Ex-Farmingdale Business Owner Sentenced to Three Life Terms

(This story was posted by Joe Dowd. It was reported and written by Ryan Bonner.)

A Dix Hills man who owned several fitness centers in Nassau County, including one in Farmingdale, will spend the rest of his life in jail for his role in the murders of three men between 1994 and 2003.

Christian Tarantino, 46, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Central Islip Wednesday. Tarantino was a co-owner of Synergy Fitness Clubs in Farmingdale, Massapequa, Levittown, Franklin Square and Long Beach, according to prosecutors.

Following jury trials in 2011 and 2012, Tarantino was convicted of participating in an armored car robbery in June 1994 during which a 47-year-old guard was shot and killed; orchestrating the August 1994 murder of an associate in that robbery, whose body Tarantino dumped from a boat several miles off the coast of Long Island; and, conspiring to murder a long-time confidant, who had threatened to take evidence of the first two murders to the FBI.

“For almost a decade, Christian Tarantino was a one man crime spree, engaging in armed robbery, murder and murder conspiracy to cover his tracks,” United States Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a press release. “He controlled his confederates the old-fashioned way - by murdering them.

In sentencing him, Judge Joanna Seybert said Tarantino had shown no remorse, and called him "a violent, cruel, cunning person who chose to commit crimes," according to Newsday.

Tarantino had claimed his innocence, and said, "I feel terrible about what happened to all the families" of the dead men. His attorney, Todd Sher, said he planned to appeal the convictions.

Tarantino was convicted in 2011 of the 1994 murders of guard Julius Baumgardt, 47, of Lindenhurst during a Muttontown armored-car robbery, and the murder of one of the robbery participants, Louis Dorval, 30, of Elmont and East Meadow. According to testimony, Tarantino feared that Dorval would become an informant, Newsday reported.

He was later charged and convicted of a third man's death.