By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, August 10, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | Two Star B | NEWS | Page A03
A request for parole by Christopher Righetti serving a life sentence for the 1976 rape and murder of a 20-year-old New Milford woman was rejected this week, the state Parole Board’s executive director said Friday.
Robert Egles said the panel, weighing the seriousness of Righetti’s crime, also ordered a hearing on whether his next eligibility date in three years should be delayed.
Kim Montelaro, a journalism and English student at the University of Rhode Island, had gone shopping at Paramus Park Mall when she was abducted on Aug. 31, 1976, raped, then stabbed several times in the chest. Her body was found in a ravine near Washington Township’s Pine Lake Beach Club a few days later.
Righetti maintained through most of his trial that the killing had been an act of self-defense or an accident. In a hearing to determine whether he would tried as an adult, Righetti, then 16, claimed Montelaro lured him into her car, had sex with him, then turned on him with his knife.
Righetti’s lawyer abandoned the self-defense claim on the last day of trial, saying his client should be convicted of manslaughter.
In appeals of his murder conviction, the last one in 1982, a public defender contended Righetti’s police lineup appearance was illegal. The evidence was insufficient to compel Righetti to appear in the lineup during the search for Montelaro’s killer, the lawyer said.
But Righetti’s alibi witnesses failed to show up during his trial and prosecutors proved a knife and sheath found at the scene matched items he admitted purchasing shortly before the killing.
At age 15, Righetti was released from the state Training School for Boys and Girls after serving 13 months for raping an 18-year-old woman in a Bergen County park in 1974. In March 1976, he accosted another woman at knifepoint and demanded a ride home, but charges were not pressed after authorities assured the victim Righetti would receive psychiatric help.
Keywords: NEW MILFORD; MURDER; PRISON; WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP; KIDNAPPING; PARAMUS
ID: 17352075 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)
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