Man Held in Deaths of Elderly Couple

A 22-year-old Sylmar man was arrested Thursday in the fatal stabbing of an elderly couple, the owners of a popular North Hollywood restaurant who had hired him to install a floor in their home, police said.

Israel Cabrera was arrested on suspicion of fatally stabbing and beating Sabato and Eugenia Russo, both 73, at their home in the 6300 block of Bellaire Avenue early Wednesday, police said. Robbery is believed to have been the motive.

Cabrera was part of a three-man work crew that had finished installing a wooden floor at the Russos’ home earlier in the week, said Det. Vince Bancroft. Cabrera is believed to have returned to the house alone Wednesday morning, Bancroft said.

Several items taken from the Russos’ ransacked house were found at Cabrera’s residence, along with two knives believed to have been used in the slayings, authorities said.

Devastated friends and relatives of the couple spent Thanksgiving Day trying to come to grips with the slayings. One person described Sabato Russo as a man with a generous heart, who would often feed the homeless around his Sylvan Street restaurant.

“They were good people,” said Joseph Iacobellis, 21, whose mother is a veteran waitress at the couple’s business, Sabatino’s Italian Bakery and Restaurant. “They didn’t deserve anything like that.”

The Russos’ casual Italian restaurant, with its red-checked tablecloths and friendly atmosphere, has been a fixture in North Hollywood for nearly two decades, said longtime chef Juan Jimenez.

Sabato Russo, a native of Naples who went by “Sabby,” greeted patrons at the door and employed a number of friends and family members at the restaurant. The eatery is popular with a broad group of regulars, including police, entertainment industry figures, boxers from a nearby gym and Italian American families looking for a little tradition.

The Russos had gone into semi-retirement in recent years, leaving much of the day-to-day operation of the restaurant to their daughter, Rosanna Tolino, 33, and her husband, Antonio. But Sabato still kept his hand in the business operations, said Rosanna Tolino.

“He was very sweet and trusting,” she said of her father.

Tolino and her husband began worrying about the Russos on Wednesday afternoon when Sabato failed to show up with a delivery of extra pie boxes, she said.

Her husband decided to go to the house to check on the couple, Tolino said. On the way to the house, Antonio flagged down a police patrol car, Bancroft said.

Fire Department personnel found the bodies after forcing their way into the residence, Bancroft said. Police found no evidence of a forced entry at the home.

Jack Basmadjian, a longtime Bellaire Avenue resident, said neighbors were stunned by the killings. “It’s a nice, very quiet block,” he said. “This is the first thing that’s happened like this, and I’ve lived here 13 years. It’s really a shame.”

Sharon Simon, a next-door neighbor, said her husband and son had been home Wednesday morning but had not heard anything strange from the Russos’ house.

On most Thanksgiving eves, Simon said, she would walk over to the Russos’ place, where Sabato would give her a pie from the bakery. This year, she said, there were firetrucks outside the house, and she wound up watching the grim proceedings through her bathroom window.

Simon said the neighborhood would not be the same without Sabato Russo, whom she described as “very hospitable, very Old World, very Italian--and just very nice.”

Rosanna Tolino said it would be difficult to continue her father’s business without him. Sabato Russo and his wife, a native of the Bronx, came to Southern California in 1956, and Sabato worked for many years as a chef at the now-defunct Villa Capri in Hollywood, which was co-owned by his uncle, before opening his own place.

“He just did everything,” Tolino said. “I don’t know how we’re going to make it through. I don’t know if I can fill those shoes, but I have to try. . . . That’s all I can do.”