George Del Vecchio was executed by the State of Illinois for the murder of Tony Canzoneri
According to court documents George Del Vecchio, who was convicted of murder as a teen, would break into a home where he would sexually assault a woman in the home before nearly decapitating six year old Tony Canzoneri.
George Del Vecchio would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
George Del Vecchio would be executed by lethal injection on November 22 1995
George Del Vecchio Photos
George Del Vecchio Case
Lawyers for Death Row inmate George Del Vecchio have asked the Illinois Supreme Court to delay Del Vecchio’s scheduled Nov. 22 execution.
The reason for the requested delay is that Del Vecchio, 47, through his attorneys, argues he is too sick to be executed. He suffered a heart attack in October, and his lawyers believe he is too ill to understand the last-minute appeals available to him.
An inmate asking to be allowed to return to health before being executed is an intriguing notion and a creative legal move.
Lost in all of this is what Del Vecchio did to end up on Death Row. He has an excellent legal team to argue on his behalf; his victims, on the other hand, are voiceless. So while the Illinois Supreme Court decides whether to allow Del Vecchio to recover his health before his execution, perhaps it is not unreasonable to say a few words here on behalf of his victims.
On Dec. 22, 1977, Del Vecchio, then 29, high on the drug PCP-he had ingested enough of the drug to “kill a horse,” his attorney said-went to the home of Karen Canzoneri on West Wabansia Avenue in Chicago. She testified that she was awakened shortly after 5 a.m. by a man standing over her bed and holding a knife. She said that the man sexually assaulted her.
After the assault, she said, she escaped through a bathroom window and summoned police. When officers arrived, they found the body of her 6-year-old son, Tony. The child’s throat had been slashed “from ear to ear,” according to the officers who found him; the boy had been all but decapitated. One officer said, “It would break your heart to see what was done to that boy.”
Indeed, one of the officers who found the murdered child left the house in tears. An arrest was made immediately; George Del Vecchio was found on the roof of the Canzoneri house. Police believed that Del Vecchio murdered the child before having sex with the boy’s mother, that he slaughtered the boy in order to silence him. Del Vecchio’s excuse was that, because he was under the influence of drugs, he was not in possession of his faculties.
It was not the first time Del Vecchio had extinguished a human life.
In 1965, when Del Vecchio was 16, he and two other young men killed a 66-year-old man named Fred A. Christiansen while the man was out for an evening walk near his home.
Police officers said that Del Vecchio and the others attacked Christiansen because they wanted money to buy drugs. Del Vecchio, according to police, fired five bullets into Christiansen. One of Del Vecchio’s accomplices tried to quiet the screaming man by kicking him while he lay on the ground. Christiansen would not stay quiet (much like 6-year-old Tony Canzoneri would not stay quiet 12 years later); Del Vecchio shot the man at least five more times, killing him. Del Vecchio and his accomplices got $11 for their night’s work.
Del Vecchio pleaded guilty to the murder, saying he was high on drugs at the time. Because he was a juvenile, he was put in the custody of the Illinois Youth Commission. By 1973 he was deemed to be rehabilitated, and was paroled. Four years later he slit the throat of Tony Canzoneri.
None of the attorneys working on Del Vecchio’s appeal dispute that Del Vecchio murdered the child; none of them dispute that he earlier killed Fred Christiansen. The attorneys say that there were procedural errors in Del Vecchio’s trial, and that he is now too ill to be executed on Nov. 22.
As we have been reminded in recent days, it is a very good thing that persons scheduled to be executed should have the right to thorough and fair appeals, and should be represented by top-quality lawyers. What sometimes gets lost, though, is the story of the people whose murders were the reason the condemned prisoners are on Death Row.
Testimony at Del Vecchio’s trial for the murder of Tony Canzoneri alleged that before Del Vecchio slit the child’s throat, the boy cried: “Mommy, Daddy, I don’t want to die.”
Now, 18 years later, Del Vecchio’s attorneys are arguing that he is not yet ready to die.
Maybe not. But however you feel about this case, one thing is not in doubt:
On the night that George Del Vecchio butchered Tony Canzoneri, that 6-year-old boy wasn’t ready to die, either
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1995-11-13-9511130127-story.html
