May 02 2007
This article originally appeared on June 27, 1998
Marco Trotta, who slapped, punched and bit the life out of his 8 1/2-month-old son will spend at least the next 15 years - and possibly the rest of his life - in a penitentiary - contemplating his "horrible, horrendous" breach of trust.
And baby Paolo's mother, Anisa Trotta, who stood by and covered up as the husband she doted on murdered their son, will spend her next five years away from him, locked up in a woman's prison.
As Mr. Justice Alfred Stong passed sentence on the killer couple yesterday in Ontario Court, general division, in Whitby, a spectator hissed, "Happy Father's Day, Marco!"
The normally stoic judge used strong language directly at the couple - he, 29, she 25 - as he passed sentence.
He said he held Anisa Trotta as responsible as her husband for their first-born son's death.
"She is also guilty of a major breach of trust," he said.
"It is inconceivable that in 8 1/2 months she did not witness any injury to this child. She was aware and she elected to do nothing.
"It is sadistic, twisted irony when viewed from the perspective that so many couples who want to have a child, cannot."
Marco Trotta, who slapped, punched and bit the life out of his 8 1/2-month-old son will spend at least the next 15 years - and possibly the rest of his life - in a penitentiary - contemplating his "horrible, horrendous" breach of trust.
And baby Paolo's mother, Anisa Trotta, who stood by and covered up as the husband she doted on murdered their son, will spend her next five years away from him, locked up in a woman's prison.
As Mr. Justice Alfred Stong passed sentence on the killer couple yesterday in Ontario Court, general division, in Whitby, a spectator hissed, "Happy Father's Day, Marco!"
The normally stoic judge used strong language directly at the couple - he, 29, she 25 - as he passed sentence.
He said he held Anisa Trotta as responsible as her husband for their first-born son's death.
"She is also guilty of a major breach of trust," he said.
"It is inconceivable that in 8 1/2 months she did not witness any injury to this child. She was aware and she elected to do nothing.
"It is sadistic, twisted irony when viewed from the perspective that so many couples who want to have a child, cannot."
Paolo was robbed of his life by the couple, the judge said.
In an effort to show the tiny baby "who was boss, or to deliver macho-type discipline," Trotta made Paolo's short life one of pain and terror.
''As a father, he breached the sacred bond of trust between father and son . . . and that breach is most horrible and heinous."
Stong noted that the abuse began when the boy was about a month old and the "continuous barrage of assaults" proceeded until Paolo died 7 1/2 months later.
On June 12, after an eight-week trial, Marco Trotta, 29, was found guilty of second-degree murder, endangering life by committing aggravated assault, and assault. He had pleaded not guilty to all three charges.
Marco Trotta's lawyer The judge upped the time before he would be eligible for parole to 15 years from the mandatory 10 years, and sentenced him to four years for aggravated assault and three years for the assault. The last two sentences will be concurrent with the life sentence.
Anisa Trotta, 25, had pleaded not guilty to manslaughter, criminal negligence and failing to provide the necessities of life.
She was found guilty of the latter two counts, and yesterday, Stong sentenced her to four years for criminal negligence and one year for failing to provide the necessities of life.
He ordered that she serve the sentences consecutively, for a total of five years.
Trotta's lawyer, Gerald Yasskin, said outside the courtroom that he had already started an appeal of the verdict with respect to the second-degree murder conviction and of the possible lesser verdict of manslaughter.
Trotta, he said, was not the harsh man portrayed by the prosecution.
"He is very quiet, very cold . . . not the warm, friendly person who you would want to have a drink with," the lawyer said. "But my client maintains he did not kill his child."
Yasskin said Trotta would seek to be out on bail pending appeal.
The picture painted of Trotta by prosecutors Sheila Cressman and Paul Murray as an arrogant sadist whose brutality made his tiny, defenceless son's life a hell of bites, beatings, broken limbs and slaps in the head that fractured his skull held true yesterday.
He showed not a flicker of emotion when the judge passed sentence.
Neither did his wife, who stood pressed against his side, with his shiny green suit coat draped over her shoulders against the chill of the air-conditioned courtroom.
Apart from the hiss of "Happy Father's Day," there were only tears in the courtroom as the sentences were delivered.
Before Cressman asked the judge to sentence Marco to the mandatory life term, but to extend the period before he can seek parole to no less than 15 to 18 years, Renata Kepczyk, Anisa Trotta's mother and Paolo's grandmother - who was the prosecution's main witness - spoke to the court.
In a speech that was half a plea for her daughter and half an appeal for punishment, she said Anisa was devoted to her husband and had been "misled and misused" by him.
"Confusion has caused her to show poor judgment," Kepczyk said.
"Anisa is not malicious . . . but she has taken her marriage vows beyond their intent and will stick by her man for better or worst. 'Anisa must be made aware that her children are as important as her husband."
Two other children were taken away from the Trottas by the Durham Region Children's Aid Society.
During the trial, court was told that the society was informed by Kepczyk and others of suspicions that Paolo was being abused. Even after his skull was fractured in January, 1993, nothing was done.
And when he died on May 29, 1993, his death was dismissed as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. A second autopsy, performed when Paolo's body was exhumed on July 20, 1994, found he had suffered three skull fractures, a broken arm and several bruises.