Chapter 22

Custody and Visitation Battle

In a deposition dated May 28, 2002, Paul Riedel used the murder of Alex Algeri and his wife’s alleged involvement as a reason to improve his custody and visitation situation with his son, Nicholas.

With the help of his lawyer, Steven Constantino, Paul sought to have custody of the infant transferred to him, and an order restraining “the child’s removal from the State of New York.” The order would have to supercede the November 16, 2001, order of a Broward County, Florida, court that gave custody of Nicholas to Lee Ann while allowing Paul visitation rights.

In the section subtitled “Background of the Action,” the statement said that Paul and Lee Ann were married on July 30, 1999. Nicholas was the only child born of that marriage, on February 24, 2000, at Good Samaritan Hospital, in West Islip, New York.

During mid-June 2000, Lee Ann “fled” New York State, the deposition stated, taking Nicholas with her, and went to live in Florida with her mother. Paul responded on August 25, 2000, with a simultaneous court order directing Lee Ann to return to New York and a divorce action.

On September 21, 2000, a New York judge determined that New York was Nicholas’s home state and he could not be taken out of state without his father’s consent. Lee Ann and Nicholas were represented by Donna England, a court-appointed law guardian.

The outcome of that hearing, according to the deposition, was that Nicholas had to live in New York State, and Paul had a right to visit his son regularly as long as he attended a Smart Parenting Program, which was monitored by the court. Lee Ann complied with the court order and moved to New York in early October 2000.

A section of Paul Riedel’s deposition was entitled “The Conspiracy.” It stated that, unbeknownst to him, in mid-July of 2000, prior to the respondent’s return to New York for the evidentiary hearing conducted by Judge Kent, she, her mother, Patricia Armanini, and her mother’s life partner, Elizabeth Budroni, had selected one Ralph Salierno and a third party whose name he didn’t know to murder him.

The deposition stated that it was “apparent” that Elizabeth Budroni had met Salierno while working out at a gym in Florida and had arranged a meeting with Salierno, Lee Ann, Pat, and this unknown third party to plan Paul’s murder.

Paul noted in his statement that he had been partners with the murder victim in a health club on Montauk Highway, in Amityville. He stated that Alex Algeri had been his best friend. He had been the best man at Paul and Lee Ann’s wedding. He was the godfather of baby Nicholas. Paul noted that he and Al drove identical black Yukon sport utility vehicles. Both vehicles had identical stickers on their rear windows. Paul, however, worked the night shift, from 5:00 P.M. until 12:00 A.M. every night except Wednesday.

The only time Al worked the night shift was Wednesday nights, which was Paul’s normal day off. Since they never worked a shift together, each parked his vehicle in the exact same spot—the parking space immediately behind their “headquarters” rear door.

Paul stated that the murder had taken place at approximately 7:30 P.M. on a Wednesday in January. There had been an aerobics class going on. There were always classes going on in the gym during the evening. Apparently, at the request of one of the patrons, Al exited the rear door of the gym to retrieve certain CDs from his vehicle to play over the gym’s sound system during the aerobics session.

“Unbeknownst to Al, at the time he exited the gym to retrieve those CDs, the above-referenced Ralph Salierno and Scott Paget (who also resides in Florida) were waiting in the parking lot in a rented van they had driven from Florida to conduct the murder of me that had been planned by the respondent, her mother, and Elizabeth Budroni, for nearly one and a half years,” Paul wrote. Al retrieved the CDs and turned to reenter the gym. Salierno and Paget exited the rented van, and shot him three times in the head and back. Alex, mortally wounded, had stumbled to the rear entrance of the gym, collapsed on the floor, and died shortly thereafter. That concluded Paul’s description of his friend’s murder.

The next section of Paul’s deposition was called, “Respondent Returns to the State of Florida with My Consent.” Paul wrote that, following the murder of Alex, he had allowed Lee Ann and Nicholas to return to Florida. Lee Ann had consulted with a Suffolk County detective, who had advised her that he believed there was a contract out for Paul’s life. Paul wrote that Lee Ann had gotten herself into a hysterical state.

Lee Ann had told Paul again and again that she felt the murder had been a mistake. She felt the murderers were contract killers whose target actually had been Paul. She convinced Paul that the situation was not only dangerous to Paul, but to her and Nicholas as well. That was why she and the baby had to leave New York.

Lee Ann eventually had convinced Paul that those bullets were meant for him, so he agreed to go away with her. Paul wrote that he’d been completely unaware of her participation in the conspiracy to murder him. Paul wrote that he consented to her request to return to Florida with Nicholas, and even went so far as to accompany them on their journey and assist them in setting up house. Lee Ann, Paul wrote, established a formal residence in Florida in February 2001.

In the following section of the deposition, entitled “The Florida Action,” Paul pointed out that Lee Ann was very quick to see a lawyer once she got out of New York State. The timing had been suspiciously perfect. As soon as she established the Florida residency requirement, she served Paul with divorce papers. It was then that Paul retained Steven Constantino as his divorce lawyer, and a custody order was issued in Florida that allowed Paul to have visitation rights. Paul got “extensive overnight visitation with Nicholas in New York for at least one full week of each month and four weeks over the summer.”

