A couple was sentenced to life in prison for their convictions in connection with the murder of the wife’s ex-husband, a former Marlboro man, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said Aug. 14.
U.S. District Judge Philip M. Halpern pronounced the sentences for Jamie Orsini, 40, on Aug. 11 and Nicholas Orsini, 38, on Aug. 13.
The couple, formerly of Beacon and most recently from Amsterdam in upstate New York, were convicted by a federal jury in September 2024 of one count each of carjacking resulting in death and conspiracy to commit carjacking in connection with the death of Jamie Orsini’s ex-husband, Steven Kraft, a former Marine who last lived in Marlboro.
The convictions followed a two-week trial in U.S. District Court in White Plains.
Kraft, 34, was last seen on April 28, 2020, when he returned his two daughters, whom he shared with Jamie Orsini, to the Orsinis’ home in Beacon following a custodial visit.
Kraft failed to show up for work at a deli in Marlboro on April 29, 2020. On May 4, 2020, investigators found his 1999 Toyota Camry abandoned at the corner of Third Street and Carpenter Avenue by Downing Park in the City of Newburgh.
Using GPS technology, cellphone data and video surveillance footage from public and private sources, prosecutors determined that Jamie Orsini bought a 10 foot by 100 foot tarp, duct tape and a Tyvek suit and boots from the Home Depot on Route 9 in Fishkill on April 8, 2020.
Video from the parking lot showed Nicholas Orsini helping to load the material into the couple’s GMC Envoy.
Nicholas Orsini later bought from the same Home Depot two 31-gallon galvanized steel trash cans, an angle grinder and an ax, three bottles of charcoal lighter fluid, a flame lighter and 16 bundles of firewood.
Prosecutors said those items could have been used to burn or dismember and dispose of a body.
Kraft’s body has never been found. In a pre-sentencing memo to the court, Nicholas Orsini’s attorney, Bruce D. Koffsky, noted that his client had voluntarily led police to a location in Amsterdam where he believed he had buried Kraft’s remains, although nothing was found at that location at that time.
Video surveillance footage showed Kraft’s car crossing the Newbugh-Beacon Bridge from Beacon to Newburgh on April 28, allegedly driven by Nicholas Orsini. After parking the car in Newburgh, prosecutors believe he walked a mile to a Sunoco station on Route 9W, where he used a burner phone to call a taxi to take him back to Beacon.
Along the way, he disposed of one of Kraft’s cell phones, but another one was left in the car.
Meanwhile, on April 29, 2020, Jamie Orsini sent a text to one of Kraft’s cellphones, asking about their children’s report cards, to create the impression she did not know he was dead, prosecutors said.
Koffsky declined to comment on behalf of Nicholas Orsini. Jamie Orsini’s attorney, Samuel Braverman, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mike Randall covers breaking news for the Times Herald-Record and the Poughkeepsie Journal. Reach him at mrandll@th-record.com.
This article originally appeared on Times Herald-Record: Couple gets life sentences in death of wife’s ex-husband in 2020
Reporting by Mike Randall, Middletown Times Herald- Record / Times Herald-Record
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By Mike Randall, Middletown Times Herald- Record | USA TODAY Network
