Crime & Safety
Martin Nigro, 82, Judge in Wood-chipper, Ferguson Trials
Judge Martin L. Nigro, a judge trial referee after a long career as prosecutor and state superior court judge, died Monday. He presided over the first Alex Kelly trial and over the Norwalk trials of the "Wood-chipper murder" case and Geoffrey Ferguson.
According to an article in The Advocate of Stamford, Ferguson shot five men in the head in 1995, setting their Redding house on fire to burn the bodies."
Nigro sent Ferguson to prison with two life sentences, with no parole. Ferguson's trial was in state Superior Court in Norwalk.
In the 1989 "wood-chipper murder" case, presided over by Nigro, again in the Norwalk courthouse, Richard Crafts of Newtown was convicted of murder for killing his wife and then putting her body through a woodchipper to help get rid of it. Nigro sentenced him to 50 years in prison.
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In the first trial of Darien rapist Alex Kelly (after Kelly returned to the United States from his years on the lam in Europe), Nigro presided. That case ended in a mistrial in Stamford with a hung jury. (Kelly was retried in 1997 in Stamford, where Judge Kevin Tierney sentenced him to 16 years in prison.)
Nigro was the state's attorney for the Stamford-Norwalk district from 1970 to 1977, when he became a judge, according to his obituary.
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Nigro's funeral is to be held Thursday after a 10 a.m. Mass at St. Mary's Church in Greenwich. Visiting hours are from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Leo P. Gallagher Funeral Home, 31 Arch St., Greenwich. The Gallagher Funeral Home website has more details.
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