Lawsuit: Ex-Hercules cop, charged with wife's attempted slaying, accused of fighting over fast-food parking spot, mistreating police dog's wounds
By Matthias Gafni
mgafni@bayareanewsgroup.com
HERCULES -- Years before a
retired Hercules police officer was charged with trying to murder his estranged
wife, a lawsuit by a former female colleague portrayed John Goodner as an
out-of-control cop who sexually harassed her, abused his police dog and got in
an off-duty fistfight with a resident over a Taco Bell parking spot.
It is not known whether any
support ever surfaced for the colleague's complaints or whether Hercules police
ever investigated them. The officer who filed the suit, which targeted the city
and not the former cop, did so after being fired by the department for lying to
the chief about a gun purchase.
But the complaint, which Audrey
Lake lost five years after it was filed in 2008, paints a picture of a rogue
cop whose downward spiral may have begun much earlier than Jan. 28, when
authorities say Goodner tried to shoot his estranged wife.
Goodner, 47, of Antioch, has
pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, shooting into an inhabited
dwelling, stalking and making criminal threats. Prosecutors say that after
Goodner found out his wife had filed a restraining order against him, he drove
by her Antioch house and fired multiple times into her bedroom as she slept,
narrowly missing her. He faces life in prison if convicted on all counts and is
being held in County Jail in Martinez on $1.775 million bail.
Seven years earlier, Goodner
found himself the centerpiece of Lake's lawsuit, which also named the city of
Hercules, its police department, then-Chief Fred Deltorchio, current Chief
William Goswick, Commander Thomas Dalby and Sgt. Timothy Stratmeyer, claiming
sexual harassment, gender discrimination and a slew of other workplace
violations. The suit accused the Hercules Police Department of looking the
other way at bizarre and belligerent conduct by Goodner, who took a medical
retirement in 2009, while Lake was held to different standards.
An attorney for Lake and the
city both say that Goodner was eventually dropped from the suit because the
statute of limitations had expired, not because the allegations against him
were found untrue. The police department and other officers were also dropped
from the suit.
Goodner, a 15-year Hercules
police veteran, was the department's canine cop when Lake, now 51, was hired in
2002. She became his trainee, and he eventually handed over the duties to her,
although the transition did not go well, Lake said in her lawsuit.
According to Lake, Goodner was
never disciplined for the following allegations:
• Goodner forced Lake, as a new
hire, to wear a padded "bite suit" and allowed his police dog Sabre
to attack her in front of other officers. She later learned that no one else
had gone through such an initiation.
• Sabre received no veterinary
care or vaccinations. Instead, Goodner used a staple gun and glue to dress the
dog's wounds. Goodner continued to work with his police dog despite failing to
obtain an annual certification to do so, and allowed the unvaccinated dog to
pursue and bite suspects.
• While off-duty, Goodner
"flashed his badge to a citizen" over an argument about parking at a
Pittsburg Taco Bell. The confrontation ended with Goodner beaten and needing
medical treatment.
• Goodner failed to obtain
personal auto insurance and report an accident to the Department of Motor
Vehicles. He also failed to report to the police department damage to his
police vehicle.
• Goodner was sometimes
dispatched to calls but cleared them without going to the scene.
• Goodner failed to return an
"undocumented amount of controlled substance" to the Solano County
Sheriff's Office that was used for canine training. The narcotics eventually went
missing.
• Goodner used a sergeant's
computer to access pornography.
• He made offensive comments
about Lake's breasts and left her inappropriate notes. In one instance, he left
her a note saying "I was here" inside the breast panel of her
bulletproof vest, which was secured in her locker in the women's restroom area.
Hercules police spokeswoman
Connie Van Putten, a detective during Goodner's tenure on the force, said she
could not comment on the former officer's reasons for retirement, or Lake's
allegations, calling them personnel issues. Van Putten said Goodner was a
"satisfactory officer" from 1994 to 2009.
