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| Patricia Columbo arrested for murder in 1976 |
For some reason, an article I posted about Patricia Columbo back in June (Bad Decisions and Ruined Lives) has elicited some rather sharp responses from those who obviously still loathe Patricia all these many years later.
Here's a sample from someone named Janis Shipley:
- You need to do a little more homework. You have painted a picture of an impressionable girl who was a victim. She was far from a victim & was actually the stronger personality of the duo. She was & probably still is a habitual liar & until very recently never even took responsibility for what she had done. I repeat.....your synopsis is all wrong. You sincerely need to do more research & write this again. BTW...she will never get out on parole unless she lives to be 100!!! And might I remind you that she stabbed her 13 year old brother 87 times with a pair of scissors. Nobody coerced her to do that. She made that evil decision all on her own!!!!
Who's Patricia Columbo? She was a young Italian-Irish diva who murdered her parents and her 13-year-old brother in 1976 with the help of her much older boyfriend, a man named Frank Deluca. Columbo became romantically involved with Deluca while she worked as a waitress in a restaurant near the Walgreens drug store that Deluca managed.
When Deluca met and seduced Columbo, he was married man with five kids. He also had a history of philandering and he was especially fond of young girls such as Columbo who could easily be conned by older, suave hustlers like himself. When he turned on his charm, Columbo fell in love with him. But for Deluca, all he wanted was sex.
Certainly, Columbo wasn't an angel. She was snotty, loud, arrogant, promiscuous and rebellious. She had trouble with authority and she knew how to manipulate people to get what she wanted. And when she didn't get it, she became quite nasty.
When she met Deluca, she saw Frank as her ticket to ride from her strict, authoritarian parents who kept her on a very short leash. For Deluca, Columbo was just another piece of tush to satisfy his ravenous libido. And so, Columbo needed Deluca a lot more than he needed her.
That was until Frank's wife found out about her husband's latest affair. When she subsequently served Frank with divorce papers, he knew that he was facing a financial disaster in alimony and child support payments.
And so, in Patricia, he found his answer to his financial problems. They would kill her family and she would collect the family inheritance. And then they would get married. And then? An then Patricia would likely go the way of Drew Peterson's fourth wife Stacy and never be heard from or seen again. And then Frank would get the inheritance and solve his financial problems and he would be free to find himself more young, gullible girls he could seduce.
Columbo and Deluca subsequently murdered her family, intending to make it look like a mob hit. But it was a brutal, amateur job unbecoming of a professional hit and they were eventually caught. Patty had tried to hire outsiders to do the job with offers of money and sex, but she failed. And so, she and Frank did it themselves. Ironically, unbeknownst to her and Frank, her parents had cut her out of the family will because of her relationship with Deluca.
The rest is history. Both Columbo and Deluca have been in prison for nearly 40 years. Both have been eligible for parole several times and both have been rejected. They're unlikely to get out until they're dead.
When I wrote my original article on Columbo back in June, I had no intention of painting her as an innocent victim of an older, conniving sexual predator, although you could certainly make a strong case for that. Columbo was a bad girl who met a bad person and together they committed a heinous crime that still haunts many people all these many years later. And it should.
But she's not the same person she was 40 years ago, although some people aren't convinced. She's grown up in prison and she's found the Lord Jesus Christ. I know; a lot of people claim to find Jesus Christ in prison, only to fall back into their old ways when they gain their freedom. But I think Patty's conversion is genuine and not phony.
Should she be paroled? I think so. But why? Number one; she's changed. Number two; she poses no threat to anyone. And besides; there are many people a lot more deserving of a jail cell these days than Patricia Columbo. But reality tells us that she's unlikely to ever be free again.
For those who are unforgiving and continue to condemn Patricia for what she did a long time ago, you're advised to read these words written by the apostle John: "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them." (1 John 2:9-11)
No matter what evil someone has committed, we must be willing to forgive them. That doesn't absolve them of their wrongdoing. They must be punished for their crimes. But if they truly repent and confess their sins to Christ, and devote their lives to serving Him, He'll forgive them. And they'll inherit eternal life. Even Patricia Columbo.
