Ruminations of a convicted kidnapper

As Joseph Aceto plans his appeal, he also wants to clear his guilty conscience

Before Joseph Aceto is sentenced next month for kidnapping his ex-girlfriend and trying to kill a man, there is something unexpected he wants to get off his conscience.

An act of vandalism in the Flathead County jail in January 2005 was his fault.

Another inmate, David Pinard, was blamed for causing between $8,000 and $10,000 damage by flushing a blanket down a toilet. The Sheriff's Office was disrupted for two days because of raw sewage released into the building.

"I was responsible for it," Aceto said, even though Pinard was blamed. "That's something I feel pretty bad about."

He doesn't find it odd that after a lifetime of violence and imprisonment he'd feel guilty about letting someone else take the fall for some criminal mischief.

"I know that I have a history. It doesn't mean that things don't bother me," he said from the Flathead County jail. There, he awaits sentencing for the second time on charges of shooting at his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend, and abducting the woman, Eileen Holmquist.

Aceto, now 52, met her in 2000, when he recently had been paroled from prison, starting his life in the Flathead Valley with a job at a furniture-building business. It was there he met Holmquist.

"What happens is two people who should have never met, met."

They had a brief, on-again, off-again romance.

After it ended, Holmquist began a relationship with artist Rocky Hoerner. Aceto fumed about how she had "disrespected" him. He said Holmquist's cousin threatened him and told him to stay away from him.

On May 22, 2000, according to Aceto's testimony at trial, he learned at a bar that Holmquist was living with Hoerner, whom Aceto didn't know.

He said it was only a quirk of fate that he happened to glimpse Holmquist working in Hoerner's Columbia Falls art gallery at about midnight that day. He drove past and came back, parking down the street from the gallery.

Hoerner came out to see what Aceto was doing. Then, Aceto's actions, by his own admission, became criminal.

He picked up a loaded gun from between the seats of his car. He got out of his car and pulled the gun. Hoerner fled. Aceto pursued.

"I wanted to scare him. I wanted to humiliate him," Aceto testified.

He fired two shots toward Hoerner and then set his sights on Holmquist, who had fled into a back room in Hoerner's shop. Still firing, Aceto ordered her to open a door. She did.

Aceto maintains that she went willingly with him into the woods of the North Fork, where they stayed for nights before she left him. Two juries, though, convicted him of aggravated kidnapping.

Holmquist testified at Aceto's first trial in 2002 that she was terrified that he was going to kill her. She described his threats and torments while they were in the woods. Months after he was sentenced to 210 years in prison, she killed herself.

Although Aceto takes responsibility for vandalism in the jail, he feels no guilt for Holmquist's death.

"I was sad when I heard it. I'm still sad," he said. But he doesn't feel responsible, he said.

Aceto won a new trial because of his interaction with Holmquist during the first one. Acting as his own attorney, he exploded in rage as he questioned her in court. District Judge Ted Lympus ordered him removed from the courtroom. The Montana Supreme Court found that to be a violation of Aceto's constitutional rights.

He came back from Montana State Prison to stand trial again in May.

Aceto said he plans to appeal his second conviction.

"I have some concerns about the trial. I think I have pretty strong issues," for appeal, he said.

He said he believed that if he told the truth, the evidence would exonerate him. He was guilty of criminal behavior, but the attempted homicide and kidnapping charges were too much.

"They overcharged me," he said.

He told his attorneys, Glen Neier and Ed Falla, that he would behave at trial and testify truthfully.

But his lawyers didn't point out inconsistencies in things that Hoerner has said, he asserts. The judge let the jury hear transcript testimony from Holmquist from the first trial, but not his cross-examination of her.

"The prosecutor got to cherry-pick," Aceto said.

The judge granted two of his five motions that alleged prosecutorial vindictiveness, Acteo said. Three amended criminal complaints included seven new charges or sentencing enhancements of charges, he said. He doesn't see why the judge would rule that some were prompted by vindictiveness and others weren't.

He said there was overzealousness in the case that made him "like the victim of a holy war or a witch hunt or something."

After he is sentenced June 15, Aceto will work with the state Appellate Defender Office to file his appeal while he is back at Montana State Prison. It's a familiar environment.

"I've been in prison just about my whole life," Aceto said.

He refused to talk about his history on the East Coast. There are reports that he was involved in bombings and the Federal Witness Protection program and that he killed a fellow inmate in a Southern prison.

"It's been a way of life," Aceto said of prison. His last sentence before coming to Montana was for 20 years, he said.

"I have a lot of things to occupy me. I have a pretty active life in prison," including activities related to his political beliefs.

Aceto, Who has a swastika tattoo, has been called a racist. He denies that and prefers the word "racialist," which recognizes the difference between races. He doesn't condone "burning crosses and things like that," he said.

"There are so many negative things I've heard about myself," he said.

"When people get to know me, they have a positive feeling," Aceto said. Since he's been in jail, he has received cards and money from "a friend" and enjoys the company of "a person who visits me often."

There is a story that Aceto is so institutionalized that he doesn't really want to get out of prison, the outside world intimidates him too much, and he is filing appeals for just an idle distraction.

That's not true, he said.

"If they open the door, I'm out it … I'd like to get out," he said. He has family back East whom he'd go to, he said.

When he was released the last time, he first went to Chicago, he said.

"I seen all these people with cell phones and stuff. That sort of freaked me out," he said.

It is unlikely that anyone will open the door for Aceto anytime soon. County Attorney Ed Corrigan has said he plans to ask District Judge Kitty Curtis to sentence Aceto to prison for the rest of his life.

Aceto is prepared to take what comes.

"I've always been a survivor," he said.

Reporter Chery Sabol may be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at csabol@dailyinterlake.com.