Anthony Dibella appears in a booking photo from April 2022. (New York State Police)
An upstate New York man who killed his sister because he believed she was a witch, and who justified the killing with his own supernatural faith, was recently sentenced to spend 18 years to life in prison.
Anthony Dibella, 53, was charged with one count of murder in the second degree and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree over the gruesome slaying of Wanda Paoli, 67, in April 2022. After initially pleading not guilty to all three counts, Dibella pleaded guilty to the lone murder charge in July.
The victim was repeatedly stabbed in the head, neck, and face with the blade of a bayonet and an awl – a small tool often used for leather working or to put notches in wood. The killer initially admitted his crimes to several members of law enforcement and his brother.
“I was done with her witchcraft,” Dibella told New York State Police troopers after they arrived at the residence in Lyme – a small town southeast of the Canadian border; located roughly equidistant to the cities of Toronto and Montreal. The convicted killer-brother and his victim-sister lived in the house on Failing Shores Lane with their 89-year-old mother at the time of the violence. Law enforcement found the mother there unharmed.
Dibella himself made the 911 call on April 28, 2022.
“Wanda Paoli is being killed, she is a witch, killed with a knife and awl, and is currently on the porch,” he told Jefferson County 911 dispatchers after attacking his sister on the day in question.
Empire State police arrived on the scene just before 11:30 a.m.
First responders found Paoli on the back porch of the house suffering from multiple stab wounds and tried in vain to save her life. A forensic team arrived around 3:00 p.m. to secure evidence at the scene.
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“Troopers arrived on scene, she was already outside, laying outside the side door,” NYSP Trooper and Public Information Officer Jack Keller told Carthage, New York-based CBS affiliate WWNY in the aftermath of the carnage. “They immediately attempted to perform rescue efforts, unfortunately, she succumbed to those injuries.”
Dibella made several more admissions over the course of a multiple-hour interrogation by state police that same day.
“I had to do what I did to her because she was getting in the way of me communicating to God,” the since-convicted killer told troopers. Later he added: “People are worshipping rocks and dirt instead of God.”
Through the course of the investigation, police also obtained a statement from the brother of the defendant and the deceased, Russell Dibella, who lives in Texas. The brother told police he spoke with Anthony Dibella on the phone just after the crime and that his brother said: “I killed her” and “I stabbed her in the head.”
On Wednesday, Dibella was sentenced in a Jefferson County court, according to WWNY. Law&Crime reached out to the clerk of court for additional information but no response was immediately forthcoming.
The deceased woman’s obituary does not contain a photograph. A threadbare remembrance page notes that she was married at the time of her death and additionally survived by two sisters, along with “many nieces, nephews, cousins, and dear friends.”
“No services will be held at this time,” the terse eulogy reads.
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