‘Patty is not a victim’: Patricia Columbo again denied parole for 1976 Elk Grove murders
Convicted killer Patricia Columbo’s bid for parole failed Thursday when members of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board denied her petition for release by a vote of 8 to 2.
Columbo, 68, was sentenced to 200 years in prison for the May 4, 1976, murders of her father Frank Columbo, mother Mary and 13-year-old brother Michael in the family’s Elk Grove Village home. Columbo’s co-defendant and boyfriend Frank DeLuca was also convicted and received a 300-year sentence. DeLuca died in prison in January 2023.
Raymond Rose, former Elk Grove Village deputy police chief and lead investigator on the case, has attended every Columbo parole hearing for the last 40 years to oppose her release. Accompanied by former Elk Grove Village police chief and current village trustee Stephen Schmidt, Rose urged board members to “send a clear message to Patricia Columbo and those like her (that) these acts of violence will never be tolerated by our society.”
Attorney Jed Stone argued for Columbo’s release along with former professor, lawyer and domestic violence expert Dr. Karla Fischer, who said Columbo expressed remorse and told her “I am responsible for all these crimes.”
Stone and Fischer say Columbo was sexually abused from age 7 to 12 by a family friend and groomed by DeLuca, who sexually exploited and trafficked her.
Since her incarceration, Columbo earned associates and bachelor’s degrees, said Fischer. She also works with the prison literacy program and serves as a peer trauma counselor to fellow inmates, all of which provides evidence of her rehabilitation, Fisher said.
“People can be redeemed,” said Stone during his closing statement. “Redemption is real and should be honored by this board.”
Calling Columbo the mastermind behind the murders, Rose rejected rehabilitation claims, saying she has never admitted complicity or shown remorse.
“She even has stated that she can't remember what happened during the murders and described that day as ‘like a dream,’” he said. “How does someone atone for crimes that they have committed if they haven't even taken the first steps of expressing remorse or admitting her participation?”
He described the gruesome scene he and other officers encountered: Michael stabbed 87 times with a pair of scissors and shot once in the head; Mary bludgeoned with a vase and “shot between the eyes, her throat slit from ear to ear” and Frank Columbo, beaten with a bowling trophy, stabbed in the throat and chest and shot four times.
According to Rose, Columbo, then 19, spent eight months planning the murders, which included providing a layout of her parents’ house to would-be hit men she attempted to hire. Failing that, Columbo manipulated her 37-year-old married lover into killing her family by falsely claiming her father intended to have her and DeLuca killed, Rose said.
Rose expressed relief at the board’s decision in response to “an obvious push to get her paroled.”
“I was a little concerned they were painting an inaccurate picture of what really happened,” said Rose. “They turned the whole thing around, making Patty a victim. Patty is not a victim.”
Schmidt said the board’s decision honored the sentencing judge’s intent, which was to incarcerate Columbo and DeLuca for life in what he described as “the worst crime committed in our village.”
“That was accomplished today,” said Schmidt, who promised to return with Rose in two years for Columbo’s next parole hearing “to do it all over again and make sure she doesn’t get out.”