A Queens prostitute was sentenced to 30 years in jail on Tuesday for fatally drugging her four clients, including Cipriani Dolci head chef Andrea Zamperoni. Angelina Barini, 43, admitted to distributing fentanyl to various men and the "date rape" drug GBL to Zemperoni in a conspiracy to rob incapacitated clients in August.
Barini said that she did so in the hopes of knocking the men out and robbing them, but ended up killing them. Prosecutor Breon Peace applauded the 30-year sentence, saying he hoped it would serve as a deterrent to anyone who tried to use narcotics to perpetrate "heinous crimes."
Dangerous Intentions
Barini, dressed in a blue prison jumpsuit with blonde streaks evident at the tips of her long brown hair, cried many times during the sentencing on Tuesday.
Despite a terrible family history and a raging drug habit that "robbed her" of some free choice, US District Judge Brian Cogan, who handed down the sentence in federal court in Brooklyn, said the temptress' appalling actions "cries out for punishment."
"There is no level of disadvantage of being raised that can mitigate what you did here ... drug addiction or no drug addiction, something has to kick in," Cogan said.
One of the family members of one victim said that she had absolutely no sympathy for Barini.
According to court records, prosecutors claimed that while working as a sex worker, Barini had a practice of giving narcotics to her clients in order to "incapacitate and rob them." Barini met with one of the victims at a motel in Astoria on July 4, 2019, and provided him with fentanyl-laced narcotics. Later that day, he was found dead, according to court documents.
Similar instances occurred on July 11 in Woodside and on August 5 in College Point, according to investigators, with both males dying of fentanyl-laced narcotics overdoses. Barini was again the person who gave the two men fentanyl-laced drugs.
Killed Chef Mercilessly
Prosecutors say Barini met Zamperoni at the Kemway Lodge motel in Elmhurst on August 18, 2019, and drugged him with GBL, killing him almost instantly. Barini had made several attempts to dispose of Zamperoni's body at the motel, but it was discovered three days later wrapped in bleach-stained linens in a waste bin.
However, she was not alone in the crimes. She was assisted by her boyfriend Leslie Lescano, 44. He was also charged with conspiracy to deliver a controlled drug.
According to prosecutors, Barini gave Zamperoni her American Express bank card and instructed him to go to a drugstore and buy gift cards and goods for her, including shampoo and bodywash.
According to court papers, she also told him to procure her cheese, cold cuts, and smokes, which Lescano did with the victim's bank card at a deli.
Sally, Barini's older sister, told the New York Post that she thought the punishment was "a little severe" and that she planned to appeal although she admitted that her sister is a drug addict.
"I think what wasn't taken into account was that of course what happened was wrong but the victims put themselves in there," Sally said. "They weren't saints. They went with her. They wanted to party and they wanted to do drugs with her and have sex. It wasn't like she put a gun to somebody's head and forced them to go with her."
