By Amy Bennet Williams
News-Press.com
FORT MEYERS, Fla. — Just five months into a 30-year sentence for killing his infant son, Ryan Costello walked out of jail a free man, while he appeals his case.
After posting $250,000 bail and promising to stick close to home, the Navy vet and 1998 Fort Myers High School graduate left a Panhandle prison in September and returned to his mother’s Fort Myers home.
When he heard the news, former State Attorney Joe D’Alessandro could hardly believe it. As state attorney for three decades in the 20th Judicial Circuit, which includes Lee and Collier counties, D’Alessandro watched thousands of criminal cases unfold. He can’t recall any in which the defendant wasn’t locked up during the appeals process. “When I first heard it, I didn’t think it could be true,” he says.
In a high-profile trial in April, Costello was convicted of manslaughter for killing his 4-month-old son, Darwin, in 2010. The boy died of massive injuries: skull fractures, internal bleeding, bruising, a fractured spinal cord, retinal hemorrhaging and a fractured elbow. Costello had rushed the baby to HealthPark, handed him to a nurse, then drove back to his town house. There, Lee County sheriff’s deputies found a marijuana greenhouse, prescription pills and Costello’s other toddler son, Kingston, who’d been left there alone.
Later that day, Costello and former fiancee Whitney Simonsen, the boys’ mother, sat alone in an interrogation room. As a video camera taped them, Costello broke down, telling her “I killed my kid,” and calling himself a murderer, deputies said.
Full story: Convicted baby killer out for appeal