Romanian national pleads guilty to charges related to home invasion, extortion of Connecticut couple

A Romanian national admitted to his role in a bizarre home invasion in which a wealthy Connecticut couple was injected with a harmless blue dye, told that the shot contained a "deadly virus" and ordered to pay $8.5 million for an antidote.

Stefan Alexandru Barabas, 38, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to conspiracy to interfere with commerce by extortion, and will serve between six and seven years if his plea agreement is accepted, according to a Department of Justice press release.

Shortly before midnight on April 15, 2007, Barabas and his accomplices Emanuel Nicolescu and Alexandru Lucian Nicolescu broke into a South Kent mansion wearing masks, brandishing knives and carrying Airsoft guns that resembled real firearms, per the release. 

"The men bound and blindfolded two adult victims and injected each with a substance the intruders claimed was a deadly virus," the release states. "The intruders ordered the victims to pay $8.5 million or else they would be left to die from the lethal injection. When it became clear that the victims were not in position to meet the intruders' demands, the intruders drugged the two residents with a sleeping aid and fled in the homeowner's Jeep."

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The home belonged to investor, documentary filmmaker and art collector Anne Bass, the ex-wife of Texas billionaire Sid Bass, The Oneida Daily Dispatch reported. Emanuel Nicolescu was formerly her butler, the outlet reported. 

Bass and her boyfriend, artist Julian Lethbridge, were held hostage for five to six hours and repeatedly asked to come up with $8.5 million, per their court testimony in Emanuel Nicolescu's criminal trial covered by the local outlet. Bass' 3-year-old grandson slept through the entire event and went unscathed. 

The next morning, the Jeep was recovered in a parking lot about 65 miles away in New Rochelle, New York, the department said.

A week after the home invasion, crucial evidence in the case washed up on the beach in Long Island's Jamaica Bay. Inside an accordion case, authorities recovered a stun gun, a black plastic Airsoft gun, a 12-inch knife, a crowbar, sleeping pills, syringes, latex gloves and a laminated card with the address of the victims' South Kent home. 

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About three years later, a Connecticut State Police investigator connected a partial Pennsylvania license plate from the night of the home invasion to a car registered to Michael N. Kennedy, a fourth accomplice who drove the three men to the home and picked them up afterward.

Emanuel Nicolescu, investigators learned, formerly lived with Kennedy. Cellphone data revealed that he had made a call at the same time and from the same location as where the Jeep was abandoned. Then, his DNA was matched to DNA recovered in the car. 

Kennedy's father was a professional accordion player, investigators learned, and witnesses later identified the knife found in the accordion case as a gift given to Emanuel Nicolescu by his father-in-law, the Department of Justice wrote.

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"The investigation revealed that Emanuel Nicolescu and Kennedy worked with Barabas and Alexandru Nicolescu to commit the crime," the DOJ said. "Barabas’ co-conspirators planned the home invasion, which included the research and purchase of implements necessary for the crime, such as two-way radios, stun guns and imitation pistols. On the night of April 15, 2007, Kennedy drove Barabas, Emanuel Nicolescu, and Alexandru Nicolescu to a location near the South Kent home, and then picked them up the following morning in New Rochelle at the location where the intruders abandoned the stolen Jeep."

During the investigation, all four men fled the country. Emanuel Nicolescu returned to the U.S. and was arrested in Illinois in January 2011. Alexandru Nicolescu was tracked down to the U.K. and arrested on Nov. 14, 2013, the DOJ wrote. Kennedy, a dual citizen of Romania and the U.S., voluntarily returned to the U.S. in November 2021. 

Barabas, who pleaded guilty this week to additional charges, was a fugitive in Hungary until his arrest in August 2022. 

All three accomplices were charged with attempted extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion, and Kennedy accrued an additional charge for possession of a stolen vehicle. Kennedy was sentenced to 48 months in prison; Alexandru Nicolescu was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison; and Emanuel Nicolescu was sentenced to 20 years in prison, according to the DOJ. 

Barabas has been detained since his 2022 arrest, and is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 11, per the agency.