Edition: U.S. / Global

Two 1963 Slayings Still Rouse Passions in Lodi, N.J.

Published: October 3, 1996

The reason is Thomas Trantino.

Not the Thomas Trantino of old photographs, neat in a suit and tie, clean-shaven. Not the Thomas Trantino described by his lawyer as a model prisoner and by corrections officials as ''well-adjusted.''

It is the other Thomas Trantino, the one who pistol-whipped and shot at point-blank range a 40-year-old police sergeant who was responding to a noise complaint at the Angel Lounge, a bar on Route 46.

That Thomas Trantino is the reason the slayings of the sergeant and a 21-year-old police trainee who also answered the call, 33 years ago this August, remain an open wound in Lodi.

A friend of Mr. Trantino's, Frank Falco, who shot and killed the trainee, was killed by the police after a struggle in his midtown Manhattan hotel two days after the officers' deaths.

But Mr. Trantino surrendered. He still lives -- he has most recently been in Riverfront State Prison in Camden -- and has made repeated attempts to be released. Those facts are what has kept the memories of the brutal murder alive.

For many of the 22,000 people of Lodi, a town that is just two and a half miles square in southwestern Bergen County, the day Sgt. Peter Voto and Gary Tedesco were killed, Aug. 26, 1963, remains a part of local lore.

Bill Tullo, now 80, remembers, ''My granddaughter was born in my house that day.''

Anna Belli was 7 and her father was the Mayor of Lodi in 1963. ''I can still remember walking downstairs that morning and hearing, 'Two cops shot dead in Lodi, New Jersey' coming over the radio,'' she said.

Mr. Trantino, 58, has asked to be paroled eight times, more than any other current inmate in New Jersey. Eight times he has been rebuffed. His lawyer was back in court again a couple of weeks ago, appealing a Parole Board ruling last year that Mr. Trantino should not be let out on the ground that he did not acknowledge shooting the sergeant and had tried to blame Mr. Falco, thus showing he was not rehabilitated. The board set his next parole hearing for 2005.

Andrew Voto, the dead sergeant's brother and a retired police chief here, is 70 and partly paralyzed from a stroke a few years ago. But he was outside the latest hearing at the Bergen County Courthouse leading a protest, as he has done during parole or court hearings for Mr. Trantino for the last 16 years. He will persist, he said, ''as long as my brain remains strong.''

So, despite anything that Thomas Trantino might do to try to get beyond that one bloody night -- he has written a book in prison and done several Picasso-like sketches in pen and ink that were exhibited last year in Tokyo and 11 cities in Europe -- there is nothing he can do to erase the memories. His name has become synonymous with evil.

In fact, a few weeks ago, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who was 16 at the time of the murders, visited Bergen County and spoke of a new law in New Jersey that requires execution or life imprisonment without parole for anyone convicted of killing a police officer. She spoke of ''brave family members who have to soldier on without the loved ones'' and ''how difficult it is for victims' families and the community when heinous offenders repeatedly come up for parole.''

And then she added, ''Let's make it clear once and for all: No more Thomas Trantinos.''

The events that led her to make that call began on Aug. 25, 1963. Gary Tedesco's mother, Sadie, 75, remembers saying goodbye to her son as he went out the door that night. He was headed to a party to celebrate his official swearing-in as a police officer, just a few days off.

''I closed the door on him,'' Mrs. Tedesco recalled. ''And I said, 'Don't dare go to the police station tonight. I just had a funny feeling. And he said, 'What could happen to me in Lodi?' ''

Sometime between 2:35 and 3 A.M. on Aug. 26, Sergeant Voto, a father of three, went to the Angel Lounge to investigate a noise complaint. Mr. Tedesco, unarmed and in civilian clothes, tagged along. Inside, both Mr. Trantino and Mr. Falco had had seven or eight double shots of whisky to celebrate a robbery in Brooklyn earlier that night. They quickly overpowered the sergeant and his trainee.

Mr. Trantino pistol-whipped Sergeant Voto, then shot him twice in the head and once in the back. Mr. Falco forced Mr. Tedesco to strip to his underwear, then shot and killed him. After the shooting, both men fled.

Two days later, New York City police detectives traced Mr. Falco to a midtown Manhattan hotel, where they entered his room with a pass key and, after what they described as a fierce struggle, shot and killed him.

Mr. Trantino surrendered to the police later that day. He was convicted of murder in 1964 and given the death sentence. He was still on Death Row in 1972 when the United States Supreme Court overturned the death penalty. Mr. Trantino's sentence was commuted to a life term.

He was on the verge of being paroled in both 1980 and 1988. But the Voto and Tedesco families fought back. His 1980 petition inspired a big police rally outside the Bergen County Courthouse. In February 1988, hundreds of protesters staged a candlelight vigil in 10-degree temperatures in the town amphitheater. Both times, parole was ultimately rejected.