81°
Jury selection began in the case, in which Angelo Kenneth Wedra of Palisades Park is charged with sexually assaulting a 35-year-old Rochelle Park woman in March 2001. He was 62 at the time.
Wedra also is charged with sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl, which could end up returning him to the Bergen County courthouse for a second trial. The assaults on the child occurred between June 2002 and December 2003, prosecutors say.
Wedra has been free on $300,000 bail since Nov. 24, 2009, three months after he was arrested in connection with both cases.
He remained impassive throughout jury selection in the first case yesterday, wearing a blank expression that apparently never changed.
According to information provided by family members during court proceedings last August, Wedra was charged in 1971 with the aggravated sexual assault of a handicapped teenage girl during a home invasion.
He pleaded guilty to the sexual assault and was sentenced to 20 years, to be served concurrently with a 25-year stretch for murder, they said.
His wife, Marie Mattson, also contended that it was “common knowledge” that Wedra had organized-crime ties.
The court proceedings arose from a motion filed on Wedra’s behalf by his lawyer, defense attorney Dennis Calo, seeking to admit “certain character evidence of the victim” in the alleged Rochelle Park rape.
Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi found some of the evidence admissible “for the purposes of proving that the victim had a motive to lie” and some not.
Jurors could hear testimony that the woman threatened to have her ex-husband killed by Wedra, as well as a conversation between the ex-husband and Wedra while he was in jail, the judge ruled.
Jury selection in the case was to continue today. The trial is expected to take one to two weeks.
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
Click here to follow Daily Voice Hackensack and receive free news updates.
