Halfway2sane

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

Frances was almost 17 years old when she met Tony toto at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx. He was only 15 and not long out of Italy. Although his English was poor, he had swagger. Frances was outside a classroom talking with her sister one day when Tony winked at her.

He asked her out. She said no.

She said, “My mother said you never say yes, the first time. “So, I said I was busy.”

The second time he asked, she said yes. They went to the movies.

“It was a foreign movie,” she said. “It was at the Globe Theater. We didn’t understand a word.”

They married in 1966, which gave Tony a deferment in the Vietnam draft. Frances said she became pregnant on their honeymoon. Tony worked as a printer but eventually moved into the pizza business and real estate management, buying an apartment building that he would eventually sell to raise money for his wife’s bail.

The year was 1983. Tony was running his pizza shop in Allentown Pa, while his wife Frances stayed home with their four kids.

Tony was cheating on her pretty much around the clock, and girls were starting to call the house. “A body can only take so much,” Frances explained. She said, “I had so many people call me and tell, “I think if more people had minded their own business, we might have been better off.”

Frances ultimately ended up hiring two teenagers who tried to kill Tony five times.

On Jan. 26, 1983, for $500 Tony was shot in the back of the head while he slept by 20-year-old Anthony Bruno, an acquaintance who said he was “emotionally involved” with Frances. He lay in that bed for four days and that bullet is still in his head.

When Tony survived, Frances tried to finish the job by dosing him with barbiturates in chicken soup. She told her dazed and groggy husband he had the flu. Doctors said the drugs probably saved him, slowing his metabolism and preventing deadly blood loss.

Two days later, Anthony Bruno, unwilling to shoot Tony a second time hired teens Ronald and Donald Barlip to finish the job. Ronald fired a bullet into Tony’s chest as he lay in bed. The bullet missed his heart and passed through his body. But he refused to die. The Barlip cousins, were drug addicts, drawn into the plot because they were desperate for money.

On Jan. 30, police acting on a tip rescued Toto from his bloody bed. He spent two weeks in the hospital. 

He remembers waking up in the hospital and feeling scared and worried. He said, “I couldn’t understand why my wife did this? Was it because I cheated on her or was it something else? At the same time, I was praying to God, ‘Please let me live.’ ”

And as soon as Tony got out of the hospital, he chastened that his behavior had driven his wife to such drastic action, bailed her out of jail, dramatically pleaded with a judge to show her mercy and resolved to reinvent himself as a good husband and father to the couple’s four children.

Frances received four to ten years in state prison, which she served four of and Tony was waiting for her when she was released.  

The Toto’s have no idea what happened to Anthony Bruno, who pleaded guilty alongside Frances and was sentenced to six to 12 years and served just under five, or the Barlip’s, who also pleaded guilty.

Ronald Barlip received four to 10 years in state prison and was arrested on drug charges in Allentown 10 hours after his release in 1991. Donald served his 2½-5-year sentence in Lehigh County Jail.

They reassembled the shards of their marriage in the same Walnut Street house where the plot unfolded and where they still live.

Tony said, “We both cried, and we say to each other, ‘From now on let’s talk, let’s communicate better.”

They say they went through extensive counseling that helped them make their marriage last. They make sure that they communicate well now, something that they had never done before. And that respect is everything.

Since then, they have led comparatively unremarkable lives. Their children are doing well, and they have 11 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren to dote on. They wouldn’t stand out from any other couple pushing a cart in the supermarket or sitting in the next pew at church.

In the years after the crime, people would point at the Toto’s and whisper, or show up outside the house to take pictures. Tony lost job opportunities because of the notoriety, though he was able eventually to return to his first vocation as a printer.

The story of the Allentown couple may sound familiar to you. If not the real one, then the film version from 1990. It featured Kevin Kline and Tracey Ullman as the Toto-inspired leads, with Keanu Reeves, River Phoenix and William Hurt as hapless hitmen who can’t even get an A for effort as they shoot, poison and drug their unkillable target.

“I Love You to Death” was played for laughs — dark laughs — but it wasn’t far from the truth. 

Anthony Bruno, who stated when the movie came out, he objected to the comedic take, the same as Barlip’s relatives. Anthony said, “The problem I have with it is, I must live every day of my life knowing I tried to hurt someone. To me, that is no joke.”

Today, the only reminder of their infamy is a gallery filled with magazine articles, posters and pictures of movie premieres from all over the world.

But it’s the personal memorabilia, like 60 years of Valentines, wedding photos of when their love story began, and their growing family that keeps them on course — reminding them that love conquers all.

Among the most cherished items is a framed thank-you note from Kline for the Toto’s’ hospitality as he studied for the role. It is set like a nostalgic jewel among pictures of the Toto’s with the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Joan Rivers.

They were taken around the world on press junkets, flying first class and staying in top hotels except for one trip when they were put up in a lower-end chain.

Frances said, “When you got on the elevator you could smell the bug spray.”

To which Tony said, “Let it go. “You eat the steak all the time, sometimes you get the burger.”

The Toto’s haven’t talked much to the media since the excitement over the movie died out, though they granted a few interviews on their 57th wedding anniversary.

They marked their 60th on Feb. 26. Not many marriages make it that far, especially ones where the spouses reconcile over attempted murder times five, but they are in fine shape for their age, she’s 81, he’s 79 and see no reason they can’t mark many more anniversaries.

“I ran a 5K last year,” Tony said cheerfully, which is how he says most things. A picture of him at the finish line, and a medal on a ribbon, commemorate this feat, which he plans to do again this year. Frances said she would join him this time, but only to walk.

He said, “What I care about is staying healthy,” a sentiment that would have landed quite differently in 1983, when all of this began. He also has a black belt in taekwondo, a Korean martial art.

He’s a charismatic man, a grayer version of the lean, roving-eyed Italian immigrant who worked the ovens at. The building was demolished for a parking lot, which you might imagine is for the best because it’s one less reminder of the plot that thrust the couple into the spotlight.

Tony said, “I believe in God and I believe he gave me a second chance and I kept my family together.”

The Morning Call, WFMZ, Los Angeles Times