John Frankowski Jr and Kim Delaney (left) claim their cousin Jonathan Roman (top right) killed their father, John S Frankowski Sr (bottom right), at the request of their aunts. Pictures: Edmund J Coppa; AP
A MIDDLE-AGED “mummy’s boy” who was sentenced to 18 years to life behind bars on Monday for murdering his uncle was actually the puppet of a greedy family “cabal,” a US lawsuit charges.
The children of victim John S Frankowski Sr claim in the civil suit that their cousin, convicted killer Jonathan Roman, 44, was acting at the direction of his mother Sandra Roman and aunt Annmarie Porter.
The sisters wanted their brother Frankowski Sr dead to land another $140,000 apiece on top of the $281,000 each they were already getting from their late mother’s estate, according to the documents.
Frankowski Sr had been named executor of their mother’s will after her death in 2013 — and his money-grubbing siblings were furious that he was taking his time probating it, his children say.
“To them, this money is everything,” Frankowski Sr’s daughter, Kim Delaney, told the New York Post on Sunday, referring to her cousin and aunts. “To them, it was a fortune, and they wanted that money as soon as possible.”
Frankowski’s son, John Jr, added of his relatives: “Clearly they’re a bunch of bumbling buffoons.”
“But obviously, had it not been for [our investigation], I truly believe that Jonathan and the rest of family, in their mind, thought they were going to get away with murder.”
Jonathan Roman was slapped with the hefty prison term on Monday after reading a statement in a Nassau County court in which he said he was sorry for his crime.
“I was using cocaine and smoking pot, I definitely wasn’t thinking clearly that day. I was speaking to my uncle for a while, I brought up an issue with the house and my uncle and I began to argue. My uncle started to fight with me. Next thing I know, my uncle is dead,” the killer said.
Judge David Sullivan said: “This obviously is a cowardly and heinous act.”
Meanwhile, the victim’s son, who travelled from Florida for the sentencing, lamented, “my dad will only be stories to my children.
“I lost myself after my father was murdered,” he said.
The son and his sister are charging in their suit that on at least four occasions before their father’s death, the so-called “Coram Cabal” appeared at the victim’s house in Wheatley Heights.
There, Roman would “prowl” around his uncle’s property, peep into windows, and harass him as others, Sandra and Porter included, waited in a “getaway” car, their suit states.
After Frankowski Sr went missing in early 2014, Sandra Roman left his son a voicemail asking him to call her. In the background of the March 2 call, her son Jonathan Roman can be heard saying “the f**king eyeballs are out” — an unsettling reference to the medical examiner’s testimony during Roman’s trial that the 71-year-old’s eyeballs bulged out when the killer choked him to death, court documents state.
That same night, surveillance video from across the street showed Roman lugging a body out of his uncle’s house in a tarp and stuffing it into the trunk of his mother’s car, the suit says.
The elderly man’s mangled corpse was found buried in a shallow grave in the woods behind Sandra Roman’s house five days later.
The papers also charge retired Naussau County Detective Ronald Dandrea with trying to help cover up the murder, telling Sandra’s other son, Stanley, that “police would not look for John S Frankowski Sr because he was ‘old and white’.”
“I think it’s safe to say that the police were either incompetent, indifferent or intentionally decided not to pursue an appropriate investigation,” the Frankowski children’s lawyer, Bob Abrams, told The Post.
“We’ve discovered a whole bunch of evidence on our own that should have been discovered by the police. And the fact that it’s been two years and we’ve had to do all this … it’s very disturbing and upsetting.”
The estate has yet to be divided given the pending civil action, the lawyer added.
Neither Porter nor lawyers for Sandy Roman responded to messages. Dandrea could not be reached for comment.
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