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A call and email to Goodner's
attorney was not returned, and Goodner declined a jailhouse interview request.
Prosecutors said there is no record of the District Attorney's Office
investigating any of Lake's allegations.
Although Goodner has no record
of arrests since he left the force in 2009, Antioch police said they've
responded numerous times to alcohol-related incidents involving the former officer
at different locations, including the home of his brother-in-law, where his
wife was staying after the couple separated.
Just five days before the
shooting, Goodner's wife filed a restraining order and described how he stalked
her for months.
"(He) walks around my
neighborhood, drives (drunk) past my house and revs engine, texts at all hours,
sits at shopping center at restaurant across from my house and sends msgs re:
what he can see going on at my house and that he knows if I'm home or
not," she wrote in the Jan. 23 court document.
She describes calling Antioch
police numerous times but said the responding police officers would either
drive him home or take him to the hospital because he was too drunk to drive.
In one instance, police left his keys with her. She said he later texted her
asking for the keys because he needed the key to his gun safe.
After the shooting, police
found a cache of weapons in Goodner's home, prosecutors said. Prosecutors also
said Goodner stalked his wife for a year and had at one point attached a
tracking device to her car.
The day before the shooting,
prosecutor Scott Cunnane said, Goodner sent his wife a series of text messages
trying to dissuade her from serving him with the temporary restraining order.
One text in the series, Cunnane said, read:
"If I don't hear back from
you, I will do what I need to do."
He was finally served the order
in his jail cell the day after the shooting.
Suicide-slay
cop omitted wife, surviving daughter from pension
By Shawn Cohen, Lorena Mongelli
and Leonard Greene
The retired Westchester cop who
gunned down his teenage daughters and killed himself made sure that his wife
and surviving child would be left destitute by his death, The Post has learned.
Glen Hochman, who spent 22
years as a While Plains officer, filed retirement papers on Jan. 30 — about
three weeks before the bloodbath — that intentionally left them out, sources
said.
“It’s the most selfish final
insult,” said a family friend from Harrison. “It’s reckless and insulting for
any man to leave their family high and dry like that, by choosing the zero
option on their pension.
“But for him to do that and
then kill his children, that’s pure evil. He effectively stole the future away
from the family he left behind.”
Hochman, 52, executed daughters
Alissa, 17, and Deanna, 13, in their sleep on Saturday before killing the three
family dogs and then turning the gun on himself.
He typed a hateful suicide note
that included taunts to his wife, Anamarie, 50, warning her to be financially
responsible — even though he knew she would be broke.
He left a second note at the
Windward School in White Plains where he worked security and Deanna was a student.
Sources said Anamarie — who
wanted a separation — may be able to challenge the retirement papers, but that
won’t solve her immediate financial problems for her and daughter Samantha.
“We will have to deal with some
very difficult issues,” Anamarie’s uncle, Emil Giliotti, told The Post. “All we
have is each other.”
On Thursday, mourners wearing
red and green ribbons waited in a long line to view the closed caskets of the
Hochman girls at the Coxe & Graziano Funeral Home in Mamaroneck.
As family and friends traded
hugs and blank stares, a television looped photos of the girls from childhood
through adolescence.
“We’re as heartbroken as can
be,” a Hochman neighbor said. “We go far back, and right now the only ones on
our mind are those two girls, their mother and their sister.”
A funeral for the girls will be
held Friday at St. Gregory the Great Church on Halstead Avenue in Harrison.
No arrangements have been
announced for the father. Sources said there were plans to cremate his body.
Investigator:
Former cop killed ex-wife, ambushed police
By Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN
CNN)A former cop
"disenfranchised with law enforcement" and known to own "a lot
of guns" is accused of killing his ex-wife before ambushing a sheriff and
deputy who responded to the scene, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation official
said Monday.
The deaths appear to have
resulted from a "long-simmering domestic dispute," Rusty Andrews, the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation's deputy director of investigations, told
reporters.
