Retired NYPD cop John Galtieri gets life in prison for murder of ex-wife, Jeanne Kane

[The Watchmen]

She looked at her father and saw only a monster.

The daughter of convicted murderer John Galtieri ripped her dad as a remorseless savage Wednesday before the ex-cop was sentenced to life in prison for the cold-blooded killing of his former wife.

"You are a coward," seethed Patricia Kane DeFranco, standing between her mother's two sisters in an emotional courtroom showdown. "Only a coward would hit someone who can't hit them back.

"Only a coward hides behind a gun."

Galtieri, 63, was convicted of pumping five bullets into his long-suffering ex-wife, Jeanne, 58, in a festering rage over a divorce settlement that gave her most of his NYPD pension.

Jeanne Kane, along with her sisters, performed in the '60s as The Kane Triplets, appearing on "The Ed Sullivan Show." She spent 27 years as a battered wife before her divorce.

"I used to find my mother with black eyes and a split lip," said DeFranco, 28. "She stayed all those years because she was worried he would kill her family, or kill me."

Galtieri drove up from Florida to ambush Kane in a Staten Island parking lot. She was waiting - with a hot meal in the backseat - for their only child to return from work.

Her voice trembling at times, DeFranco fondly recalled her mother and reviled her father. She recounted several vicious beatings, including one where her mother was repeatedly kicked in her lower back just hours after kidney surgery.

"Put this monster away for the rest of his life," she urged Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Stephen Rooney.

DeFranco promised to ensure her father suffered physically, emotionally and financially - and vowed that her mother would live on through her.

"I won't rest until you have lost everything, starting with your freedom," she said to the man who stole her childhood and her mother.

"You might think you have won. You might think you have beat my mother. One thing you underestimated is me."

DeFranco ended her statement with an epitaph for her father: "He will be tortured by this for eternity - 'Jeanne beat me.'"

Galtieri, a former NYPD sergeant, stared blankly as his daughter talked. He declined the opportunity to speak.

Rooney quickly handed down the maximum sentence of 25 years to life, with an additional seven years tacked on for a weapons charge.

"What's particularly chilling here is the calculated and premeditated nature of this murder," Rooney said.

The surviving triplets, Lucille and Maureen, led other family members in applause as Galtieri was led from the courtroom. He was convicted in February in the Jan. 30, 2007, slaying.

The couple's 2003 court-ordered settlement paid Jeanne Kane $400,000 for the beatings inflicted by her spouse. She also received half the money from the sale of their New Jersey home, and $2,200 a month in alimony - money taken from Galtieri's police pension.

Outside court, DeFranco said facing her father was the hardest thing she had ever done, but she was relieved it was finally over.

"He's gone," she said. "He can't hurt me anymore."

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The New York Daily News