Police: Norwalk Man Obsessed With, Stalked His Separated Wife

Norwalk police had applied to a judge for a warrant to arrest a city man on stalking charges but had not yet made the arrest when his ex-wife and her co-worker told police the man was stalking her again.

So police arrested Joseph Brancato, 46, of Grumman Avenue on Sunday, and, after his court appearance Monday, arrested him again Monday evening when he turned himself in at police headquarters.

Police gave this account:

Brancato was separated in 2010 from his wife, and they have a February court date for divorce proceedings. On various occasions, and frequently earlier this month, his wife reported to police that he had been stalking and harassing her.

His wife said he would call her repeatedly just to harass her. The woman also said she received repeated telephone calls from numbers that had their identification blocked, so that she couldn't prove it was Brancato who had been calling her. She had applied for and received orders of protection, but they had expired by late January.

Brancato was a good friend of his wife's superviser at work. Earlier this month, Brancato told his friend he wanted a gun because he wanted to shoot someone. Two days later, the woman's brother saw Brancato's car parked near the woman's home, and her brother told her that he had seen Brancato drive by her home three times that day in three different cars.

The day after that, a friend took the woman to a pharmacy and along the way the woman noticed Brancato was following them in another car. They were able to elude the car. The friend told her that earlier he had seen the car drive slowly past her house three times.

The woman said she would often receive telephone calls from Brancato after their childrens' bedtime. During these calls, Brancato would demand to talk to the children, although he knew it was past their bedtime. When he was refused, he would curse his wife and hang up.

In the days between those three incidents, the woman received numerous telephone calls from an unknown number. When she was talking with a police officer, one call came in from an unknown number and the officer answered it. After 15 seconds of silence, the caller hung up.

A police officer spoke to Brancato a number of times and warned him not to follow his wife. Brancato replied that he understood.

Police also questioned him about the telephone calls. Brancato said he had called his wife three times, but when the officer asked to see his cell phone, the calls were not recorded on that device. When asked about the discrepancy between his statement and what his cell phone indicated, he was unable to explain it.

On Sunday, Brancato's wife and a coworker saw Brancato circling the parking lot at her place of work, near the end of her work day. His wife told police she recognized his car and distinctly saw him in it, looking at her. Her coworker, in a separate interview, also gave police the same account.

Police called Brancato, who insisted he was in Stamford all day. He agreed to meet police at a diner in Norwalk, where police arrested him on a charge of stalking and held him on a $100,000 bond before his Monday appearance in state Superior Court in Norwalk.

On Monday evening, Brancato was charged with four additional counts of third-degree stalking and one count of second-degree harassment.