| What Happened? |
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| On January 29, 2002 Jack Moretti was taken into custody by the blue Island, IL police department for bad checks. At that point he offered up information about the disappearance of Stacey Bravo. It was his belief that he would "walk" after he divulged what he knew. He then let the police search his house. There they found plenty of illegal items, listed on the evidence tag report, including drugs, materials for selling drugs & bomb making materials. He showed the police where there would be blood on the floor. Moretti was charged with possession of marijuana & cocaine, cocaine with intent to sell & concealment. On February 4, 2002 Timothy Gallano was arrested because of Moretti's statement. TJ cooperated. He took them to the barn to retrieve Stacey's remains. And he gave a few statements, then agreed to one being videotaped. The videotaped statement was TJ being questioned by assistant state's attorney, Terrance Riley. TJ's basic story is Stacey pulled a gun on him & he reacted & in the struggle the gun went off, killing Stacey. Out of fear & to protect Jack he helped Jack Moretti conceal the body. Here is his story. In 1999 TJ had a girlfriend Stacey Bravo that he met through a friend, Jack Moretti. TJ was staying with Jack in Blue Island because he didn't want to commute to Alsip from his parents home in Bourbonnais. He eventually found out that Jack was a drug dealer & Stacey was selling for him out of the bar she worked at. TJ broke up with Stacey when he realized she was using IV drugs but they remained friends. He could not do drugs because of random drug testing, hes a truck driver. In Sept 1999 Stacey went over to Moretti's house after work followed shortly behind by a girlfriend who TJ didn't know. The girls smoked some pot & talked about being molested as children & were getting quite upset. TJ was watching TV in a recliner & was trying not to pay attention to the conversation. Jack was in the next room, possibly sleeping. The rooms were only divided by plastic because they were renovating the house. When the girl left, Stacey went into Moretti's room then came out soon after. TJ thought she had left because he didn't hear her moving around. Then suddenly she walked up on his right side & pointed a gun at him. He was sitting in the recliner with the footrest up & sees her out of the corner of his eye, pointing a gun at him. He reacts by grabbing her right hand which held the gun. His hand is on hers & the butt of the gun, hers is on the trigger. So he stands up & as he does so the momentum pushes Stacey into nearby chairs that were in front of a workbench & the gun goes off. At least twice. He knows one hit her & another hit the wall. He does not know if there are others. The gun was either a semi-automatic or adjusted illegally to an automatic. The way he had held her hand as he got up put the barrel of the gun behind her right ear & angled slightly upward. That's when Moretti came out & saw what had happened. TJ was in shock & Moretti was already yelling that they had to clean up the mess. Moretti had illegal things in his house & didn't want TJ to call the police. TJ is a very loyal friend & didn't want to get Jack in trouble, he was in shock & scared of trusting the police. Moretti starts to clean up the mess. Going along, still in shock TJ helps put Stacey in a plastic bag & in her trunk. Moretti finishes cleaning up & later conceals the body in a plastic drum & covers it with concrete & leaves it in his yard. After about 6 months they ended up taking the drum to a friend's barn in Mokena. All of this TJ admits to & takes responsibility for. So that's his side. Pre-Trial A bit of information was brought to TJ's attention. Jack Moretti bragged to another inmate about how he told Stacey to pull the gun on TJ to get him to stop butting into the drug business that Jack & Stacey had going. The inmate, Alonso Pratt gave a statement in the form of an affidavit. Before the trial, the possession of marijuana & the Intent to sell cocoaine charges against Jack Moretti were dropped. He plead the 5th. & didn't testify in TJ's trial. Pratt's statement was inadmissible as hearsay because of this. The 1st. Trial The state contended that TJ, with no motive, came up behind Stacey & either held her head down or held it perfectly still & shot her 5 times in the back of her head execution style, the gun making contact with her head. With some of the state witnesses, the testimony did not match the written reports or past testimony. There were a lot of contradictions & unanswered questions. After deliberations there was a hold out juror who informed the judge that he could not convict because he had doubt. The state did not convince him beyond a reasonable doubt that TJ was guilty. A background check was then done on the juror & he was dismissed. An alternate was put on in his place. A verdict of guilty was reached in a short time after the new juror came on. The verdict was appealed. The appellate court's decision was to award TJ a new trial because dismissing a juror the way they did was illegal. The 2nd. Trial On the day the 2nd. trial was scheduled to begin, Jack Moretti showed up to testify. He had already given a statement, a signed affidavit, to the defense. But as soon as the prosecutors saw him they ran to get him a public defender. The public defender then told Moretti to plead the 5th. again. The state kept implying that they would charge Moretti with murder if he testified. The defense asked for even limited testimony as Moretti would testify that he only heard 2 shots from the next room, but the judge wouldn't force Moretti to testify. So once again Moretti & Pratt's testimonies were lost. But Moretti's statement was read aloud, for the record, before the jury was chosen. Once the trial started it seemed to be going well. The defense counteracted everything the state came up with. There were many contradictions & unanswered questions again in this trial. In fact the state committed perjury when they told the jury that Jack Moretti was prosecuted & convicted & received the maximum sentences. The judge ordered that they read a stipulation stating that all the drug charges were dropped & Moretti was only charged with concealment ( & only served about 15 months of a 5 year sentence ). There is a page on this site listing the contradictions of all the witnesses & another page with all of the counteractions & questions raised by what the state is accusing TJ of. After 4 days of trial the jury deliberated for 25 minutes while they ate lunch. They came back with a guilty verdict for first degree murder & concealment. Be sure to check out the other pages to find out why we can't figure out how not a single one of those jurors had a single shred of doubt. Was it because it was a Friday of a 3 day weekend? Or was it just laziness? Or did the state's dramatic presentation of Stacey's 2 1/2 year decomposed body, ranting & raving & repetition of the same things over & over & over, get to them. Or maybe they couldn't put 2 plus 2 together, they needed it spelled out for them like the state did. Too bad what the state said isn't the truth. Now Now we are on a crusade to get the truth out! The sentencing isn't until May 1st. but the appeal is all ready to be filed. There were so many things that were wrong with this trial it's crazy. TJ's attorneys vow it will be back. But there's still a little shred of hope with the judge. He can overturn the verdict, give a new trial or a lesser crime. Judge Panici told the jurors at least 12 times during the trial that the state "had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that TJ killed Stacey in cold blood. Many of the people in the courtroom were surprised about the verdict, including a reporter who was present for the whole trial. So there's hope that the judge has doubt too. Judge Panici, we're counting on you to get the REAL TRUTH out! |
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