A Niagara Falls man fatally stabbed a little more than three years ago called police for advice twice the day he was killed.
In one of the calls, Kenneth E. Walaszek Jr. said, “I don’t care about spilling the beans because I’m ready to kill them.”
“I am,” he told the call-taker, talking about the occupants of a Packard Court apartment where hours later he would die on the lawn after being stabbed in the chest. “I went there and threatened them and I probably shouldn’t but that’s OK.”
Three people were charged in the slaying, including two who were 17 at the time. One of the teens was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison as an accomplice in Walaszek’s killing.
But that teen’s attorney said Niagara County prosecutors withheld evidence in the case, and that information wasn’t shared with the defense until almost a year after the teen pleaded guilty.
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The evidence – recordings of Walaszek’s calls to police – would have made a difference in the case, according to the teen’s defense attorney.
Under state law, recordings of the calls should have been turned over to defense attorneys as part of standard pretrial disclosure of information, a legal process known as “discovery.”
An attorney for the teenager believes the content of the calls provides additional context to existing evidence that shows the teen did not lure Walaszek to his death.
“These calls are evidence that at multiple times he expressed a desire to go over there, and, in fact, made threats of violence against anyone who would stop him,” defense attorney James Quinn Auricchio said.
Niagara County District attorney Brian Seaman said he believes the contents of the calls make no difference to the outcome of the case.
Niagara County District attorney Brian Seaman said he believes the contents of the calls make no difference to the outcome of the case, since he said he believes the information included in them was already known to the defendants and defense counsel.
This is the latest in a series of cases in which Niagara County prosecutors have been accused of withholding evidence from defense attorneys. Last year, a judge ordered a new trial for a man who spent a decade behind bars for a robbery and attempted robbery after finding the man was “denied a fair trial.” That case included evidence withheld from his defense attorneys before and after trial.
In another case, defense attorneys said prosecutors withheld that an alleged witness to a Niagara Falls homicide was on the phone with a longtime member of Niagara County law enforcement at the time of the slaying.
Prosecutors call it ‘glitch’
Walaszek, 52, was killed Nov. 16, 2020, at the Packard Court apartments on Pine Avenue in Niagara Falls. The trio charged in the case pleaded guilty.
The teen Auricchio represents pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and second-degree conspiracy in July 2021. She is serving a prison sentence of 15 years to life. The other teenage defendant, who is male, was sentenced in Niagara County Family Court.
The Buffalo News is withholding the teens’ names due to their ages at the time of the crime.
Auricchio’s client pleaded guilty because she felt moral guilt for the man’s death, he said. The case is being appealed.
Tramaine Sanchez.
Tramaine S. Sanchez, who was 24 at the time of the homicide, admitted to the knife attack. She took her own life while being held in the Niagara County Jail in December 2022 before she was scheduled to be sentenced. She was 26.
Sanchez’s estate is suing the county, saying she was sexually assaulted by a jail deputy days before she died by suicide.
The female teen was a domestic violence victim at the time of Walaszek’s killing, said Auricchio, the fourth attorney to represent her. County prosecutors were using an antiquated understanding of domestic violence and how victims of it may behave when evaluating the teen’s actions, he said.
Prosecutors said Walaszek had been concerned for the teen’s welfare. She had been occasionally staying at Sanchez’s apartment.
“There were allegations of different criminal enterprises going on” at Sanchez’s apartment, Seaman said.
Prosecutors should have known early in the case about the existence of the phone calls Walaszek made to police, Auricchio said, because they were referenced in a police detective’s December 2020 testimony before a Niagara County grand jury.
But they never made it into the hands of the teen’s attorney until 11 months after she pleaded guilty.
Under state law, both sides in criminal cases are obligated to share “discoverable” materials with opposing counsel.
Auricchio, who came onto the case after his client pleaded guilty, used the failure to disclose the evidence as part of his effort to get his client’s plea withdrawn. He also used the information in an effort to get her sentence reduced.
Niagara County Youth Court Judge Diane Vitello denied both of those requests.
County Judge John Ottaviano also denied a motion in Sanchez’s case based on the disclosure issue with Walaszek’s phone calls, Seaman said.
The recordings of the calls to police were not identified as missing or requested by any of the teen’s prior defense attorneys, Seaman said.
Seaman said Walaszek’s two calls to the Niagara Falls Police Department’s non-emergency line on the day he was killed would not have been automatically linked to the case file of his killing, like other types of evidence were, including police-worn body-camera footage from the scene.
