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Grippo at the time of his arrest in 2019. FILE PHOTO
Joseph Grippo, the Montauk man accused of bludgeoning another Montauk man to death in 2019, was set to face trial starting on Monday, July 18 — but he was allowed instead to plead guilty to manslaughter in the first degree.
He admitted to the crime in court and will be sentenced in September to a fixed term of 20 years in state prison under a plea agreement with prosecutors.
If convicted at trial of the original charge, intentional murder in the second degree, he would have faced a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life.
Grippo, now 50, who has been incarcerated in the Suffolk County Jail since his arrest two weeks after the murder, admitted in court on Monday to planning the killing, then bludgeoning to death 38-year-old Robert Casado in Kirk Park the morning of June 6, 2019.
Monday was a day that was supposed to be about scheduling, with jury selection to begin the next day. Over 70 jurors were standing by at the courthouse.
The plea deal Grippo took was one District Attorney Ray Tierney’s office had offered him earlier this year, though with a slightly shorter sentence, 18 years.
“I do want to take the plea,” Grippo told the judge when he was first brought into the courtroom at noon on Monday.
The problem for Grippo and his decision to accept the plea was that the D.A.’s office had withdrawn that offer. Eric Aboulafia, the assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, after hearing of Grippo’s change of heart Monday morning, told State Supreme Court Justice Stephen Braslow, “The people now have rescinded that original offer.”
Aboulafia pointed out that the deal was withdrawn after Grippo himself rejected it, saying in court earlier this year, “I didn’t do nothing.” Aboulafia went on to say that Grippo later went on an abusive, obscenity filled tirade against Braslow.
This change of heart on July 18 on Grippo’s part occurred just before the lunch break. Braslow encouraged Aboulafia to go to his superiors during the break and ask them to reinstate the offer. “Tell them I want them to move this thing forward, please,” Braslow said, before recessing until 2:15 p.m.
After the lunch break, Aboulafia came back with an offer of 23 years in prison in exchange for the guilty plea.
Grippo’s attorneys, Daniel Russo and Keith O’Halloran, went to their client with the modified offer, which he turned down.
This led to a conference in the judge’s chambers between Grippo’s attorneys, Aboulafia and fellow Assistant District Attorney Emma Henry, which produced the offer of 20 years, which Grippo then accepted.
After pleading guilty to the manslaughter charge, Grippo was asked a series of questions by Aboulafia, putting on the record the specific details of the crime he was admitting to. Part of the ensuing narrative differed from what police and the D.A.’s office have previously described.
In early 2019, Grippo was living at his mother’s house on Old Montauk Highway with his girlfriend.
In March 2019, the woman moved to the Sands Motel in downtown Montauk to be with Robert Casado.
“You were jealous of Robert Casado, yes?” Aboulafia asked Grippo.
“Yes, sir.”
“And therefore, you planned his murder?”
“Yes, sir.”
On May 24, 2019, Grippo purchased a pickax handle at Riverhead Building Supply on Industrial Road in Montauk. He learned that Casado walked daily from the Sands Motel to his job at Mickey’s Carting, taking the short cut through Kirk Park called Kirk Park Trail.
Besides their interest in the same woman, the two men had a couple of other things in common: Both worked as laborers, Casado at Mickey’s and Grippo at Seaside Landscaping in downtown Montauk, and both had to be at work early in the morning each day.
In the early morning on June 6, Grippo, driving a 2017 Honda, met a friend at the Wavecrest Hotel on Old Montauk Highway. He asked this friend to take the wheel, and to drive him to the woman’s residence, meaning the Sands Motel.
But before they got there, Grippo had the friend take a detour to Kirk Park. Grippo pulled his pickax handle out of the back of his vehicle and got out, entering the path he knew Casado would soon be walking on. There, he concealed himself in the dense shrubbery the path runs through.
When Casado walked down the path, Grippo pounced on him, striking him repeatedly in the head with the pickax handle, crushing Casado’s skull, he admitted in court.
When Grippo emerged from the Kirk Park path, his hands were covered with blood. He had his friend drive him to Grippo’s mother’s house, where he washed up and changed his clothes, then went to work. He took the 36-inch pickax handle to work with him, disposing of it later in the day by leaving it in what he described as “an East Hampton dumpster,” apparently at the Montauk Recycling Center. Police never recovered the weapon.
Aboulafia said the friend was not implicated in the crime.
According to his attorney, Daniel Russo, because of the violent nature of his crime, Grippo is required to serve at least 85 percent of his sentence before being eligible for parole.
When that time comes, the parole board will likely consider Grippo’s record. This is his third time being sentenced to prison in New York State.
Starting in 1988, he served four years on a felony charge of attempted burglary. Then in 1998, he was sentenced to 15 years on multiple violent felonies, including armed robbery and assault.
On July 18, after over three years of denying his guilt, insisting, “I didn’t do nothing,” of berating the judge with obscenities, of allegedly hurling a canister of his own urine at a corrections officer — he is still facing a felony harassment charge over that incident, which occurred last year — Grippo spoke calmly throughout the day, including when he was admitting his guilt.
His voice did not waver. He seemingly showed no emotion.
On September 7, before Grippo is sentenced, Casado’s family is expected to address the court, to describe the impact of the loss of their loved one.
Grippo will then have one last chance to make a statement before Braslow pronounces sentence on him.
