Opening statements in Commack murder-for-hire trial

Ronald Thornton first enticed James DiMartino into fraudulent real estate schemes, then had the Nesconset attorney killed when Thornton's "house of cards" was about to crumble, a Suffolk prosecutor told jurors Monday.

The slaying took place on Oct. 20, 2008, in the parking lot of a Commack restaurant where DiMartino, 44, expected Thornton to hand over a $16-million cash infusion for the mortgage business they ran, Assistant District Attorney Nancy Clifford said in opening statements of Thornton's murder trial in Suffolk County Court in Riverhead.

"Ronald Thornton never went there that day. Instead, he sent a death squad," she said.

Prosecutors say a man hired by Thornton shot DiMartino in the head and left him to die in the restaurant parking lot on Jericho Turnpike.

Thornton, 39, a onetime mortgage broker from Nesconset, is charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy in DiMartino's death.

But Thornton's attorney, Glenn Obedin of Central Islip, Monday told jurors there is no evidence to support prosecutors' claim that Thornton, at a meeting in Queens days before DiMartino was killed, promised three people - who are being prosecuted separately - he'd pay them $10,000 if they killed DiMartino, or that he provided the murder weapon.

"There's no gun," Obedin said. "There's no money. . . . There's no evidence of that meeting."

In a 40-minute opening statement, Clifford described DiMartino as a naive dreamer who "thought he had met that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," after meeting Thornton at a real estate closing.

"[DiMartino] was a man who always wanted bigger, better, more," Clifford said. "He never met a get-rich-quick scheme he didn't like."

Thornton "was a person who painted rainbows and who had an uncanny ability to find the weakest part of a person," she said. "The only gold in his pot was fool's gold."

Thornton's scams, including one in which he tried to sell a house he didn't own, began to unravel in part because DiMartino, his attorney and business partner, notarized a phony deed signed by a fictitious mob figure, Clifford said.

At the same time, clients were seeking compensation for real estate deals that didn't pan out - and threatening to report Thornton to authorities, she said.

"Ronald Thornton wanted Jim DiMartino dead because Jim DiMartino was the only person who could expose Ronald Thornton and his house of cards," Clifford said.

Outside court, DiMartino's parents said their son did not intend to break the law when he notarized the fake deed.

"If he did anything, he did it because he thought it was right and he could take care of it," said his father, Joe DiMartino.

DiMartino's mother, Marion DiMartino, said her son was "a wonderful human being."

For seven months before DiMartino was killed, Thornton agreed to be a cooperating witness with the Suffolk district attorney's office, Clifford said. Thornton claimed DiMartino had accepted loans from mob figures, but investigators became "increasingly disenchanted" with Thornton and his accusations against DiMartino, she said.

"Very little of it was verified. Almost none of it was corroborated," Clifford said.