Columbia Falls man dies in state prison

The violent criminal who kidnapped a woman in Columbia Falls and took her up the North Fork nearly 14 years ago to the day has died in Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge.

Prison officials say Joseph Aceto, aka Joseph Anthony Balino, 61, died May 20 at the prison infirmary after an extended illness.

Aceto had a lengthy criminal record that included bank robberies and bombings in New England in the 1970s, a murder in an Arkansas prison in the 1980s, and attempted murder and kidnapping in Montana.

He was sent to Montana State Prison for 210 years after being convicted of shooting at Rocky Hoerner at his Columbia Falls art gallery and kidnapping Aceto’s former girlfriend, Eileen Holmquist, in May 22, 2000. Holmquist was then involved with Hoerner.

Aceto allegedly fired five shots with a .380-caliber handgun in Hoerner’s former art studio on Nucleus Avenue across from the post office. Hoerner took cover behind a desk and called 911. Holmquist was also in the studio.

“I stayed on the floor behind the desk while he was rampaging around,” Hoerner said. “I heard her screaming, ‘No, no, no,’ then her voice was gone,” Hoerner said.

Aceto forced Holmquist by gunpoint up the North Fork Road where they hid for several days. She emerged near Big Creek after two nights claiming Aceto had raped her, but rape charges were never filed. At the end of the ordeal, Aceto told her to lay on the ground and slowly count to 100. When she was finished, he was gone, she said.

Aceto was captured the next day by sheriff’s deputies while hitchhiking down the North Fork Road, hungry and disoriented. The handgun was not recovered. He was charged with two counts of attempted deliberate homicide and one count of aggravated kidnapping, and bond was set at $1 million.

Aceto was convicted on all counts in January 2002 following an unusual jury trial. Aceto represented himself, with public defender, now Flathead County Justice of the Peace, Mark Sullivan appointed stand-by counsel.

At the start of the trial, Aceto made an opening statement and cross-examined the first of several prosecution witnesses. But he became agitated and frustrated during his cross-examination of Holmquist after several of Flathead County Attorney Tom Esch’s objections were sustained by Flathead County District Court Judge Ted Lympus

Aceto and Lympus argued, and Aceto ultimately exploded into profanity, hurling a file folder at Lympus and Holmquist. Lympus had Aceto removed from court and arranged that he watch the trial on closed-circuit television from his jail cell.

Sullivan was ordered to take over the trial. He said he wasn’t prepared and asked for a mistrial. Instead, Sullivan was given several hours to prepare Aceto’s defense, and the trial resumed. Following the jury’s verdict, Lympus sentenced Aceto to 210 years in prison.

“I don’t give a damn about the penitentiary or how much time I get,” Aceto said, denying the crimes and claiming Holmquist shot at him first.

The psychological trauma continued for Holmquist, who was found dead at her home in Coram on July 30, 2002, of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Aceto appealed, claiming Lympus violated his Constitutional right to be present and to appear in person in all criminal proceedings, and that Lympus erroneously denied Sullivan’s motion for a mistrial.

The Montana Supreme Court agreed with Aceto’s first argument and left the second unanswered. The high court said Lympus should have warned Aceto before removing him, and that Aceto was denied the opportunity to participate in his defense from his jail cell. Aceto was granted a new trial in November 2004.

Flathead County Attorney Ed Corrigan took over the prosecution in the new trial, and Judge Katherine Curtis presided. Aceto was represented by public defenders Glen Neier and Ed Falla.

Aceto asked that charges of attempted homicide and aggravated kidnapping be dismissed. At trial, he said nothing would have prevented him from killing Holmquist or Hoerner if that had been his desire.

“I didn’t go there to kill anybody,” he said.

The night of the shooting, Aceto told the jury, he was “drinking a lot of beer” at the Blue Moon Nite Club and visiting with another ex-boyfriend of Holmquist’s. He said the man told him that Holmquist was living with a man named Rocky who had an art studio on the main street in Columbia Falls. Aceto estimated he had had from eight to 10 beers before he left the bar.

Richard Hanners writes for the Hungry Horse News.