Anchorage Daily News

TACOMA -- The year was 1978, and Joseph Tarricone wanted Renee Ray Curtiss for his own.

The 53-year-old Alaska man wooed the object of his desire -- 28 years his junior -- with gifts, attention, even tickets to Italy, according to newly filed court documents.

But Curtiss grew annoyed with the overtures and wanted Tarricone, who owned a meat distribution company in Alaska, "gone," the documents state, and she asked her brother to "help her out."

That September, in the basement of his sister's Summit-area home, Nicholas Louis Notaro did just that, Pierce County prosecutors contend.

Notaro shot Tarricone in the head, then, with his sister's help, used a chain saw bought for the purpose to dismember the body and bury it in the yard, the court records state.

Tarricone's remains lay there for nearly 29 years until a construction crew building a development on the site unearthed them last June, touching off a homicide investigation that culminated this week with the arrests of Curtiss and Notaro.

On Tuesday, brother and sister pleaded not guilty in Superior Court to one count each of first-degree murder in Tarricone's death. Deputy prosecutor Dawn Farina requested Notaro, 59, and Curtiss, 54, each be jailed in lieu of $2 million cash.

Farina told Judge Susan Serko that Notaro was convicted in 1979 of killing his wife in Alaska. Vicki Lea Notaro of Healy died in September 1978 after being shot in the head. Nearly a month later, her body was discovered north of Nenana, according to a story published Oct. 23, 1978, in The Anchorage Times.

"He killed his wife, then flew to Seattle and murdered Mr. Tarricone within a week's time," the deputy prosecutor said in arguing for the high bail Tuesday.

She also reported Notaro's 1994 conviction for child-rape in Pierce County and noted he and Curtiss could receive life sentences if convicted in Tarricone's death.

"The state is concerned with flight," Farina said.

Public defender Lisa Contris, who represented Notaro for the purposes of Tuesday's arraignment only, did not immediately argue the bail amount. Serko ordered Notaro held on the $2 million cash bail.

Curtiss, who co-owns a Seattle bail bond company with her husband, had two private lawyers to represent her. Attorneys Robert Meyers and James Newton persuaded Serko to set Curtiss' bail at $500,000.

Three members of Tarricone's family -- including a man thought to be his son -- attended Tuesday's arraignments and left court without speaking to a reporter.

Efforts by the News Tribune to reach Tarricone's daughter -- Gypsy Tarricone -- were unsuccessful. She told KOMO-TV for a story posted on its Web site Tuesday that she always suspected Curtiss was involved in her father's disappearance.

"I absolutely knew," said Gypsy Tarricone, who told the station she last saw her father in Hawaii in 1978. He left there en route to Pierce County to see Curtiss, she said.

Prosecutors contend Curtiss asked Tarricone to come to the rental house off Canyon Road she shared with her mother some time between Sept. 21 and Oct. 21, 1978.

Notaro already was there, according to court papers.

Notaro lured Tarricone into the basement under the pretense of looking at a washing machine, the documents said. When Tarricone turned his back, Notaro told detectives, he shot him "in the back of the head with a gun, twice," according to the charging papers.

Curtiss told investigators she couldn't remember whether she was at the house at the time of the shooting, but she admitted driving her brother to a store to buy a chain saw, the court records state.

"Curtiss and Notaro both admit to cutting up Tarricone's body and burying the body on the property," according to the charging documents, and Curtiss said she later threw the gun used to kill Tarricone into Lake Washington.

Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said Tuesday detectives traveled to Alaska and New Mexico to interview potential witnesses and reviewed hundreds of pages of law enforcement reports in making their case.

Missing persons reports and other clues indicated the remains found at the Canyon Road site most likely belonged to Tarricone, Troyer said.

Forensics technicians determined the bones had been cut in some way, indicating homicide, according to the charging documents.

Investigators then began to identify people associated with Tarricone who might have lived at that address and made the connection to Curtiss, and, more importantly, her brother, Troyer said.

"We've got a guy who killed his wife around the same time," the spokesman said. "After that, they kind of put it all together."

ADVERTISEMENT