By: Najla Alexander
NJ AG authorities announced that criminal charges have been filed against a Hunterdon County couple who allegedly made fictitious reports alleging that New Jersey State Police (NJSP) troopers committed a sexual assault while on duty.
Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin stated that Randal Kelco, 35, and Lisa DeStefano, 45, both of Bloomsbury, New Jersey, have been charged by complaint with making false reports to law enforcement (second degree).
The defendants told staff members at a hospital, as well as officers from two separate law enforcement agencies, that Kelco had been sexually assaulted by multiple troopers, NJ AG officials say. But an investigation by the OPIA Corruption Bureau and the NJSP Office of Professional Standards (OPS) uncovered evidence indicating the attack never occurred.
“In this case, OPIA followed the evidence, including the body-worn camera video of the officers, which allegedly shows this was a malicious, self-serving hoax by the defendants,” said Attorney General Platkin.
“This case clearly demonstrates how important body-worn camera video evidence can be to understanding events and fact-checking witness statements,” said Eric L. Gibson, Executive Director of OPIA.
According to the investigation, three NJSP troopers responded on October 23, 2023, at 3:59 a.m. to a domestic dispute at the Brunswick Avenue residence in Bloomsbury shared by the defendants, who were present there together.
The troopers’ body-worn cameras captured their interactions with Kelco and DeStefano while they investigated the incident for roughly 40 minutes, leaving the home at about 4:36 a.m. The footage also captured the troopers transporting Kelco to a nearby hotel before then leaving the scene without any further interaction with either defendant, according to NJ AG officials.
NJ AG officials say the following day, shortly after 1:30 a.m., Kelco and DeStefano checked in at the Emergency Department of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, where they both reported to the medical staff that Kelco had been sexually assaulted by the responding troopers the day before.
New Brunswick police officers responded to the hospital and spoke with the defendants, who reiterated their account of the alleged assault and provided a detailed description of the purported crime, NJ AG officials stated.
According to NJ AG officials, the couple subsequently filed a complaint with the NJSP Office of Professional Standards (OPS) against the troopers, and told a detective from that office during a November 6, 2023, interview that the troopers sexually assaulted Kelco.
The investigation revealed, among other things, that neither the body-worn camera footage nor footage of the interaction from Kelco’s own cellphone shows any evidence of a sexual assault or any other misconduct on the part of the troopers during their interaction with Kelco and DiStefano, NJ AG officials said.
In fact, the recordings directly contradict the accounts of Kelco and DeStefano.