“C Number” Prisoner Cases

Patricia Columbo, then 19, arriving for court in 1976. She was convicted of murdering her parents and brother. Opponents fight release of woman who killed her parents and brother.

The sleepy neighborhood in Elk Grove Village still attracts the occasional visitor seeking a glimpse of where one of the northwest suburbs’ grisliest and most notorious crimes took place. The home on Brantwood Avenue has been occupied since 1980 by Rosa Gomez and her family. She said she doesn’t think or talk much about the murders, which occurred four years before she moved in, but acknowledges that if she’d known about them beforehand, she might never have bought the place. For the few neighbors who were there at the time and remain, the memories are distant, but one sentiment seems universal: No one wants to see Patricia Columbo back in the area again. “It was just so appalling. … You did feel quite uneasy. People felt creepy about it for quite a while,” said Beverly Pittelko, who lived a couple of streets away at the time. Columbo, who was 19 at the time of the 1976 murders, was convicted along with her boyfriend, Frank DeLuca, of shooting her parents, Mary and Frank Columbo, slitting Mary Columbo’s throat and stabbing Patricia’s 13-year-old brother, Michael, dozens of times. DeLuca and Patricia Columbo were each sentenced to 200 to 300 years in prison, but the two are up again for parole in May — 35 years after the killings. Columbo has a preliminary parole hearing Thursday. Though Columbo has been up at least 15 times before, most recently in 2008, she has won support from the same two members of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board at her last three attempts at parole. This spring, Columbo will appear before four new board members, though she would need eight votes to win parole. One person intent on making sure that never happens is Mundelein Police Chief Raymond Rose. Not yet 30 when he became the lead investigator on the case as a member of the Elk Grove Village police force, Rose said he will fight against parole for Columbo “until one of us is dead.” “When you see people who’ve been murdered, what makes this so grisly is that it’s an entire family,” said Rose, who plans to travel downstate to Dwight Correctional Center to testify against Columbo’s parole after having done the same at DeLuca’s preliminary hearing at Logan Correctional Center last month. “When you think about that … you can’t forget,” Rose said. “It’s like we’re speaking on behalf of the family because they’re not here to talk for themselves.” Neither of the two Prisoner Review Board members who have voted in favor of Columbo’s parole — Geraldine Tyler and former state Rep. Jesse Madison — could be reached for comment. In explaining her first vote for Columbo’s freedom, in 2006, Tyler has said Columbo is “not the same woman” she was when she killed her family and seemed remorseful. DeLuca, now 72, has never received a vote in favor of parole, parole board officials said. Those “yes” votes for Columbo have re-energized Rose to keep up his fight. He said it worries him that Columbo, now 54, might be gaining sympathy because she was so young at the time of the killings and has been portrayed by advocates as a rehabilitated and well-behaved prisoner. “There are people who say, ‘Poor girl’ … (that) she was suckered in. My question is, who groomed who? Frank DeLuca didn’t groom her. She groomed him,” Rose said, calling Columbo “a very hard personality, very cold, calculating, manipulative. … It’s clear to me that this evilness continues.” Algis Baliunas, one of the prosecutors at Columbo’s trial, said that while over the years he has often questioned the purpose of extended prison sentences, in the case of Columbo, he remains adamant that parole should not be granted. Baliunas, who has been in private practice since 1978, recalled that, years ago, he was asked by Columbo’s attorney if he would support her parole petition. “After the trial, I ended up working on the defense side for a number of years, and after seeing many people who were rehabilitated, I could see how in some instances it is a waste of money to keep people in jail,” Baliunas said. “But in Patricia Columbo’s case, there was never any clear-cut motive for her decision to kill her family in such a vicious manner. … She seemed to have an inability to deal with day-to-day situations, so why take the chance?”

And we thank the Chicago Tribune for a very articulate editorial on why she should not be granted parole 3-3-11:
Every couple of years, we’re forced to revisit the horror of May 4, 1976 — the day Patricia Columbo and her lover murdered her parents and her 13-year-old brother in Elk Grove Village. Columbo’s father was shot four times and bludgeoned with a lamp. Her mother was shot once between the eyes, and her throat was slit. Her brother was shot once and stabbed repeatedly with scissors. All three were found with what looked like cigarette burns on their bodies. Columbo and Frank De Luca both got 200 to 300 years in prison. They began their sentences in September 1977. Go ahead, do the math. Then think about this: Patricia Columbo is preparing to ask the Illinois Prisoner Review Board to let her out. It will be her 17th try. We suppose we should be encouraged that the answer has been no. Or rather: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It’s maddening that Columbo was eligible for parole after serving only eight years, but the board wisely and repeatedly denied her request. On her last three attempts, though, two board members voted yes, cracking open the door that could lead to her release. The board must slam it shut. Columbo and De Luca weren’t eligible for the death penalty because of fortuitous timing: The state’s capital punishment law had been ruled unconstitutional, and lawmakers didn’t pass a new one until 1978. But when supporters of the death penalty talk about wanting to preserve that option for the most heinous crimes, they’re talking about cases like this one. Columbo was 19 at the time of the murders; De Luca was 39, married, with five children. Columbo’s father wasn’t happy about the relationship, and he’d made that clear by knocking out De Luca’s front teeth with the butt of a rifle, according to trial testimony. Two witnesses testified that Columbo agreed to pay them — sex now, cash later — to kill her parents. For five months, they strung her along. They met for trysts, and she provided a floor plan of the home and photos of her family, promising to pay them from her parents’ estate. Columbo and De Luca grew impatient and did the job themselves, prosecutors said. A jury agreed. We’ve had a lot to say about capital punishment lately, and we’ll say it again: Illinois’ system is irreparably broken. Weighing the desire to punish the worst of the worst against the very real risk of executing an innocent person, it’s clear the death penalty must be abolished. Gov. Pat Quinn is considering a bill that would do just that. He should sign it. But crimes like Columbo’s make that a tough decision. They call for harsh — and unwavering — punishment. Her case is among the last under the state’s old parole system, under which prisoners were sentenced to a range of time and allowed to petition for early release. But her sentence, effectively, was life in prison: Nobody expected her to do 200-plus years, only to die trying. Every year or two, though, she’s back before the board, arguing that she’s a different woman. In her 1987 bid, she admitted for the first time that she’d committed the murders. In 1991, she said she’d found “some redemption” by working in an inmate literacy program. “To try and express the regret, I wouldn’t know where to begin,” she said in 2006. Those statements were countered by witnesses like Thomas Epach, who represented the Cook County state’s attorney’s office in 1991, when the board heard Columbo’s fifth request. “We feel strongly that her sentence is just beginning,” he said, calling the murders “the hat trick of evil.” Recalling the gruesome crimes, board member John Stenson, a former Peoria police chief, argued against parole in 2006. “They weren’t only murdered, they were overkilled,” he said of the victims. But Columbo and her lawyers continue to press her case. She’s a model inmate who’s written for the prison newspaper, earned her GED, tutored other prisoners, blah blah blah. None of that comes close to justifying her release. Ever. We’re glad to hear she’s sorry. It suggests she understands why she’s in prison, and why she should stay there.