Retired detective’s keen eye leads to possible break in jewelry store homicide case
STAMFORD — Before he left the Stamford Police Department nearly five years ago, former major crimes Sgt. Anthony “Butch” Lupinacci promised he would not let his well respected investigative skills wither with disuse.
It appears he hasn’t.
On the Saturday afternoon when Stamford jewelry store owner Mark Vuono was killed, Lupinacci, 70, had just finished running some errands and was driving down Summer Street when he had a sudden craving for a steak wedge at Wedge Inn near the corner of North and Summer streets.
It it weren’t for the coronavirus he never would have seen the three. Because there is no seating in the North Street sandwich shop
during the coronavirus crisis, the detective went back to his car to eat his sandwich. He moved it to the rear lot behind Dairy Queen — when something caught his eye.
“I was pulling into the back of the lot and in the far left corner I saw the older model Jaguar, it was very clean, and that’s what made it stand out,” said Lupinacci, who has kept his skills up by doing work for local attorneys and Vito Colucci Investigations.
Two men were standing outside the car and another was in the passenger seat.
“For some reason it really stuck out. There was something really out of place with these guys,” said Lupinacci.
The former homicide detective with a sixth sense for crime and criminals helped Stamford police find high resolution surveillance video of three men who federal authorities say were just minutes away from robbing and killing Vuono in his Marco Jewelry store on March 28. The video helped police and the FBI find Robert Rallo, 56, of Brooklyn, Thomas Liberatore, 62, of White Plains and Paul “Tony Pro” Prosano, 59, also of Brooklyn and arrest them just two days after Vuono, 69, was slain.
Bureau of Criminal Investigations Capt. Richard Conklin said the video that Lupinacci helped them uncover allowed investigators to cut down the amount of time it took to solve the case.
Lupinacci said he saw there was a New York license plate on the black 2000 Jaguar, later identified by police as the robbers’ get away car, and he told himself to write the plate down but got distracted by a very important call from a client. By the time he finished the call the Jaguar had pulled out of the lot and headed east on North Street, toward Bedford Street as the trio made there way up to Sixth Street to commit the robbery.
Lupinacci said the way the car was backed in to a space in the rear of the otherwise nearly empty lot got him think. He said one of the men looked as though he was changing clothes behind the car.
“I said to myself, this is really strange. There were a lot of empty spots, but they are backed into the rear of the lot. Something hit my gut that these guys were really suspicious,” said Lupinacci, who put in 36 years with the police department before retiring in summer of 2015.
Lupinacci went home and didn’t think about it for a while. Sometime that afternoon he called a police officer for an investigation he was working on and was told about the Marco Jewelry robbery. A little while later, something jogged his memory about the Jaguar.
“I said to myself, those guys I saw in the parking lot, maybe they had something to do with the robbery,” he said. He called the lead investigator on the case, Sgt. Sean Boeger, and told him about the car. The next day he went to Dairy Queen and spotted the camera, which would have picked up the three. He called Lt. Tom Scanlan. the supervisor of the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, and told him where the camera was located.
According to the federal affidavit charging the three with robbery, the surveillance footage showed the three preparing for the robbery, two of them putting on surgical masks, and the license plate of the Jaguar.
The Jaguar was found in Staten Island, and Rallo and Prosano were picked up when they tried to move the car. Jewels from the jewelry holdup were found in Prosano’s car and in his Brooklyn apartment, federal authorities say.
Conklin said the Dairy Queen video was the first time investigators got a look at the license plate that would eventually be traced back to Rallo, who purchased the car about a month earlier.
“Armed with that information, they jumped ahead and it assisted us in cutting down some time (to track the suspects down),” Conklin said. “Butch Lupinacci was one of us for many years and his street smarts and sixth sense really kicked in.”
Lupinacci said he was happy to help his brothers and sisters in blue, and he hopes the arrests will bring some relief to the Vuono family.
“The police investigators did a thorough job tracking down the evidence,” Lupinacci said. “My heart really goes out to Marco’s family. I’m glad these guys were apprehended, for what little closure it can give them. At least justice was served. Kudos to the Stamford police and the FBI. I am just happy it worked out.”