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Records Detail Domestic Violence In Graziano Family

News Channel 8 photo by MARK DOUGLAS

Over the past several years, Debra Graziano and her son John obtained several restraining orders against Edward Graziano, left, but had them dismissed, records show.

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By STEPHEN THOMPSON

spthompson@tampatrib.com

Published: February 27, 2009

Related Links

• Edward Graziano Still In Jail
• Previous: Graziano Arrested
• More Background

Edward Graziano

On Sept. 30, 2004, Debra Graziano asked for a restraining order against her husband Edward, accusing him of putting a carving knife to her throat and threatening to slash her carotid artery, according to court documents.

In her petition, she claimed he also told her if she ever sought alimony "he'd hunt me down like a …dog, put a bullet in my head, then his own."

A judge granted her request and the restraining order was to last two years. In a matter of weeks, however, Debra was asking that it be dismissed.

She wanted Edward home so he could spend Christmas with his family.

It is not an unusual pattern: an allegation of violence, followed by a reconciliation, that does an end run around the judicial system. It emerges again and again in some 18 court files on the Graziano family.

Their troubled marriage came to a head Thursday when Edward, 52, was arrested on a charge of trying to arrange to have Debra killed.

The solicitation-for-murder charge came after Edward held several meetings with an undercover Pinellas County sheriff's detective who was posing as a go-between for a hit man Edward wanted to kill his wife, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said.

This week, Edward paid $1,100 in cash, wrote a check for $1,000 and gave a gift card for $13.06 to Westshore Pizza to have the crime committed, detectives say.

Debra is a guardian for her son, John Graziano, the Iraq war veteran who was left in a semi-conscious state after a car wreck with Nick Bollea. She and her family are suing the Bollea family – Nick, his mother Linda Bollea and Linda's estranged husband Terry, who is better known as former wrestler Hulk Hogan.

The Graziano family thinks the Bolleas are liable for John's injuries and are seeking millions of dollars. Lawyers involved in the lawsuit have said Edward stood to gain financially as a result of Debra's death, either because he would become the family guardian or because he would get a greater share of any award or settlement.

Edward and Debra Graziano can't even agree on when they got married. She says it was in 1991, and he says it was in 1993, according to a divorce action that was eventually dismissed. They have three children; Christin, now 25, Michael, now 20, and John, now 24.

Court Actions Date Back To 2004

Debra filed her first request for a restraining order in Pinellas County on Jan. 20, 2004, and said she was staying in a shelter for abused women as she was doing so. In her petition, she said Edward had been fired the month before from his job as a funeral director in Brooklyn, N.Y., because of a violent outburst in a nursing home.

She also said he hit their son Michael, then 15, as he was trying to learn how to drive; that after she picked him up at a bar, he threw up in their home and told her to clean up the vomit; that he had punched her in the head in front of their daughter; and that he told her he wished she had breast cancer as a friend of hers did.

Her request was denied Jan. 29, 2004.

The next month, she filed for divorce and the couple reached a temporary separation agreement that was to last a year; as part of the agreement, Edward agreed to move out of the house at 1225 Curlew Road. He came back nine months later, on Nov. 20, 2004, with a proposed postnuptial marital settlement agreement under which she would cede her share in the property to him.

The case was set for a final hearing, but Edward didn't want to continue with his proposal, and Debra didn't show up,

Then, on Sept. 29, 2004, it was son John who was asking for a domestic violence injunction against his father. John, then 19, said in his petition his father had tried busting his bedroom door in. Edward, using a screwdriver, then broke the windshield and a passenger window to his son's car, John's petition says.

As his father tried climbing through his son's bedroom window, John said he took a baseball bat and struck a point near where his father was trying to get in, to scare him, the petition says. When Edward went back around to the front door to return inside, John jumped out the window and went to a friend's house, the petition says.

The next day, Debra filed a restraining order too, and she apologized for her history of inaction as far as Edward was concerned.

"Please your honor I know I have been wrong in the past not to make police reports but I didn't want to ruin his chances for employment," she said.

Her own situation was also on her mind.

"I have $344, two kids, a car with a brake line about to go," she wrote. "Myself and my children have nowhere to go."

But, she said, the fact that Edward threatened to slit her throat – plus the incident with John – spurred her to take action, she wrote in the petition.