The affidavit then commented on what a great father Paul was. He noted that his home was equipped with all of the facilities and toys a small boy would need. He wrote that he and his son had a fabulous relationship: “During our visits I bathe him, feed him, attend to his needs, and spend quality time with him. I am intimately familiar with Nicholas’ needs, his schedule, and all items necessary to properly care for him.” Paul noted that although he worked full-time managing two fitness centers, both of those facilities contained “certified child care nurseries.” Each facility, he noted, was staffed by licensed child-care professionals. While Paul was working, it was always assured that Nicholas would get the care he needed.

The next section of Paul’s statement was called “Murder Case Broken.” Paul wrote that the Suffolk County Police Department homicide squad had conducted a long yet eventually successful investigation into the murder of his friend Alex. Paget and Salierno had been arrested on April 13, 2002—Paget in Florida and Salierno in Scarsdale, New York. The pair were charged with the murder of Alex Algeri. During their interrogations by law enforcement, both men had admitted to being present at the scene behind the gym at the time of the shooting, but each side maintained that the other had pulled the trigger.

At the time of Paul’s statement, Paul noted, both Salierno and Paget had been indicted by a Suffolk County grand jury. Salierno was arraigned before Judge Louis Ohlig on April 23, 2002, and Paget was awaiting extradition proceedings in Dade County, Florida. That was outrageous enough, Paul wrote. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Lee Ann had also continued to cuckold him. The affair between Lee Ann and Salierno proceeded until they bore a child together in January 2002.

The next section was called “Respondent’s Involvement in the Murder Conspiracy.” Paul noted that he had been told that Lee Ann, her mom, and Liz Budroni had all made sworn statements to police in which they admitted to recruiting Salierno and a third party (who had not yet been arrested). According to Paul’s understanding, Salierno and his accomplice’s job had been to travel from Florida to New York to commit a crime against him.

The unknown accomplice Paul mentioned would have been Richie Pollack, who backed out of the deal and, as it turned out, would never be arrested in connection with Alex’s murder. Paul noted that because of confidentiality agreements over which he had no control, Paul actually had not read the sworn statements by Lee Ann, her mom, or Liz.

However, the statements had been described to Paul and it was Paul’s belief that, in Lee Ann’s sworn statement, she had said that she admitted to asking Salierno and his friend to come up North to commit a crime against him, but that she denied that the object of the exercise was to murder him.

Paul stated that it was clear that Lee Ann had committed acts following the solicitation of Salierno and his friend, that, according to New York law, made her guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and murder in the second degree. He noted that as he was writing, Lee Ann remained a free woman.

Paul insisted that he could prove that Lee Ann was involved in the murder. Neither her mother and Liz, nor Salierno and Paget, could have arranged the hit without Lee Ann’s cooperation, Paul insisted.

There were several reasons for this. None of the others had ever been to the Amityville gym. In fact, they’d never been to Amityville. They had no idea how the building was laid out. They didn’t know that there was a rear parking lot, that Paul drove a black Yukon SUV, or where he usually parked it when he was working. Only Lee Ann had that information.

Based on the fact that Lee Ann had talked him into allowing her to go to Florida under false pretenses, she had planned to have him killed, and only a quirk of fate had led to the tragedy of a wrong man being killed.

Despite the fact that Lee Ann hadn’t yet been arrested by Suffolk County police, he wrote, it was Paul’s understanding of the situation that both Lee Ann and her mother, Pat, were to be arrested.

When the day of his wife’s and mother-in-law’s arrest came, Paul noted, Nicholas was going to need a new full-time caretaker and he was the obvious choice. Other than her mother, Paul noted, Lee Ann had no other relatives in Florida. “Based upon the foregoing,” Paul’s statement said, “I am begging this Court to invoke the emergency provisions of the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act.”

Paul wrote that if it weren’t for the blunders of his assassins, he would be dead today and Nicholas would have had to grow up without a father. Instead, he would have been raised with Ralph Salierno as his father—Ralph Salierno, a murderer.

That fact alone, Paul explained, should be enough to win him custody of his son. The mother was a murderer, and the father isn’t. As a custody issue, it was a simple matter of black and white.

The statement was signed by Paul Riedel, then stamped and signed by a Suffolk County notary public. Constantino, Paul’s lawyer, simultaneously made his own deposition, which reiterated the facts and theories in Paul’s statement, and was meant to reinforce Paul’s allegation that an emergency existed and he should be granted custody of Nicholas immediately.

If the Suffolk County prosecutors were looking for a strategy by which they could use the testimony of Pat Armanini and Elizabeth Burdroni against Lee Ann—prosecuting neither two nor five for the murder, but rather three—Paul’s divorce lawyer had just laid it out for them.

As a brief regarding how to prosecute a murder case, the statement had value. According to Judge Marion T. McNulty, of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Suffolk County, it had considerably less value as a custody argument. Judge McNulty refused to sign the order that would have transferred custody of Nicholas to Paul Riedel based on the “emergency circumstances.” In a handwritten addendum Judge McNulty said he refused to sign because Paul had failed to show that an emergency existed and therefore his court lacked jurisdiction over the matter.