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He served in the US Army during the Korean War and afterward settled in San Jose, where his sister lived. “Within a week, I was on a boat” back to the US, he said. In his late teens, he heard murmurs about being drafted into the Italian army. His family moved back to Sicily when he was a toddler, and after fifth grade he left school and started helping out in the family's olive oil factory. That's very strange.” Adele didn't say it then, but she believed the murderer was still at large, and no fancy heart-tracking device was going to change her mind.Īnthony Vincent Aiello was born in Chicago in 1928, one of seven children. Looking at Adele, the woman warily mused, “That's just strange. His pointy nose and a frame that nearly matched the dimensions of the wheelchair lent him an elfin quality.
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He'd been held for four months in county jail awaiting trial and wore a red Department of Corrections shirt, loose civilian khaki pants, hot pink socks, and flip-flops because the jail couldn't find shoes that fit.
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She occasionally showed these to Adele, who otherwise looked directly at Tony with closed-lip Mona Lisa inscrutability.īased in large part on the data from the Fitbit and the neighbors' surveillance camera, Tony had been arrested and charged with murder. Tony's daughter, Annette Aiello, a 61-year-old with wavy, black hair and her father's squared-off shoulders, sat next to her, making notes on a legal pad. In her nineties, Adele presents an elegant figure with short, gray hair, gold hoop earrings, pink blush, and a long brown cardigan. She opened her mouth, apparently overcome for a second, before collecting herself. Watching him cross the room from the front row was Adele Navarra Aiello, her walker parked in the aisle beside her. In late January, Tony Aiello was pushed into a Santa Clara County courtroom in a wheelchair.
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He bought two dozen roses for the occasion. He was gutsy too: When he was about 80, he met Adele Navarra while they were in line at the Save Mart meat counter and asked her to coffee the same night. Neighbors said that not so long ago, Tony seemed hale-a stocky figure walking down the sidewalk in a tank top, like a pint-size, sure-stepping Marlon Brando. People who'd known him for decades said he'd always had “little man syndrome.” But maybe there was something to the bravado. Still, Tony would brag, “Nobody believes that I'm 90.” He could do anything-“a little slower.” Perhaps that was just Tony being Tony. The slightest nick while pruning trees in the yard would make him bleed until his wife, Adele, would, as he put it, “patch me up.” After losing an inch or so to age, Tony stood 4'11". He took blood thinners for his congestive heart failure. Arthritis stiffened the fingers that had served him for decades as a deli butcher, so he cut food with scissors.
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He would read recipes in the living room and forget the ingredients by the time he reached the kitchen. He had hearing aids and a pacemaker with a defibrillator for his triple-bypassed heart. Stiff in the back, he had contraptions to help him pull on his pants and socks, along with a shoehorn to slide his feet into velcro-strapped shoes. He gripped a walker to hoist himself out of bed. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.Īs Tony Aiello entered his nineties, he had false teeth, an artificial hip, and an artificial knee.
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