Viviana Tulli Murder Case: Plea, Lawsuit, and Halfway House Reform

The Viviana Tulli murder case began on the night of August 29, 2010, when David Goodell, a paroled violent offender, faked a seizure at Logan Hall, a privately operated halfway house in Newark, and escaped from the hospital where a single unarmed employee had taken him. Hours later he strangled his 21-year-old ex-girlfriend, Viviana M. Tulli of Garfield, New Jersey, dressed her body in sunglasses and a hat, and drove her car until police caught him after a chase. Goodell pleaded guilty to murder in 2013 and was sentenced to 45 years in state prison. Tulli’s family sued the state, the hospital, and the halfway house operator, and her sister Stella became a public voice for reform of New Jersey’s halfway house system.

The Escape and the Killing

Goodell was serving a parole term at Logan Hall, run by Community Education Centers, when he faked a seizure on the evening of August 29, 2010. A single unarmed CEC employee drove him to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Hospital. He escaped almost immediately on arrival, at roughly 11:50 p.m.¹

State regulations required halfway houses to monitor parolees and to notify the parole board immediately if a resident absconded.² Once free, Goodell tracked down Tulli and strangled her. Prosecutors said he then placed her body in the passenger seat of her own car, dressed her in sunglasses and a hat to disguise that she was dead, and drove off.³

Who Viviana Tulli Was

Viviana M. Tulli was born in Paterson and lived her whole life in Garfield. She graduated from Garfield High School and was the daughter of Carlo Tulli and Luz Boria Diaz, with a sister, Stella, and a brother, Carlo.⁴

According to Stella Tulli’s later account, Viviana met Goodell when she was 15 and began dating him at 16. He was 11 years older. After he was incarcerated for assaulting an ex-girlfriend and a police officer, Viviana kept in touch as a pen pal and visited him in prison over her family’s objections.³

Goodell’s Record and Early Parole

David Goodell, born December 18, 1979, had a documented history of violence against women. He was convicted of assaulting a police officer and making terroristic threats against a woman he was dating, and a Passaic County judge sentenced him to more than two years in prison. He served that time at Northern State Prison in Newark.⁵

Although his projected release date was December 2011, Goodell was paroled in February 2010 after serving less than half a year, and was placed at Logan Hall as a condition of that release.⁵

Arrest at the Scene

A witness saw Goodell outside Tulli’s car in the parking lot of Ridgefield Park High School, disoriented and covered in blood, and called police.⁵ When officers arrived, Goodell got back into the car and led them on a chase that ended in a Ridgefield cul-de-sac, where he drove head-on into a police cruiser. Authorities called the collision an attempted “suicide by cop.”⁶ He was found in the vehicle with self-inflicted wrist wounds. Tulli’s body was in the passenger seat, and police quickly determined she had been killed before the crash.³

Indictment, Guilty Plea, and 45-Year Sentence

A Bergen County grand jury indicted Goodell in November 2011 on eight counts:

First-degree murder
Absconding from parole
Unlawfully concealing human remains
Desecration of human remains
Eluding police
Aggravated assault by auto
Aggravated assault on a police officer
Resisting arrest

⁵

In June 2013, Goodell pleaded guilty to murder, admitting that he had faked a medical emergency to escape and then strangled Tulli. On September 13, 2013, Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi sentenced him to 45 years in state prison. When the sentence was announced, Goodell laughed and shouted, “Live long, ha ha!” The judge described a life largely spent in prison and a record of “arrests, convictions, restraining orders and repeated violence against women.” Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Wayne Mello said Goodell was “bereft of what makes us human beings.” Stella Tulli told the court he was “someone who shouldn’t matter, who has no place among us.”⁷

Under New Jersey’s No Early Release Act, Goodell must serve at least 85 percent of the sentence before parole eligibility. In 2014, his attorney Frank Gennaro asked a two-judge appellate panel to reduce the term as excessive. Prosecutor Annmarie Cozzie argued it should stand, calling it a “horrendous case.”⁸

