Friday, May 09, 2008; Posted: 12:24 PM
Arin Jennifer Dilallo, 44, "has something wrong in her head," her 18-year-old son told police after Betty Rutigliano was found early Tuesday morning in the bedroom of her Nambe home with 20 stab wounds to her head, upper body and chest area.
Nick Dilallo "stated (his mother) has never cared for him ... ," according to a probable cause statement filed Thursday in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court. "He stated his mother is like another child. He said his mother has mental problems but stated she has never been hospitalized or diagnosed."
Nick Dilallo also said he found a knife in the nightstand in his mother's room two days before Rutigliano, 68, was killed, and "he believed his mother might be involved in the death of his grandmother," the probable cause statement says.
A Santa Fe County Sheriff's Department detective who interviewed Arin Dilallo about two hours after Rutigliano's body was found said the daughter was "lethargic and almost looked like she was going to fall asleep," the statement says. Arin Dilallo "stated she couldn't remember what happened," according to the statement.
Arin Dilallo told the detective she was taking Clonazepam "for panic disorder and depression," and she'd last taken a pill just before detectives arrived, the statement says. Clonazepam is prescribed to control seizures and anxiety as well as treat the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, twitching and schizophrenia, and for pain management, according to MedlinePlus, an Internet site maintained by the National Institutes of Health. The drug is related to the same family as Valium and Xanax, the Web site says.
Arin Dilallo was arraigned Thursday in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court, where Judge George Anaya Jr. ordered her held in lieu of a $1 million cash bond. Dilallo began crying after Anaya asked her for her address, then said, "Sorry. I don't know." Anaya then read her the address in Nambe where her mother's body was found, and Dilallo confirmed that was where she lived.
"Are you employed?" Anaya said.
"Disabled," she replied.
Arin Dilallo, who was arraigned by video from the Santa Fe County jail, could later be heard crying off camera and saying to a state police officer who wanted her to sign documents, "I lost my mother, my kids. I'm trying; I'm trying."
Nick Dilallo told detectives he awoke about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday after he heard a "howl" from his grandmother. He said it was "the worst scream he has ever heard before," the probable cause statement says. He also heard Rutigliano yelling for help, so he ran to her room and saw his mother standing over his grandmother with an object in her hand he couldn't see, according to the statement. He found Rutigliano lying face down in a pool of blood and checked her vital signs but found none.
Nick Dilallo said his mother "had blood all over herself," the statement says. She then ran out of the room and out of the home. Her son said he helped his mother change out of the bloody clothes she was wearing. His mother then went to the kitchen sink to wash up, according to the statement. When paramedics arrived, Arin Dilallo was washing blood from her upper body, the statement says.
When a detective later interviewed her at the Sheriff's Department, she told him she knew she was going to jail because of what happened to her mother, the statement says.
Arin Dilallo "told me that if I was looking for a knife there was one in the dishwasher," Detective Martin Rivera wrote in the statement. "She stated it might have blood on it because of a cut she got the night before making dinner. She had no visible injuries to her hands and later denied making the statement."
She said she heard her mother calling for help around 1:30 a.m., the statement says. Arin Dilallo said she went into her mother's room, saw Rutigliano lying on her back bleeding, then saw her roll on to the floor face down, according to the statement. Dilallo said her children came in to the room at that time, and she ran to a neighbor's to call police, the statement says.
The next-door neighbor later told Rivera no one came to her door the night of the killing, the statement says.
Arin Dilallo said an ex-boyfriend was "out to get her," but investigators checked on his whereabouts -- he's on electronic monitoring -- and found he'd been home when the killing occurred, according to the statement.
Further, investigators found no signs of forced entry into the home, and Rutigliano's jewelry and purse remained in her room, the statement says. Also, Nick Dilallo said he locked all the doors before he went to bed.
An autopsy found Rutigliano had been stabbed 20 times, though Sheriff Greg Solano has said the two most significant lacerations were on her neck. Investigators seized several kitchen knives from the Nambe home and found one of them looked like it could be the knife used to kill Rutigliano when it was compared with Rutigliano's wounds, according to the statement. That knife was found in the dishwasher, Solano said.
Rutigliano worked at Cities of Gold Casino in Pojoaque. Charles Archuleta, a bondsman with Madrid Bail Bonds in Santa Fe and an avid poker player, said Thursday that Rutigliano was his favorite poker dealer at the casino.
"I preferred to play at her table," Archuleta said. "She was a really nice lady. She was always joking that she didn't need my services (bail bonds). She was very professional and treated you like a human being."
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