Daughter reads impact statement at Mark Caleo sentencing hearing
FORMER high-profile restaurateur Mark Caleo didn’t look at his youngest daughter today as she told a court how he had stolen her life when he had her mother murdered.
NSW
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FORMER high-profile restaurateur Mark Caleo didn’t look at his youngest daughter today as she told a court how he had stolen her life when he had her mother murdered.
The Supreme Court heard how Caleo’s two daughters had nine homes, including an orphanage and fosters homes, after their mother, Rita Caleo, was stabbed to death in their Double Bay home almost 30 years ago.
“I didn’t understand why other children had their parents and I didn’t,” the woman who cannot be identified because she was only 18-months-old at the time, said.
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“My father never wanted to take responsibility and this is something he will never understand how much it has affected our lives to this day.”
The two girls were eventually brought up by Caleo’s third wife in Japan.
“What my father did was not just a terrible crime that happened overnight three decades ago,” his daughter. said.
“It is a lifetime crime that affected countless people and will continue to do so.”
Breaking down as she read her Victims Impact Statement in court, she said she had wondered why her mother’s Malaysian family had never contacted the girls and then learned after getting in touch with them that they had been “living in fear” of Mark Caleo.
He sat in the dock staring straight ahead to the front of the court and showed no emotion.
The court was hearing sentencing submissions after Caleo, 56, was convicted in April of soliciting the murder of Rita Caleo in August 1990, solving one of the state’s most notorious cold case murders.
Tongan national, father-of-six Alani Afu, 52, was convicted of murdering Ms Caleo who was stabbed 23 times in the bathroom of her home as her daughters slept in the bedroom next door.
The two men who sat next to each other during their trial were today sitting at opposite sides of the courtroom.
Mark Caleo was acquitted of soliciting the murder of Rita’s brother, Dr Michael Chye, who was shot dead as he drove into his Sydney home in October 1989.
The Caleos were a golden couple who owned a number of restaurants including an Italian restaurant in Sydney’s QVB building.
His two daughters sat in court for part of his trial and the youngest described how she dealt with the guilty verdict.
“It took time for me to process the verdict but as I started to reflect on the sad and unimaginable truth that is forever imprinted on my life, I felt very shocked and disturbed,” she said.
The sentencing hearing continues before Justice Robert Hulme.