Mark Caleo who paid for wife Rita Caleo’s murder loses appeal

A former restaurateur who paid a hitman to murder his wife and make it look like a ‘robbery gone wrong’ has had his appeal thrown out in the NSW Supreme Court.

A former high-flying Sydney restaurateur who callously organised his wife’s murder has had his appeal thrown out in the NSW Supreme Court.

In 2018, Mark Caleo was sentenced by Justice Robert Hulme to 12 years in prison, with a non-parole period of nine years after being found guilty of hiring a hit man to kill Rita Chye at their Double Bay home in 1990.

Rita’s body was found by the house cleaner in a pool of blood with 23 stab wounds.

A jury found Caleo paid Alani Afu $10,000 to do the deed and make it look like a “robbery gone wrong”.

Mark Caleo is led into a prison van after his sentencing hearing in 2018. Picture: AAP

Calleo, 58, appealed his sentence on June 7, 2021, submitting there was a miscarriage of justice because he was jointly tried with the hit man Afu.

But NSW Supreme Court Justice Natalie Adams said she was not satisfied the trial miscarried, giving her reasons in a written judgment released on Friday.

“Properly instructed by the trial judge, as they were, the jury were capable of appreciating the use they could make of evidence as against each of the appellants. It has not been shown that a substantial miscarriage of justice is likely to have occurred,” Justice Adams said.

The appeal was dismissed.

Mark Caleo found guilty of soliciting the stabbing murder of his wife, Rita Chye (pictured) in 1989.

Alani Afu was found guilty of the murder of Rita Caleo, 39, who was stabbed 23 times at the family's Double Bay townhouse in August 1990. Picture: AAP

In 2018, Afu was sentenced to a 20-year prison sentence with a minimum term of 15 years.

The pair thought they got away with the murder on August 10, 1990, before being charged more than two decades later for the gruesome death.

Tragically, the Caleos’ two toddler daughters were left without a mother.