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Superior Court Judge Edward A. Jerejian, who was bound by the terms of a plea bargain, told 59-year-old John Chiodo that he still could go to prison if he doesn’t fully fulfill the requirements of the either deal or his probation.
That includes paying restitution for what he stole, the judge said.
Chiodo, a grandson of the late Lodi Police Captain Charles F. Chiodo, admitted rifling his cousins’ homes in the fall of 2013 looking for money to save his own.
Chiodo said he’d stayed home to care for his elderly mother while she was sick and dying.
“I was losing the house I lived in for 55 years, and mentally I was out of it,” he told the judge this morning. “I tried everything I could to save it.
“These are good people [who] probably hate me now, people that have helped me through my life. I know they hate me, but that’s understandable. It eats at me every day that I would do this to them.”
One cousin told the judge that Chiodo stole jewelry that her grandparents left for her daughter to wear at her wedding.
She said he also threw away the only photo of her father-in-law in his Italian army uniform “like it was trash.”
Another cousin said Chiodo attended a college going-away party for her grandson, then returned the next day when he knew the house would be empty and “stole everything.”
“Do the right thing here for what he has done to my children and our entire family,” she told the judge.
Jerejian, in turn, told family members that Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Maria Rockfol put “a lot of time and effort” into resolving the case.
Rockfol said she “had no choice” but to strike a deal for five years probation and the restitution.
“The court and the state are bound by law,” she said. “It is a crime of the third degree, and this is what the [state] Legislature has given us to work with.
“I understand the pain because I have had to deal with victims my entire career.”
Although family members requested double restitution, Rockfol said such an award can only be sought in civil court. She also noted that $6,000 paid out in theft insurance has to be reduced from the total, under state law.
Chiodo paid $2,000 this morning and pledged to pay $200 a month going forward — which would take nearly 19 years.
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Maria Rockfol, attorney Aaron Miller, John Chiodo (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
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