STATE SUPREME COURT
Man gets life for fatally injecting girlfriend
Published: November 19, 2009, 12:30 am
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A Town of Tonawanda man who injected his girlfriend with an overdose of a prescription painkiller after they argued last Dec. 12 was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years to life in prison.
Julius C. Franquet, 42, declined to address the court on his second-degree murder plea in the death of Annmarie Paciorek, 38, a medical researcher.
“Let’s just get on with this,” he told State Supreme Court Justice Penny M. Wolfgang during his sentencing.
The judge scolded Franquet, an emergency medical technician, branding the crime in their Holly Lane flat a “cruel and coldblooded murder.”
The judge pointed to the victim’s “valuable research” she very likely could have accomplished. Paciorek was a researcher at the University at Buffalo’s Toshiba Stroke Research Center and a graduate student at the school.
David G. Jay, Franquet’s attorney, called the case “a double tragedy,” noting Franquet also “had a future in” medicine had his drug addiction not “ruined his life.”
Jay told the judge that Franquet “has taken responsibility” for his crimes.
Dr. Mark Paciorek, an orthodontist and the brother of the victim, spoke of the devastation Franquet had inflicted on his entire family, including his elderly parents, who were on hand for the sentencing.
He denounced Franquet for what he called the “control” he exerted over his “baby sister” before he murdered her in a fit of anger.
After three days of testimony during his murder trial, Franquet pleaded guilty as charged Oct. 7 to second-degree murder for administering the fatal overdose to Paciorek.
Franquet made a first-aid call several hours after the victim collapsed and died in an effort to cover up his actions. He was arrested for her murder two days after she died.
Prosecutors Colleen Curtin Gable and Robin J. Deubler also insisted that Franquet plead guilty the same day to a felony assault charge for biting a corrections officer in the Erie County Holding Center during a jailhouse argument in June. That plea did not add to his prison sentence.
Franquet pleaded guilty shortly after prosecutors Curtin Gable and Deubler played for the jury a videotaped confession Franquet gave Town of Tonawanda police detectives shortly after the fatal overdose.
mgryta@buffnews.com
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