Wanted in husband’s death, US woman arrested in Rome
ROME — An American woman wanted in her husband’s 2002 murder was able to stay at the Rome hotel where she was arrested for nearly two weeks before an international arrest warrant turned up in the system identifying her as a murder suspect, Italian police said.
Beverly McCallum, 59, was cooperative when she was arrested last week in a hotel on the northwest outskirts of the Italian capital, officials said.
While she had been staying in the small-business hotel since early February, her arrival from Pakistan via Saudi Arabia did not raise red flags because no international arrest warrant had been issued, the head of the Rome police rapid reaction unit said.
The date of her arrival was not clear.
McCallum, who has Italian heritage, appeared to be looking into whether she could remain in Italy, Marco Sangiovanni said.
She was arrested on an Interpol warrant.
In Italy, hotels are required to submit identities of guests taken from their official travel documents to local police offices. The hotel, Papillo, which features Italian and European Union flags, is in a shopping mall in a nondescript area overlooking Rome’s main ring road.
U.S. authorities had been seeking to extradite McCallum from Pakistan, where she was believed to be living, to stand trial in the slaying of her husband, Robert Caraballo.
In 2002, he was beaten and suffocated, and his body was dumped and burned in a blueberry patch in Michigan.
Police said McCallum was being held at Rome’s Rebibbia prison.
Caraballo’s badly burned remains were found in a scorched footlocker in a wooded area in Ottawa County, Michigan, in the days following his death. The identity of the victim was unknown until police received an anonymous tip in 2015.
In the years after the slaying, McCallum reportedly met a man from Pakistan over the internet and moved there.
Rome police said she had fled to Pakistan after learning police were on her trail.
Murder charges were announced last year against McCallum, her daughter Dineane Ducharme, and Christopher McMillan, of Grand Rapids. The three also were charged with conspiracy, and disinterment and mutilation of a body.
McMillan pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He had been expected to testify against the other two.
Ducharme was also in custody.
McMillan, a friend of Ducharme, told investigators that the slaying was planned and a “test run” was performed before
Caraballo killing Caraballo, Eaton County sheriff’s Detective James Maltby testified at a hearing last year.
According to the Lansing State Journal, Maltby said McMillan told investigators that McCallum pushed Caraballo down the basement stairs of a home, then beat him with at least one hammer.
McCallum wrapped a plastic bag around the head of the still-breathing Caraballo, Maltby testified.
Ducharme, who was 21 at the time of the slaying, told police her mother killed Caraballo and that she helped dispose of her stepfather’s body, according to Maltby.
McCallum also has two younger daughters, who were 9 and 11 at the time. Maltby testified that McCallum brought the two younger girls with her when she burned Caraballo’s body.
Maltby said one of the two younger daughters later questioned her mother about what happened and said that McCallum told her she killed Caraballo in self-defense.
Sometime after the killing, Ducharme and her mother moved to Pasadena, Texas.
McCallum subsequently moved to Pakistan after learning that the investigation into the slaying was progressing, Maltby said.