Killer Patty Colombo

By Annie Steen

A true crime anthology headlined by Patty Colombo. Patricia Columbo and Frank DeLuca were arrested for the brutal murders Columbo's parents and brother in Elk Grove, Illinois. Twenty-year-old Columbo had been kicked out of her parent's home two years earlier and began living with DeLuca, her thirty-six year old married boss. The pair later killed her parents under the belief that they would receive an inheritance but Patty had been written out of the will years earlier. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201460501

Book preview

KILLER PATTY COLOMBO

ANNIE STEEN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PATTY COLOMBO

AMELIA DYER

NATASHA CORNETT

NICOLE KASINKAS

GENENE JONES

TRACEY WIGGINTON

SAMANTHA SCOTT

DANIELLE STEWART

MARGARET DEFRANCISCO

SUZAN CARLSON

Twenty-year-old Patricia Patty Columbo and her thirty-nine—year-old married boyfriend Frank DeLuca were arrested on May 17, 1976, for masterminding and executing the murders of Patty’s parents (Frank & Mary) and brother (Michael). Patty moved from her family’s home almost two years prior to the shooting in order to live with her boyfriend. The pair plotted to murder her parents and brother with the intention of inheriting her family’s estate, but they were unaware that Patty was struck from the family’s will soon after she left home.

Patty had an average upbringing in a suburban town in Elk Groves Village, Illinois. She was the apple of her father’s eye until her mother gave birth to their son. Frank’s attention and affection swiftly shifted from his daughter to the male heir of the family. Her father’s attitude towards her after the birth of her baby brother drastically changed in mere moments. At first, she was loved and showered with gifts and prizes, but later she became a nuisance in the household, and Frank – an Old-World Italian – wanted to preserve his daughter’s purity by any means short of locking her in her room. Though neighbors commented on her being the ideal daughter and an angel to her parents and baby brother, she harbored deep feelings of hatred for every member of her family. Her jealousy towards her brother was deep, but she made sure never to show her true feelings to anybody.

At 16-years-old and while in high school, she was working her first job in a coffee shop in the town’s Go-Go Center shopping plaza. There, she met a pharmacist who would later become an accomplice in the slaying of her family in their home. DeLuca was the manager of the Walgreen’s pharmacy located just next door to Patty’s coffee shop, and their relationship immediately took off.

DeLuca offered Patty a position in his pharmacy which she gladly took with the promise of a higher salary and more time spent with her new boyfriend. It didn’t take long for the pair to take their relationship to the next level, evolving into a physical one between the teen and the 35-year-old. But it didn’t stop there, and Patty even boasted having sexual relations with DeLuca’s pet dog. She provided pictures to show as proof to her classmates of the bestiality which occurred in DeLuca’s home.

After spending two years together, DeLuca brought Patty to into his home which he shared with his wife and five children. Even this was too much for Patty and she suggested to DeLuca that they find an apartment where they could live together without disturbing or being disturbed by his family. DeLuca was only too willing to accept the proposal, and the couple began their search for an apartment together.

In April 1974, Patty told her parents of her plans to move out of the home and to make a life for herself. At first, Patty’s parents were ecstatic that she was beginning to mature and intended to live on her own in an apartment. Her parents even provided her with a sizable amount of cash to help her begin a new life as an independent young woman. However, their excitement soon turned to anger when they learned that DeLuca, almost 20 years her senior and a married man, was going to leave his family to share an apartment with their oldest child. Frank wouldn’t take it, and he confronted his daughter’s boyfriend. Their meeting didn’t end well for DeLuca, and he required medical attention after Frank had beaten him to nearly an inch of his life with the butt of a rifle.

Infuriated that her parents treated her boyfriend in such a harsh manner, Patty immediately broke ties with the Columbos. Any future interactions with her parents were hostile and revolved around her immaturity and persistence that DeLuca was a good man who took good care of her. The threat of falling out with her parents hit them hard, but not as hard as what they did to her. After determining that their daughter was a lost cause, Frank went straight to the family lawyer to make revisions to his and Mary’s joint will. The new will stipulated that in the event of Frank and Mary’s death, Michael – their pre-teen son – would become the sole inheritor of the family’s estate. Patty’s name was nowhere in the new will, just as Frank had intended.

