A man was today arraigned in a New York court for the murder of his Guyana born wife and held without bail.
The New York Daily News reported that Loventino Cassadean, 49, was charged with killing his 22-year-old bride Felicia Cassadean. He pleaded not guilty in the First District Court in Hempstead and was held without bail. He was stone-faced and silent as police walked him to a patrol car, the newspaper reported.
Police said Felicia Cassadean, a mother of two, was found dead in her burning Long Island home on Monday. She was stabbed to death by her husband, possibly after an argument over his sex-abuse arrest, according to the Daily News. She was discovered in her smoke-filled Freeport home about 6 am on Labour Day. She had been stabbed repeatedly. The fire, which left her corpse badly burned, may have been set to cover up the crime, the newspaper reported.
Her husband was arrested in April for oral sex with a teenager. Court papers say he invited the victim, who was under 17, to his bedroom and gave her a love letter before undressing her. The Daily News reported that Nassau County Police Det. Lt. John Azzata said there was “an ongoing dispute” between husband and wife over the arrest before Monday’s murder.
The two met when she living in a Catholic home for unwed mothers. Following the discovery of the body, the man was quickly picked up by police on a nearby street. “He’s given statements to the fact that he’s had some involvement,” Azzata was quoted as saying.
The victim’s family went to the medical examiner’s office to identify her body before the hearing. Her shaken father—who threw her out of the house when she got pregnant at 15, she once said—declined to speak. But uncle Anthony Ram said relatives had no inkling of domestic trouble before the slaying, the Daily News reported. “Like every marriage, I guess they had difficulty. We didn’t know much about it,” Ram was quoted as saying. “We never saw any bad side of him at all. He was very well-spoken, very soft spoken,” Ram added. “There are a lot of things we don’t know about him.”
The suspect was a divorced father when he married Felicia, who was living in Merrick with her son. They got married two years ago and she had a second child. Both children, ages 5 and 2, were visiting their grandmother in Guyana at the time of their mother’s death.
The couple was about to be evicted from their apartment after failing to pay rent since March. Public records show Cassadean had a string of tax warrants and a bankruptcy in his past, the report said. Felicia, who was taking pharmacology classes at Farmingdale State College, was about to start a new job this week.
“Felicia was very young, very beautiful girl; very ambitious; she was very independent. She had two wonderful kids. She was trying to make a better life for them,” Ram said. “Things were looking good for her, this is a shock,” he added.