Gay man faces trial in slaying of Brooklyn resident
Slaying in Fla. hotel room leads to charges against gay drifter

By ED WALSH

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against the accused killer of Anthony Martilotto, a gay man from Brooklyn, in a trial expected to start next month.

The agreement to waive the death penalty against Adam Ezerski, 20, was signed late last month.

"It is a great weight off my chest," Ezerski wrote from the Broward County Jail where he has been in custody since September. "The circumstances don't fit or something of the sort. I am happy about that."

Adam Ezerski, charged in the slaying of a Brooklyn gay man in Fort Lauderdale last summer, says he reacted in self-defense

after the victim attempted to assault him

Ezerski's public defense attorney, Bob Wills, said the case against his client didn't present any of the "aggravating" circumstances necessary under Florida law to qualify for the death penalty. Wills said that although Ezerski had an unadjudicated charge on his record for auto theft out of Key West, he had no violence on his record, something that would be considered an aggravating circumstance.

Ezerski is charged with murdering Martilotto, 39, in a Fort Lauderdale hotel room last summer before fleeing to San Francisco in Martilotto's rented Ford Mustang. He is also being charged with assaulting a gay man in San Francisco whom he met shortly after arriving in California last August.

Wills said authorities in San Francisco didn't seem interested in prosecuting Ezerski for the assault charge until Florida investigators finished with their murder prosecution. Wills noted that if San Francisco had successfully prosecuted Ezerski for the assault first, that conviction could qualify as an aggravating circumstance that could have made Ezerski eligible for the death penalty.

Ezerski has said he killed Martilotto in self-defense after Martilotto tried to rape him. He also denied attacking a man in San Francisco. He said he engaged in a mutual fight with the man after the man refused to pay him for sex.

Ezerski, who said he is gay, added that he traveled to San Francisco, in part, to take refuge in the city's large gay population.

Tony Lowe , assistant state attorney for Broward County, said he can't comment on the case against Ezerski.

"I'm not allowed to talk about that, as much as I would like to," Lowe said. "Otherwise, I could be digging ditches in the hot Florida sun."

Wills said the case against Ezerski is crippled by "shabby" forensic work and said the crime scene investigation in Fort Lauderdale was marred by a "comedy of errors."

"I was shocked," Wills said.

He said the medical examiner's office didn't dispatch an investigator to the crime scene after Martilotto was found dead, leaving police to take photographs and gather evidence at the scene.

Initially, investigators weren't sure Martilotto was murdered. It wasn't determined until an autopsy a day after the killing that he died from being strangled, Wills said.

Ezerski was initially suspected of killing a second man in South Florida, but has since been cleared of involvement in that case. Ezerski made national headlines in August 2001 when he was compared to gay spree killer Andrew Cunanan, the man who murdered designer Gianni Versace.

The case was featured twice on Fox's "America's Most Wanted."

After seeing himself on TV news reports last year, Ezerski, along with his newfound friend, San Francisco resident Troy Young, traveled to Reno where the pair was arrested.

Young, 38, was later convicted of harboring a fugitive and lying to an FBI agent. He will be sentenced in federal court in San Francisco on Aug. 14.

Young said he has a "super hero complex" and was convinced Ezerski was innocent and wanted to help keep him from getting into more trouble until he was ready to turn himself in.

Ezerski's trial is scheduled to begin here in mid-September.

Representatives of the prosecution and defense teams plan to be in San Francisco this month to take depositions from about 20 witnesses. Several of those witnesses will likely be subpoenaed to testify in the case.

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