Suspect Arrested In 1997 Slaying Of Former East Hartford Resident In Florida

In March, Fred Parlante of East Hartford went to Broward County, Fla., with the intention of telling the detectives working on his mother's 15-year-old murder to step aside and let the FBI's cold-case agents take over the dormant case.

"They showed me the boxes of evidence,'' Parlante recalled Saturday. "They didn't want to let it go.''

Last week, Parlante, an ex-boxer and retired truck driver, got the call he'd been waiting for since his mother, Olga Parlante, 71, a former East Hartford resident, was killed during a robbery in her Dania Beach, Fla., apartment in 1997.

"'Fred, we're going to make an arrest,''' Parlante quoted Broward Sheriff's Department Detective Frank Ilarraza as saying over the telephone.

A convicted felon named Bennie Hall, who has a history of robbery arrests, was charged on Thursday with first-degree murder in Olga Parlante's death.

"I was in seventh heaven; what a relief," said Parlante, 67.

Crime-scene investigators at the time of the homicide collected fingerprints and palm prints from the walls of the apartment, the inside of Olga's pocketbook and a dresser drawer. But the prints never matched a suspect; in any case, the database couldn't accept palm prints.

With the case stalled, Fred Parlante said, he consulted with psychics and hired private detectives.

"I pressed for 15 years,'' he said.

But it all led nowhere ? until now.

Recent advances in the huge national database of crime-scene prints made it possible for investigators to submit palm prints ? and the Broward County detectives hit pay dirt.

A palm print lifted from a wall in Olga Parlante's apartment in 1997 matched a print on file from Hall, who was serving time for other crimes in the Martin County, Fla., jail.

Officials told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that Hall, 44, had been convicted of robberies against elderly victims inMiami-Dade County.

He will be charged in the killing of Olga Parlante, who was known throughout Broward County as the "Bingo Queen'' for her habit of playing the region's bingo halls nearly every day.

"The database grows, and the computer technology keeps improving year after year," Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti told the Sun-Sentinel. "It doesn't matter how long it takes: We're going to get justice for the family, and this case is a perfect example of this."

Fred Parlante echoed those sentiments Saturday.

"I am so happy we were one of the first new cases,'' he said. "Not only for this family, but, God forbid, for the next family that can be helped by this technology. Losing a mother or a father ? that is the hardest thing in the world."

Olga Parlante moved to Florida in the mid 1960s with her husband, Anneo, who was suffering from emphysema. Olga drove tractor-trailers and worked as a waitress, Fred Parlante said. Anneo Parlante died about 10 years later, and Olga went on with a life filled with her grandchildren ? and bingo.

On March 13,1997, Parlante, who was living alone in her apartment Dania Beach, near Fort Lauderdale, was beaten, strangled with a blouse and dragged back into the home when she tried to crawl away, the Courant reported at the time. Stolen during the killing: a 20-inch television set, radio with cassette player, mantel clock and $53.

Her body was discovered by a granddaughter, who needed counseling after the ordeal.

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