When agencies compile evidence packages in cases, they aren’t always aware of every possibly related document or recording, Seaman said.
“This was just simply a glitch in the system that is completely understandable,” he said.
Auricchio emailed Assistant District attorney Doreen Hoffman in May 2022 requesting the call recordings, along with other materials. In a court hearing a couple of weeks later, Auricchio brought up the request before the judge. Hoffman told the judge she would request the material from police, according to the transcript.
Prosecutors received the recordings a month later and turned them over to the defense, according to the District attorney’s Office.
Auricchio disputed Seaman’s assertion that the calls included information known by the teen’s prior attorneys. One of the teen’s former attorneys swore to that in an affidavit.
The story that Sanchez and Auricchio’s client initially gave to police was that they were defending themselves and Walaszek was killed in self-defense, but authorities concluded that was a cover story.
The detective’s testimony
In his grand jury testimony, Niagara Falls Police Detective Troy Earp briefly described Walaszek’s calls to the department’s non-emergency line on the day he was stabbed.
Walaszek expressed concern about the teen and was referred to the department’s Narcotics Unit, Earp told the jurors, according to a partial transcript of the testimony included in court documents. The detective testified he wasn’t sure if Walaszek ever made contact with anyone there.
The second call was the same request for help and he was transferred again, with the outcome unknown to Earp.
Earp’s testimony did not include anything about Walaszek saying he had previously gone to the apartment or admitting he threatened people at the apartment.
Auricchio said that wasn’t a complete picture of what was said and that prosecutors had a duty to correct the record before the grand jury.
Seaman said Earp’s testimony was not deceptive “in any way.”
Outside a Niagara Falls apartment
Walaszek was fatally stabbed at 11:41 p.m.
The only phone call that night between the female teen and Walaszek happened three minutes earlier, Auricchio said, citing phone records and surveillance video.
But Walaszek had already been to the apartment that night before the call. The teen couldn’t have lured him there since she hadn’t spoken with him then, Auricchio said.
The Packard Court apartment had surveillance cameras, and the suspects thought they turned all of them off before the killing, though some were still recording, Seaman said.
Separate security video shows Walaszek had been at a Buffalo Avenue bar before he went to the apartment that night, Auricchio said. His blood-alcohol level at the time of his death was 0.16%, according to autopsy results cited in court documents.
Walaszek’s Buick LeSabre first drives past the apartment at 10:35 p.m. About four minutes later, surveillance footage shows him kicking the front door of the apartment and then pulling a Christmas decoration down, according to court documents.
He leaves at 10:42 p.m., which is when Sanchez called police reporting someone just tried breaking in. Police did not respond to the apartment until the stabbing.
Because the suspect in the reported burglary had left the scene, the call did not receive an immediate response, Seaman said.
After calling 911, Sanchez sent a text message to the teen demanding she return a cellphone the teen was using.
By about 10:49 p.m., the teen returned to the apartment with the phone, which was placed on a counter until Sanchez picked it up at 11:33 p.m.
Witnesses told police Walaszek was in the parking lot outside the apartment in the hour before the killing and had followed the teen when she got into another vehicle and left the area. Witnesses also told police Walaszek deliberately rammed that car during that pursuit, damaging the vehicle and causing it to crash.
Surveillance footage also shows Walaszek outside Sanchez’s apartment 10 times between 10:22 and 11:39 p.m. that night, according to Auricchio’s court documents.
The phone records show something else – seven completed calls between the phones of Sanchez and Walaszek that night, according to court documents.
Security video shows Sanchez waving a knife around while speaking to Walaszek on the phone, according to Auricchio.
The only chance for a possible call between the teen and Walaszek is, according to court papers submitted by Auricchio, within a minute of Sanchez picking up a knife at 11:38 p.m., after Walaszek had already been to the apartment.
Auricchio believes Sanchez created a threatening environment at the apartment that night and may have forced the teen to call Walaszek.
A witness who was in the apartment told the grand jury Sanchez was threatening the teen and Walaszek.
Another witness in the apartment testified Sanchez told the teen to call Walaszek “or I’m going to beat” you, according to court papers. It would be her or him, Sanchez allegedly said.
For Auricchio, the withheld evidence pokes a big hole in the prosecution’s theory his client lured Walaszek to the apartment that night.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever had a case where I thought I was being, for lack of a better term, professionally gas lit,” Auricchio said. “I just felt this was being minimized and the discrepancies in this case were being minimized to a degree that I’ve never experienced.”
Reach Aaron at abesecker[at]buffnews.com or 716-849-4602.
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