Reply #12: Interesting Background on the Moderator [View All]

[VeniceBeat]

Christopher Balestrero - the Queens "wrong man" whose case inspired an Alfred Hitchcock movie - regained his freedom, but he and his family were never the same.

"We were all, to some extent, affected by it," said his son Gregory Balestrero, 55, of Alexandria, Va.

...

Gregory Balestrero, who heads an engineers' trade association, said he and his older brother, Robert, 62, a truck driver in Columbia, S.C., felt the loss of their mother when she was hospitalized and the stigma of their father's arrest.

"I got over it more than my brother did," Greg Balestrero said. "He was taking a lot of crap in school ... A lot was done to keep me from understanding."

Rose Balestrero died in 1982; Manny Balestrero in February 1998, at age 88.

"Be careful of accusing anyone," Manny Balestrero told Life magazine in 1953. "Before you accuse anyone, you should think, because you can destroy a family, physically and mentally, like mine could have been destroyed."

Newsday

Interesting, no?

OK back to the discussion...