Year after East Haddam woman’s violent death, life insurance company refuses to pay husband

Feb. 08--An Illinois insurance company that holds a $257,000 life insurance policy on a woman found slain in her East Haddam home last March is asking a federal judge to block her husband from getting the money.

Sandra Kalosky was found beaten to death in her home on North Moodus Road on March 23. State police have said little about her death other than that she died of blunt trauma to the head and her death has been ruled a homicide. No one has been arrested.

The Zurich American Life Insurance Company, or Zalico, has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block her husband, Robert Kalosky, from getting the money from the policy that she took out in 2011. Kalosky has not responded to the lawsuit and has not commented on his wife's death. He filed a claim for the money six days after her body was found.

While not specifically calling him a suspect in his wife's murder the insurance carrier in court papers says it is reluctant to pay the claim.

"Inasmuch as the homicide death of the deceased remains open and unsolved, Zalico cannot determine whether a court would find that Robert Kalosky is and/or may be disqualified from receiving the plan benefits based on federal common law and/or Connecticut state law that prohibits an individual from receiving funds if that person is convicted in the death of the deceased," the company's attorney Regen O'Malley wrote in a court filing.

If a federal judge were to rule that Robert Kalosky isn't eligible to receive the death benefit then either his son, Phillip T. Kalosky, or Sandra Kalosky's surviving sisters, Barbara Kaluza or Janet Guerrini, could be beneficiaries.

Robert Kalosky could not be reached for comment. Kalosky refused to accept a copy of the lawsuit when it was served on him, hasn't responded to the federal complaint and is in danger of defaulting, according to court records.

Sandra Kalosky is the second wife of Robert Kalosky's who has died under violent circumstances in the same house.

Nearly two decades ago, Paula Kalosky was found with a single gunshot wound to the head in the same home. The death was initially ruled a suicide but changed to "undetermined, " in 2004. Robert Kalosky has not been charged nor named as a suspect in either death.

That change came after John Carbo, Paula Kalosky's brother, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Robert Kalosky. The case was settled with no finding.

"I never believed that my sister killed herself. It never made sense to me, " Carbo said in an interview with The Courant last spring.

According to the wrongful-death lawsuit, the two women knew each other and Sandra divorced her husband and moved in with Robert Kalosky about a year after Paula Kalosky's death.

In his statement to state police after Paula Kalosky's body was found, a copy of which is in Carbo's possession, Robert Kalosky said he didn't hear any gunshots that morning. He told police he left the house and went to withdraw money from an ATM and to get gas. After coming home and starting breakfast, he went to check on his wife and found her dead with his gun next to her.

Robert Kalosky said he called 911, then moved the gun at the behest of the dispatcher before going outside to wait for emergency personnel. Kalosky told police that Paula had been upset by the death of her mother from cancer about five months earlier.

Carbo said his sister, who worked for a Hartford insurance company, was about to graduate from the University of Hartford and had picked out her graduation gown a few days before her death.

After the suicide ruling, the family hired Michael Malchick, a former state police detective, to review the case. The state police reopened the case and the manner of death was changed to "undetermined, " according to the wrongful death suit and medical examiner's office.

A wrongful death lawsuit was filed against Robert Kalosky by Paula's family after a probate judge removed him as executor of her estate. The lawsuit was settled for about $95,000 just before evidence was to start before a jury. The majority of the settlement, $53,000, was placed into a college fund for the couple's son, who eventually went to Johnson & Wales University.

Dave Altimari can be reached at [email protected].

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