FILIBERTI BOYFRIEND’s MOTHER CALLS OUT MARTINO
'Stand up for my son and Katie as well as cops’
By JIM LANGAN
The mother of the young man questioned early on in the death of Katie Filiberti has reached the boiling point with Hyde Park Supervisor Tom Martino regarding recent comments he made attacking reports that two Hyde Park Police officers had been asked to submit DNA as part of the murder investigation.
The mercurial Martino used the term “bomb throwers” in reference to media and Internet speculation about the officers involved.
Hudson Valley News confirmed and reported the DNA request in our June 29 edition.
Police Chief Charles Broe confirmed our report but vigorously defended the officers involved and expressed frustration with the rash of rumors precipitating such an unusual request.
But it was Martino’s attempt to interject himself that has Melissa Kirby seeing red.
Full story in this week’s print edition, of Hudson Valley News
Can't say I blame her one bit. No one came out to defend her boy in any way when his name was being dragged through the mud all over town and all over the comment pages of a different local news publication. Even when asked directly if the young man was a suspect, police refused to answer, being as tight-lipped as they have been all along. Yet when doubt is cast over the Hyde Park Police Department, an official letter from the District Attorney's office is released to clear them, and the town supervisor calls the media and concerned townspeople "bomb throwers" for daring to question why two officers were asked to submit DNA samples as part of the investigation into the death of Katie Filiberti.
Where is the letter clearing the boyfriend Mr District Attorney? And Mr. Martino, how DARE you accuse the people of this community, and even the press as being instigators, for daring to ask questions about this case rather than giving answers the we should have been told without asking.
At the top of the list, why were two police officers taken in for DNA testing? Is the Chief conducting this investigation based on rumors and innuendo, or is he not? Or, for that matter, is the Chief even still conducting this investigation at all, or has another department taken over as the lead agency?
If the two officers in question were never suspects, then they should never been asked, nor should they have submitted to DNA testing. The notion that they were tested simply to put the public at ease over rumors is quite simply, ridiculous. If that had been the case, then the Chief would have made an official and timely statement explaining why this was being done, who the officers are and their part in the investigation, when exactly the officers were going to be tested, and when the results of the tests would be available. Furthermore, from that point forward he should have recused himself and his department, handing over the investigation to another agency.
The public hasn't heard a peep about the case, zero facts have been given all along, we don't even know if in fact the case is indeed a homicide thanks to the gag order placed on the Medical Examiner, yet when rumors begin swirling about the unprecedented fact that two officers were taken in for DNA testing we are called "bomb-throwers" and told the equivalent of "move along, nothing to see here."
