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Cops: Business partner lured attorney to his killers

BY ZACHARY R. DOWDY AND SUMATHI REDDY | zachary.dowdy@newsday.com sumathi.reddy@newsday.com

9:54 PM EST, November 17, 2008

The attorney who was shot dead in a Commack restaurant parking lot was lured there with the promise of new business by his neighbor and business partner, and then was killed in a botched robbery involving two accomplices, Suffolk police said Monday.

A 19-year-old exotic dancer and her boyfriend conspired with James DiMartino's business partner to rob DiMartino during a concocted business meeting in a restaurant parking lot last month, Suffolk detectives said. When DiMartino showed up on Oct. 20 and resisted the robbery, police said he was shot in the head in the parking lot of Sil La Joung on Jericho Turnpike.

Charged with second-degree murder were DiMartino's partner, Ronald Thornton, 37, of 6 Margaret Ave., Nesconset; Donovan Raysor, 20, of 191-39 116th Ave., St. Albans; and Monique Randall, 19, of 223-28 105th Ave., Queens Village. Randall was arrested Saturday and the other two on Sunday; they all pleaded not guilty in First District Court in Central Islip Monday.

They were held without bail.

"Mr. Thornton had set up his business partner for a robbery in that parking lot," said Det. Lt. Jack Fitzpatrick, commander of the homicide squad. "That robbery, as we all know now, ended in Mr. DiMartino's death."

Fitzpatrick would not say if DiMartino's killers took any money. Police said none of the defendants had criminal records.

Donald Dacey, 48, of Hauppauge, a lifelong friend of DiMartino's, condemned the crime.

"For someone to do that, you would hope it would not be over something that little," he said. "Nothing warrants killing somebody, of course. But just robbing somebody? I would assume there's more to it than that. That doesn't add up."

The victim's mother, Marion DiMartino, 71, said she was elated to hear of the arrests.

"I am thrilled," she said. "I hope they suffer forever because this was my baby."

Breaking into a sob, she said: "He was the most wonderful son a mother could have. And these animals killed him."

Still, she said the arrests brought her no closure.

"They can't bring my son back," she said.

A passing motorist noticed DiMartino lying on the ground in the restaurant parking lot at 3:20 p.m. He was pronounced dead at St. Catherine of Siena Medical Center in Smithtown.

At a news conference at police headquarters in Yaphank yesterday, police said Thornton was a partner in a new business, JMB Funding, with DiMartino. Police said Thornton enlisted Randall, whom he had met in her capacity as an exotic dancer, because he thought she'd know someone who could pull off a robbery.

Fitzpatrick said Randall then recruited her boyfriend, Raysor, to hold up DiMartino. Thornton suspected DiMartino would be bringing a lot of cash to the discussion of a business deal, Fitzpatrick said.

The men had worked as partners at JMB Funding on Wheeler Road in Central Islip, a company that has existed for only a few months, Fitzpatrick said. But he said the men had known each other for considerably longer and that they had business dealings in the past.

Both within blocks of each other in a Nesconset neighborhood.

Detectives would not reveal how they unraveled the operation, which Fitzpatrick said was planned over a matter of days, but court documents show that the plan was only to rob DiMartino.

"The oral statement of the defendant stated in sum and substance that we planned the robbery and one of my guys had a gun and shot him in the head during the robbery," read the felony complaint filed against Randall.

Fitzpatrick declined to say who police believe fired the gun.

Anthony La Pinta of Hauppauge, Randall's attorney, said, "She has the support of her family."

"They are willing to do everything in their power to help and support her," he added. "We are conducting our own investigation to determine whether in fact these allegations are founded."

Attorneys and relatives of the other defendants could not be reached or declined to comment. Relatives at DiMartino's home declined to comment yesterday.

Dacey worried for the young daughters his friend and his wife have.

"I just keep thinking of the four girls," he said.