"But now he's going after our son not just me and this obsession with cutting my throat is just too much," she wrote.

He Got Order Against Wife

John's restraining order against his father was granted for a one-year period – from Oct. 7, 2004, to Oct. 7, 2005 – but just days before Christmas, John asked that it be dismissed because, he said, his father had gone through anger-management classes.

Debra's was granted, too, but she asked that it be dropped because of the holidays.

Edward was charged with domestic battery after his confrontation with John. He was accused of hitting his son in the head with his head or elbow as John was ducking to avoid getting struck, an arrest affidavit says. The charge was dropped, however.

Records show that between the time mother and son won their restraining orders – and the time they asked that they be dismissed – Edward did not stay out of trouble.

With the injunctions still in effect, Edward, on Oct. 4, 2004, called the Curlew Road home 75 to 100 times, threatening Debra, and went over there drunk, court records show. He was charged with aggravated stalking, violating a restraining order and with burglary, but all but the felony stalking charge were dismissed. Edward pleaded guilty to misdemeanor stalking and was sentenced to a year in jail.

Then after the holidays, Edward filed a petition for a restraining order against Debra. He said that on Jan. 7, 2005, she threatened to contact his out-of-state probation officer and have him put in jail, according to his petition. He said Debra also threatened to slit his throat while he slept and to cut off his penis while he slept. .

Edward won his petition, with a restraining order that was to remain in effect from Jan. 8, 2005, until July 20, 2005, records show. Then, 18 days after he won the restraining order, he asked that it be dismissed because "we would like to go to counseling and this injunction makes that very difficult," he wrote. It was dismissed.

'He Has Gotten Worse'

Debra later regretted asking that the injunction against her husband be dismissed so he could spend Christmas with his children, court records show. In a June 1, 2005 letter to Pinellas Circuit Judge Amy Williams which Debra did not immediately send, she said as much, court files say.

In another letter to Williams, dated March 22, 2006, Debra said, "He has gotten worse."

At one point, she said in one of her letters, he called her and told her to get out of the house, and that he would drag her into the woods, tie her to a tree, and rape her to death.

At another point, he had keys made to an apartment where she was staying and robbed or burglarized her twice, one letter says. She moved to a shelter for abused women, she said, and wrote one of her letters from a library because her husband had spyware and read her e-mails.

"I have held all this stuff he has been doing to me inside hoping his probation would control him somewhat," she wrote Williams in one of the letters. "He told me to get a will drawn and get my things in order … he has said if I get a lawyer for our divorce (if he allows me to live) I'll need a mortician," she wrote.

On June 21, 2007, according to civil and criminal court records, Edward struck his wife, and then followed her to a Publix supermarket where she had fled to call 911. He also spat at a law enforcement officer investigating the incident. Edward was arrested and charged with tampering with a witness.

The next day, Debra filed another request for a restraining order. She said that on June 21, 2007, her husband put the family dog in her face, telling the animal to bite her. She said he also pulled her breasts out of her blouse, her petition says. Debra said she could hardly open her mouth because of a punch she received in the jaw from him, her petition says.

She got her restraining order. But then she asked that it be dismissed so her husband could go to his daughter's wedding, court records show. It was dismissed on July 5.

Still On Probation During Latest Arrest

The tampering with a witness charged was dismissed and prosecutors replaced it with two other charges – felony battery and battery on a law enforcement officer. Edward was being held at the Pinellas County Jail when his son John was in the Aug. 26, 2007, car wreck with Nick Bollea.

Debra begged a judge to order Edward be escorted to Bayfront Medical Center to visit his son because of continuous threats of violence, court records show.

"This will send him completely out of control,'' she wrote. "It is a tragedy that he cannot be a comfort to us or we a comfort to him but it has never been. Please send him with an escort."

Edward eventually pleaded guilty to the two charges and was sentenced to 36 months or probation. He was ordered into a batterer's intervention program.

He was still on probation when he was arrested Thursday on the solicitation-to-commit murder charge. At his first appearance today Edward said he had no car, no home and that he couldn't afford a lawyer.

Initially he was being held without bail, but today it was set at $200,000.

News Channel 8 reporter Mark Douglas contributed to this report. Reporter Stephen Thompson can be reached at (727) 451-2336.

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