Last updated on August 26, 2020
Tom Maniscalco, 75, will have to wait another five years before he is eligible for release again
Convicted triple murderer Tom Maniscalco was denied parole Thursday, Aug. 6, in a video hearing from Mule Creek State Prison in Ione.
Maniscalco, 75, will not have another parole hearing for five years. Although sentenced to 46 years to life, he became eligible for early release under a program aimed at easing prison crowding by considering parole for inmates 60 and older.
A biker-turned-lawyer, Maniscalco was convicted in 1994 in the murders of Richard “Rabbit” Rizzone, 35, at his ranch home in Westminster in 1980, as well as Rena Arlene Miley, 19, and Rizzone’s friend, Thomas Bernard Monahan, 28. All the bodies were found several days later.
Maniscalco and Rizzone were onetime leaders in the Hessians outlaw motorcycle gang, which was founded in Orange County in the late 1960s.
The three victims had been shot multiple times at close range — execution-style. Miley, the daughter of a Los Alamitos police captain, was found on her back, naked and raped.
According to court records, Maniscalco believed Rizzone was ripping him off in his counterfeiting and meth-distribution ring.
Also participating in the slayings was fellow Hessian Daniel “Shame” Duffy, who was convicted of special-circumstances murder and is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Maniscalco’s first trial started in 1990, and ended a year later with a hung jury. A second trial stretched nearly 1 1/2 years,
