43
Killer pleads guilty to stabbing wife to death
The defendant faces 15 years to life in prison.
YOUNGSTOWN — The tortuous four-year journey of the murder case of Joseph P. Nazarini through Mahoning County’s justice system is nearly over.
On Monday, Nazarini, 59, pleaded guilty to murder in the Feb. 5, 2004, stabbing death of his wife, Denise, 52, in their Oakley Avenue residence in Boardman.
Nazarini faces 15 years to life in prison when he is sentenced at 9 a.m. July 17 by Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, who accepted his guilty plea the day his jury trial was to have begun.
Had he been convicted of the original charge of aggravated murder, Nazarini would have faced 20 years to life in prison.
When he is sentenced, Nazarini will get credit for more than four years he has spent in the county jail, so his earliest possible release date would be about 11 years from now.
At $68.84 a day, the county has spent some $107,000 so far to house him in its jail since his Feb. 6, 2004, arrest. When he goes to state prison this summer, the state will assume the cost of housing him.
The delay in concluding the case was due to the slowness of psychiatric hospitals, where Nazarini had been a patient, to produce records needed for a psychiatric evaluation of Nazarini, who had earlier pleaded innocent by reason of insanity, agreed Dawn Krueger Cantalamessa, assistant county prosecutor, and J. Gerald Ingram, defense lawyer. The evaluation was never completed.
“We had to issue judgment entries. We had to threaten hospitals with contempt, and we still have one hospital ignoring us,” Ingram said.
The case had been before Judge Maureen A. Cronin, who retired last year. It came before Judge Sweeney after Judge Timothy E. Franken removed himself from it because he led the prosecution of it while he was an assistant county prosecutor.
The victim suffered multiple stab wounds and appeared to have been dead for about 24 hours when police found her body in a bedroom, police said.
Cantalamessa said Nazarini stabbed his wife with kitchen knives, apparently while she slept, and that he gave police a confession. Nazarini stabbed his wife about 8 a.m., sat with her body all day, and called police to the residence and surrendered to them there the next morning, police said. That’s because he believed her employer, Sky Bank in New Castle, would soon call to inquire about her absence from work, police said.
The motive for the slaying was financial distress, police said.
The couple owed at least $50,000 to $60,000 in credit card debt and was facing bankruptcy, Cantalamessa said.
Nazarini, an unemployed substitute teacher, told police he thought he’d have an easier life in jail than facing so much debt, Cantalamessa said.
In a separate $1.2 million civil wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Nazarini by Denise Nazarini’s estate, Judge R. Scott Krichbaum issued a default judgment, declared Nazarini civilly liable for his wife’s death and barred him from reaping any benefit from her death.
“I think it’s a good resolution for him to go to prison, rather than go to a mental institution,” Cantalamessa said. The maximum time he could be in a mental institution is 10 years; and such patients are usually institutionalized less than 10 years, she said.
“I believe he committed the crime of murder and that he wasn’t insane” when he committed it, she added.
milliken@vindy.com