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Calling the crime “heinous,” Superior Court Judge Edward A. Jerejian sentenced Edwin Estrada to 60 years in prison — 52 of which he must serve before being eligible for parole — for killing Vincent Leuzzi. Estrada has four years and three months jail credit, which could reduce his time in prison to about 47¾ years.
Estrada smashed the retired 88-year-old mason and bricklayer in the head with a cooking pot in July 2010 after Leuzzi found him rummaging through is house for drug money.
Defense attorney John P. Pieroni, speaking with CLIFFVIEW PILOT afterward, called the sentence “greatly excessive” for a defendant who “has never been convicted of a crime, nor has a prior criminal record on any level — adult, juvenile, domestic violence — and who was 18 years old at the time.”
Pieroni said he will be appealing the sentence, the entire two-month trial and a judge’s rejection of a plea deal that preceded it. He said he will challenge evidence about Estrada’s upbringing, including allegations of sexual assault against him and his sister by their father, a convicted sex offender in Florida.
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor John Higgins, who worked the case the entire four years, said: “I am grateful that this matter is finally closed for a wonderful, yet grieving, family.”
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STORY/FILE PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia
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The victim’s stepdaughter, Filomena Mazzone, yesterday called Leuzzi “a simple yet remarkable man” who enjoyed music, growing his own vegetable and making his own wine.
He was “an American through and through” who served in the U.S. Army, became a naturalized citizen and “took pride in showing us all the buildings he helped to build throughout Bergen County,” she said.
Estrada broke into Leuzzi’s Jersey Avenue home to steal money for himself and the victims’s grandson. Both were drug addicts hoping to support their habits.
Leuzzi died nine days later of what a medical examiner said were eight to 12 blows to the head.
Estrada was arrested in New York City and originally charged in Hackensack with attempted murder and armed robbery. He made things easy for investigators by using Leuzzi’s credit card to buy clothing in Washington Heights, in a transaction captured on surveillance video.
The charges were upgraded to murder after Leuzzi’s death.
Pieroni told jurors during the trial that Estrada came from an abusive family, suffered from bi-polar and anti-social disorders, and first attempted suicide when he was eight. He’d been homeless for weeks and was strung out and hungry, said the lawyer, who blamed Leuzzi’s grandson.
Higgins, in turn, called the attack “extensive and particularly brutal” and Leuzzi “as vulnerable as anyone you will ever see.”
Estrada contended that he’d smoked PCP in Leuzzi’s bathroom, got paranoid and began hitting him with the pot while hearing “the devil” say “do it, do it” in his head.
A state psychiatric expert called by Higgins rejected the account.
After 10 months of negotiations, Estrada pleaded guilty in March 2013 to aggravated manslaughter in exchange for a 27-year prison term. But Presiding Superior Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi nixed the deal and scheduled a trial after family members called for the death penalty.
Jerejian, the sentencing judge, yesterday said Estrada “brutally, viciously and senselessly” bashed in the elderly man’s head after he’d “served his country and his family and was enjoing the simple things of life at that age.
“To invade someone’s home to steal, to rob and to kill is a heinous crime,” the judge said.
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