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The sentence meted out by Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi in Hackensack was for bail jumping, obstruction of justice and contempt of court.
Because of the nature of the crimes, Paul Kramer must serve at least 4½ more years behind bars once he is paroled in 2024 from the flat 15-year term that he began serving in January 2012 for the attempted murder.
Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
As a result, Kramer, 34, will likely be 50 years old by the time he’s released.
“I’m sorry, your honor,” Kramer told the judge, saying that his mental state at the time of his escape was so severe that he seriously considered suicide.
If Kramer should apologize to anyone, DeAvila-Silebi indicated, it should be to his family, who put up their home as surety for his bail and are now on the hook for $100,000.
“They care for you deeply,” the judge said, “and it’s ironic that you did this with no regard for them.
“You have caused great pain to your family,” DeAvila-Silebi said, adding that this factored into her sentence. “You in essence put their whole life in jeopardy.
“I don’t know how much their house is worth and how they will bear this financially,” the judge said. Fleeing as he did, she said, caused “a cascade of expenses for them and for law enforcement.”
Kramer was living with his parents in Mahwah while out on bail before his sentencing on an attempted murder conviction. Kramer broke into a Lodi man’s house in 2009, lay in wait for him and then stabbed the man’s brother repeatedly when he came home instead.
Early the morning of Sept. 22, 2011, Kramer cut off his monitoring bracelet and fled his parents’ East Mahwah Road home.
He abandoned his mother’s Chrysler PT Cruiser in the parking lot at Ravi Continental Cuisine a short distance away, where an employee found it later that day.
Police initially brought in helicopters and tracking dogs, searching a 65-acre quarry in Suffern. They later operated on the theory that Kramer either hopped a train or caught a ride. They even searched his former Orange County home near Middletown.
A tip two months later led authorities to a bus station in Springfield, Missouri, where they found him.
“So many agencies were involved in locating and capturing [him],” Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time, citing the tireless work of his own officers, detectives from the New Jersey State Police and Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, police in Mahwah, Ramapo, Suffern and the village of Tuxedo, and the Missouri State Police, who were waiting when Kramer got off the bus.
Kramer’s lawyer, Robert Galluccio, asked the judge for leniency, citing his extreme emotional state.
“Facing sentencing broke him psychologically, and he ran away,” the attorney said, alluding to “homosexual undertones” that were involved in the attempted murder.
After breaking up with him, Kramer’s partner called his mother and told her he was gay and had AIDS.
She told Kramer, who went to his ex-lover’s home, broke in and waited before attacking the man’s brother, nearly slitting his throat.
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
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