‘These Maltese immigrants are savages. Let too many of them into the country, and who knows what they might do.’
Denis Catania shows off his Maltese passport (he has dual Maltese/American nationality).
Diana Camacho
Do you remember Denis Catania?
For years he infested the timesofmalta.com comments-board and other internet sites with his rabid and barely literate rants against African immigrants in Malta.
He posted lots of comments on this site, to the same effect, and even entered into battles with some regular readers.
This when he himself emigrated to the United States of America with his parents, as a child, several decades ago and was there still.
About two and a half years ago, I noticed his absence on the comments-boards and thought something might be amiss.
It didn’t take long to find out – oh, the wonders of the internet – that he had become involved in a relationship with a woman young enough to be his daughter, Diana Camacho and was wanted by the police for murder.
I had broken the news on this website: Denis Catania was quite a famous denizen of the Maltese comments-boards, a sort of Eddy Privitera of immigration.
Camacho worked in a shop and one of her colleagues was a student about her age (early 20s) who was working for the extra money.
They became friends, and Denis Catania, devoured by insecurity, became madly jealous and imagined that his girlfriend’s contemporary would also be his rival.
His solution?
He kidnapped the young man, knocked him out and burned him alive in a car. He then packed up Camacho and her two children and escaped to Cuba using false documents. They were caught there in September two years ago.
Now there are updates. The Atlantic Press reported last week:
Suspect who initially fled to Cuba pleads guilty in kidnapping and burning of Hammonton man
By LYNDA COHEN Staff Writer | Posted 1 week ago
A man who fled the country after kidnapping a man and leaving him burning inside a car in Hammonton pleaded guilty this morning.
Denis Catania, 51, of Voorhees, pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter. He faces 22 to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced Aug. 22.
Three people were charged in the kidnapping of Ross Heimlich, 23, from Camden, then leaving his body burning inside a car in Hammonton.
An autopsy showed the Somerdale man was struck in the head, and may have been alive when the car was set on fire.
Co-defendants Diana Camacho and Damien Leo previously pleaded guilty to the conspiracy and will be sentenced at the same time.
Leo was arrested first. Catania, and Camacho, 27, fled the country but were finally apprehended in Cuba in September.
CBS Philadelphia reported last Sunday that Diana Camacho pleaded guilty to conspiracy to murder, and that she had agreed to testify against Catania. The next day, Catania also pleaded guilty – but to aggravated manslaughter.
17 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/07/14/guilty-pleas-for-2-nj-slay-suspects-caught-in-cuba/
http://m.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/suspect-who-initially-fled-to-cuba-pleads-guilty-in-kidnapping/article_f262403e-ea4e-11e2-a7ca-0019bb2963f4.html?mode=jqm
It’s going to be the same as in the seventies when a lot of Maltese men ruled the notorious London Soho district, where incidentally Norman Hamilton, our supposed new high commissioner in London, used to work at the time.
Back then it was not recommended to say that you’re Maltese in the UK, and now with all this bad press we’re getting it’s going to be the same again.
We came across this murderer during a visit to the Maltese Center in Astoria, New York. At the time Denis Catania was an active member of the executive committee.
They should have kicked him out the moment he started making an ‘Eddy Privitera of immigration’ of himself.
The clown made a solo protest about the immigration ‘issue’ in Malta, in Washington, making a total ass of himself and Malta, and the Maltese Center continued to allow him to appear in photos when Maltese VIPs visited them.
During our visit we came across other like-minded fellas and unfortunately as the saying goes, Tutto il mondo e’ paese” – a microcosm of Malta in New York too.
This government just gets better and better.
By the end of their term, we are going to have a reputation of endorsing terrorist governments.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130721/local/Malta-may-block-EU-s-plan-to-blacklist-Hezbollah-wing.478800
But I do not understand.
If Denis was jealous of this guy, why did Diana help him?
There’s more to it than meets the eye.
[Daphne – I don’t think she helped him commit the murder. My recollection is that she helped him cover it up, largely by escaping with him.]
I agree with Weber, there is more than meets the eye in this case.
Why, if it was her lover?
[Daphne – That’s the point, Min. He WASN’T her lover. These were two people in their 20s working in a shop together. They became friends/buddies, as people in their 20s in the 21st century tend to do. The 51-year-old boyfriend felt threatened by this situation.]
Madonna, what an insecure man he must have been to feel jealous of a poor 21 year-old boy, working in a shop to earn some money.
How people of a certain age manage to feel jealous is beyond me.
At 51, the man should have been strong enough to just learn to cope with ‘stupid’ situations of the kind which led him to do what he did.
X’imbarazz.
Manslaughter?
And yet, he was an immigrant himself, in the land of immigrants.
Thankfully, Malta escaped being mentioned in the press report.
Why on earth was the sentence reduced to aggravated manslaughter? To me it sounds more of kidnapping plus premeditated murder and it should carry a much harsher sentence, possibly life or the death penalty.
It might be plea-bargaining.
In some US jurisdictions, the accused can plead guilty to a lesser charge. In the Zimmermann case, for instance, the jury could have passed one of three verdicts: innocent, guilty of murder, or guilty of manslaughter.
As always, I stand to be corrected by our legal eagles.
I used to work Diana before she went on to work at Target, the place where she met Ross. We met for lunch late summer before the murder. She told me she’d had an affair with Ross and at that time Denis did not know. At that time I’d known Diana for over a year. I had only seen Denis briefly when I’d pick her up at their house for dinner or when he’d drop her off for work. She would go through phases of wanting to leave then deciding to stay. I think she felt trapped being a single mother of three and working a low wage job. She liked being able to say that she lived in Voorhees, known as the “Success Address” here in South Jersey. I was completely floored when I heard of the charges against her. I lost track of her shortly after our last meetin where she discussed Denis’ s desire to more to Florida. She said he was down there with her youngest son looking for a duplex for them. The plan was for them to each have their own house so that he didn’t have to live w her kids all of the time. She said he’d told her if she didn’t move down w him that she’d never see her son again. She’d hoped that she could get a place of her own and leave him but the only thing she could afford would be in Philly or Camden and she didn’t want to go back to inner city slums. Diana was an extremely beautiful girl, very kind and polite. I often wondered why she stayed with a man old enough to be her father. … and I often wondered why she stayed with him when he only accepted her youngest child. The oldest son he didn’t like and refused to take on their cruises. It was so bad that the child knew how Denis felt and preferred to stay home with a sitter, usually a grandparent who insisted payment for watching their own grandchild. … Diana didn’t have an easy life but she didn’t let it get her down. She lived for her kids and was happy to have them schooled in the Voorhees district. While I in no way condone her actions, I believe she felt she had no choice but to lure Ross… without Denis she would have been homeless. Though it would have been better than killing an innocent young man, going to prison and losing her kids… I’ve spent many nights trying to figure out how the Diana I knew could get caught up in something like this. ..
Nice story but Diana had plenty of choices. And she chose to lure Ross Heimlich to his death. It was she who got Mr Heimlich alone so that Damien Leo and Denis could Murder him. She deserves every bit of time she is going to receive. All three of them do.
Btw, Damein leo plead guilty to Manslaughter…
Oh believe me I don’t think she should have received a lighter sentence or leniency of any kind. There is no excuse for her actions.
She should have left Denis a long time ago, back when she noticed that he was treating her oldest son differently from the other kids.
I was merely relaying her mindset, whether it was wrong or right.
Believe me, I am extremely upset that Ross lost his life and it is doubly upsetting knowing that she was once involved with him and still chose to go along with this diabolical plan.