The Family’s Civil Lawsuit

In September 2012, Stella Tulli-Makowski, acting as administrator of her sister’s estate, filed suit in Essex County Superior Court. The case was moved to federal court. Defendants included Community Education Centers and its senior vice president William Palatucci, the state of New Jersey, the Department of Corrections, the state Parole Board, the Department of Public Safety, UMDNJ and its hospital, and Goodell himself. The complaint alleged the halfway house system was “horribly mismanaged,” that defendants could and should have detected the faked seizure, and that proper procedure would have prevented the escape and the killing.⁹

In May 2013, U.S. District Judge William Martini dismissed the federal civil rights claims under Section 1983 against the state, the Department of Corrections, the Parole Board, and the Department of Public Safety, ruling that those public entities were not “persons” who could be sued under the statute.¹⁰ Judge Martini let the Section 1983 claim against UMDNJ Hospital proceed but dismissed the state law claims against it with prejudice, finding the hospital immune under the New Jersey Tort Claims Act.⁹

In December 2013, Judge Martini ruled that Community Education Centers was not entitled to immunity and had to face the negligence claims. The court found the plaintiff had sufficiently alleged that CEC negligently executed its state contract and that this negligence was responsible for Tulli’s death. Because Goodell had pleaded guilty to terroristic threats and aggravated assault before entering Logan Hall, the judge wrote, it was “reasonable to assume that defendants should have known about this plea” and should have recognized that he posed a risk of physical harm to others. Several other theories, including state-created danger and illegal operation of a halfway house, were dismissed as “conclusory.”²

The Halfway House System the Case Exposed

Tulli’s killing was not an isolated failure. Between 2005 and 2012, roughly 5,100 inmates escaped from New Jersey’s privately run halfway houses.¹¹ Logan Hall alone logged 185 escapes between 2009 and 2011.¹²

A June 2011 audit by State Comptroller Matthew Boxer found “lax security” at many facilities and said state inspections were “lenient, if done at all.” Prosecutions of escapees were rare: the rate for Essex County facilities was about 10 percent from 2009 onward, and law enforcement often did not learn of an escape until the person committed another crime.¹¹¹²

Community Education Centers was the state’s largest halfway house contractor, operating about 1,900 beds and receiving roughly $71 million in state and county contracts in fiscal year 2011.¹¹ In August 2012, the state imposed $45,000 in fines for nine escapes across six facilities, the largest sanction to that point.¹²

Stella Tulli’s Advocacy

Viviana’s sister Stella became a public voice on the case. She testified before the New Jersey Assembly Committee on Law and Public Safety in July 2012, describing the “lax security” and “disregard for the suspect’s violent past” and asking, “Why was a violent offender in a halfway house?”¹³ She appeared on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton, corresponded with Governor Chris Christie’s office, and worked with the New York Times reporter whose investigative series brought national attention to the system.¹⁴

By 2015, she was building a North Jersey support group for families of murder victims, working with victims advocate Susan Tanis of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.¹⁵

1
Campus Safety Magazine. Parolee Escapes From Hospital, Kills Girlfriend
2
Courthouse News Service. Halfway House on the Hook for Killer Escapee
3
Metro. Woman Reveals Horrifying Details of Sister Who Was Murdered by Prison Pen Pal
4
Legacy.com. Viviana M. Tulli Obituary
5
Daily Voice. Ex-Con Indicted on Murder, Police Assault Charges in Bergen Woman’s Death
6
Daily Voice. Halfway House Fugitive Gets 45 Years for Killing Bergen Ex-Girlfriend
7
NBC Philadelphia. Man Sentenced in NJ Halfway House Murder Case
8
NJ.com. Attorney Asks for Shorter Sentence for Garfield Woman’s Killer
9
Courthouse News Service. Killer Escapee May Cost New Jersey Hospital
10
NJ.com. Charges Against State in Lawsuit Over Halfway House Murder Dismissed
11
NJ.com. NJ Halfway Houses See 5,100 Escapes
12
Prison Legal News. Escapes and Crime: New Jersey’s Privately Run Halfway Houses
13
NJ Spotlight News. Assembly Committee Holds Hearings on Halfway Houses
14
HuffPost. NJ Halfway House Victim
15
Daily Voice. Garfield Native Spearheads Support Group for Murder Victims’ Families