On This Day
April 20
2009
William Michael Parente, born July 20th
1949, was a New York attorney who began his own practice in 1988. He used his
practice to manage large investments. Over the years he built a 20 million
dollar Ponzi scheme by creating what he called “bridge loans”. He took money
from investments and loaned that money out. When investors asked Parente for
their money back out of their investments, he began writing bad checks. Nearly
half a million dollars worth of bad checks prompted the FBI to open an
investigation into Parente and his Ponzi scheme.
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| William Parente |
On April 20th, 2009, William, Betty, and Catherine drove to visit Stephanie
near her college in Baltimore. It wasn’t uncommon for the Parentes to drive down
to visit Stephanie. William, Betty, and Catherine checked into the Sheraton
hotel in Towson. Stephanie would be making the 5 mile drive from her college to the hotel later in the day.
When the family did not check out
during their check out time, the hotel staff entered the Parente’s room.
The female bodies were lying on the bed, while William Parente was lying on the floor of the bathroom. William’s fatal wounds were
clearly self-inflicted with a knife. It was later discovered that Betty was the first to be
killed by her husband, then Catherine, and then Stephanie. Stephanie had most
likely arrived to the hotel room after her mother and sister had already been
murdered. Betty, Catherine and Stephanie were killed by asphyxiation and blunt
force trauma.
While there is
no clear motive for why Parente murdered his wife and two children before
committing suicide, I believe that he did not want his family to know the truth.
Parente would rather kill his family than for them to find out the life they were
living was not due to his hard work, but rather a Ponzi scheme that was
crumbling beneath his feet.
Sources:
Blanco, J. I.
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://murderpedia.org/male.P/p/parente-william.htm
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