Former Deputy Pleads Guilty in Wife’s Death
A former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter Monday in the shooting death of his wife in the couple’s Chatsworth house.
Anthony Michael Scalzo, 50, admitted shooting Joan Patricia Scalzo, 44, during an argument on Feb. 20, 1989, in the house in the 10000 block of Nevada Avenue.
Joan Scalzo was a fifth-grade teacher at Pinecrest Elementary School in Northridge. She died after being shot twice in the head with a .38-caliber revolver.
According to testimony at Scalzo’s preliminary hearing, the couple was separated and was planning to sell the house.
He came to the house on the day of the killing to discuss the sale. One of the couple’s daughters testified that while she was working in the back yard, she heard a loud bang. She entered the house to find her father bending over her wounded mother with his hands around her neck, the daughter, Claudia Scalzo, 15, testified.
Anthony Scalzo had been charged with murder. The lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter covers killings that resulted from heated arguments rather than premeditation.
Scalzo was a sheriff’s deputy from 1972 to 1984, when he suffered a back injury.
He is scheduled to be sentenced July 9 before San Fernando Superior Court Judge John Hayes Major. He faces a maximum sentence of 13 years.
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