Officials from the state Department of Corrections have moved Delmar native and convicted killer Christopher Porco from the downstate correctional facility in Fishkill to Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, Clinton County.
The transition took place on Monday, Jan. 22, and leaves Porco three hours away from his former Bethlehem home. Porco was convicted last August of murdering his father, Peter Porco, and attempting to murder his mother, Joan, during an ax attack inside the family’s 36 Brockley Drive home in November 2004.
Porco was sentenced in December in Albany County to two consecutive 25-years-to-life prison terms. The sentencing came three months after an eight-week trial in Orange County Supreme Court in Goshen.
Dannemora is often called Little Siberia because of its remote northern location next to the Canadian border. The Center for Land Use Interpretation, a research organization, has noted that the Clinton Correctional Facility is known for its tough inmates and brutal guards, and is the largest of all state prisons.
Porco will be able to see visitors daily and has daily use of a phone to call out.
`He is free to make phone calls and take part in voluntary programs or exercise or write letters,` said Linda Foglia, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections.
`Mandatory lock-in is late in the evening,` she added.
The prison was built in 1845. By the late 1800s, inmates from other state prisons were transferred to Dannemora because the Adirondack air was good for their tuberculosis.
Preppie murderer Robert Chambers and the late rapper Tupac Shakur were both inmates of Dannemora at one time. Current inmates include John Taylor, sentenced to death in 2002 for killing five employees of a Wendy’s outside of Queens.
Porco’s lawyer Terence Kindlon is appealing Porco’s case. If Porco loses his appeal, he could be 68 years old after serving his consecutive sentences.
`The annual cost of housing an inmate in state prison is $31,126 on average each year,` Foglia said. Housing an inmate in state prison for more than 47 years costs $1,462,922.
Joan Porco has said she believes her son is innocent, and asked Judge Jeffrey Berry to be lenient in sentencing her son. Porco’s brother, Johnathan, is currently in the Navy on a scholarship. His father, Peter Porco, was the chief law clerk for state Appellate Court Judge Anthony Cardona.“