Chapter 12
The wedding assault cases resolved before the aviation litigation.
Rocco’s slap was easy to analyze.
June was safe with the guard.
Adelaide was standing upright.
She was not physically attacking anyone when Rocco walked toward her and struck her.
Context explained his anger.
It did not make the slap self-defense.
Prosecutors offered misdemeanor diversion based on the single strike, limited injury, cooperation, and lack of further violence.
Rocco accepted counseling, community service through an unaffiliated organization, medical restitution, and the required supervision period.
One of his associates called that embarrassing.
Rocco answered:
“My daughter was four months old and almost went down a staircase. I was still required to control my hand.”
The associate never raised it again.
Adelaide’s case was far more serious.
Video showed her deliberately release the carriage brake and push the baby toward the stairs.
Prosecutors considered attempted aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and other child-danger statutes available under state law.
They did not immediately charge attempted murder because the evidence of a specific intent to kill was less clear than the evidence she intentionally created extreme danger.
Her words mattered.
Her planning did not show a prior homicide scheme.
The incident appeared impulsive.
That distinction remained important even though nobody regarded the conduct as minor.
Then investigators added charges connected to the Gabriel settlement.
False statements.
Fraud-related representations.
Obstruction and evidence-concealment theories where supported by the maintenance records.
Her lawyers attacked the linkage.
They argued a woman could be guilty of endangering a baby without being guilty of every corporate misrepresentation investigators discovered afterward.
Correct.
Prosecutors separated the cases internally and built each around its own evidence.
Sophie’s family also entered the picture.
Her parents, Martin and Elaine Marlowe, lived in Oregon.
They had been estranged from Sophie during much of her pregnancy because they disapproved of her relationship with a Santoro.
After her death, they had been too overwhelmed—and too afraid of Rocco’s name—to seek custody of June.
Rocco did not blame them publicly.
Privately, he struggled.
They asked for photographs.
Then video calls.
June’s guardian ad litem supported cautious contact.
May you like
Rocco agreed.
No one was allowed to make another adult’s fear into June’s permanent loss.
