February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
DiMeo’s life term will be for the murder of Long Island jeweler Thomas Renison last December.
However, DiMeo could still face the death penalty in Connecticut where he is yet to go to trial for the murder of husband and wife Tim and Kim Donnelly, who ran a jewelry store in Fairfield.
DiMeo, 23, was apprehended in Atlantic City two days after the Donnellys’ murder.
The double killing shocked Fairfield’s close-knit Irish American community.
The Donnellys were parents to two grown children, Tara and Eric, and were active members of the Fairfield Irish American community.
Their store specialized in Celtic design jewelry and they ran a booth at the annual Fairfield Irish Festival. Tim Donnelly was also a member of the local Gaelic American Club.
U.S. ANGRY WITH IRELAND?
The Bush administration is reportedly “furious” with the Irish government after a Palestinian sent to Ireland following a West Bank siege left the country for Spain.
Jihad Jara was allowed into Ireland as part of a U.N.-brokered deal to end the siege at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem three years ago.
Jara’s movements in Ireland were to be tracked by Gardai but the Sunday Independent reported that he left Ireland and spent several weeks Spain last year before being sent back by Spanish police.
The Jara case, and the presence in Ireland of other suspected Islamic militants, is the subject matter of a ‘Dateline’ edition to be broadcast in the near future.
The NBC show will reportedly air the unhappiness of senior Bush administration officials with the Jara and other anti-terror issues.
A spokeswoman for the Irish Consulate in New York said that she could not comment on a story yet to be broadcast.
However, the spokeswoman said that the Irish minister for justice, Michael McDowell, and Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy had recently visited the U.S.
During meetings with top officials from the U.S. Attorney General’s office, as well as top FBI and CIA figures, no disquiet had been voiced, she said.
SUPREME’S AN O’DEA
Sandra Day O’Connor is still invited to the O’Dea family reunion set for Ennis, Co. Clare this weekend.
However, the retiring Supreme Court justice has cited a travel conflict and will not be making the Irish trip.
This is a source of some disappointment to reunion organizer and longtime Chicago Irish American community activist, P.J. O’Dea.
However, O’Dea is happy that he traced a distant family link to the outgoing justice.
He said that Day O’Connor’s Irish immigrant grandfather had changed the family name from O’Dea while her husband, John Jay O’Connor, traced his heritage to County Kerry.
BUCKS FOR PROJECT CHILDREN
The Senate Appropriations Committee has included $250,000 for Project Children in its fiscal 2006 State and Foreign Operations Act. The bill must be approved by the full Senate, and then in House/Senate conference, before it becomes law.
“Over 37 peace walls still stand in Belfast and many children in Northern Ireland attend segregated schools,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, a backer of the Project Children appropriation.
“This is why programs like Project Children remain so critical for successfully developing people-to-people exchanges that encourage conflict resolution,” Schumer added.
Project Children brings Catholic and Protestant children to the U.S. each summer to spend vacation
time with American families.
FADING GREEN
The Irish might still be the largest ethnic bloc in Massachusetts but they are not arriving in the numbers that once turned the Bay State from its monochrome Yankee hue into a place with more political shades of green than Ireland itself.
Census bureau statistics covering the period 2000-’03 show that Brazilians made up the largest block of new arrivals. They were followed in the top ten by immigrants from El Salvador, India, Japan, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Germany, China and Canada.
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