BRIDGEPORT -- For two years Frank Dore, a psychiatric social worker, showed little remorse for blasting his wife to death with a shotgun after she began divorce proceedings against him. At his plea hearing he instead recited a laundry list of his own accomplishments.
So it was not without some skepticism that members of his late wife's family, wiping away their own tears, listened as the 59-year-old Dore, his voice cracking with emotion, apologized Friday to the "community of women," for his actions.
"We are not into forgiveness here, we are into justice," Superior Court Judge Robert Devlin Jr. retorted, sentencing Dore to 28 years in prison for the charge of first-degree manslaughter with a firearm. "Don't go walking out of this courtroom thinking it was a justified act, because it wasn't."
Dore is accused of fatally shooting his 48-year-old wife, Patti Joy Dore, in their Forestview Road home on Jan. 12, 2010, one day after she began divorce proceedings against him. Patti Dore, an outgoing woman with bright red hair, had worked in the clerk's offices in the Main Street and the Stamford courthouses.
Helped by family to a desk before the judge, the victim's mother, Veronica Rothermel, told Devlin that the name "Frank Dore," makes her ill because of the heartbreak he caused their family.
"The cardinal sin was when Patti decided she wanted to get out of this unhealthy lifestyle by means of divorce, but you settled this action by shooting her four times with a shotgun," she said.
While Dore's lawyer, Eugene Riccio, lamented that the couple's troubled marriage ended this way, he added: "I think to place all the turbulence on my client's shoulders is not fair."
According to police, shortly before 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 12, they received a 911 call from a neighbor of the Dores on Forestview Road that Patti Dore was screaming out a second-floor window that her husband was trying to kill her.
"Jack call the police Frank is trying to kill me," the neighbor related Dore screamed to him. Police said the neighbor then heard four gunshots.
When officers got to the Dore's front door they said they heard some shouting and a little girl crying. They rang the door bell several times before Frank Dore answered it dressed in a T-shirt and pajama bottom pants. "I'm done, I did it, I'm going to prison," police said Dore blurted.
Nearby police said was the couple's 11-year-old daughter sobbing.
Police said they went to the couple's second-floor bedroom where they found Patti Dore lying face up on the floor in a large pool of blood. A shotgun was lying nearby on a bed, police said. They said they later recovered five spent shotgun shells at the scene.
In addition to the prison term, Judge Devlin sentenced Dore to five-years probation.
Supervisory Assistant State's Attorney C. Robert Satti Jr. acknowledged that the victim's family was not completely happy with the plea bargain but he told the judge that there was a danger that if the case had gone to trial Dore would have used a defense of extreme emotional disturbance that could have resulted in a conviction for a lesser charge.
Contact Daniel Tepfer at 203-330-6308 or dtepfer@ctpost.com. Follow him on twitter.com/dantepfer
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