For decades, Nicola Colafella was mentally incompetent in double murder case. Now, he asks for parole. - The Boston Globe (2024)

The Globe recently reported on how his case stretched the structures of the justice system, which, experts say, struggles with what to do with a man who teetered on the edge of competency. The resulting delays can trap both the accused and the victims in a legal purgatory.

Just hours after the attack, Colafella admitted to assaulting the Earley family, his upstairs tenants, with a gun and an ax in the Mission Hill three-decker he owned and lived in at the time. He killed Walter Earley, a retired Boston police officer, and Bobby, his adult son. He wounded Katherine, Walter’s wife, and another son, Tommy.

After Colafella pleaded guilty, he was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 30 years. Because he was credited for the 34 years he has been detained, he was immediately eligible to ask the state Parole Board for his release, which the Earley family opposes.

On Thursday, he, his lawyer, and his niece argued that he should no longer be held, while a family member of the Earleys and a representative from the Suffolk district attorney’s office argued against. The Parole Board will consider the arguments and how Colafella, who is being held at at MCI-Norfolk prison, answered their questions before issuing a ruling in the coming weeks.

In the board’s Natick offices on Thursday, Colafella said he could live the rest of his life free without further issue, with aid from health care workers and his niece. He also said he was sorry about what he did.

“I feel very bad about it,” said Colafella, a native of Italy who learned to write English while in the state mental hospital. In his scratchy voice, he added: “I am ashamed.”

He said he’d look forward to living in an apartment provided by his niece and her family — “I’ll spend the rest of my life with them,” he said. His lawyer, Sean O’Neill, said Colafella has been an “exemplary” inmate who hasn’t caused any problems in decades.

But John Earley, grandson of Walter and Katherine and nephew of Bobby and Tommy, said he believes releasing Colafella would shorten the punishment he deserves.

“Due to his off and on again competency, the victims never got the justice they deserved,” he said.

The 1990 shooting occurred amid an escalating rent dispute between Colafella and his tenants. That morning, Colafella had grabbed a gun and an ax and walked up the stairs in the St. Alphonsus Street apartment. He repeated on Thursday what he’s said before: that he wasn’t there to hurt his tenants, but wanted to scare them. But after he knocked on the Earleys’ door and threatened them, Bobby Earley had come toward him, saying he wasn’t going to take any more.

Colafella shot him before shooting the rest of the family. Police who arrived first on the scene found Colafella covered in so much blood that they initially thought he might be one of the victims. No, he told them, according to police reports from the time: “It’s from the people I shot upstairs.”

Thirty-four years later, his memory is poor, he said. He responded to many questions with “I don’t remember,” though he sometimes offered further details with prodding. He said he can’t remember much about what happened after he shot Bobby, but he said he knows he shot the whole family.

Colafella, clad in a gray jumpsuit with the “DOC” of the state Department of Correction on his back, sat in a wheelchair during the hearing, wrists and ankles in manacles.

He was deemed incompetent over the years because of his inability and unwillingness to work with the parade of lawyers he had before O’Neill. In order for a case to proceed to trial, the defendant has to be able to participate in their own defense. Because of his paranoid delusions that the lawyers — and others — were conspiring against him, court records say, he was repeatedly found unable to stand trial.

Parole Board member Charlene Bonner, who served as the lead questioner, repeatedly asked him about his mental illness. She said that two dozen assessments over the years — which are sealed from the public view — are consistent: that Colafella suffers from “delusional disorder, persecutorial type.” Bonner said that even if Colafella is not having delusions now, relapses happen.

“Here’s the worry: When people think they are better and they’re on medication, they stop taking it,” she said. “We have to weigh what would happen with his safety and public safety if he were to relapse.”

Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.