“Drug-fed killing and robbery spree ended in Fairfield”

Drug-fed killing and robbery spree ended in Fairfield

Posted: 20 Sep 2010 09:14 AM PDT

On Feb. 2, 2005, an attorney whose office was above Tim and Kim Donnelly's jewelry store on the Post Road in Fairfield heard several loud bangs and a woman's screams.

When he went downstairs to investigate, the attorney later told police, he saw a man stuffing items into a shopping bag before quickly leaving the store. The attorney found Tim Donnelly lying on the floor and bleeding. Police would find Kim Donnelly in a fetal position.

Police and court records state that Kim Donnelly was shot six times and her husband was wounded five times. Tim Donnelly was pronounced dead at the scene. Kim Donnelly died at the hospital.

The couple was widely known in Fairfield, and the slayings in a busy area of town stunned the community.

Two days later, Christopher DiMeo and Nicole Pearce were arrested at a motel in Atlantic City, N.J. Police said DiMeo had been on a killing and robbing rampage of jewelry stores after driving to the area from California. The spree had ended, they said, after he gunned down the Donnellys. The pair later pleaded guilty in connection with the robbery and murder of a Long Island jeweler. DiMeo was sentenced to a life term, while Pearce was sentenced to 20 years for robbery.

DiMeo is charged with capital felony, two counts of felony murder, two counts of murder, first-degree robbery and criminal possession of a handgun in the fatal shooting of the Donnellys. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, though he has confessing to the killings in documents filed by his attorney in an effort to reach a plea agreement that would avoid the death penalty. Prosecutors have turned that offer down.

An arrest affidavit in the Donnelly killings states that police found in Pearce's home two hand-drawn diagrams of the inside of jewelry stores, including the Donnellys'. Police said Pearce later admitted scouting out the Donnelly store for DiMeo the day before the murders.

Pearce told police that on the day of the Donnelly murders she drove to Connecticut with DiMeo but he dropped her off at a train station because she was scared after he had killed the Long Island jeweler. To calm himself down, DiMeo shot 10 bags of heroin into his arms, and she did about half that amount, Pearce told police, according to the affidavit.

Pearce said she didn't see DiMeo at her Queens, N.Y., home until hours later, the affidavit states.

"It didn't go good," she said DiMeo told her.

In November 2008 Pearce pleaded guilty to helping DiMeo plan the murders of the Donnellys. She faces up to 50 years in prison.

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