Thomas Trantino: The Angel Lounge Murders and 2002 Release

Thomas Trantino is the New Jersey man convicted of the 1963 murder of two Lodi police officers, sentenced to death, spared when the state’s death penalty statute was struck down, and eventually paroled in 2002 after nearly 40 years in prison and a dozen parole hearings. His release came only after the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the parole board to free him, ending one of the longest and most politically charged parole fights in state history.¹

The Killings at the Angel Lounge

On the night of August 26, 1963, Sergeant Peter Voto, 40, and Probationary Officer Gary Tedesco, 21, of the Lodi Police Department responded to a disturbance call at the Angel Lounge on Route 46. Inside, Trantino and Frank Falco, both former convicts in their mid-twenties, had been drinking and using barbiturates while celebrating a recent robbery.²

The two men ambushed Voto as he came in. Tedesco, a week into the job and unarmed, was attacked when he followed his partner inside.³ Trantino and Falco seized Voto’s service weapon, pistol-whipped both officers, and shot them execution-style.⁴

Voto had served with the department for more than twelve years and left behind a wife, a daughter, two sons, his parents, a sister, and a brother on the same force. Tedesco was survived by his parents and two sisters.²

Two days later, New York City police tracked Falco to a midtown Manhattan hotel and killed him in a gun battle when he resisted arrest.⁵ Trantino surrendered. In 1964, he was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.⁶

From Death Row to Life Imprisonment

Trantino received eight stays of execution at Trenton State Prison before the law changed under him.⁷ The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1968 decision in United States v. Jackson cast doubt on death penalty statutes that gave juries the sole power to impose a death sentence, and in 1972 the New Jersey Supreme Court applied that reasoning in State v. Funicello and struck down the state’s statute. Trantino’s death sentence was automatically commuted to life with the possibility of parole.¹

Under the law in effect at the time of his conviction, supplemented by New Jersey’s Parole Act of 1979, he became eligible for parole after twenty-five years, minus credits for good behavior and work. The state Supreme Court later confirmed his first eligibility date fell in 1979.¹

Why the Parole Fight Took Decades

Trantino appeared before the parole board more than a dozen times over two decades. In 1980 the board voted to release him, but a dispute over restitution to the victims’ families stopped it. In October 1982 the board reversed itself and voted 5-2 to deny, pushing his next eligibility to 1992.⁷

Through the 1990s, the case settled into what appellate courts later called a “tug-of-war” between two state agencies. The Parole Board kept insisting that a halfway house placement was essential before it could approve release. The Department of Corrections kept refusing to transfer him, citing safety concerns, anonymous death threats, and political pressure. Each side blamed the other, and Trantino stayed inside. In May 1996, the full board denied parole and set a ten-year future eligibility term, its harshest action yet.⁶

A second problem was the legal test the board was using. Board members had been asking whether Trantino had achieved “full rehabilitative potential” and “total rehabilitation,” and pointing to his “selective recollection” of the murders as proof he had not accepted full responsibility. In May 1998, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that was the wrong standard. The proper question under state law was whether there was a “substantial likelihood” that he would commit another crime if released. The court set aside the ten-year denial and sent the case back.⁶

The 2001 Ruling That Ordered His Release

On remand, the board denied parole again. Trantino appealed, and on January 18, 2001, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision that ended the fight. In Trantino v. New Jersey State Parole Board, the court found the board’s latest denial “arbitrary and capricious” and unsupported by the evidence.¹

The justices said the board had leaned on “remote” evidence, including a 1956 robbery, a 1963 incident of marital assault, and old prison violations, calling that a “makeweight to compensate for the lack of substantial evidence” that Trantino posed a real risk of reoffending. The court also found the board had cherry-picked limited testimony from a 1999 psychological evaluation while disregarding substantial expert evidence that he presented a low risk of recidivism.⁸ The 1963 murders were “heinous,” the court said, but public outrage “has no place in a parole proceeding,” and punishment was no longer a material consideration given the 37 years he had already served.¹

The court ordered the board to grant parole, conditioned on successful completion of a twelve-month halfway house placement, and directed the Department of Corrections to place him in a halfway house near the Camden/Cherry Hill area within 30 days.⁸

Release in 2002

Trantino walked out of a halfway house in Camden on February 11, 2002, his 64th birthday, after 12 parole hearings and nearly 40 years in custody. It was the longest sentence served in New Jersey at that time.⁹

Life outside was hard. Community opposition followed him from town to town. Within weeks he had been turned away from housing in Collingswood, Staten Island, and Haddon Heights. He took a temporary job as a substance abuse counselor at a Volunteers of America day center and lasted ten days before local protests forced him out. By mid-March 2002 he was living in a homeless shelter in Camden, looking for permanent housing and work.¹⁰

Assault Charges and 2004 Acquittal

In November 2003, Trantino was arrested after a 911 call from his Camden office. His live-in companion, Carmen Gonzalez, accused him of beating her on five occasions between October 27 and November 6, 2003. Prosecutors had tape-recorded descriptions of the alleged assaults and photographs of bruises. His parole was revoked and he was returned to jail.¹¹

In December 2003, Gonzalez testified in New Jersey Family Court that her earlier accusations were “lies.” Judge Octavia Melendez dismissed the civil domestic violence complaint, but state prosecutors continued the criminal case. On July 22, 2004, after roughly 20 hours of deliberation over four days, a Superior Court jury before Judge Linda G. Baxter acquitted Trantino, then 66, of all assault charges. The jury deadlocked on a minor false imprisonment count and a mistrial was declared on that charge. Judge Baxter lifted his $100,000 bail.¹²

A Prisoner Who Became a Writer and Artist

During his decades inside, Trantino built a second identity as a writer and visual artist. He began making art in solitary on death row, working out imagery from the cracks and shadows on his cell walls with pens, canvas, and acrylics. His work was later shown in galleries in France, Japan, and New York City.⁹

In 1974, Alfred A. Knopf published Lock the Lock, an unedited compilation of his poems, prose, and visual art created on death row. A 1973 New York Times profile described his writing as heavy satire on death row routines and stream-of-consciousness social commentary, and his drawings as reflecting cubist influences. “I changed not because of prison. I changed despite it,” he told the Times that year.¹³ His writing drew a group of well-known advocates for his release over the years, among them Abbie Hoffman, Howard Zinn, Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, Woody Allen, and John Lennon.⁹

In Lodi, the two officers remain a fixed presence. A monument to Sergeant Voto and Officer Tedesco stands in the center court of the municipal building, and members of the police department hold an annual Memorial Day ceremony there. A baseball field at the base of Chestnut Street carries their names.⁴

1
FindLaw. Trantino v. New Jersey State Parole Board
2
Officer Down Memorial Page. Sergeant Peter Voto
3
Officer Down Memorial Page. Officer Gary Tedesco
4
Borough of Lodi. Voto-Tedesco Memorial
5
New York Daily News. Cops Killer Near Parole
6
FindLaw. Trantino v. New Jersey State Parole Board
7
The New York Times. Trantino, Slayer of 2 Police Officers, Denied Parole
8
vLex. Trantino v. NJ State Parole Board
9
PEN America. Tommy Trantino: Perseverance and Protest
10
Midland Reporter-Telegram. Released Convict Faces Life as Pariah
11
The New York Times. Complaint Made Against Paroled Killer Is Dismissed
12
The New York Times. Trantino Found Not Guilty of Beating His Companion
13
The New York Times. An Inmate at Rahway Writes and Illustrates Two Books