Somewhere in Alabama, a killer roams free.
It’s a theory Shelton police believe two decades into a cold case murder.
After evading justice for 21 years since the Dec. 22, 1992 killing of Shelton resident Francis Gallo in his Howe Avenue home, cops and Gallo’s family are hoping that publicizing the case will shake out new evidence that will lead to the arrest of the man they believe perpetrated the crime.
The Crime
Sitting in an interview room at the Shelton Police Department’s detective bureau last week, Linda Gallo and her daughter, Lindsay, now 32, remember all too well the nightmare they awoke to at 4:30 a.m.
“Laying in bed, I heard a ‘pop pop,’ and I ran downstairs,” Linda Gallo said. “I found my husband laying on the kitchen floor. I didn’t quite realize at that point what had happened.”
The couple’s son, Fran, just 14 at the time, and Lindsay, then 11, woke up and came down the stairs.
Linda sent them to a neighbor’s, then tried 911.
“When I picked up the phone, the phone lines had been cut,” Gallo recalls.
Soon after, she made another grim discovery.
“I realized there was blood,” she said. “I still couldn’t take that all in.”
Police and paramedics rushed to the scene.
They brought Fran Gallo, 41, to Yale-New Haven Hospital where doctors performed surgery, but couldn’t save his life.
Police believe Gallo was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, victimized by an armed burglar who had entered the house looking for quick grabs.
The Aftermath
Gallo’s death reverberated throughout the Valley.
Gallo grew up in Derby and managed the printing department at Griffin Hospital. He coached youth soccer and was a referee, too.
He was a long-time member of Derby’s tight-knit Hotchkiss Hose Fire Company.
His turnout gear is displayed at the firehouse on David Humphrey road to this day.
“That really threw this company for a loop, when Franny died,” Kelly Curtis, Derby’s fire commissioner, said. “Right before Christmas. The hardest thing a company officer could do is bury one of their members.”
Thomas Lenart Sr., a former Derby police sergeant who worked with Gallo’s father at Hull Dye and became friends with Fran, said every December the memories of his friend’s death come back.
“I try to forget it,” he said. “Unfortunately, I can’t.”
“He was an out-going, fun-loving person,” Lenart said of Gallo. “He always had a smile, always a laugh, whether it was the best circumstances or the worst. It’s just so odd and so random.”
The toll on Gallo’s family was obviously worse. There’s no “closure.”
“You relive it over and over,” Linda Gallo said of the horrible night 21 years ago. “What could have been different? What could have changed?”
The family never returned to the home, on Howe Avenue, near Riverside Park. They stayed with relatives for about six months before returning to Shelton, where they all still live.
“It sucks,” daughter Lindsay, now 32, said simply about having to grow up without a father.
She said she still has to deal with the ramifications, even in day-to-day interactions with others.
“People I meet now they think my parents are divorced. Sometimes it’s just easier to let them think that,” Lindsay said. “It’s just easier than explaining the real reason.”
“For the longest time after I used to put out four plates to set the table, put out his favorite foods,” Linda Gallo said. “He’s missed so much in his kids growing up, as my kids have missed their dad.”
Gallo left two sisters who still live in Derby, Linda said.
“One of his mother’s biggest dreams was to find out who did this before she passed away,” she said. “But she’s gone.”
While the case has grown old, Shelton police are still pursuing.
“He was just a normal, hard-working, family-loving husband and father, really,” said retired Shelton police Detective Ben Trabka, who was assigned to the case in 2003. “This was just someone who was asleep in their own house, minding their own business.”
The Investigation
When the case was assigned to Trabka, he said police still had some tips to follow.
“Basically we followed up some leads, and in following up the leads to their homicide, we closed a Stratford cold case homicide, but the suspect from that we ruled out in ours,” he said.
“We did get a break in the case when someone came forward, someone with a guilty conscience that had information they had never shared before,” Trabka said.
“It was only brought to light because this person, their conscience was bothering them because they had just lost their father and they realized what it was like, and that’s the reason they came forward,” the detective said.
The new information pointed to a man who was 15 years old at the time of Gallo’s death, and was reported a runaway to Shelton police the morning of the killing.
About a year after the crime, the boy left the state and hasn’t returned since.
Police say he currently lives in Alabama.
Cops are hesitant to delve into too many specifics regarding the investigation, and Trabka said police have spoken to the man, but don’t have enough evidence to lead to an arrest.
“We’ve sat down and we’ve interviewed him,” he said. “Based on the interview he’s not any less of a person of interest, that’s about all we can say.”
The Hope
Trabka retired this year. The case is now assigned to Detective Matt Kunkel.
He can be reached by calling the police department at 203 – 924-1544 and asking for the detective division.
Police believe their suspect was with another person when he entered the Gallos’ home.
“We know for a fact that there’s other people that have information,” Trabka said.
There’s a $70,000 reward in the case, but the incentive to help solve the crime should go beyond money, Trabka said.
“We’re talking about people who are now in their mid-30s that know something, and they could have kids the age that Lindsay was when this happened,” he said.
Gallo’s face also adorns the 10 of Spades (pictured above) in a Cold Case deck of playing cards produced by the state’s criminal justice division and correction department.
“Obviously the Gallo family as well as the Shelton police are looking for someone to make this Christmas a little happier and put an end to this ordeal,” the detective went on.
“It would be awesome if we could just jog someone’s memory of something,” Lenart said. “The worst of it was the time of the year, on top of everything else.”
“Enough is enough,” Lindsay said. “I get really angry when I see other cold cases getting solved. I’m like ‘Come on, you solved it with a hair sample from 30 years ago? Really?’ I’m happy for that family, but I’m jealous and I’m angry. Why do they get it and we don’t?”
