Was Toni Fratto Black Widow Or Little Girl Lost?

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Toni Fratto was formally charged Monday on five separate counts including the death penalty eligible open murder of Micaela “Mickey” Costanzo in Elko Justice Court.

While her police report implies the girl was some sort of criminal master mind who meticulously planned the brutal killing of Mickey Costanzo down to the minute and also enthralled Kody Patten to not only help her but also take the rap and face lethal injection all by himself, people who know the girl tell a different story.

According to the police report Fratto and Patten drove Costanzo five miles west of Wendover to an NDOT gravel pit. There the couple beat her to unconscious and then Fratto cut the young girl’s throat with a knife. The two then buried her in a shallow grave and then drove about ten miles past Wendover Utah to burn the knife and Costanzo’s possessions at another gravel pit about 3 miles northeast of Wendover, Utah.

According to the police report, if Fratto was as she claims a participant, the entire crime and the cleanup had to have taken place between the hours of 5 pm and 6 pm March 3rd, at the very most an hour and probably much less.

While the girl’s whereabouts is not known from 5 pm, she and her mother were recorded as being in attendance at a West Wendover Recreation District meeting at 6 pm and witnesses report they arrived a few minutes before the meeting was gaveled to begin.

“I think they were there a little before the meeting began,” said board chairman Kerry Robinson.

What may also be true is that the whereabouts of both mother and daughter several minutes before then when the pair left off father Claude Fratto to a meeting of the West Wendover city employees union at city hall leaving at most 55 minutes for Patten and Fratto to commit the murder, bury the body, destroy the evidence and then clean up.

A run through conducted Wednesday by the High Desert Advocate suggested that 55 minutes was enough time but just barely. Following Fratto’s version of events in the police report the Advocate timed the drive involved. The drive from the West Wendover High School to the Nevada gravel pit, the murder scene took approximately 10 minutes. The drive back through Wendover to the Utah gravel pit took approximately 15 minutes and the drive back from the Utah gravel pit to the Fratto house another 15 minutes. With the drive times subtracted the couple if Fratto’s account is true had about 20 minutes to commit the murder, destroy the evidence across town and then return home to cleanup before Toni Fratto was seen again with her parents.

The question a jury might be asked to answer was 20 minutes enough time?

If planned in advance the answer could well be yes and there are indications by both Fratto’s and Patten’s statements to police that there was at least some forethought in the murder.

Patten reportedly told police that he had borrowed the SUV used in Costanzo’s abduction from West Wendover High School and had taken a shovel with him. Both suspects also told police that they had brought a knife.

There is however no evidence of any planning for Patten at least to avoid suspicion or arrest. He returned to the Fratto home where he was living and went to school the next day, Friday. The weekend found him still at the Fratto’s where he again spent the night. It was only early Sunday evening several hours after Mickey Costanzo’s body was found in a shallow grave that Patten was called in for his second interview and after being interrogated for hours finally confessed and was arrested.

But as Patten was pathetic in evading arrest, Fratto comes off as brilliant.

According to sources at no time during any of Patten’s interrogation sessions with police did he implicate his lover Fratto. And there was no physical evidence, at least none released to the public, linking her to the crime.

Starting with her cool demeanor supposedly less than an hour after brutally cutting Mickey Costanzo’s throat, she gave away nothing more than being the distraught girlfriend of a confessed murderer. And she walked out of her one and only police interview while Mickey Costanzo was only missing with an apology from the police for troubling her. For six weeks the girl went about her daily routine and never raise any suspicions with police or sheriff’s detectives.

In fact her entry into the law offices of Patten’s attorney Jeffrey Kump, April 22nd in Elko came as complete surprise both to the defense and later to the prosecution. Indeed as one officer put it, if she had just kept her mouth shut she never would have seen the inside of the Elko County Jail let alone face the prospect of spending the rest of her life in prison.

So why did she?

From the minute the news broke the overwhelming feeling from those who knew her was that far from a criminal mastermind with ice water for blood. Rather  many in town believe Toni Fratto was confessing to a crime she didn’t and some say could not have committed at the behest of her jailed lover.

Patten certainly had the opportunity to make such a request. 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 n May 7th.

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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 suggest and alternative reason why Fratto knew details of the murder not released to the public. Patten may have simply told her.

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, Claud 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.

A possible reason as to why Patten would ‘suggest’ to his girlfriend to confess to the crime may be found in the mitigating factors regarding the death penalty. According to Nevada law juries may take into account the fact that a convicted murderer acted on the suggestion of another involved in the crime. And according to Fratto’s charge sheet that is exactly what she is accused of doing.

While popular opinion in Wendover is strongly against that version of events, the only opinion important to Fratto will be that of a jury. And given the girl’s sudden eagerness to throw herself on her sword to save her boyfriend, no one will save her from a possible death sentence or life in prison if she does not save herself.