James Zappalorti - Murder

Murder

Upon his return to Staten Island, Zappalorti did not hold down a formal job but was frequently seen in the neighborhood planting trees and clearing away debris. All of this came to an abrupt end on the evening of January 22, 1990, after Zappalorti invited a neighborhood resident and his companion to a small hut he had built on the edge of the property of his family's home. Once there, the duo demanded Zappalorti's wallet, and, after he tossed the wallet into the yard, the neighbor, Michael Taylor, 20 years old, pulled out a hunting knife and stabbed him three times in the chest and abdomen, causing his death; Zappalorti's brother, Michael Zappalorti Jr., discovered the body at 11:30 A.M. the following morning. A subsequent autopsy showed four stab wounds, and authorities speculate that the fourth wound was inflicted by Taylor's accomplice, identified as 26-year-old Phillip Sarlo.

Taylor was taken into custody at 2:30 A.M. on January 24 as he stepped outside a bar in the South Beach section of Staten Island, but Sarlo fled the area and was not apprehended until February 18, after he was found to be in Ocala, Florida. Gay rights activists asked New York State Governor Mario Cuomo to appoint a special prosecutor to the case, citing the fact that Staten Island District Attorney William Murphy had been the only one of the city's five district attorneys to go on record as opposing the city's anti-gay-discrimination law when it was passed in 1986; and that also, in that same year, Murphy had prosecuted a carjacking case involving Taylor, Sarlo and two others that resulted in Taylor, then 16 years old, being adjudicated a juvenile offender when he could have been tried as an adult, and Sarlo receiving the minimum sentence — 1½ to 4½ years — then possible on the charges under which he had been indicted. In both the 1986 carjacking case and the Zappalorti murder, Taylor, in statements he made to the police, cited animosity toward homosexuals as a motive for the crime (the victim in the 1986 case was attacked near a boardwalk in the South Beach area reportedly frequented by homosexuals, and Zappalorti's sexual orientation was common knowledge in the neighborhood where both he and Taylor resided). Sarlo, however, denied harboring such sentiments.