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1975 Nassau cop killer up for parole, again

BY MATTHEW CHAYES | matthew.chayes@newsday.com

June 10, 2008

John MacKenzie, left, hopes a parole board will let him out of prison on supervised release from his second-degree murder conviction for the killing of Nassau County police officer, Matthew Giglio, right, in 1975. (Newsday photo by Matthew Chayes; Nassau County)

WOODBOURNE, N.Y. - Wearing drab green prison clothes, John MacKenzie wept last week as he watched fellow inmates play with their children in a visiting room.

The 61-year-old says he gets few visitors at the Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in upstate Sullivan County. His two daughters want nothing to do with their father, who's told parole commissioners he's had prostate and gallbladder surgery in the nearly 33 years he's been imprisoned for killing a Nassau County police officer, Matthew Giglio, in 1975.

"This is not a life," he said during an interview with Newsday, admitting he thinks he has a "snowball's chance in hell" of being paroled.

He doesn't want to die as Prisoner No. 76A3447.

"I can't ask for fairness. I can't ask for forgiveness. I can't ask for compassion. I can't ask for understanding. And why? Because it's going to fall on deaf ears," MacKenzie said.

This week -- for the fifth time in nearly eight years -- he is hoping the parole board will let him out of prison on supervised release from his second-degree murder conviction, for which he was sentenced to 25 years to life in Giglio's death.

And for the fifth time, Giglio's family and many supporters are trying to see to it that parole is denied. For them, the loss will never end.

Every time the family opposes his parole request, "it just brings up old feelings," said Giglio's daughter, Doreen Velardi, 43, of New Jersey.

MacKenzie said he can empathize. "If it was my father or my family member, I'd probably feel exactly the same way, and I don't fault them," he said.

The shooting happened in October 1975 as MacKenzie, 29, formerly of Whitestone, was burglarizing a West Hempstead boutique when officer Giglio, 35, confronted him. MacKenzie fired his gun. The bullet ruptured Giglio's colon and aorta; his leg had to be amputated.

Ten weeks later, Giglio, a Nassau cop for 11 years, became the 24th Nassau police officer to die from injuries suffered in the line of duty. He left a wife and three children.

If he gets parole, MacKenzie said, he would move into a Zen Buddhist monastery at Mount Tremper, N.Y., where his mother is buried. But with parole prospects grim, he says, he wishes he had gotten a death sentence.

According to records, MacKenzie has had a clean disciplinary record. He's earned college degrees and says he's dedicated his time to showing fellow inmates how their crimes hurt victims. He says he's deeply sorry and, while he can't remember the night in question because of the prescription drugs he says he was taking, accepts full responsibility for the killing.

About 50 people have written letters supporting MacKenzie's release; more than 1,000 have written to oppose it, said Carole Weaver, the parole spokes- woman. The campaign to oppose parole has been led by the Police Benevolent Association, the Nassau police union.

"He's rehabilitated? He can do good work in jail. He can educate other people in jail," said union president James Carver. "Matt Giglio, he got sentenced to death, so why should this guy go out and lead a productive life, or any life?"