#Rockland County mom fights release of daughter’s sexual assault killer

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Richard LaBarbera was one of two men convicted in the murder of Paula Bohovesky, 16, in 1980.
NYSDOC

Outraged Rockland County residents are fighting to keep a murderous sex fiend from being paroled in Manhattan later this week — just a 30-minute bus ride from where he sexually assaulted then fatally stabbed a 16-year-old honors student.

The slain girl’s mother, Lois Bohovesky, 88, said she still lives in Pearl River and is terrified that her daughter’s killer, Richard LaBarbera, could show up on her doorstep.

“It’s bad enough that he’s still walking around after what he did to Paula,” said Bohovesky, whose daughter was stabbed to death as she walked home from the library more than four decades ago. “But now he could be in commuting distance to my house.”

Concerned residents amassed more than 2,000 signatures and delivered a petition to LaBarbera’s parole officer and the NYS Department of Correction and Supervision urging them to place the ex-con in Staten Island and bar him from traveling to Rockland County.

LaBarbera, 67, is expected to be released July 23 and report to a parole officer in Midtown — a 30-minute bus ride from Bohovesky and the small Pearl River town that’s still deeply traumatized by the brutal slaying.

Bohovesky said she remained in the town all these years to stay near her daughter’s memory. “I don’t want to lose the feeling of her presence,” she said.

The petition was spearheaded by former Rockland County Legislator John Murphy, whose daughter was Paula’s classmate. “Foremost in our minds is that he never comes back to this community,” Murphy said. The horrific crime forever changed the once-idyllic town of 15,000 people, he added.

“This was an innocent sweet girl. The crime was so heinous, so animalistic — and if it could happen in the middle of the town, it could happen to anybody anywhere,” Murphy said.

LaBarbera was paroled upstate in July of last year after 38 years in prison — despite Bohovesky begging the parole board to keep him behind bars.

But three weeks later he violated his parole after being found drunk and was locked up again.

LaBarbera was one of two men convicted of killing Paula on Oct. 28, 1980, on her walk home from a part-time job at the Pearl River Library.

LaBarbera and Robert McCain, 56, were found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years to life.

The pair were drinking at a local bar when they spotted Paula cross the street — just two blocks from her home. McCain ran over to her and hurled a chunk of concrete at the right side of her skull and beat her, officials said.

The pals then dragged her behind a vacant house, where McCain allegedly sexually assaulted her. LaBarbera then started to take his turn, believing she was dead, authorities said.

But when Paula began to stir, LaBarbera stabbed her five times in the back.

McCain, who has denied any role in the crime, is up for parole next year.

“The medical examiner said he’d never seen such a brutal attack,” Bohovesky said. “What if they did it again?”

The grieving mother said she’ll never overcome the loss of her daughter, and every single day she still thinks about Paula’s harrowing final moments at the hands of “two beasts.”

“It took me years before I just didn’t cry all the time,” she said. “But the one thing worse than what happened to her would have been not knowing her at all.”