There was this guy I used to know, now dead. He was sort of a jerk, a chubby little guy who like to act like he was mysterious. Met him through a friend and socialized with him because I socialized with me friend. He lived on Staten Island.
This guy, named Paul Michael, had a friend who would hang around with Paul sometimes when we were there. He used to make these very cryptic references to how Paul had a dark side. Most of us thought Paul was sort of a joke. Then he moved away and we sort of forgot about him.
Fast forward several years later. I get call from a friend telling me to turn on Donahue. There's Paul ON DONAHUE. We are all in shock. Apparently what happened was as follows.
Paul had always been the sort of guy who wanted to be a tough guy, and at one point he actually did meet and hang around with a legitimately bad ass criminal type. The criminal, as we later found out from James Ellroy (more on THAT later1), considered Paul Michael to be a complete stooge but thought he might have some use for him one day. And then that one day came.
The criminal was approached by a man in a divorce situation who wanted to make his soon to be ex-wife into a soon to be ex-living person. The man's name was Paul Hamwi. Hamwi wanted the criminal, whose name I can't remember, to go to florida and kill his wife, Susan, because he didn't want to pay her alimony or child support. So the criminal approaches Paul and recruits him and Paul, not wanting to be a pussy, agrees. Possibly part of him wanted to do it? It was only a woman, and he's be with the criminal, who was obviously a tough guy.
So they get to the woman's house and go in and the criminal attacks Susan. Serio claims he had no part in it but it seems that he actually helped strangle Susan Hamwi. Susan dies. They then discovered that Susan and Paul Hamwi's toddler was in a crib in the next room. They leave anyway, and the baby dies.
Susan apparently had befriended a schizophrenic man in the neighborhood, whose name was Purvis, I think. So after she's been missing a few days, Purvis goes over to see Susan, and he comes upon Susan's corpse and the corpse of the child. Distraught, he immediately calls the police. The police arrive and Purvis is acting very cagey so they ask him if he were involved, if he killed Susan. Thinking they wanted to hear him say "yes," he does so. The police arrest Purvis. Purvis's mother (with whom he lives) arrives and he relates what happened. When she hears he confessed she freaks out and tells him what he's just done. He immediately recants his confession. Too late. He's convicted of two murders. Life in prison.
This all happened before Paul (my "friend") moved to Staten Island. So I gather that he told his friend about what happened ("I'm a contract killer") and that's what they used to whisper about all the time.
After Paul moved away, he was living in Texas. The hardened criminal, for reasons I don't recall, was in prison on another charge but was questioned about the case and in exchange for imunity offered to give up Paul Hamwi and "our" Paul. So the criminal calls Paul from prison and they shoot the shit about old times, including the murder. Paul talks about the murder on the phone. Moments later the Texas Rangers swoop down on his house and arrest him. He is extradited back to Florida and put on trial. This is when he was on Donahue. Purvis, the schizo guy who was wrongly convicted, is set free. Serio gets life in prison. So does Hamwi.
Serio served 6-10 years or so, became extremely corpulent in solitary confinement from what I've heard, and died of a heart attack. He was kept in solitary because he killed a woman and a child and was a little chubby guy, so would have been killed almost immediately if put in the general population.
So years later I am reading "My Dark Places" by James Ellroy and I am floored yet again by this case -- Ellroy devotes several pages of his book to the case!
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