A Manhattan man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in Queens Supreme Court on Thursday for an execution-style murder of a long-time acquaintance on the Grand Central Parkway in 1990.
Kevin Smith, 67, of the Yorkville section on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, was found guilty in November following a retrial after a previous verdict was overturned on appeal.
According to the charges and trial records, on Feb. 8, 1990, 45-year-old Frank Sestak was behind the wheel of a Dodge station wagon on the Grand Central Parkway near 68th in Forest Hills with Smith in the backseat directly behind him. A third man, David Hammerstone, was seated in the front passenger side. Sestak pulled over on the westbound shoulder overlooking Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. At that point, Smith pulled a gun and shot Sestak in the back of his head. Smith jumped out of the vehicle, stood at the driver’s side door, and fired several more shots, striking the victim’s skull, brain, spine, and lungs. Hammerstone pulled out his handgun and also shot Sestak, who succumbed to his injuries.
Smith and Hammerstone robbed a Manhattan bank a month after the murder and were apprehended by FBI agents in Allentown, PA. A Queens jury indicted them in March 2015. Hammerstone pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in October 2016 and was sentenced to four to twelve years in prison.
Smith was convicted of second-degree murder a month later after jurors heard testimony that he marked Sestak for death as the result of a love triangle involving an unidentified woman whom Smith was dating. An appellate court overturned that conviction and ordered a new trial primarily due to the introduction of evidence that Smith and Hammerstone committed a bank robbery after the execution-style murder. Presenting that evidence was found to be in error by the court.
Smith was found guilty of murder in the second degree in November after the jury deliberated for approximately five hours following a week-long trial.
“For more than 25 years, justice eluded the family of the victim,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “And after a guilty verdict in 2016, an appeals court reversed in 2023, a jury has spoken again, and the defendant has been held to account for this brutal killing.”
Queens Supreme Court Justice Michael Aloise, who presided at the retrial, sentenced Smith to 25 years to life in prison.
“Today, a judge sentenced the defendant to the maximum term of incarceration,” Katz said. “I hope this gives the slain man’s family both relief and finally closure.”
