Accused child rapist ex-cop has managed to avoid trial for 25 YEARS by claiming he’s dying

From the time Michele Dinko was 12 years old, she has waited for her friend’s cop father to be brought to justice for allegedly raping her.

Dinko, who is now 45 years old and a single mother of two, is still waiting, as her alleged abuser, retired detective Leonard Forte, now aged 78, has managed to avoid a trial by claiming that he has been on death’s door for the last 25 years.

A joint investigation conducted by USA Today, Naples Daily News and Burlington Free Press has shed light on the unusual case, detailing the decades-long courtroom drama marked by the defendant’s numerous end-of-life claims, even as he continued enjoying his retirement in Florida and going on trips. 

Forte has repeatedly denied Dinko’s allegations against him and said the case has ruined both his health and his financial security.   

Dinko is now 45 years old and a single mother of two

Delayed justice: Former detective Leonard Forte, 78 (left), has avoided going on trial for allegedly raping Michelle Dinko in 1987, when she was 12, by claiming that he’s dying. Dinko is now 45 years old and a single mother of two 

In 2017, Forte said he had been referred to hospice care and had six months to live.

‘I’ve been dying for 25 years, your honor,’ he told a judge by phone. ‘I’m sorry I’m still alive.’  

Forte, former detective with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in New York and a married father of three daughters, was accused by Dinko of repeatedly raping her while on a trip to Vermont with his family in 1987.

During his first trial in 1988, Forte was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault carrying a 60-year prison sentence, but a judge presiding over the case threw out the conviction, arguing that the female prosecutor had prejudiced the jury by being too emotional.

A Vermont prosecutor decided to retry Forte seven years later, but he agreed to a delay after the retired detective claimed that his heart had failed and he was on a transplant list.

Forte contended, citing his doctors, that without getting a new heart he would be dead within a year, and that he was not healthy enough to travel to Vermont to stand trial. That was in 1995.

Twenty five years later, Forte, who never received a heart transplant, is still alive and living in Marco Island, Florida, in a waterfront home, with multiple boats and seven vehicles registered to his name.

Despite his repeated assertions that he is not well enough to travel to Vermont to face trial, Forte has gone on 11 vacations over the last decade, including a trip to New York that brought him within 200 miles from the courthouse where his rape case would have been heard over the course of two days. 

The case against Forte remains open, but there is an ever-diminishing chance it will ever be successfully prosecuted because officials have accidentally destroyed crucial materials, including audio recordings and court transcripts.

The three-decade saga began unfolding in February 1987, when Dinko, then a 12-year-old girl attending middle school in Wading River, New York, joined her friend’s family, the Fortes, on a trip to Landgrove, Vermont.

As Dinko would later tell police and attorneys, her friend’s father, Leonard, raped or tried to rape her on three successive nights during the getaway.

After they had returned from Vermont, Dinko said she went to a sleepover at her friend’s house, during which time Forte again raped her, then warned her to keep quiet about their ‘love.’

After Dinko reported the alleged abuse, Investigators interviewed another classmate of Forte’s daughter who claimed that the retired detective fondled her on two occasions.

The prosecution of Dinko’s case was reportedly complicated by the fact that Forte was well-connected and was friends with several prosecutor in Suffolk County, as well as one influential judge, according detective Carmine Macedonio, who was tasked with investigating the allegations against him.

Macedonio told USA Today that he was once even warned to ‘tread carefully’ in his handling of the Forte matter.

Macedonio claimed that after he ignored the warning and brought the case to Vermont, where most of the rapes allegedly happened, he was denied a promotion, leaving his career in tatters.

When Forte’s case finally went to trial in Vermont in December 1988, the retired detective painted his accuser as a liar, but the jury believed Dinko’s claims and found him guilty.

Forte was facing a 60-year sentence when Vermont District Court Judge Theodore Mandeville toss out the verdict, writing that prosecutor Theresa St. Helaire displayed in court ‘a fury seldom seen this side of hell,’ according to records obtained by the newspaper.

Assistant Attorney General David Tartter, who then took over the case, decided to retry Forte after trying, and failing, to reinstate his first conviction.

Meanwhile, Forte had relocated his family from New York to Florida and began writing letters and sending documents to Vermont listing his many serious ailments, including grave heart problems, an anxiety disorder and a crippling fear of flying.

But according to court records obtained by USA Today, during that time Forte had joined a frequent flier club and had taken several flights to New York; he claimed he undertook those trips to visit his doctors.

In 1996, Forte made the claim that he had been placed on a transplant list to wait for a new heart. After consulting a doctor who reviewed the defendant’s medical file, the prosecutor agreed to delay the new trial until Forte’s health improved.

Every few years, Forte would write or call the court, claiming he was nearing death. And yet, he carried on living.

In 2017, Forte attributed his unexpected longevity to his determination.

In the interim years, Forte and his wife, Irene, took at least 11 vacations, including trips to New York by RV and to Disney World.

This past June, Forte called in saying he cannot function and requires the use of an oxygen tank around the clock, but when a photographer went by his house in Florida in eptembe,r he reportedly saw the elderly man standing in the yard without the breathing aid.

Tartter has since expressed regret that he signed off on the medical delay without having Forte examined by a doctor.

He also has said he no longer believes anything Forte says concerning his supposedly failing health.

‘At this point, I am wondering if he is immortal,’ the prosecutor once wrote in an email to the retired cop’s accuser, who is still waiting to testify against him 33 years later.

 

 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk