FEAR OF FREE COP-KILLER
NYPD vic’s kin terrified as parole lift eyed
A Brooklyn cop-killer is on the brink of being released from parole without any supervision, leaving his victim’s daughter outraged — and fearful that he could hurt her family.
“He killed my father,” Helaine Guttenberg-Ginsberg said of Pablo “Paul” Costello, 61.
“It makes me nervous that he may be free to go wherever he wants and that he might have a vendetta,’’ said the woman, who successfully lobbied to keep Costello behind bars for five extra years.
Guttenberg-Ginsberg’s nightmare stems from a 2008 law that allows the discretionary lifting of parole even for convicts serving a maximum life term.
In 1980, a judge sentenced Costello to 25 years to life for helping to kill Officer David Guttenberg after the cop stumbled on an in-progress robbery at a Bay Ridge auto-parts store.
At the time, such a sentence meant a lifetime of prison for Costello, or at least a lifetime of state supervision if paroled. But the law was amended, and last month, Costello’s parole officer recommended he be released from supervision.
Guttenberg-Ginsberg’s legal efforts, which went up to the state’s highest court, succeeded in keeping Costello behind bars until 2014, when he was released on parole.
She also has been drawn into online beefs with people she believes are Costello’s relatives.
Guttenberg-Ginsberg asked The Post not to publish her photo, saying, “If [Costello] does go out on early parole, I don’t want him knowing what I look like. I hope he wouldn’t come after me, but I don’t know . . . I don’t know what he’s capable of. He’s never expressed remorse. I don’t know that he has any.”
She begged the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in a June 22 letter, “Please keep him on parole for life, as was his original sentence by the judge.’’
The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has joined Guttenberg-Ginsberg in lobbying to keep Costello on parole.
Lifting parole supervision “would be an outrageously irresponsible act that puts all the citizens of this city, police officers and the family of deceased Police Officer David Guttenberg at unnecessary risk,” said PBA President Patrick Lynch.
A final decision is still “under review,” a DOC spokesperson said.
Reached by The Post, Costello, who is living in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, declined to comment. His lawyer, Alfred O’Connor, said only, “He’s gainfully employed.”
Guttenberg-Ginsberg was 18 when her dad was slain on Dec. 29, 1978. Costello was acting as lookout outside the Dyker Auto supply shop and shouted to his accomplice, Luis Angel Torres, inside that the officer was about to enter. Torres was holding up a customer and a manager at gunpoint at the time. He shot the cop dead. Torres died in prison in 1996. Without parole supervision, Costello would no longer be barred from any contact with his victim’s family, GuttenbergGinsberg said, noting. “He can travel anywhere and live anywhere he wants — he can live next to me if he wants.”