Confession heard
in "Curious George" slaying

Alan Shalleck, coauthor of the Curious George children's books, had planned an evening of sex with two men he met through a gay magazine ad the night he was killed, according to a taped confession from one of the two defendants, the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sun-Sentinel reported Tuesday.

Vincent Puglisi told investigators that he responded to the ad about a year before he and codefendant Rex Ditto arrived at the author's Boynton Beach, Fla., mobile home that night in February 2006.

Puglisi, 55, denied any role in the killing until being told that Ditto, 31, had implicated him, the Sun-Sentinel reported. Puglisi's public defenders are trying to get the confession suppressed, claiming it was coerced.

When the men arrived at Shalleck's home, Puglisi said, the three watched television before Ditto and Shalleck went into the bedroom. Puglisi went into the bedroom later.

Ditto then began to choke and beat the 76-year-old Shalleck, Puglisi testified. Puglisi said he held a pillow to Shalleck's face while Ditto "stabbed him close to 100 times until the knife broke and then " fetched a kitchen knife, which also broke. He finished the job with a butcher knife. He said they left with a gold ring, coins and a Fossil watch.

"It's no excuse, but I was with Rex and went along with his plan because I cared about him," Puglisi told circuit judge Edward Garrison on Monday. "I didn't know he was a sick puppy, but now I do."

Shalleck wrote more than two dozen Curious George books with Margret Rey, who created the character with her husband in the late 1930s.

A former CBS producer, he also wrote and directed more than 100 Curious George episodes for the Disney Channel, according to the Palm Beach Post, but he never profited significantly from his role and struggled financially in his later years. (Barbara Wilcox, The Advocate)