April Grisanti was forced into a car in Norwalk 36 years ago ...
and disappeared. Her sister hopes someone has information on what happened to her in February 1985.
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Norwalk,
#Connecticut - Thirty-six years after she disappeared following arguments with her ex-boyfriend, police still don’t know what happened to 20-year-old April Grisanti.
The older man she was with that night, James “Purple” Aaron, was convicted of kidnapping her but never was charged with murder. Her body has not been found, and she is presumed dead.
Now that Aaron himself has died, Grisanti’s family just wants to know one thing: Where is she?
“This is not a ‘whodunit,’ ” said Gina Grisanti, April’s sister who is looking for help in a renewed effort to uncover information in the case. “This is, ‘Let’s find her.’ "
Thoughtful, ‘pretty girl’
Gina Grisanti’s loss is magnified by the fact that she didn’t become close with her sister until shortly before she disappeared in February 1985. April would be turning 57 on Saturday.
“The sad part is, we were just starting to be sisters,” she said. “She had a car, she would drive me. I had a boyfriend. We only had six months.”
Although they were close in age — April was 14 months older —“we were both opposites,” she said. “I was street smart, she was naïve. She was a good, pretty girl.”
Their mother, Mary Lou Grisanti, described her older daughter as outgoing.
“Everybody liked her,” she said. “Always smiling. Always wanted to be a friend to somebody, always helped out.”
April was sure to check in on her great-grandmother, she said.
“She’d bring her a pizza,” Mary Lou Grisanti said. “She was good that way.”
And when friends who didn’t have much money had a baby, April would buy things for the child.
“She felt bad for them,” her mother said.
Lisa Hector-Ingrassia said she was April Grisanti’s best friend. The two went to middle school together and stayed tight even after Hector-Ingrassia’s family moved four towns away to Monroe.
“She was the most kindhearted, forgiving human being I have ever known,” she said. “She was a very, very beautiful girl.”
Each had an uncanny ability to sense when the other had news, whether good or bad.
“She would call me and say, ‘Are you OK?’ I’d say, ‘My boyfriend just broke up with me.’ I have never had a connection with anybody like that since she disappeared,” Hector-Ingrassia said. “It was the most amazing relationship. Nobody has been that close to me, in any of my relationships.”
“I loved her with every ounce of my being,” she said. “She meant the world to me.”
When her friend was with Aaron, Hector-Ingrassia began to notice something. She saw a different bruise every time Grisanti visited her in Monroe.
When she asked about them, Grisanti would say, " ‘Oh, you know, he gets angry sometimes,’ ” Hector-Ingrassia said. “She felt like she deserved it because she pissed him off.”
One day, Grisanti told her close friend some shocking news: Aaron had been questioned in his wife’s killing a few years earlier. Grisanti downplayed it.
“She said I don’t think he did it. I can’t imagine him doing something like that,” Hector-Ingrassia said.
Mary Aaron homicide
The skeletal remains of Mary Frattalone Aaron had been found on Aug. 1, 1981, in a wooded area of Norwalk near a Merritt Parkway commuter lot. She was last seen on July 2, a month earlier.
She and her estranged husband had been talking about getting divorced, according to the state police, who are still investigating the unsolved homicide. Neither detectives nor medical examiners were able to determine how Mary Aaron died.
Although he was questioned, James Aaron was not arrested.
Grisanti’s mother also knew about the homicide. She brought up the subject with her daughter, who again said she didn’t believe James Aaron was involved.
Like Hector-Ingrassia, Mary Lou Grisanti also noticed marks on April.
“I finally talked to her one day, and she decided I was right,” Mary Lou Grisanti said. Her daughter was going to break off the relationship. She also started calling the police to report that she was being abused.
Two abductions
Witnesses told police that about 9 p.m. on Jan. 31, 1985, Aaron forced Grisanti into a car after they argued in an East Norwalk bar, according to Courant archives.
A few hours later, the two were seen arguing a second time at a different bar, this one at 147 Main St. in Norwalk. Police said Grisanti went outside to make a phone call about 12:15 a.m., and Aaron again forced her into his car and drove off.
Aaron, who was 33 at the time, was arrested less than two weeks later and eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree kidnapping and unlawful restraint.
Although her wallet turned up near a Norwalk school and her car was recovered from the Norwalk River, there was no sign of April Grisanti.
Aaron was questioned, but “he never admitted murdering her,” said Norwalk police Sgt. Steve Kalmanides, who leads a new team of detectives working on the investigation. They were given the assignment late last year to put “a fresh set of eyes” on the cold case.
Police sent out a news release about the case after the 36th anniversary of Grisanti’s Feb. 1, 1985, disappearance and posted it on Facebook in hopes the right person would see it and talk. No one responded.
“We’re waiting for tips to come in,” Kalmanides said. “Somebody might have that little bit of information they’re holding onto all these years. We’re hoping there’s somebody out there who will come forward.”
Kalmanides acknowledges the challenges of solving a case so old. He was 10 when Grisanti disappeared.
For one thing, police lack forensic evidence. For another, people with knowledge of serious crimes often are afraid to talk, he said. Even if they want to, memories fade.
“She hasn’t been located. There is no body, there is no autopsy,” Kalmanides said. And “in general terms, people are fearful, and it’s hard to get people to cooperate.”
Grisanti’s family filed a lawsuit in 1987 against Norwalk police claiming the department repeatedly ignored April Grisanti’s complaints of domestic violence. The suit alleged that police ignored two of April Grisanti’s calls, one on Jan. 15, 1985, and one a few weeks later on Jan. 31, and that they took no action in the early hours of Feb. 1 when a woman in one of the bars called twice and said Grisanti was being beaten and kidnapped, according to Courant archives. It was settled in 1994, according to court records; details of the settlement were not available.
Similar complaints from Tracey Thurman of Torrington led to a $2 million settlement and a new domestic violence law passed in 1986. It requires police to make quick arrests during domestic violence calls when there is evidence the law has been broken.
The law came too late to help April Grisanti. But her family hopes now that Aaron is dead, people who might know where April is will be less fearful about coming forward. Aaron died on Oct. 10, 2016, of pneumonia and muscular dystrophy, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Gina Grisanti, who has a recurring nightmare of her sister being strangled, will lead the effort of seeking any and all new leads.
“I am not giving up,” she said. “I am not giving up until my dying day.”
Anyone with information is asked to contact police. Anonymous tips may be sent via the Norwalk police website at
Norwalkpd.com or texted to TIP411 (847411) by typing NORWALKPD into the text field, followed by the tip. Information also may be called in anonymously to the Norwalk police tip line at 203-854-3111.
