CRIME

Palm Beach County man charged in 19-year-old murder in Hawaii

Eliot Kleinberg
ekleinberg@pbpost.com
Kimberly Belluomini was found dead in October 2000 at her apartment on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Anthony Moreno, 59, was booked Dec. 5, 2019, at the Palm Beach County Jail after a grand jury in Maui indicted him for second degree murder. [Provided courtesy of Maui News]

WEST PALM BEACH — A man living blocks from a Riviera Beach marina is in custody and facing extradition to Hawaii, where authorities say he killed a mother of two 19 years ago after the two left a Maui bar together.

Anthony Moreno, 59, was booked Dec. 5 at the Palm Beach County Jail after a grand jury in Maui indicted him for second-degree murder in the October 2000 death of Kimberly Belluomini, according to court records and Maui police.

Moreno refused to waive extradition in a Dec. 9 appearance in Palm Beach County Circuit Court. He remained in jail Thursday without bail. His next hearing is set for Jan. 8.

It’s unclear where in Palm Beach County Moreno had been living. Maui police said he was living on a boat in a marina in West Palm Beach that it did not name. His jail entry gives an address a few blocks from Riviera Beach's Loggerhead Marina.

Arrest 19 years later: ’Evidence was sent out to be tested’

According to a Dec. 6 release by Maui Police, a grand jury indicted Moreno on Nov. 22 on a charge of second-degree murder. The release said police also allege he raped the woman.

Police and prosecutors in Maui did not return calls from The Palm Beach Post late Wednesday.

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Maui police, neither in their release, nor in their interviews with Hawaii media outlets, have provided specifics on how they were able to make a case against Moreno 19 years after the crime. Detectives told the Maui News for a Dec. 6 story that "some evidence was sent out to be tested."

That might be a reference to DNA, which has helped solve numerous cold cases nationwide, and in South Florida. In 2015, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office began a $1 million project to clear a backlog of about 1,500 unanalyzed rape evidence kits.

Maui police said they tracked Moreno to Texas, and more recently, to Florida, but did not elaborate.

Records show arrests for Moreno in Texas from 1981 to 2009. Moreno has had no previous arrests while in Florida, according to records, but Palm Beach County records show he had been issued seven boating infraction citations, dating to February 2016.

Woman found dead after a night at Henry’s Bar & Grill

Maui police said Belluomini was found dead in her apartment in the beachfront community of Kihei the morning after she and Moreno had left a nearby bar called Henry’s Bar & Grill.

Moreno was interviewed as a person of interest and admitted he’d been with the woman that night but no charges were filed, police said.

The Maui News reported on Dec. 6 that Belluomini, a 38-year-old mother of two who had grown up in California and had lived in Maui for about five years, was found the morning of Oct. 27, 2000. It said the local medical examiner ruled she died of traumatic head injuries.

The newspaper said witnesses told police they'd seen Moreno and Belluomini share a cab as they left the bar.

“As far as we know, he (Moreno) had no ties to her (Belluomini) except for that night,” Detective Nelson Hamilton, the primary investigator in the cold case, told the newspaper.

A woman who at the time had been a co-worker and friend of Belluomini at a computer center told the online news outlet Maui Now last week that it was she who'd called authorities after the woman didn't show for work. She said Belluomini worked in accounting.

Hawaiian authorities came here to talk to Moreno in November

Maui police said Moreno was picked up by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office marine unit. His jail entry says he was arrested by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

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Maui detectives told the Maui News they went to Florida and contacted Moreno, who was unemployed, on Nov. 13 on his boat.

“He was surprised,” Detective Oran Satterfield said. “He didn’t want to talk to us.”

But, fellow detective Clyde Holokai said, “he knew something was afoot.”

Arrests in Texas for drugs, burglary; sex assault charge dropped

Texas records show Moreno was arrested four times there.

He was sentenced to three months probation in 1981 on a Houston car burglary conviction, and got two years in prison on a drug conviction in Huntsville, Texas, about an hour north of Houston.

And in separate cases, he was sentenced to four months in jail on drug convictions in 2008 in Houston and in 2009 in nearby Baytown.

Records also show that in 2009, Houston-area police charged him with aggravated sexual assault on a child under 14. Prosecutors later dropped the charge.

Staff researcher Melanie Mena contributed to this story.

EK@pbpost.com

@eliotkpbp