Eric Napoletano

Victims

3 deaths attributed, 2 COVERED BY CONVICTIONS. He was convicted of two murders and received two consecutive life terms after a multi-jurisdictional investigation spanning Virginia, New York and New Jersey. The third attributed death produced no conviction

Years active

1984 / 1985 / 1990

Location

Virginia/New York/New Jersey, USA

Method

Stabbing with knife / Shooting / Strangulation

Status

Eluded investigators across three states, moving from New York to Albuquerque, New Mexico, before his arrest on March 27, 1991. A New Jersey prosecutor in Clifton coordinated a multi-jurisdictional investigation across the Virginia, New York and New Jersey cases, and secured TWO MURDER CONVICTIONS and two consecutive life terms; the New Jersey sentence was imposed on June 25, 1993. The third death attributed to him did not result in a conviction. Held at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. His mother, who worked for the New York City Police Department, was reported at the time to have shielded him from investigators.

Eric Napoletano killed three people connected to him by marriage or relationship over six years across three states. An FBI profiler described him in evidence as a sexually sadistic serial killer.

He was born in 1965. Marilyn Coludro, fifteen, his girlfriend, was killed in 1984 in New York. Gladys Matos, the mother of his first wife, was killed in 1985. Myra Acevedo, twenty-two, his second wife, was strangled in 1990 and her body left in a rural part of New Jersey. The three deaths were by stabbing, shooting and strangulation respectively.

He was arrested on March 27, 1991. He was convicted in New Jersey of his wife's murder in May 1993 and sentenced to life imprisonment on June 25 that year. The case attracted attention because of how long he had operated across state lines, with each jurisdiction holding a piece of the pattern.