Sentencing for Staten Island 'Ninja Burglar' delayed
ST. GEORGE, Staten Island (WABC) -- The man who admitted to being the "ninja burglar," terrorizing Staten Island with a string of stealthy break-ins had his sentencing delayed Friday.
Robert Costanzo, 46, of Staten Island, is expected to receive 25 years behind bars and five years of post-release supervision for a string of 160 burglaries, pulled off between 2005 and 2015. The sentencing was adjourned to April 24.
Dressed in all black, and slipping in and out undetected in the dead of night, Costanzo, 46 at the time, hit high-end homes on Staten Island, as well as wealthy neighborhoods in New Jersey, Connecticut and upstate New York.
He will serve his time in a New York state prison, and his sentence will run concurrently to sentences he receives upstate, in New Jersey and in Connecticut for crimes committed in those jurisdictions.
Costanzo pleaded guilty in April 2016, but the sentencing was delayed for several reasons.
After he's sentenced on Staten Island, he will be sentenced upstate.
Prosecutors said Costanzo led a normal life during the crime spree, living with his child and the child's mother at a Staten Island home.
They believe that over the course of 10 years beginning in 2006, Costanzo committed more than 150 burglaries in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. They believe he stole more than $4 million in cash and goods, and that he sometimes gave the handbags he stole to his family and friends.
He was first taken into custody in May 2015, when he appeared in a Staten Island court for an unrelated case. He was detained on an extradition warrant from Farmington, Conn., for a 2014 home invasion and has been held in Connecticut since then.
He is also a Level 3 sex offender following the rape of a grandmother at knife-point in her Staten Island apartment in 1989. He was convicted of sexual battery in Kissimmee, Fla., in 1996.
