Mark Caleo guilty of ordering wife Rita Caleo’s 1990 murder

ALMOST 30 years after he thought he had got away with murder, Mark Caleo has been convicted of ordering the stabbing death of his wife, while being cleared over the shooting murder of her brother Dr Michael Chye.

Almost 30 years after he thought he had got away with murder, Mark Caleo has been convicted of ordering the stabbing death of his wife.

A Supreme Court jury today found the former high-flying restaurateur, 55, guilty of soliciting the Eastern Suburbs murder of Rita Caleo in a tragic tale of jealousy, money and affairs.

Rita Caleo was stabbed to death. Her husband has been found guilty of ordering her murder. Picture: Supplied

Mark Caleo leaves the NSW Supreme Court at Darlinghurst during his trial. He’s been convicted over the 1990 murder of his then wife. Picture: AAP

The jury also convicted former Kings Cross bouncer and Tongan national Alani Afu, 51, of killing Ms Caleo in the ensuite bathroom of the family’s Double Bay home while her toddler daughters slept in the next room.

The verdict brought to an end the state’s highest-profile cold case investigation.

Caleo and Afu, a father-of-six, were arrested in 2015 after a fresh investigation by the Homicide Squad’s Unsolved Homicide Team.

Alani Afu.

Former Kings Cross bouncer Alani Afu is arrested by police.

Just before the jury came back with a verdict, Caleo and Afu wished each other good luck in the dock.

However the jury acquitted Mark Caleo of ordering the murder of his brother-in-law, Hurstville GP Dr Chye.

The 36-year-old doctor was shot dead as he drove into the garage of his Woolahra home on October 16, 1989.

Dr Michael Chye was gunned down as he arrived home. His killer remains unknown.

Ms Caleo, 39, who owned a chain of Italian restaurants with her husband, was killed on August 10, 1990.

The jury heard that Caleo got one of his staff from the couple’s flagship restaurant in Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building to hire Afu to kill his wife after she found out he was having an affair with one of her friends, Janice Yap.

Ms Caleo had written her husband out of her will.

She was murdered two days after the NSW Government posted a $50,000 reward together with immunity from prosecution for anyone with information about Dr Chye’s death.

It can be revealed that Caleo has convictions for common assault in 1998 and was given a suspended sentence in the ACT Magiistrates’ Court in 1993 for stealing five handbags.

Justice Robert Hulme remanded both men in custody for sentencing.