An 81-year-old man was arrested in San Francisco on Monday on suspicion of killing his wife and dumping her body in the bay in 1982. Former computer programmer Patrick Vincent Galvani has been charged with the murder of Nancy Galvani, who was a 36-year-old social worker at the time of her death. The arrest comes after a yearslong campaign by the Galvanis’ daughter, celebrated Yale professor Alison Galvani, to convince prosecutors to bring charges against her father.
On Monday, Aug. 9, 1982, a group of fisherman found a naked body wrapped in a sleeping bag drifting under the San Mateo Bridge. The woman’s body was tied to a cinder block and bound at the ankles; her cause of death was strangulation. The body was soon identified as Nancy Galvani, a social worker who had recently moved to a women’s shelter in the Tenderloin with her 5-year-old daughter Alison, after leaving her husband. Nancy had filed a restraining order against Patrick and accused him of trying to kill her by holding a pillow over her face and punching her. Nancy and Alison moved out of the family home on Green Street in Pacific Heights, and she planned to divorce Patrick, friends told reporters at the time.
At the time of her death, the couple had a temporary and contentious custody agreement over their daughter, with Alison spending weekends with her father and weekdays with her mother in the women’s shelter. In a recent interview, Alison remembered her father yelling at her mother, “I’ll kill you before you get custody of Alison.”
On the evening before Nancy’s body was found, at around 7:30 p.m., she told the hotel owner on McAllister Street that she was driving to Pacific Heights to pick up Alison and would be “right back.” She was never seen alive again. After obtaining a warrant to search the Galvani home at 1871 Green St., investigators found Nancy’s 1973 Buick Apollo in the garage. Patrick was arrested and charged with murder, but the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office controversially dismissed the charge based on a lack of evidence…