February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Patrick Markey
Queens detectives have escorted fugitive Miguel Valerio from Maryland back to New York, where he has been charged with fatally shooting County Kilkenny immigrant Francis O’Loughlin in a local bar two years ago.
Head bowed and hands cuffed behind his back, Valerio said nothing as he was taken from the 108th Precinct to Queens Supreme Court last Thursday morning to face pre-trial proceedings.
Prosecutors have hit Valerio with two counts of second-degree murder, and charges of criminal possession of a weapon and tampering with physical evidence, according to the Queens District Attorney’s office.
Valerio was tracked down and captured last week in a small, remote trailer park in a Maryland suburb after two years on the run. Initially detectives tracked Valerio to Delaware through local tipoffs and with information gleaned from the America’s Most Wanted TV program. Further tipoffs in that state led them to the trailer park.
"I have to commend the detectives working under Chief Pat Timlin for their relentless pursuit of this defendant over the last two years," said Gregory Lasak, the Queens executive assistant district attorney.
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Valerio has given detectives a statement implicating himself in the shooting, police said. The alleged triggerman broke down in tears when detectives found him, telling them he was relieved that he could stop running, police said.
O’Loughlin, a 32-year-old horse show-jumping champion who owned a New York construction company, died of his wounds after being shot on Sept. 5, 1998 inside the Mad Ass Tavern, a busy Irish bar in Sunnyside.
Investigators believe the two men were involved in a drawn-out dispute, probably over O’Loughlin’s girlfriend, who worked at the bar with Valerio. O’Loughlin and Valerio had argued the week of the shooting and exchanged words again the night the Irishman was killed.
"A few days before the defendant may have been flirting with the victim’s girlfriend. They had some words. He wanted Valerio to stay away," said one law enforcement source familiar with the case.
Investigators said Valerio stormed out of the bar and returned about 20 minutes later with a high-powered handgun. O’Loughlin had been waiting for his girlfriend to finish work that night. At about 2:30 a.m. when he went into the bathroom, Valerio followed him inside and alleged shot him once in the back of the head with the .45-caliber weapon, prosecutors charged.
In his statement to detectives, Valerio said he had been having problems with the victim and had taken the handgun into the bar to scare O’Loughlin. The two men struggled in the bathroom and the gun went off with Valerio’s finger on the trigger, the defendant claimed in his statement.
Prosecutors said no murder weapon had been uncovered, but according to a criminal complaint, police found a machine gun inside Valerio’s apartment in Corona, Queens.