Fratto Wants Confession Thrown Out Before Trial

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Attorneys for accused killer Toni Fratto moved that her confession be thrown out of court just weeks before her trial is set to begin in February.

The motion filed this Wednesday in Elko District Court expands on points originally made in response to a motion in limine made by Elko district Attorney Marc Torvinen last summer before Fratto’s preliminary hearing in Elko Justice Court.

Torvinen’s motion was a successful attempt to preempt a defense move that would seek to throw out Fratto’s confession on the grounds of attorney/client privileged conversation and therefore inadmissible in court.

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Patten was arrested for the March 3rd murder of Micaela Costanzo three days after she had gone missing and within a few hours after her body was discovered in a shallow grave some 5 miles west of Wendover.

Patten cracked and admitted to killing the young girl after an all night interrogation session and a phone call to his father Kip. According to police reports at no time during the intense 8 hours of so of questioning did Patten implicate his live in girlfriend Fratto in the crime and indeed may have even used her as his alibi.

For the first six weeks after his arrest, it was the position of the Elko District Attorney’s office and the Elko Sheriff’s Department that Kody Patten was the sole suspect in the case and would alone stand trial for the murder of Micaela Costanzo.

All that changed on April 22, when John Ohlson, Patten’s lead attorney released the bombshell confession from Toni Fratto in which she claims it was she and not her lover who killed Costanzo. Within 24 hours of Ohlson’s release of the taped confession to the court, Fratto was arrested and charged with the death penalty eligible open murder of her classmate.

While the confession was allowed for the purposes of the preliminary hearing, its admissibility on the District Court level is a whole new ball game.

Where the outcome of a preliminary hearing is heavily weighted to the prosecution the playing field is much more level at the trial stage, and it is not unusual that some evidence presented during the hearing is thrown out before trial.

Fratto’s attorneys stress two major points in their motion. The first being that Fratto confession was protected by attorney client privilege and as such cannot be used against her. The second that without the confession the state has literally no other evidence linking her to the crime.

Fratto’s attorneys John Springgate and David Lockie allege that Fratto was lied to and manipulated by Ohlson and Jeff Kump to put herself possibly on death row while giving her vague assurances that anything she said would be more or less confidential.

Apart from revealing details about the confession itself, the motion indicates the deep rift between Fratto’s lawyers and Patten’s. Far from being on the same side the legal teams are seem to be gearing up for a legal version of “royal rumble” with every side for itself.

Time and time again Ohlson is mentioned in support of the DA’s assertion that Fratto’s confession is not protected by the attorney/client privilege. And for their part Fratto’s lawyers accused Ohlson of blatantly misleading their client and perhaps even violating the attorney rules of conduct.

Before she made her confession Fratto was in almost daily contact with Patten. Fratto visited him as often as twice a week making the four hour round trip to Elko on Wednesdays and Sunday ever since Patten was arrested March 7th.

She also talked to him at least once a day thanks to a collect calling plan purchased by her father. The frequent and continued contact the girl had with Patten also

Far from the black widow who directed Patten to kill a romantic or social rival, friends and acquaintances of both Fratto and Patten describe her as a mouse of a girl who was “barely there”.

Indeed some friends relate the Patten held the whole Fratto family in thrall and what official records exist tend to support the allegation.

He moved into the home after his own parents threw him out and bragged to classmates how he verbally and emotionally abused his benefactors.

So complete was his domination of the family, friends relate, that even when Patten was caught on school grounds strangling Toni Fratto just months before the murder, Claude and Cassie Fratto refused to press criminal charges and allowed the very disturbed young man back into their home.

By all accounts Fratto’s parents were oblivious to the point of denial that there was anything wrong with the future killer.

Then a juvenile Patten was suspended and than readmitted to the high school where he was put on probation.

According to one well placed source Patten was just one infraction away from being expelled at the time of the murder and like his girlfriend Patten also withdrew from the school’s social life in his senior year.

If Fratto’s confession is thrown out some legal experts familiar with the case suggest that the state would have no other option than to drop most charges against Fratto.

Even with the confession several observers in the courtroom expressed doubt that a jury would convict the girl for the murder.

Investigators admitted that there was not a scintilla of evidence putting her at the scene of the crime at the time it was said to have occurred.

“There isn’t a foot print, there isn’t a finger print, there isn’t any trace of her at the murder scene,” said one investigator. “This is the damnedest case I have ever seen.”

“Toni Fratto was always just a huge smokescreen,” said a source involved in the case. “Without her this is a simple murder of by a sociopath kid of a sweet young girl. She (Fratto) was used by Patten’s side to confuse everyone.”

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