Man, 82, Killed Wife by ‘Defending Self’

An 82-year-old man accused of strangling his 76-year-old wife testified today that he had killed her in self-defense during an “argument over her boyfriends” in which she had fought “like a wildcat.”

Peter Cipolla, his quavering voice barely audible, told a jury that his wife of 52 years had attacked him, scratched his face and head and bit deeply into his left hand. “I never saw her so mad before.” He told the jury that she fell and he fell and lost consciousness. When he recovered a short while later, he said she was ice cold. The retired hairdresser was arrested March 17 at his home in North Valley Stream. A pathologist testified that Mrs. Cipolla had died of “manual strangulation.”

Excerpt from John McQuiston Oct 15, 1977 New York Times