Orsinis convicted of killing wife’s ex-husband
Federal prosecutors say a jury relied on “overwhelming” evidence against a former Beacon couple challenging their conviction for killing the woman’s former husband, who disappeared in April 2020 after returning his daughters to West Church Street following a custody visit.
Jamie and Nicholas Orsini filed separate motions for acquittal or a new trial after a jury convicted them on Sept. 27 of killing Steven Kraft, whose body police have never found after discovering his car abandoned in the City of Newburgh.
Both Orsinis claim that prosecutors failed to prove that Kraft was killed, with Jamie Orsini alleging that surveillance video capturing Nicholas Orsini driving Kraft’s car in Newburgh showed evidence of a passenger, suggesting her ex-husband was still alive after he returned their teenage daughters to Beacon.
Jamie Orsini also claims that supplies bought from the Home Depot in Fishkill before and after Kraft’s disappearance — a 100-foot tarp, duct tape, painters coveralls, grinder and galvanized trash cans — were “everyday household items,” not tools used to dispose of Kraft’s body and evidence as alleged by prosecutors.
In addition to challenging the court’s admission of the purchases, Jamie Orsini claims the court erred by allowing the testimony of two neighbors who said they smelled something burning from the yard outside their apartment.
Both Orsinis alleged that the federal crime under which they were convicted — carjacking resulting in death — does not apply because prosecutors failed to prove a carjacking took place.
The claims mirror those made by the defense during the trial, according to prosecutors in a response filed on March 22. “The evidence was not just sufficient, it was overwhelming,” they said.
After a two-week federal trial in White Plains, a jury found each Orsini guilty of carjacking resulting in death and conspiracy to commit carjacking in the disappearance of Kraft on April 28, 2020, less than two months after he filed a request to have the custody order modified. A hearing on his request had been scheduled for June 10.
On the day he disappeared, Kraft picked up his daughters from his ex-wife’s home in Beacon at 4 p.m., drove them to a Sonic restaurant in the Town of Newburgh and then to his apartment in Marlboro, before returning them to Beacon at 7 p.m. Police said they used location data to confirm that Jamie and Nicholas Orsini followed him to the restaurant.
The next day, Kraft failed to show up to his job at a deli in Marlboro, and on May 4, investigators found his 1999 Camry abandoned in Newburgh.
Prosecutors allege the couple planned the murder, buying items before Kraft disappeared that could be used to dismember and burn a body. Security footage and a store receipt from April 8, 2020, from the Home Depot on Route 9 in Fishkill showed that Jamie Orsini bought a tarp, duct tape and coveralls.
After Kraft’s disappearance, Nicholas Orsini bought trash cans and a grinder, an ax, charcoal, lighter fluid, a lighter and 16 bundles of firewood at the same Home Depot, prosecutors said.
One of the earliest pieces of evidence was surveillance footage showing Kraft’s car crossing the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge on April 28. Nicholas Orsini was accused of being the driver. According to investigators, he parked the car, walked a mile to a Sunoco station on Route 9W, discarded one of Kraft’s phones along the way (another was left in the car) and used a burner phone to call a taxi to take him back to Beacon.
More than three years later, on June 15, 2023, police arrested the Orsinis in Amsterdam, the city near Albany where they had moved. Each faces a maximum penalty of life in prison on the carjacking resulting in death charge and five years on the conspiracy charge.