Patty was never a person to let things go, evidenced by her increasingly aggressive demeanor towards her family, including her blissfully ignorant little brother. More than a year after the incident between her father and her boyfriend, Lanyon Lannie Mitchell, a Pontiac salesman from Schaumburg, Illinois, had entered Patty’s life through a mutual friend who played matchmaker between the two. Despite still being with DeLuca at the time, Patty had agreed to see Lannie socially. Their first meeting took place at a local nightclub in October 1975.

Patty and Lannie spent time at the club drinking and dancing. While standing close to Lannie, she noticed that he had a gun holstered at his waist. She asked him about his line of work and whether a car salesman’s job description involved carrying a firearm. More to impress her than anything else, Lannie simply told his dance partner that he was a contract killer who occasionally received contracts from his friends. She was drawn to Lannie immediately, and he promised her that he could provide bullets and firearms for her, no questions asked. That night, she and Lannie went to a motel to have sex. Remembering his initial offer, she asked Lannie if he could provide her with .22-caliber bullets that she and her boyfriend could use for target practice. Lannie obliged and gave her the bullets on the following day.

A week after their first meeting, Patty called Lannie to meet up for lunch. During their brief meeting, she told the supposed contract killer about her falling out with her parents. She explained where her animosity towards her parents stemmed from and that she was only too willing to take them out of the picture. In addition, Patty confided in Lannie of her and her boyfriend’s financial woes and that they were in desperate need of cash to pay bills. According to her story, Patty’s parents were loaded with cash, and their deaths would result in a fat paycheck. Initially, Lannie was stunned at what he was hearing, but he continued to play it cool. In court, Lannie testified that he maintained his contract killer persona in order to continue having sexual relations with Patty.

Before they ended their lunch date, Patty expressed her intent to have both of her parents killed. Lannie told her that he could get it done without a hitch, but he required a payment of $10,000 per person. He testified in court that he had never intended to murder Patty’s parents, but he was ultimately shocked when Patty agreed to the fee. Lannie told a friend of his, Roman Sobczynski, about the contract he received from Patty to murder her parents. From then on, Lannie and Roman were partners in the murder plot with the former playing the role of hitman and the latter playing the hitman’s boss. The two men testified in court that they simply wanted to impress the young woman but admittedly took it too far.

Over the course of several months, Patty met with Lannie and Roman numerous times to ensure that her everything was going according to plan. In late October, during one of their initial meetings after agreeing to carry out the murders, Lannie had a change of heart and told Patty he wanted out. Patty outright denied his request and instead, gave him the floor plans of her parents’ home and the locations of the wall safe, jewelry, and expensive furs.

As time passed by with seemingly no developments in executing the murder plot, Patty grew increasingly impatient and irritated towards Lannie and Roman. In early November, she met them yet again to ask how and when they could carry out her plans. This time, Roman gave a noncommittal answer and asked for an upfront fee before staking out the Columbo’s residence. Patty told them that the payment would be transferred after her parents were killed because she and her boyfriend were strapped for cash and couldn’t provide financial compensation for their services until the deed was done. However, she offered them sex as an upfront payment for their services which they readily accepted. Afterward, she provided them with photographs of her parents, a schedule of their weekday activities, and she requested that they stake the house together. That night, however, they ended up throwing a sex party between the three of them, and they were still stuck on square one of the murder plot.

Patty became irritated at Lannie and Roman’s continuous delays and requests for payment. In early December, she went to her parent’s home and had a heated argument with her mother concerning DeLuca’s upcoming divorce trial. Patty left the home in a huff but made sure to leave the back patio doors unlocked. She immediately notified Lannie and Roman that the house could be entered through the back and asked them to get there right away to murder her parents. Lannie and Roman unwillingly went to the Columbo’s residence to find that the back door had been locked between the time Patty left and their arrival. Roman returned to their vehicle and waited while Lannie knocked on the front door. Patty’s mother answered the door which caused Lannie to panic and flee the scene.

