Tired of ads? Subscribers enjoy a distraction-free reading experience.
Click here to subscribe today or Login.

WILKES-BARRE — A lover’s familiar voice, a commotion, then silence.

Those were the sounds Jennifer Daley said she heard last year during a call from Samuel Vacante that would be the couple’s last. Daley’s concern for her boyfriend mounted as multiple follow up calls to Vacante’s cellphone went unanswered and others were met with a man’s garbled voice on the other end.

“Hospital. Stitches,” the voice said during one call. “Love you,” Daley was told in the last.

Prosecutors allege the voice didn’t belong to Vacante, but to the man who moments earlier murdered him via a rifle blast to the back. Daley, however, said she had no basis to believe the man on the other line was anyone other than her boyfriend.

“I had no reason to believe it was anybody else,” Daley said.

Daley’s testimony came during the second day of Eleazar Yisrael’s homicide trial Tuesday morning in Luzerne County Court.

Yisrael, 31, of Hazleton, faces life behind bars if convicted of Vacante’s murder. Prosecutors say he shot Vacante, 52, in the back with Vacante’s own rifle inside his Drums home — severing his spinal cord — and drove off with the body in the trunk of Vacante’s car. He eventually ditched the car near his home and dumped the body in Carbon County.

Investigators testified Tuesday that Yisrael, clad head-to-toe in digital camouflage, was spotted the morning of Vacante’s murder walking down road less than 2 miles from his home. The outfit was odd, investigators said, because it was a warm, muggy day.

Yisrael, though “uncooperative,” told police he was out on a walk and was let go, investigators testified. The encounter piqued authorities’ interest after it was discovered the husband of Yisrael’s girlfriend had gone missing and was presumed murdered.

Yisrael, prosecutors say, was romantically involved with Vacante’s estranged wife, Lisa Vacante. The couple was in the final stages of divorce, and the pending sale of their home on Coventry Road was at issue between the two, according to Daley.

Samuel Vacante wanted to sell, she said. His wife didn’t.

Daley, 34, who often paused on the witness stand to fight back tears, said she met Samuel Vacante at Meadow Burke Products, a paving and concrete manufacturer the pair worked at in the Humboldt Industrial Park in Hazle Township. The couple saw each other multiple times per week, Daley said, and talked on the phone every day.

But on Aug. 31, 2015, their daily call became anything but routine.

“I heard the sound like he dropped his phone,” Daley recalled. “I wasn’t getting any response. I was just hearing static or shuffling in the background like rustling papers or something. Then the call ended.” So Daley called back.

This time, Daley said, the man answered and said, “he fell on a rake or a stake. I couldn’t make it out exactly. I assumed he hurt his mouth.”

Other calls were ignored until the man, allegedly Yisrael, again answered and mumbled, “Hospital. Stitches,” according to Daley. But a frantic search of three area hospitals turned up no sign of Samuel Vacante. Another call was answered during which the voice said, “love you,” before hanging up, Daley said.

Vacante’s son, 23-year-old Brandon Vacante, testified that he, too, experienced similarly odd interactions that night from his father’s phone. A text message Brandon Vacante received said he was quitting “being a father and a family man” and ordered him to leave Lisa Vacante the home and bank accounts, he said.

But the message was unlike anything Brandon Vacante ever received from his father.

The spelling of certain words — and being called “youngblood” — alerted Brandon Vacante something was out of the ordinary. He responded to the texts and begged his father to call him, but a reply said his father’s jaw was wired shut and he was unable to talk, Brandon Vacante testified.

“I realized I’m sick of (expletive) your mom over,” according to a text read to jurors.

On cross examination, Brandon Vacante described his mother’s behavior as her marriage was coming to an end.

“She wasn’t the same person I grew up knowing and respecting. The way she would go out … things that used to not be okay were now okay,” he said, adding he believed his mother’s relationship with Yisrael was behind his father’s efforts for a divorce.

Investigators testified that cleaning materials, a rifle, and a trail of blood leading to the driveway were found inside the Vacantes’ garage. Samuel Vacante’s vehicle, meanwhile, was discovered two days after he went missing, its license plate removed and its vehicle identification number scribbled out with a black marker.

The vehicle was found about two blocks from Yisrael’s home, investigators said.

Testimony will resume Wednesday.

Yisrael
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/web1_Yisrael_Eleazar_toned-2.jpg.optimal.jpgYisrael

By Joe Dolinsky

[email protected]

Reach Joe Dolinsky at 570-991-6110 or on Twitter @JoeDolinskyTL