Slaying suspect on trial 13 years later

Using DNA evidence, authorities charge a neighbor in the death of a Largo woman in 1990. But there is one snag - he has an identical twin.

By CHRIS TISCH, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 22, 2003

LARGO -- More than 13 years after the brutal slaying of Laurie Colannino, a jury was sworn in Monday evening to decide if her shoe salesman neighbor killed her.

Colannino, 23, was stabbed more than 15 times and choked in her Largo apartment on Jan. 2, 1990. Her attacker also raped her, leaving behind semen that would prove valuable a decade later, after the emergence of advanced DNA technology.

Two years ago this week, Pinellas sheriff's deputies arrested Brian Calzacorto, 39, in connection with Colannino's death. Calzacorto lived in Colannino's Roosevelt Boulevard apartment complex, but was not considered a suspect until almost five years after her death. It then took investigators another six years to develop enough evidence to charge him with murder in her killing.

One of the snags in that investigation: Calzacorto has an identical twin brother whose DNA is an exact match of his.

"This is an extremely unique situation," prosecutor Bill Loughery told potential jurors Monday. "I don't think there is another case in the country, maybe even the world, like it."

Opening arguments are scheduled to begin this morning. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty. The trial is expected to last at least a week.

Colannino was a cocktail waitress and aerobics instructor who had just applied to paramedic school the morning she was killed. Friends described her as friendly, athletic and attractive.

Calzacorto lived about 100 yards from her apartment, but no one ever reported seeing the two together and he was not fully explored as a suspect. The technology for examining DNA technology was not as widespread as it is today.

In 1994, cold case detectives reopened the case and again canvassed the apartment complex. They asked all employees, residents and anyone who Colannino knew -- more than 170 people -- to provide blood tests so they could compare blood types and DNA.

Calzacorto was still living at the complex, Bay Pointe Apartments, 2770 Roosevelt Blvd., when the investigation was resumed.

Calzacorto didn't return phone calls left by investigators. Then he vanished. His twin brother, Alfred Calzacorto, reported him missing. Detectives asked Alfred Calzacorto to provide blood samples, hoping to compare them to the semen taken from Colannino's body. He refused.

Several weeks later, Clearwater police arrested Brian Calzacorto on a grand theft warrant. Calzacorto had been accused of stealing from a shoe store where he worked. Investigators asked Brian Calzacorto if they could get a blood sample, but he, too, refused.

Through an attorney, Brian Calzacorto told investigators he had bad experiences with police in Pennsylvania, where he had been investigated in the shooting death of his father, who was a police officer. Pennsylvania authorities have said Brian Calzacorto is a suspect in his father's 1986 death, which remains unsolved.

In 1999, investigators sent the semen samples from Colannino's body to a lab for more advanced testing. Investigators then staked out Brian Calzacorto's Tampa apartment until they saw him toss a trash bag into a Dumpster. They seized the trash bag, which contained a razor screen and cigarettes. Those items provided DNA, which investigators compared to DNA from the semen from Colannino's body.

They were a match.

The chance of the DNA belonging to another person -- besides an identical twin -- is somewhere north of 1 in a quintillion, a 1 with 18 zeroes behind it.

Investigators just had one last hump. They had to clear Alfred Calzacorto -- who has that same DNA -- as a suspect. Though the job sites of both brothers had disposed of attendance records, investigators determined Alfred Calzacorto likely was at work in Tampa that day.

Coupled with the fact that Brian Calzacorto lived in eyeshot of Colannino's apartment complex, detectives arrested him in April 2001. A grand jury later indicted him on a first-degree murder charge.

Brian Calzacorto's attorney, Michael Schwartzberg, said investigators did not rule out Alfred Calzacorto through work -- a point he plans to explore during trial.

"Their alibis are identical," he said. "It's all circumstantial."

-- Chris Tisch can be reached at 445-4156 or tisch@sptimes.com .

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