June 26, 2024
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Anna Maria Tolomello, who owned the former Pina's Pizza in Chalfont, was sentenced to 18 to 40 years in state prison for the slaying of her 65-year-old business partner, Giovanni Gallina.
A Bucks County woman who owned a pizza restaurant in Chalfont was sentenced to 18 to 40 years in state prison for killing her boyfriend and business partner.
Anna Maria Tolomello, 51, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder in April as part of a plea agreement for fatally shooting Giovanni Gallina, 65, in March 2022. The couple shared a home and operated Pina's Pizzeria, which has since shut down.
Tolomello initially told authorities that she had shot Gallina in self-defense, claiming that he was strangling her, but forensic evidence showed Gallina was shot in the back of the head in an unprovoked attack, prosecutors said.
Three days after the killing, Tolomello offered $350 in cash to a contractor to dig a hole near her driveway, prosecutors said. Investigators found Gallina's body wrapped in a blue tarp inside the couple's bedroom when executing a search warrant nearly two weeks after his son had reported him missing. Prosecutors said the body had been hidden there for 13 days.
Tolomello also confessed to disposing of evidence, putting a bloody mattress in a dumpster outside the pizza shop, prosecutors said.
In sentencing Tolomello, Bucks County Common Pleas Judge Gary Gilman called her actions "heinous." He also said that though he believed Tolomello may have experienced some form of domestic abuse from Gallina, his killing was not done in self-defense.
