Sports Bettor Finally Admits to 2004 Murder of Long Island Bookie’s Runner
A gambler who took component inwards the 2004 killing of a Long Island bookies’ blue runner has eventually admitted his culpability inwards the case, Newsday reports.
Mark Orlando, then 33, lured Bobby Calabrese, 24, to a deserted industrial country in Island Park, betwixt the mainland and the island of Long Beach.
Orlando had promised to deal over a $17,000 gaming debt to the jr. man. But he had no more intention of paying.
Instead, he and another man, Herve Jeannot, ambushed Calabrese. Orlando held the dupe patch former US leatherneck Jeannot barb him formerly inwards the head word with a .44 caliber revolver. Jeannot shot him ii more times inward the back of the lead as he put down on the ground.
Orlando hoped he could avoid paying the $17,000 debt he owed Calabrese’s hirer by paying $4,000 to Jeannot to persuade out the killing instead.
Mistrial Declared
Now 50, Orlando admitted this for the foremost time around II weeks ago, prosecutors said Monday. He confessed before a judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison.
He had antecedently been serving 25 years to life-time for the second-degree hit of Calabrese. But in 2019, a federal appellate court upturned his original conviction.
The appellate venire ruled a detective’s testimonial that Jeannot had stated Orlando paid him to charge the execution violated the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. The clause guarantees a defendant the right on “to be confronted with the witnesses against” them and bars the admission of sure hearsay evidence.
Jeannot committed felo-de-se at the capital of the Bahamas County Jail inwards 2010, viii hours after his own judgment of conviction for murder.
It’s non sort out what prompted Orlando to plead hangdog at his retrial. But prosecuting officer Stefanie Palma said Monday it proven “what everyone has known for the lastly 16 years, that this defendant had Bobby Calabrese killed.”
‘Subhuman Coward’
Orlando’s conviction at endure ends a long and painful journey for the Calabrese family, who were forced to endure sise trials inwards total o'er 17 years.
Before Jeannot’s eventual conviction, II of his trials ended in hung juries, and the 3rd was stated a mistrial,
“It takes a subhuman coward to regain a sucker to extend out such a sickening enactment … You live you are guilty,” the victim’s mother, Kathy Calabrese, told Orlando Monday, as reported by Newsday. “If it wasn’t for you, Bobby would follow with us.”
Calabrese was a heights schooling grappling champion, who, despite his fatal flirtation with illegal bookmaking, planned to become a police officer the likes of his father. He was due to make the Long Beach Police Department entering scrutiny the twenty-four hour period after he was killed.