“Frosty” Allmond, charged in the Jan. 6 stabbing of Pinocchio’s pizza restaurant owner Sal Oliveri, has a long history of homelessness, drug abuse—and knife attacks, according to authorities in several states.
“Frosty’s” full name is Marcus Anthony Allmond. In ancient Rome, Marcus Antonius, perhaps better known by a modern version of his name, Marc Antony, was the famous friend of Julius Caesar, who was stabbed to death by Roman senators.
The 57-year-old Mark Anthony Allmond, as he is called in court records, had been recently released from a New Mexico prison before returning to California and that fateful day early last month when he is described as exploding in a rage at a popular Gilroy pizza restaurant, nearly killing Oliveri.
Witnesses said the attack in Gilroy was not a robbery attempt, but an unprovoked outburst of anger paired with a large, razor-sharp folding knife, a potentially lethal combination that eerily repeated similar incidents in New Mexico and Southern California more than two decades earlier.
In the Pinocchio attack, the motive wasn’t clear, as witnesses said Allmond’s outburst before lunging with his knife drawn at Oliveri’s daughter, Gina, included anti-immigrant rants and a reference to President Trump.
In 1991 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in 1995 in Ventura, California, the motives for knife attacks involving Allmond were drug-related, according to police.
In Albuquerque, police said Alfredo Apodaca was brutally stabbed to death when two men attacked him as they attempted to collect on a $50 drug debt. Apodaca died of multiple knife wounds to his neck, bleeding to death in a neighbor’s apartment.
One of those men, Dirk Manuel, was arrested shortly afterwards, convicted of murdering Apodaca and is serving a life sentence at the Las Cruces, New Mexico Correctional Facility.
The other man, known at the time only as “Frosty” and “Mark St. Clair,” escaped, and disappeared.
Manuel had told Albuquerque police that he and “Frosty” had gone to Apodaca’s apartment on Frosty’s suggestion—that they “do him in” over a drug debt. They went into the apartment through a window and found Apodaca asleep on a couch. Manuel said Frosty grabbed Apodaca by the mouth and slashed his neck. Frosty had given a local homeless shelter a state ID card with the name Mark St. Clair.
Police searched homeless shelters, interviewed neighbors, offered a reward and got a murder warrant issued for the fictitious Mark St. Clair.
There the trail went cold until 2007 when cold case detectives got Frosty’s real name and linked him to the crime when they tested blood from the 1991 crime scene for DNA using a U.S. Department of Justice grant. A national database matched the DNA to Allmond, who had served time on various charges in California. The detectives eventually found him in Wyoming, where he was serving time for violating probation on a DUI conviction.
It would be another three years before Allmond would be released from the Cheyenne, Wyoming prison to stand trial in Albuquerque. As the trial was about to begin, he entered a no-contest plea to conspiracy to commit murder charge in a 1991 slaying.
He was sentenced to nine years, and was released after serving seven, when he headed to California.
While Allmond spent two years in jail while the New Mexico case was pending, the Albuquerque Journal newspaper reported he also was charged with assaulting a peace officer and possession of a weapon in prison.
The DNA link that landed Allmond in prison had been supplied by the California Department of Justice, which told Albuquerque police the DNA matched an ex-convict named Mark Allmond.
Detectives learned that, since the killing and the subsequent warrant issued for St. Clair, Allmond had been arrested in California for DUI, trespassing, attempted voluntary manslaughter, assault with a deadly weapon and distribution of marijuana.
Detectives in New Mexico were able to match a photograph of Frosty to Allmond’s booking mug, and tattoos and the date of birth on the fraudulent identification card matched.
“I don’t think he forgot about what he did. But I am sure he thought we were never going to find him,” one of the cold-case detectives told the Albuquerque Journal.
One of the California cases against Allmond more than 20 years ago figures in his current case in Santa Clara County.
Allmond is being held in the Santa Clara County Jail in lieu of $125,000 bail. That bail was set at that level because of a 1996 conviction in Ventura County for attempted voluntary manslaughter.
He had been arrested in 1995 by the Port Hueneme Police Department in Ventura County on a charge of attempted murder. He pleaded guilty in 1996 to a lesser charge of attempted voluntary manslaughter.
Allmond is charged in Santa Clara County with one count assault with a deadly weapon “with personal infliction of great bodily injury” in connection with the attack at Oliveri on Jan.6. The 62-year-old restaurant owner suffered a deep knife wound to his right forearm fending off what he said was an attempt by Allmond to slash his throat.
Allmond’s next court appearance is Feb. 22. If convicted, he faces 11 years in state prison, according to a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office.
To see Mark Anthony Allmond in a New Mexico courtroom, go to Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=105Ea_-Vcos
