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A man is facing trial in the rape and slaying of a 23-year-old Largo woman in her home.
By CHRIS TISCH
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 31, 2001
LARGO -- Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against a Tampa shoe salesman who was linked by DNA last month to a 1990 Largo killing. Brian Calzacorto, 37, is charged with first-degree murder in connection with the 1990 slaying of 23-year-old Laurie Colannino. Detectives say Calzacorto raped Colannino, stabbed her 20 times in the chest and neck, and cut her throat.
"This appears to be a totally innocent girl who was attacked and murdered in broad daylight in her own home and brutally raped," said Bill Loughery, an assistant state attorney. "This shocked the conscience of the community."
A grand jury handed up a first-degree murder indictment against Calzacorto May 16.
Calzacorto has entered a written plea of not guilty to the charge. His attorney, Richard Watts, was in court Wednesday and could not be reached for comment, his assistant said.
Loughery said there are certain aggravating factors that can make a murder charge a death penalty case. Those factors include whether the murder was committed at the same time as a sexual battery, or the murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.
Loughery would not say which factors apply in Calzacorto's case, but said: "We believe certain aggravators exist."
Colannino was attacked Jan. 2, 1990, in her residence at Bay Pointe Apartments, 2770 Roosevelt Blvd. Calzacorto lived in the same complex.
Calzacorto wasn't initially suspected in the case. But when detectives reopened the investigation in 1994, they started snooping around the complex, where he still lived. Calzacorto then mysteriously disappeared, abandoning his apartment. His twin brother, Alfred Calzacorto Jr., reported him missing.
Knowing the twin had DNA identical to his brother's, detectives asked Alfred Calzacorto Jr. to provide a blood or saliva sample. He refused.
Brian Calzacorto was missing until September 1994, when he was arrested on a grand theft charge.
Homicide investigators interviewed him, but he refused to provide saliva or blood. More than 170 other males who knew or lived near Colannino were eliminated as suspects through the DNA technology.
Investigators couldn't pin anything on him and the case again fell out of the limelight. But detectives resurrected it again in August.
This time, investigators staked out Brian Calzacorto's Tampa residence. Detectives watched him take bags of trash to a trash bin, then seized them, hoping something inside might contain his DNA.
They found a protective screen from an electric razor and several Marlboro cigarettes in the trash. A month later, a state lab compared the DNA from the screen and the cigarettes to the semen taken off Colannino's body. It was a match, officials say.
Detectives also seized Alfred Calzacorto's trash and found a toothbrush and disposable razors inside. That DNA also was a match. The chance of the DNA matching another male is one-in-1.49-quintillion, arrest reports state.
Detectives then determined that Alfred Calzacorto was probably at work at the time of the murder.
Brian Calzacorto was arrested on the murder charge April 18.