December 1975 was a stressful time for Patty and her boyfriend. It had been almost two months since hiring a hitman who had yet to make a move. She had already offered Lannie and Roman sex but had yet to receive anything in return. In addition, Patty learned that after her squabble with her mother earlier that month, her father had ordered a hit on DeLuca. This scared both Patty and her boyfriend witless, and she contacted Lannie right away and ordered him to murder her parents that night. The hitman was still unwilling to execute the murder plot, but he continued to give false promises to her in hopes of receiving sexual favors in the future.

In January 1976, the three met up yet again to discuss the murder plot and when Lannie and Roman could deliver on their promise. At this moment, Patty proposed that the killers add another person to their list: Michael, Patty’s now 13-year-old younger brother. She feared that he would learn of her involvement in their parents’ murders and couldn’t risk being found out.

In late January, they met up again, and Patty told them that she had been to the house again to unlock the sliding patio doors. As soon as Lannie arrived at the Columbo’s home, the sliding doors were locked, and he had virtually no way of entering the home without breaking in. This infuriated Patty even more, and they had no choice but to wait for another opportunity.

In February, after having another sex party in one of Roman’s friend’s home, Patty brandished a Derringer from her purse. She pointed the barrel right at Lannie’s chest and commented how easy it was to take someone’s life away. She stashed the gun back into her purse, and Lannie commented on how crazy Patty had become.

The final point of contact between Lannie and Patty took place in mid-March where he asked for an upfront payment before committing the murder he had no intention of doing. She told him of her financial troubles and how she was unable to provide money payment until her parents were murdered. Lannie then withdrew himself from the agreement, but Patty wasn’t disappointed. On the contrary, she was relieved that Lannie had finally stepped back, and she didn’t need to provide any more sexual favors without receiving anything in return. She fired Lannie on the spot, and Lannie was also relieved to be free from the whole mess.

After firing Lannie and Roman, Patty, then 19-years-old, and 39-year-old long-term boyfriend DeLuca decided to carry out their plot to murder her parents on their own. Without Lannie and Roman, there were no delays. The murder could be done whenever the deranged couple pleased. The moment they chose to execute the plan was roughly six weeks after firing Lannie.

In the early morning hours of May 4, 1976, Patty and DeLuca arrived at Brantwood in Elk Grove in a rented 1968 Buick. The couple crept into her former home where they first encountered Frank who attempted to flee through the second-story bathroom window. DeLuca shot him with a .32-calibre handgun while he was dashing up the staircase. The incapacitated Frank was then bludgeoned by his oldest child with a bowling trophy. He died due to head trauma and loss of blood from the gunshot wound.

Mary heard the loud noises of the gunfire and went straight to the bathroom where Patty and DeLuca found her cowering in fear. The pair fired a single bullet into Mary’s face above the bridge of her nose, just between the eyes. Determined not to let any miracles save any of the Columbo family, they proceeded to slit the throat of Mary’s still body. Based on evidence provided by Cook County medical examiners, the bullet had effectively taken Mary’s life. Slitting her throat was redundant and unnecessary.

The last victim was Patty’s 13-year-old brother Michael. He remained asleep while his parents were murdered, but he was jerked awake by his older sister and her lover. They picked him up off his bed and instructed him to stand up straight. The innocent teenager was half asleep when DeLuca shot him point blank with a .32 caliber revolver. He immediately collapsed, and it was unclear whether he was unconscious or already dead at the time. His sister, using a pair of scissors their mother often used for sewing projects, then stabbed Michael’s body more than 80 times all over his body before she and DeLuca went back downstairs.

Patty and DeLuca didn’t immediately leave her former home. Instead, they turned on the furnace and set the thermostat to a scorching 97° in order to hasten the decomposition process of the murdered family. After the house was efficiently warm, the pair called it a day and left the house before the sun rose.

DeLuca made it to work on the following day,