Chalfont pizza shop owner gets 18 to 40 years for killing boyfriend and business partner, trying to cover up murder

CHALFONT (KYW Newsradio) — Anna Tolomello, 51, of Bucks County, was sentenced on Tuesday to at least 18 years in state prison for shooting and killing her boyfriend and co-owner of Pina’s Pizza in Chalfont back on March 16, 2022.

Prosecutor Christopher Rees said by all accounts, Tolomello was a caring and involved member of the community before the murder.

“We've discussed this at great length, and repeatedly, the challenging aspect of who she was on apparently, every other day of her life weighed against the enormity of the loss, the enormity of the harm that she caused on or about March 16, of 2022,” he said.

After killing 67-year-old Giovanni Gallina, Tolomello kept his body wrapped in a tarp in the bedroom of the home they shared for 13 days. In that time, prosecutors say she asked a friend for ways to cover up odor, blaming a skunk in the garage, and asked someone else to dig a seven-foot by three-foot hole in her yard so she “could bury some things.”

It was Gallina’s son who eventually called police from Italy, asking them to check on his father. He said they regularly talked, but he hadn’t heard from him. Tolomello told the son that Gallina went out of town, left his phone behind, and didn’t give specifics about his destination or return date.

When police arrived at the residence in Chalfont and found Gallina dead, wrapped in a tarp, Tolomello told them she shot Gallina in self defense as he was strangling her.

Tolomello’s defense attorney, Antonetta Stancu, said her client was diagnosed with PTSD from a lifetime of sexual and physical abuse, including at the hands of Gallina.

“The explanation that this doctor would give is that when you suffer from PTSD, your ability to cope with trauma is very different. And unfortunately, I believe in this case, that led to some horribly heinous decisions,” she said.