FATHER CHARGED WITH KILLING INFANT; ACCUSED OF BEATING BOY

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, September 29, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

A 24-year-old Cliffside Park man has been charged with beating his 11-month-old son to death, Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy said Saturday.
Paul Yarwood Jr. was arrested at 11:59 p.m. Friday after autopsy results showed that his son, Paul Courtney Yarwood, died from a subdural hematoma bleeding in the head that Fahy said was caused by repeated blows.
“The baby had bruises in the forehead, near the eyebrow, buttocks, and thighs, and on the left and right arms,” Fahy said. “We believe the assault happened on a number of occasions between Tuesday night and Thursday afternoon, when he [Yarwood] called 911. ”
Yarwood took the infant from his mother, 20-year-old Allandra McCray of the Bronx, about 9 p.m. Tuesday.
“The baby was going to stay with him for a few days,” Fahy said. At 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Yarwood called 911 for an ambulance to take the infant to a hospital, Fahy said.
The boy died two hours and 15 minutes later in the emergency room of Palisades General Hospital in North Bergen, he said.
Yarwood, who could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted on the murder count, was being held on $500,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail on Saturday. Fahy said McCray, a clerk at a New York law firm, was not implicated in her son’s death.
Yarwood moved to his Cliffside Park apartment about a week ago, Fahy said. Before then, he had lived for four years in the Bronx, then for four months in Manhattan.
Yarwood did odd jobs at Funky Base Productions, a recording company at 12 Mevan Drive, Englewood, including serving as a backup singer on recordings, a disc jockey, and, sometimes, a bouncer, Fahy said.
Rob Base, owner of the company, said Yarwood also performs with a rap band that Base formed four years ago. The group performs worldwide, he said.
“I know he didn’t do it not him, man,” Base said. “That’s why I’m still in shock now. I just can’t believe it.”
Base said the group was working to raise bail and hire a lawyer for Yarwood.

Keywords: ASSAULT; CLIFFSIDE PARK; CHILD; BABY

MAN KILLS ESTRANGED WIFE, SELF; SLITS HER THROAT AND CUTS HIS OWN

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, February 17, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A01

About 7:30 a.m. Friday, the day Mladen Fatovic was going to die, he called his supervisor at work, said he was not feeling well, and asked for the day off.
Sometime before 3 p.m. that day, the 48-year-old man went to the home of his estranged wife in Cliffside Park and slit her throat.
He then went back to the Little Ferry apartment he moved into at the outset of the couple’s separation about six months ago and killed himself, Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy said.
Fatovic had cuts to his throat, his wrist, his chest, “all over his body,” Fahy said.
A kitchen knife with a 8-inch blade, believed to have been used in both killings, was found in Fatovic’s bedroom, Fahy added. A note at the scene indicated the death was suicide, he said.
Autopsies will be performed today on the bodies of Fatovic and his wife, Marija, 43, Fahy said. The post-mortems are expected to confirm the cause and exact time of the deaths; otherwise, the investigation is considered closed, he said.
Henry Fatovic, the couple’s 20-year-old son, had left their Cliffside Park home for work about 7 a.m., and their other son, Robert, 21, left about an hour later. Henry Fatovic discovered his mother’s body in the bedroom when he returned home from work about 3 p.m. Friday, and called police.
“Her throat was slashed and it appears that she bled to death,” Fahy said.
There were signs of struggle in the house, Fahy said, but the door was locked when Henry Fatovic returned home and there was no sign of forced entry and no indication that anything was taken from the house.
Investigators went to Fatovic’s apartment because he had a key to the family house, Fahy said.
Homicide investigators from the Prosecutor’s Office, Cliffside Park police detectives, and Little Ferry police arrived at 36 Marshall Ave. in Little Ferry about 4 p.m. to find Fatovic’s fully clothed body on the bedroom floor, he said.
On Saturday afternoon, at the modest single-family West End Avenue home in Cliffside Park, the mail was uncollected and the porch light was on. An old Chevrolet truck with a “For Sale” sign in the window was in the driveway, in front of a blue Ford Thunderbird.
No one was home, and neighbors were not talking. A 20-year-old man who said that he had worked for four years at Shop Rite with Henry Fatovic and that he knew the family well said he never noticed any discord. He said he was shaken by the deaths, and declined to give his name.
Nino Fatovic of Little Ferry would say no more than that Mladen Fatovic was his brother. Neither son could be reached.
Marija Fatovic was an aide at North Bergen Senior Citizens Nutrition Center. The center could not be reached for comment.
David Ivanac, 49, supervisor at Rochelle Park’s FIMS Manufacturing Corp., where Fatovic was an assembly-line machinist, said he was a good, hard-working man who was sometimes impatient and hot-tempered.
“He loves his wife so much; he was so jealous,” Ivanac said. “I said to him, `Stay away. You know, two people, they can’t live together. These are nice people, no question about it.
“I can expect him to do something, like walk away, or something like that, but never something like this. “
Ivanac said he and Fatovic knew each other as children in Sestrunj, a small island of about 500 people, near Zadar in the Croatian republic of Yugoslavia, but weren’t friends then. They worked together in France for about 11 years and came to the United States about seven years ago, he said.
The Fatovics lived with his wife’s brother for a few months before moving to the West End Avenue home, Ivanac said. He said he did not know the cause of the couple’s separation.
Fahy said the couple was in the process of getting a divorce.
Ivanac said Fatovic often worked about 50 hours per week, but that he left an hour early Thursday to have dinner with his son Henry. Then he called in sick Friday morning.

Keywords: MURDER; FAMILY; SUICIDE; CLIFFSIDE PARK; LITTLE FERRY; MLADEN FATOVIC

POLICEMAN’S ELBOW SLAMMED IN CHASE

Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, November 14, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B03

A borough police officer was injured Monday evening when a suspect he was chasing allegedly slammed the door of a house on his elbow, police said.

Anthony Masucci of San Francisco was charged with aggravated assault, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct, and was released on $6,000 bail, said Cliffside Park Detective Sgt. Donald Umland.

Umland said the injury is expected to keep Officer Frank Biasco out of work for three weeks.

The incident occurred about 5:45 p.m., when Biasco came upon a 1972 Chevrolet pickup that he thought was abandoned on Lafayette Avenue, Umland said. He said Biasco found that its registration had expired.

Masucci, who walked up and identified himself as the owner of the truck, became angry when Biasco asked him about the registration, Umland said.

Biasco requested assistance, and was joined by a Fort Lee patrolman and a Fairview police officer.
Umland said Masucci, 34, fled on foot, running up the driveway of a residence at 42 Lafayette Ave., and slammed the side door on Biasco as the officer chased him.

The other officers then wrestled with Masucci as he came out of the front door of the house, and arrested him, Umland said.