The Chalfont pizzeria owner who killed her long-time boyfriend did so in self-defense, her attorneys said

Attorneys for a Chalfont woman accused of killing her longtime boyfriend and hiring a contractor to dig a makeshift grave to hide his corpse said Friday that she acted in self-defense.

There was no question that Ana Maria Tolomello shot Giovanni Gallina in the head in March, said her attorney, Daniel Schatz. But he said she did so because Gallina was choking her as they fought inside the bedroom of the home they shared.

“There’s no other conclusion available based on the evidence,” Schatz said during Tolomello’s preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Maggie Snow.

Tolomello, 49, is charged with homicide, abuse of a corpse, tampering with evidence, and related offenses in the death of Gallina, 65, who ran Pina’s Pizza, a neighborhood fixture, with her.

Schatz said Gallina had bruises on his forearms, indicating a struggle. And Tolomello was forthcoming with police who came to investigate Gallina’s disappearance a week after the shooting, and she led them to the body inside her home.

» READ MORE: The owner of a popular Chalfont pizzeria went missing. Police say his girlfriend killed him and hid his body.

Deputy District Attorney Christopher Rees disputed that version of events, saying Tolomello deliberately killed Gallina by shooting him in the back of the head. She never contacted police, who were investigating Gallina’s disappearance after his son reported him missing, Rees said. And she took steps to hide Gallina’s death.

“What the defense wants you to believe is that she shot him in the back of the head in self-defense,” Rees said. “I submit that that defies common sense.”

Snow seemed to agree, and held Tolomello for trial on all charges.

For days after the shooting, Tolomello kept Gallina’s corpse in the bedroom they once shared, wrapped tightly in bed linens and a tarp, according to the affidavit of probable cause for her arrest. Meanwhile, she asked acquaintances for advice on how to use incense to cover the smell of what she said was a skunk in her garage, and threw the mattress from the murder scene in the dumpster behind Pina’s.

She also dodged questions from Gallina’s concerned family about his whereabouts. And she called a local contractor and asked him to dig a very specific hole on her property: 7 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet deep.

That contractor, who is the brother of a local police officer, contacted Bucks County investigators after growing suspicious of Tolomello’s request, especially after she declined his offer to fill in the hole. She told him she would do it herself.

When investigators came to Tolomello’s house with a search warrant on the day she planned to bury Gallina, prosecutors said, she confessed to the shooting.