Bingo! Joseph Musumeci is Robert's brother

I don’t go in for the sort of speculation that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando likes to indulge in with Consuelo’s friends at Super One.

So I ordered a birth certificate at the Public Registry, to confirm what I suspected already: that Joseph Musumeci is Robert’s brother.

I dispatched an assistant to ask at the Public Registry for the birth certificate of one Robert Musumeci, born in 1973 or 1974.

The reply was that birth certificates are not relinquished unless those doing the asking can provide the parents’ names or at least a specific date of birth.

I had Joseph Musumeci’s parents’ names from the judgement delivered by Consuelo Herrera in the criminal case the Police vs. Joseph Musumeci: Anthony Musumeci and Rose nee Magro.

So I took a gamble and asked my assistant to present a request for the birth certificate of Robert Musumeci, son of Anthony Musumeci and Rose nee Magro.

And the clerk at the Public Registry said: “How many copies do you want?”

Bingo. They’re brothers.

This means that Magistrate Consuelo Herrera sat in judgement over a man with whose brother she was having a ‘secret’ affair.

He was acquitted, and the police did not appeal. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, because he might have been acquitted in any case, and the police might have chosen not to appeal regardless.

But the fact remains that if a magistrate cannot sit in judgement over his or her brother-in-law – for obvious reasons – then he or she cannot sit in judgement over the sibling of somebody with whom he or she has another form of sexual relationship.

The magistrate might have been aware of the potential complications that could emerge later: she appears to have covered her back with rather a lot of case law, citing chapter and verse over several pages and justifying her decision with a fundamental and obvious explanation of the basics of criminal prosecution – and all for a relatively petty case of theft of Melita Cable TV’s services.

The only reason I remembered this case – and several others did, too – is because when it was reported in the newspapers the name struck me. It struck me because I knew she was sleeping with Robert Musumeci at the time.

In my next post, I’ll tell you the story of the magistrate, the magistrate’s lover, his brother, the wife, the tampered-with connection box and the picnic-cooler. It’s hilarious.

No wonder Magistrate Herrera was so worried about going down in the world when she shacked up with Robert. Reading that court judgement, I began to understand what she meant.