SALEM -She claimed ex-boyfriend Blake Colella threatened her for months from his maximum security prison cell but Jaime Rondinelli could not convince a District Court judge on Thursday to extend a restraining order against Colella.
Judge Richard Mori listened for nearly an hour as Rondinelli told how Collela, beginning last winter, threatened her with “non stop calls and threats” from Massachusetts Correction Institution Shirley where he is serving a seven to 10 year sentence for the May 2006 stabbing of a Lynn man.Rondinelli also said Colella “sent people to my house and threatened my family and little sister.””He uses other people to get to me. I’m scared of him,” she told Mori.But Colella, who was brought under prison escort 50 miles from Shirley to Salem, dismissed Rondinelli’s claims.”I never made no threats. If I had done the threats they would have put me in the hole,” he said.After sentencing Colella in December 2007 on the stabbing charge, a judge extended Colella’s sentence following guilty pleas he made to additional charges, including ones stemming from his attempts to keep a Swampscott and a Salem woman from testifying against him on the stabbing charge.Colella’s attorney, Gary Zerola, said Colella has had good conduct time credited against his sentence and said the 28-year-old is taking college courses in prison.He has also applied for a transfer to a medium security prison that Zerola said would have been jeopardized if Mori extended Rondinelli’s restraining order.”He has a chance to be a productive member of society, which he wants to be,” Zerola said.Speaking in court, Zerola said Rondinelli knew Colella was communicating from prison with other women and questioned her attempts to pursue her claims of threats by Colella with police.”You didn’t go down to the police the day you were threatened and say, ‘help me,'” Zerola asked Rondinelli, who said information she passed on to police was not properly conveyed to prison authorities.Rondinelli also claimed Colella told her he “was going to lie and say I have drugs at my house” so that drug users or dealers would break into her home.Colella told the court Rondinelli has been selling heroin from an apartment they formerly shared.”Someone robbed the apartment of everything of mine,” he said.Zerola described Colella and Rondinelli’s relationship as “long and volatile” and challenged Rondinelli: “You know you’re on recordings as saying, ‘Blake, I can’t live without you.'”Rondinelli retorted: “I know he dropped other girls to be with me.”Colella described his relationship with Rondinelli as “a long history, a lot of problems” and said she deposited money onto his prison telephone account a week before she took out the restraining order against him. He also said Rondinelli threatened a woman he described as a friend.Although he voiced concern over Rondinelli’s claims about Colella’s friends threatening her, Mori told her, “I don’t see how he could get at you while he is in custody.”
