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Calcote found guilty of murder

The judge immediately sentenced the 34-year-old man to life in prison for killing an Anclote Elementary teacher in December.

By COLLEEN JENKINS
Published October 29, 2005

NEW PORT RICHEY - Last Dec. 4 wasn't the first time Adam Calcote made trouble.

He had been in and out of jail in Massachusetts on charges of assault and battery, making threats to kill, violating a restraining order, burning a motor vehicle and arson.

He fled his home state on the 2002 arson charge, assuming a new life and new name in Florida. He worked - when he worked - in the moving industry. He met his girlfriend on the Internet and told her his name was Adam Reade. His parents in Tampa knew about the lie but thought it was helping him turn his life around.

Instead, he turned another family's world upside down.

On Friday, 12 Pasco County jurors put an end to Calcote's path of misery. Just after noon, they found him guilty of murdering 27-year-old Kimberly Delancey, an only child, a mother's best friend, a special education teacher at Anclote Elementary School.

Circuit Judge Stanley Mills immediately sentenced Calcote, 34, to life in prison.

"We wanted justice," said Sandy Delancey, Kimberly's mother, "and we got it."

The verdict capped a difficult week, during which Delancey's family and friends had to listen to painful testimony about the night Calcote raped and smothered the young schoolteacher.

Defense attorney Keith Hammond portrayed the death as a horrible mistake. He said next-door neighbors Calcote and Delancey were engaging in consensual physical interaction but that Calcote panicked when she began screaming, "Rape!"

Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis said nothing about the tragic night at the Carlton Arms apartment complex was accidental.

"Why do you try to make sure somebody doesn't breathe again?" Halkitis said during his closing argument a day earlier. "Because you did something wrong.

"That's what premeditation is."

There was plenty suspicious surrounding the crime: Delancey was found in her apartment with the front door unlocked. She always locked her door, her supporters said. Her blinds were closed; Delancey nearly always kept them open. Her bedroom TV was blaring.

Empty Budweiser cans were on her table; she didn't drink beer. She was dressed only in jeans and a black bra; the young woman always wore underwear. She had on only one earring.

When investigators were called to Delancey's apartment on Dec. 6 - where she lay dead on her water bed - Calcote was gone. He had taken a Greyhound bus to Virginia Beach, Va., and later to Lawrence, Mass.

Police caught him there Dec. 15 after Calcote told a friend he was staying with about what happened in New Port Richey. The friend, who knew Calcote as Adam Rodriguez, notified authorities.

Calcote's subsequent taped confession with Pasco sheriff's detectives was played for jurors this week.

Jurors began deliberating on Friday just before 10:30 a.m. About 90 minutes later, they had their verdict.

Twenty people filled the courtroom on Delancey's behalf. Many women wore pink, her favorite color. Calcote's parents did not attend the trial or sentencing.

"The defendant is guilty of murder in the first-degree as charged in the indictment," the clerk read.

Sandy Delancey began sobbing quietly. Others dabbed their eyes with tissues.

Mills asked Calcote if he had anything he wanted to say.

He shook his head no.

Colleen Jenkins covers courts in west Pasco County. She can be reached at 727 869-6236 or cjenkins@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 29, 2005, 01:45:21]