Zito

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Nearly everyone gave up on Albert the Great after his clunker three weeks ago in the Jim Dandy Stakes, but not his trainer, Nick Zito. Zito changed jockeys (from Richard Migliore to Jorge Chavez) and changed equipment (blinkers off after five races on), but he did not change strategy. Breaking from post 9 in the Travers, Albert the Great fired out of the gate and wrestled the lead from Commendable down the backstretch. Whereas he faded to last in the 1 1/8 -mile Jim Dandy, Albert the Great held on stubbornly in the 1 1/4 -mile Travers.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Go For Gin switched roles with the faltering favorite, Holy Bull, yesterday and won the 120th running of the Kentucky Derby in near wire-to-wire fashion on a sloppy track."

SALISBURY -- A half-dozen police and correctional officers, including the investigator who interviewed the Eastern Shore man charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of two law enforcement officers, told jurors yesterday that the accused, Francis Mario Zito, repeatedly talked about the shootings. In the second day of Zito's trial, Robert E. Williams, an investigator with the Queen Anne's County prosecutor's office, testified that Zito admitted turning a shotgun on the officers who answered a routine call at the trailer park where Zito lived on the outskirts of Centreville, the county seat.

Francis M. Zito, sentenced to death for murdering two Eastern Shore police officers last year, died yesterday at University of Maryland Medical Center, the state prison system reported. The 43-year-old had been hospitalized for several weeks with cancer, a law enforcement source said. He had been transferred to the hospital from the Maryland Correctional Adjustment Center - the state's Supermax prison in Baltimore. Patricia L. Chappell, an attorney who represented Zito, said she was told he had been suffering from lung cancer.

SALISBURY -- Psychiatric experts and other witnesses presented radically different portraits yesterday of Francis Mario Zito, an Eastern Shore man accused of killing two lawmen last year in a Queen Anne's County trailer park. Defense attorneys rested their case with testimony from a retired psychiatric nurse who befriended Zito nearly 20 years ago in his native Pennsylvania and yesterday described him as incoherent. A neurologist hired by Zito's public defenders told jurors in the Wicomico County courtroom, where the case was moved because of pretrial publicity, that he believes Zito's lifelong history of severe mental illness has been worsened by brain damage that is either genetic or was suffered before he was born.

SALISBURY - Francis Mario Zito was convicted of first-degree murder yesterday in the shooting deaths of two young police officers who were called last year for a routine complaint at a small Eastern Shore trailer park. Jurors rejected Zito's insanity defense, finding him criminally responsible for the killings despite a well-documented history of mental illness that has dogged him since childhood and has kept him in mental hospitals for much of his adult life. The eight-woman, four-man panel deliberated for more than seven hours over two days before finding the 43-year-old Pennsylvania native guilty of turning a 12-gauge shotgun on Sheriff's Deputy Jason C. Schwenz and Officer Michael S. Nickerson as they tried to enter his trailer home in Centreville, the Queen Anne's County seat.

SALISBURY - Francis Mario Zito, a mentally ill man who admitted killing two police officers last year at an Eastern Shore trailer park, was condemned to die yesterday by the same jury that found him guilty of the shotgun slayings a week ago. Jurors, who had rejected Zito's insanity defense in the first phase of the trial, again refused the impassioned pleas of defense attorney Patricia Chappell to spare Zito, who has suffered since childhood from a...

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Despite Bellamy Road's overpowering triumph in the Wood Memorial Stakes and his elevation to Kentucky Derby favorite, Sun King remains No. 1 in Nick Zito's Derby hierarchy. "I just think he's the catalyst of our stable," said Zito of the colt he calls "Elvis" and "Captain King." "If he does well, then the whole stable does well. I like this horse to go a long way." A son of Charismatic, who won two-thirds of the Triple Crown in 1999, Sun King has won half of his six races and is the 2-1 second choice in the morning line for the $750,000 Blue Grass Stakes tomorrow at Keeneland.

Nick Zito turned the corner from 2003 into 2004 with the strongest hand of any trainer pointing to the Kentucky Derby. Birdstone and Eurosilver headed many prognosticators' rankings. But then, both horses got sick, ran poorly and missed starts. Birdstone made the Derby but lost a shoe and finished eighth. Eurosilver missed the Derby, and it cost Zito the horse. Mahmoud Fustok, Eurosilver's owner, took him from Zito five days ago and sent him to Carl Nafzger, a Kentucky trainer. Yesterday, Zito received more bad news when The Cliff's Edge - third-stringer turned barn star - woke up stiff in his right front leg. The problem was in his foot, a bruise or an abscess, Zito said.

Nick Zito had experienced every stroke of bad luck that can beset a horse in a race - stumbles, poor positioning, traffic problems, bumps, inclement weather. Until the Kentucky Derby. That's when The Cliff's Edge, the Derby's morning-line favorite, lost his front shoes and came home fifth after running next-to-last in the 18-horse field early in the race. "I've never had that happen," Zito said of the shoe incident after his two Preakness horses, The Cliff's Edge and Sir Shackleton, galloped over the Pimlico track yesterday morning.