January 01, 2025
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Woman, 41, sentenced in husband’s ’89 murder Former New Brunswick resident gets 60 years

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. – A St. Leonard, New Brunswick, woman was sentenced Monday to 60 years in prison for accessory to murder in the 1989 beating death of her husband.

Nicole Pelletier, 41, extradited in July 2001 from her hometown, was sentenced by Justice Carmen Espinosa in New Britain Superior Court in connection with the murder of her husband, Olidor Pelletier, according to a news release from the Connecticut Chief State Attorney’s Office.

Nicole Pelletier was convicted last May of arranging the death of her husband, who died 13 days after he was found Oct. 2, 1989, in the couple’s Townline Road home in Terryville, Conn., according to Mark Dupuis, spokesman for the state attorney’s office.

Espinosa “characterized Pelletier’s actions as cold-blooded and premeditated,” according to Dupuis. The judge sentenced Pelletier to the maximum allowed under Connecticut law. In Connecticut, a life sentence is 60 years in prison.

“This is essentially a life sentence here,” Dupuis said Tuesday morning by telephone. “She was taken to the York Correctional Institution in Niantic [Conn.] directly from the court hearing.” The institution at Niantic is the state prison for women.

Dupuis did not know how many years Pelletier would have to serve before being eligible for parole.

Efforts to reach Pelletier’s attorney, Claude Chong of the New Britain Public Defender’s Office, for comment were unsuccessful Tuesday.

The state’s major witness in the case against Pelletier was Jose Rubert, Pelletier’s reported boyfriend, who pleaded guilty to murder in the case in 1990.

Rubert, who was sentenced to 30 years for his part in the murder, told law enforcement officials in 1995 that Pelletier had conspired with him in killing her husband, Dupuis said. Other witnesses included relatives of Olidor Pelletier and the inspector who was the original investigator in the case.

Pelletier, who had been fighting extradition since 1996, lost her effort and was extradited to Connecticut in July 2001. She had lived in St. Leonard, located across the St. John River from Van Buren, for 12 years. The woman had returned to her hometown, where she raised her two sons, within a month of her husband’s death in 1989.

The case was a long-standing one taken over by the Cold Case Unit of the Connecticut Chief State Attorney’s Office. Pelletier is the sixth person convicted of homicide as a result of the Cold Case Unit since it was established in 1998. The unit works with local and state police to investigate crimes that go unsolved for a long period of time.

The 12-member jury deliberated three days after an eight-day trial in early May, with Assistant State Attorney John J. Russotto as the prosecutor.

The Pelletiers had been married about 10 years when Olidor Pelletier, a 31-year-old machine operator out of work with a disability, was killed. He was found beaten and bloody by a nephew, Germain Gosselin, in the cellar of the single-family home. He died, without regaining consciousness, of massive cerebral trauma Oct. 15, 1989, in a Plymouth, Conn., hospital.

Nicole Pelletier had asked Gosselin to check the house after she repeatedly tried to call her husband, who was not answering the telephone.

Rubert, according to Connecticut police, tied Pelletier hand and foot. He was savagely beaten with a baseball bat. Rubert was charged with the murder two months after Pelletier’s death and convicted in 1990, five years before telling police that Nicole Pelletier was involved.


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