UPDATED: Ending Long Saga, DiGirolamo Sentenced to 25 Years for Killing Giordano

A Superior Court judge accepted a plea deal today, Wednesday, and sentenced Rosario DiGirolamo to 25 years in prison on the charge of aggravated manslaughter, concluding the saga in a crime that has shocked Hightstown and drawn national attention.

DiGirolamo, 36, who also lived in Millstone with his wife, to killing his 27-year-old mistress, Amy Giordano, with a hammer during an argument on June 8, 2007 in Giordano's apartment above the . He then abandoned their child, Michael, in the parking lot of a Delaware hospital.

The sentence is part of a plea deal DiGirolamo made with the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office in order to avoid a murder trial that could have resulted in a life sentence. He will have to serve at least 85 percent of that sentence, more than 21 years, in state prison before being eligible for release. When that occurs, he will be under parole supervision for five years.

Al Garcia, one of the two assistant county prosecutors on the case, described Giordano’s last moments alive. She was last seen on surveillance video at the Shop Rite on Route 130, where she was shopping with DiGirolamo and their young son.

“Amy Giordano thought that she was at Shop Rite with the man she loved,” he said. “She thought she was starting a new life, that she was getting a new job and a new apartment, but on June 8, due to the defendant’s actions, that dream ended with the whack of a hammer.”

He also cited a letter sent to the court by Marsha Kaller-Apter, the elder biological sister of Giordano, who was adopted as a young child.

In it, Kaller-Apter touches on the forces of family and the misfortunes that separated her and Giordano from each other and the rest of their family as children and then left Giordano estranged from her adoptive family later on. Kaller-Apter said she didn't know Giordano's whereabouts from the ages of 3 to 17, and then lost track of her again over a decade ago, after Giordano had split with her adoptive parents.

"There is a spot in my life that can't be filled. That was Amy's spot. It was the spot where we made plans of getting together, the spot that she always had in my heart from the time long before she could walk or talk," Kaller-Apter wrote. "It's the spot where our children were supposed to get together and play and the spot where we would finally be together again. Even though we lost track of each other we always had a spot in our hearts for each other."

"Now the plans are all cancelled and there isn't even hope left," she also wrote. "All our plans and our hopes are gone. There are no more chances. She will never call me again."

Judge Edward M. Neafsey accepted the plea deal, but he also took aim at DiGirolamo’s motives and his behavior after the death of Giordano.

"The time for remorse was the day you killed Amy Giordano, not on judgement day," he said.

DiGirolamo has claimed that his girlfriend lunged at his crotch with a prybar before he struck her with a hammer, killing her. But at the where DiGirolamo agreed to the plea deal, Judge Neafsey first ruled he would admit evidence DiGirolamo had searched the phrase “martial arts lethal blows to the back of the head” on Google just days before Giordano’s death. The search was made on the computer provided to him through his then-employer, ConAir, and DiGirolamo made an attempt to erase the traces of the search, county prosecutors said.

“He obviously understood how to kill another human being with a blow,” Judge Neafsey said in court today. “This court rejects the argument that it was in the heat of passion.

“This was his decision to eradicate her, and that was to eliminate her completely from his life,” he said.

Judge Neafsey called DiGirolamo’s actions “particularly heinous” in light of the fact he did not seek help for Giordano after the allegedly accidental blow, dismembered the body and disposed of at least part of it in Staten Island, N.Y., abandoned their child and then fled to Italy.

The prosecutor’s office has cited John Russo Jr., a friend of DiGirolamo's who told county officials he helped his friend dispose of the body. He took them to Staten Island and led them to only parts of Giordano that have been found so far. Her arms, legs, head, neck, and part of her pelvis are still missing and are not being actively sought.

“You failed to take any steps to help her or to seek help,” Neafsey said to DiGirolamo about the aftermath of the hammer blow. “I believe this was because you were already considering how to dispose of the body. Even in death you didn’t give respect to Amy Giordano.”

“By killing her you rid yourself of having her in your life, but that was not enough, and you rid yourself of the evidence that could be used to convict you,” he continued.

Clad in an orange jumpsuit, DiGirolamo did not make a statement, speaking to the judge only in one-word answers.

Outside the courthouse, his attorney, Jerome Ballaratto, said DiGirolamo chose not to speak because “there was nothing to say” and that talking “wasn’t going to mitigate what he did.”

The evidence against his client, Ballaratto said, “would have made it hard to tell our story.”

Ballaratto also said DiGirolamo “doesn’t know” where the remaining parts of his former mistress’ body is.

Garcia and Thomas Meidt, the other assistant county prosecutor on the case, said on the steps of the courthouse that they were satisfied with the decision. “It was a good result,” Meidt said. “You never know what’ll happen with a jury.”

“I believe justice was served,” Garcia said.

This article was updated at 3:20 p.m. with exceprts of the letter from Marsha Kaller-Apter, and before that at 2:39 p.m. with a correction. Al Garcia was erroneously referred to as Andrew in an earlier version of this article.