WANDA DEOLIVEIRA

Ms. DeOliveira graduated from St. John’s University, Staten Island Campus in 1989 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice. She went on to earn her law degree from St. John’s University School of Law, graduating in 1992. From there, she was admitted to practice and was hired by the Kings County District Attorney’s Office as an Assistant District Attorney where she worked from 1992 to 1997. In 1997, Ms. DeOliveira left the Brooklyn D.A.’s Office to start her own private law practice on Staten Island, which included civil claims as well as criminal defense work. While working full-time as a private attorney, she had her two daughters in less than a three-year span before returning to being a prosecutor in 2000, this time in the Richmond County District Attorney’s Office under the Honorable William Murphy. During her career at the Staten Island D.A.’s Office she has worked as the Deputy Bureau Chief in the Special Victims Bureau from 2005 to 2008 and then as the Deputy Bureau Chief in the Trials Bureau until 2010, when she was then named Chief Trial Counsel to continue her love of trial advocacy in mentoring the junior assistants with their trials. After the retirement of former Special Victims Bureau Chief Yolanda Rudich, in 2014, Ms. DeOliveira was asked to return to the Special Victims Bureau as the new Bureau Chief, a position she held until July 2017 when she was promoted to the Executive Bureau as Chief Trial Counsel.

She has been in the courtroom, on trial, in over seventy five cases during the course of her career as a prosecutor, has tried over 15 homicide cases in Richmond County alone, and has investigated, assigned, and prosecuted hundreds of other murder cases. She was assigned to lead a team of investigators and was the sole prosecutor in the County assigned to review over 150 Cold Case Homicide cases dating back to the 1980s for new DNA evidence. Ms. DeOliveira has been a lead participant in the several of Staten Island’s most noteworthy cases and has personally taken several of them to trial, namely: the double murder /arson of Rocco Mercurio and his wife Linda Torrone on Ward Hill in 2001, sending defendant Mario Mannino to prison for 82 years to life; in 2002, she tried and convicted Elena Kiejlieches for murdering her husband in a mansion on Todt Hill; in 2003, Ms. DeOliveira was one of the four prosecutors assigned to the Death Penalty case against Ronell Wilson for the murders of two undercover NYPD detectives Nemorin and Andrews, and she was instrumental in creating the case that the Eastern District used to ultimately secure the death Penalty against Wilson under the Federal Prosecution; in 2004, she convicted Wayne Decker of the 1987 Cold Case homicide of Vicky Mason; in 2009, she convicted John Galtieri of murdering his ex-wife Jeanne Kane, one of the Kane Triplets of the 1960s notoriety; in 2012, she tried and convicted Carl Allen of a 1999 Cold Case homicide for the brutal murder of Noemi Ortiz; in 2015, she convicted Jonathan Crupi for the stabbing murder of his wife, Simonette Mapes, a beloved New York City High School teacher, and this summer she successfully defeated the insanity defense of Eric Bellucci, convicting him for the murder of both of his parents, which carried a double sentence of life without parole.