Montelaro Family Provides Video Testimony to Parole Board Wednesday

According to a report in nj.com, the family of Kim Montelaro is providing video testimony to the N.J. parole board opposing the release of her killer, Christopher Righetti. 

in Washington Township in 1976, is up for parole for the fifth time since 1976.  His parole hearing is the result of two bills that were signed during the N.J. legislatures lame-duck session under Gov. Jon Corzine. The bills mandated that inmates who have been denied parole receive a new parole hearing every three years. The bills, A4201 and A4202, called for a panel to review prisoners who had served 20 years or more on their sentences. 

Gov. Chris Christie repealed these laws, but Righetti "fell between the cracks," meaning that anyone who was eligible during the time the bills were signed into law and subsequently repealed are grandfathered in. In previous hearings before the parole board, the Montelaros have had to travel from their home in Florida to press the state to keep Righetti locked away.

Anthony Montelaro, Montelaro's father, told Patch, "He should have been executed when this happened, when he murdered our daughter."

"He'll do it again. ... He's already taken our daughter's life and now we've got to relive that every time that son of a bitch comes up for parole." 

According to nj.com, Montelaro's father Anthony and her brother Paul will testify through a video connection to the parole board in Trenton from a Florida prosecutor's office on Wednesday. The Montelaros and their supporters are asking that Righetti not receive another parole hearing for at least 35 years.

In an interview with Patch, Washington Township Police Chief Randy Ciocco said, "Her death resonated throughout just about every community in Bergen County." 

"I was a rookie cop then," recalled Ciocco. "The day that Kim was kidnapped I remember driving my patrol car past the swim club and seeing a suspicious car, but as I was about to pull into the parking lot I received a call over the radio to investigate a theft at the high school," he said, his voice noticeably shaking.

It was later determined that the suspicious car he saw was Kim's.

"If I had just pulled into that parking lot," Ciocco said.

 Chief Frank Papapietro remembered how the random brutality surrounding her death affected entire communities.

"Kim became everyone's daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend," he said. "The randomness of what happened to her could have happened to anybody. And that absolutely terrified people."

"My sister and cousins knew Kim," he added.

, asked the community to sign an on-line petition sponsored by Representative Robert Schroeder and his group, Keep N.J. Safe, to speak on Montelaro's behalf and at the same time "lend our voices to the thousands of women who have been victimized, but have not come forward

Righetti, who was a 16-year-old, 200 pound teenager from River Vale when he killed Kim Montelaro, had served 13 months in a state juvenile correctional facility for rape, and shortly upon his release had attempted to rape another woman before kidnapping, raping and killing Montelaro.

According to officials, Righetti's formal hearing is scheduled for sometime in June.