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Fugitive nabbed by Mass. officials

By Dean Shalhoup - Senior Staff Writer | May 18, 2018

NASHUA – Thirteen months after he allegedly strangled a female partner, carved letters into her back with a knife and threatened to “cave her face in,” former Nashua resident Blake Colella was back in county jail Thursday on $50,000 cash-only bail.

Colella, 36, most recently of Lynn, Mass., was captured Wednesday by Massachusetts authorities, who were acting on the arrest warrant Nashua Police issued in late April 2017.

Appearing before Judge Jacalyn Colburn in Hillsborough County Superior Court South, Colella let his public defender, Attorney Amanda Steenhuis, do the talking at the roughly 20-minute hearing Thursday.

Steenhuis asked Colburn to modify Colella’s original $100,000 cash bail to $10,000 cash or surety, noting he and the alleged victim have been in contact with one another for several months without any issues.

Steenhuis also told the court the alleged victim is “against prosecuting” Colella, and noted the woman didn’t cooperate with prosecutors in Salem (Mass.) Superior Court in Colella’s previous cases in that jurisdiction.

Assistant County Attorney Brian Greklek-McKeon, who represented the state Thursday with First Assistant County Attorney Kent Smith, said they are aware the alleged victim was uncooperative in Massachusetts, but said prosecutors here are prepared to subpoena her if necessary.

Asked by Colburn why the woman is averse to testifying against Colella and to cooperating with prosecutors, Greklek-McKeon said prosecutors “have suspicions … but we haven’t confirmed as to why.”

As read in court by Greklek-McKeon, the prosecution’s narrative of the alleged events of April 22, 2017, indicate Colella carved letters into the woman’s back, strangled her and, according to the indictments, “held a knife against her face … threatening to ‘cave her face in’ (and) calling her ‘a fat whore.'”

Greklek-McKeon said the alleged incident occurred “within days” of Colella’s release from the Massachusetts prison where he’d served nearly all of a 7-to-10-year sentence imposed in December 2007.

He was sentenced three days after a jury convicted him of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a charge that stems from a stabbing on Essex Street in Lynn in May 2006, according to a Salem (Mass.) News story at the time.

That and other News stories described a trial rife with allegations of witness tampering and collusion, which prompted the judge, at Colella’s sentencing hearing, to “publicly recommend that the (stabbing) victim and several other witnesses who claimed not to recall the stabbing be prosecuted for perjury,” according to the account.

Among those called out by the judge was Colella’s father, who, the story states, colluded with Colella to prevent witnesses from testifying about the 2006 stabbing.

Colella, according to the News, has a history of sexual assault cases going back to 2002, but he was cleared in three separate cases from 2002 to 2006.

Prosecutors found no evidence of coercion or witness intimidation in those cases, the story states.

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-1256, dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.

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