A man has admitted to taking part in a home invasion in Connecticut more than 15 years ago. As part of a plan to get nearly $10 million from the victims, he shot them with something they were told was “deadly.”
The 38-year-old Stefan Alexandru Barabas admitted to breaking the law by threatening to force someone to do something after breaking into a home in South Kent, Connecticut, on April 15, 2007, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Connecticut.
The victims were not officially named by the police, but the New Haven Register, The Middletown Press, and The News-Times all reported that they were philanthropist Anne Bass and her boyfriend Julian Lethbridge because Barabas was convicted of the same crime with other people.
According to the DOJ, Barabas and his accomplices “bound and blindfolded” Bass and Lethbridge and injected both of them “with a substance the intruders claimed was a deadly virus” 17 years ago. This is when they were found guilty.
According to the statement, on the night of the crime, Michael N. Kennedy drove Barabas and his friends Emmanuel Nicolescu and Alexandru Nicolescu to a place close to the scene of the crime.
The thieves “bound and blindfolded” the two victims and injected them with something they said was “a deadly virus,” the statement said. The Middletown Press, New Haven Register, and The News-Times all claimed that they told the couple they would die “from the lethal injection” if they didn’t pay $8.5 million for a cure for the virus.
In the latest statement from the DOJ, the thieves said that when they saw that the victims “were not in position” to give them what they wanted, they “drugged” Bass and Lethbridge with sleepy pills and drove off in Bass’ car.
The DOJ said that a few days later, an accordion case washed up on a beach about three hours from the crime scene. It was full of guns, syringes, sleeping pills, and “a laminated telephone card with the South Kent address of the victims.”
As the DOJ said in its statement, witnesses said that one of the weapons found in the accordion case belonged to Emmanuel.
Later, his DNA was found in the car, and Kennedy was found using information from witnesses about a partial license plate seen the night of the crime, the statement said.
During the study, all four of them left the country. The last one of them to be found guilty in the case is Barabas, who is from Romania.
When Emanuel came back to the U.S. in January 2011, he was jailed. In 2012, the DOJ said he was guilty of trying to extort money, planning to do so, and having a stolen car. He was given a 240-month prison term.
Alexandru was arrested in the U.K. in 2013 and given a 121-month prison term after admitting to trying to extort money and planning to do so.
Kennedy, who is a citizen of both the United States and Romania, came back to the United States on his own and pleaded guilty to attempted extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion. He was sentenced to 48 months in jail.
Based on the DOJ, Barabas will be given his sentence in September.
