Afterword
Soon after Alex was shot and taken to Brunswick Hospital Center, where he died, that hospital was converted into a psychiatric-only facility and the emergency room was closed and left empty.
A few weeks after the legal proceedings regarding Alex Algeri’s murder were completed, the Honorable Louis J. Ohlig retired from the bench. He is now in private practice on Long Island.
In January 2006, Ohlig declined to allow his photograph to appear in this book. He said that his family was worried about ramifications and he’d rather not have his photo used. He also said that during the court proceedings (he didn’t recall if during trial or pretrial hearings), he and Denise Merrifield received death threats.
It was the first time ever he received death threats and he presided over many high-profile cases, including a death penalty case.
He said, “I never got death threats before. I had around-the-clock police protection at my home, as well as a panic button. The neighbors must have thought we had matrimonial problems. My family was more worried than I was. If they’re going to do something, they don’t tell you. It was still cause for concern. There are a lot of wacky people out there.”
As of August 26, 2005, Ralph Salierno’s defense team continued to work their way through the appeal process.
Paul Riedel still owns the gym at which the murder occurred. He has sole custody of the son he had with Lee Ann.
Riedel’s matrimonial attorney, Steven Constantino, described this case as Beauty and the Beast, adding that it was Lee Ann, a cunningly lethal woman, who was “the beast.” According to Constantino, Riedel is now completely off drugs. Once a manic, late-night bodybuilder, Riedel now stays home at night and grows “love handles from eating Devil Dogs while watching television with his son.”
Michael “Big Balls” Fiaccabrino, childhood buddy of Rocco Salierno’s, who went on to run a marijuana-growing operation, and testify against Rocco and Lee Ann at the trial, was tried for federal drug charges and found guilty. He is currently serving a five-year sentence.
On November 4, 2005, a computer search was made on the Internet for references to the Dolphin Fitness Club address, in Amityville, using a popular search engine. Third among the items found by the search was this:
DOLPHIN FITNESS—Address4Sex—CocksuckerADS—Cruising Stops . . . DOLPHIN FITNESS, AMITYVILLE, NEW YORK, BathHouse/Sauna/Gym, Cruising for sex locations. address4sex.com/newpages/s832686.shtml22k
When the Web site was opened, along with advertisements for sex services unrelated to the gym, there was a listing for the gym with its address and phone number, followed by the editorial comment, apparently supplied by those who maintain the address4sex. com Web site: “Hot action afternoons & late evenings in Showers.” An item added to the Web site in 2004 noted that the club was open twenty-four hours and was great for “cruising.”
Today the place looks just like it did when Alex roamed its rooms. The only difference is in the weight room. Now there is a huge sign on the wall that reads BIG AL’S WEIGHT ROOM.
On October 13, 2005, Lee Ann Armanini Riedel wrote a four-page letter, both sides of two sheets of a wide-ruled loose leaf, in her precise parochial penmanship. As she wrote, she sat in her home, a cell in the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, in Bedford Hills, New York.
She said she was writing to beg for help. She had been sitting in Bedford for two years, in addition to the eighteen months she had spent in the Suffolk County Jail, and she was beginning to feel as if everyone had forgotten her. Being forgotten was, she wrote, “the one thing I always asked to not happen.” Her mind was reeling and she didn’t know quite what it was she was asking. She wanted someone to discover the truth behind Alex Algeri’s murder, so she could be exonerated. She wrote that she didn’t have any money—if she was released from prison, she would make sure to pay back all of her debts in full, even if she had to work “a million jobs.”
“I did not (the word ‘not’ was underlined twice) ask Rocco to kill Paul! Please! You have got to believe me! Mike Fiaccabrino lied about everything! I cannot beg you enough!” she wrote.
She hoped that Bruce Barket could help her more than he had. She wrote that she had wished Barket could have helped her more during her trial as well. She still wondered why she had not been allowed to testify. How could the jury believe she was innocent when her lawyer wouldn’t even allow her to take the stand and defend herself? She finally had come to believe that Barket’s strategy was the smartest, and where had it gotten her? Twenty-five years in stir with no one helping her, that’s where.
She noted that the letter’s addressee was not a member of her family; then she explained that it was really just justice she wanted. The witnesses against her had lied, she complained, often to save their own skins. People she didn’t even know sat on the witness stand and made her out to look like a monster. Something needed to be done.
She agreed that Barket’s defense had been, at times, most eloquent, and his words were easy to listen to—but that didn’t change the fact that he had failed to convince a jury that an innocent woman wasn’t guilty.
“How do you think you would feel? Everyone says the same thing: hang in there, be patient, keep the faith,” she wrote. She had been taken from her babies, who were now little boys. She noted that it had been three years since she had seen Nicholas. She lacked the words to communicate her heartbreak. She concluded, “I can’t take it anymore. I need to fight for my freedom. I need to fight for my life. I hope and pray to hear from you soon.”