Should he win that appeal, the district attorney said, Mr. Alcala will be returned to California's death row where he is appealing his death-penalty conviction. Alcala if he wished to speak before she pronounced sentence, he flatly answered, "No."Īt a news conference after the sentencing, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said Mr. Alcala, 69 years old, wearing shoulder-length, gray hair and dressed in an orange inmate jumper, sat at the defense table facing forward, with his back to those addressing the court. "Her senseless murder irreparably damaged our family," the sisters wrote.Īs the statements were read, Mr. Hover's death was a factor in her brother becoming a drug-addict who eventually took his own life and their mother becoming an alcoholic. She chose to see the good in everyone she met because she had a huge and open heart," the prosecutor said reading the letter. "Ellen was a sweet, kind, generous, compassionate, loving and beautiful young woman. Hover was a painter and pianist who dreamed of going to medical school, the sisters wrote. Her body was found buried in Westchester 11 months after she disappeared. Hover's family had owned the legendary Hollywood nightclub, Ciro's, but she wasn't an heiress. He said she was an "heiress" to compete with news coverage that summer focusing on the "Son of Sam" murders and the New York City blackout. The sister's letter revealed for the first time that their father, Ruben Schwartz, planted a headline-making story when Ms. They said they declined to appear in person because they feared further sensationalizing their sister's "brutal murder" and providing Mr. Hover's stepsisters, Victoria Rudolph and Charlotte Rosenberg. Stigell finished, prosecutor Alex Spiro read a letter from Ms. Crilley that had appeared with stories of her murder in the newspapers four decades ago with the words, "Cornelia Always in Our Hearts."
The majority of spectators in court wore stickers with a black and white photograph of Ms. "She was in her prime and she wouldn't hurt anybody," the sister said. She enjoyed her job as a TWA flight attendant and the opportunity of wide travel. She loved her dog but had to let her parents look after him because she moved into a no-pets-allowed apartment in the city. Alcala, "this is not about you today" and used the rest of her words to memorialize her sister who was born "with my father's blue eyes." Cornelia Crilley grew up the middle of five children in Woodside, Queens.