Michael Polding and Ricardo Pisano A man who once escaped from a New Zealand prison is behind bars again, after being jailed for more than 18 years for the manslaughter of a man he met after advertising himself as a male prostitute. In 2001 South Africa-born Ricardo Pisano, 36, walked out on a Tongariro-Rangipo Prison work party and fled the country. He killed 62-year-old Michael Polding in his Brighton flat last May, and then fled, and the older man’s body was not found for two months. He died from blunt force trauma to the chest. Pisano was on the run for a year, but was found and arrested in May. He’s since been found guilty of manslaughter and a charge of ‘causing actual bodily harm’, and jailed for 18-and-a-half years. While he did not consider himself gay, Pisano lived with Polding in South London and Brighton - they’d met when Pisano advertised as a rent boy in a gay magazine. Gay Star News reports that Prosecutor Philip Katz said from the word go Pisano lived off Polding: “This defendant and other friends of his effectively bled Mr Polding dry financially and this defendant, while in this period, pretended to act as his carer and even godson,” he said. “In fact, we say, he abused and assaulted Mr Polding, resulting in a serious assault. “He eventually killed him and, having killed him, left him to rot.” BBC reports that outside court, Polding's relatives, Sam and Mary McKeown, said Pisano was "an evil monster".
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 18th December 2013 - 9:46am