Stamford; the other died.

Mary Pellicci, now 40, is a clinical art therapist. She helps children who have been abused, working at a community agency in Bridgeport. She also runs support groups for Survivors of Homicide and serves as vice president of the statewide organization.  She met last month with Westchester County prosecutors, having been assured by detectives three years ago that evidence was being analyzed. Now, authorities are having a difficult time locating evidence in storage. Apparently, it never was analyzed.

"It's so frustrating," she said. "This evidence needs to be analyzed with today's technology. The Westchester DA could just snap her fingers and say, `Pull this - analyze it now.' They need to take responsibility for locating the evidence."

With the help of Connecticut's victim advocate, Pellicci is trying to have the state establish a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer. Once the evidence is located, Dr. Albert Harper of the Henry Lee Institute of Forensic Science at the University of New Haven has agreed to analyze it.

"Some of the authorities think we watch too much TV and have grandiose ideas about what can be done," Pellicci said. "It's quite offensive, because I don't watch TV, except for the news. I don't watch any type of drama or trial show because our lives are filled with the reality of it. Why would we turn to that for entertainment?

"Today's technology gave me hope. It's now or never. Three years ago police led me to think they were very close. That's what infuriates me now. They were going to go to the DA's office and request an indictment. That never happened. It's not fair to a family to promise that and just let the case sit there for three more years."

The lead investigator in Stamford when Pellicci disappeared was Lt. Larry Hogan. Hogan later became famous as a dope-dealing murderer on the mob payroll.

Things haven't gotten much better for the Pellicci's over the years. In 2000, the Stamford police announced they were taking another look at the case. Still, no one has retrieved the evidence. My question is: Why are the people in Connecticut and New York responsible for this dereliction still getting paychecks?

"With the fact that there has been police corruption since day one in this case," Mary Pellicci said, "it doesn't take much to fathom that this could be another extension of that, or just lazy police work." 

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