Anthony Giaquinta, an
ex-military contractor and a former law enforcement officer with the Gainesville
Police Department and Habersham County Sheriff's Office, was found dead from
what police believe was an exchange of gunfire with a deputy.
Giaquinta's 16-year-old
daughter and her boyfriend were at the house outside Clarkesville when
Giaquinta arrived and produced a gun. She heard gunshots, saw her mom dead,
called 911 and fled, Andrews told reporters.
Habersham County Sheriff Joey
Terrell, Deputy Bill Zigan and a second unnamed deputy responded to the scene
and found Kathy Giaquinta Smith dead in the garage, Andrews said.
Terrell and the second deputy
entered the house to search it, while Zigan secured the garage entrance in case
Giaquinta returned, Andrews said. There, Zigan was "likely ambushed from a
position Giaquinta had taken" in a nearby wooded area, he said.
Struck by multiple bullets from
Giaquinta's Glock 9-millimeter, Zigan took cover between two vehicles inside
the garage. Terrell and the other deputy entered the garage after hearing
gunshots, and Giaquinta fired again from a position to the side of the garage door,
striking Terrell in the bicep, Andrews said.
Police: Alleged shooter is ex-cop Anthony
Giaquinta.
The second deputy then
exchanged gunfire with Giaquinta, Andrews said.
The officers called for backup,
and after setting up a perimeter around the home, they found Giaquinta's body
in the back yard. There was no sign of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and it
appears he was killed by the "return fire by law enforcement,"
Andrews said.
The medical examiner will make
the final determination on Giaquinta's cause of death.
Also in the yard was the body
of Steve Singleton, a 45-year-old Flowery Branch man who police believe
"had some type of friendship with Kathy Giaquinta Smith," Andrews
said. It's unclear how Singleton died.
The sequence of events remains
unclear, but early indications are that Singleton was killed before police
arrived.
Terrell was released from the
Northeast Georgia Medical Center late Sunday, and Zigan remains in the hospital
for "further treatment and observation," County Manager Phillip
Sutton said Monday morning, adding that he's "hopeful that he will be
released soon."
The alleged shooter is a former
Gainesville police dog handler who also worked for the Habersham County
Sheriff's Office, Andrews said. He left the sheriff's office to take an
overseas position as a military contractor and returned to the Habersham County
force before being terminated in June 2013 following an allegation of domestic
violence, Andrews said.
That allegation was never
adjudicated, he said.
Though there had been no
previous reports of gun activity involving Giaquinta, Andrews said it was
"well-known that Anthony had a lot of guns in his possession."
Andrews said he was unaware of
any bad blood among Giaquinta and the sheriff and deputies who responded, but
Giaquinta was "disenfranchised with law enforcement in general."
Terrell "was asked to go
there to help with the situation," Sutton said, though he didn't say why
the sheriff was requested at the scene.
On Sunday, Sutton told CNN
affiliate WSB-TV that the sheriff responded to the call "probably because
he knew the person who was involved in the incident" and because he
thought he could calm down Giaquinta.
Police:
Former Cliffside Park cop kills son, self in Pennsylvania
BY STEFANIE DAZIO
A former Cliffside Park police
officer killed his 40-year-old son and then himself in Westfall Township, Penn.,
Sunday evening, Pennsylvania State Police said Tuesday.
Joseph Matrongolo, 82, argued
with his son, Joseph M. Matrongolo, in the driveway at 124 Green Acres Lane,
then went inside and retrieved a handgun, according to a news release.
Matrongolo fired multiple shots at his son, including one shot in the head that
killed him, the release said.
Matrongolo then shot himself in
the head, the release said. Matrongolo was pronounced dead at the Geisinger
Community Medical Center; His son was pronounced dead at the scene.
The investigation is ongoing,
the state police said.
Matrongolo retired as a
patrolman from the borough police department in 1988 after serving for 25
years.
