An 81-year-old San Francisco man accused of killing his estranged wife in 1982 will stay behind bars after a judge refused to grant bail, keeping a long cold case very much alive in San Mateo County court.
Patrick Galvani has pleaded not guilty to the charge and was denied bond yesterday, meaning he will remain jailed ahead of a preliminary hearing set for March. His estranged wife, Nancy Galvani, was found dead in August 1982, her body discovered in a sleeping bag near the San Mateo Bridge.
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told the San Mateo Daily Journal that the defense motion to set bail was denied, so Galvani will remain in custody while prosecutors prepare to finally test their decades-old theory in court.
How investigators reopened the case
Galvani was arrested in late November after the Foster City Police Department and the district attorney announced that “recent developments” cleared the way to revive the stalled investigation. Prosecutors say they have now found witnesses who were unavailable in the 1980s and that those accounts, rather than any new DNA evidence, are part of the renewed case, according to SFGATE.
A daughter's decades-long push
For Galvani’s daughter, Alison, the new criminal case is the latest chapter in a fight she has been waging for years. Now an epidemiology professor at Yale, she has long pushed authorities to revisit her mother’s death and in 2010 filed a wrongful-death civil suit over the killing.
Court filings from that civil case, including the 2010 complaint and later motions, are publicly available through Justia Dockets & Filings, and they trace how her efforts kept the case from completely disappearing into the archives.
Court schedule and defense response
Galvani entered his not-guilty plea earlier this year. His attorney, Douglas Horngrad, has said Galvani is innocent and has predicted the charge will ultimately be tossed.
Prosecutors see it differently. Wagstaffe has said his office “think we have enough to convict,” signaling confidence in the late-arriving witnesses and other evidence. The recent bail ruling and upcoming court date have also been detailed in coverage by People, which has followed the family’s response to the arrest.
Why prosecutors moved now
According to prosecutors, the case is no longer crippled by the missing witnesses and thin record that kept it from trial in the 1980s. Newly available testimony and years of pressure from Nancy Galvani’s daughter are central to why the file is now back on a prosecutor’s desk instead of a dusty shelf.
Local reporting has mapped the long arc from the 1982 investigation to last year’s arrest and this week’s bail decision, showing how persistence and timing finally aligned, as chronicled by SFist.
