An accomplice in the notorious “Tuxedo King” kidnapping case is about to get sprung from the slammer in a virtual replay of a foul-up from three years ago, The Post has learned.
Aurelina Leonor was granted parole on April 1, even though the survivors of the late victim Harvey Weinstein didn’t get a chance to argue against her release, according to Weinstein’s cousin, Ed Weinstein.
In 2011, Leonor was also granted parole without any input from Weinstein’s family, but outrage over that move — reported exclusively in The Post — led officials to rescind the decision.
After getting victim-impact statements from Weinstein’s cousin, son and longtime girlfriend, the Parole Board then then denied Leonor freedom at another hearing in 2012.
Ed Weinstein said he got an official letter dated April 7 saying that Leonor, 65, is set for release no later than April 29.
Weinstein, who lives on the Upper East Side, said he would have jumped at the chance to testify against Leonor, who repeatedly made phone calls demanding $3 million ransom while Harvey Weinstein was chained in a hole along the West Side Highway for nearly two weeks in 1993.
Leonor also lowered a microphone into the hole to record Weinstein saying “this is unbearable” on a tape that was later played for his anxious family.
Ed Weinstein said he spoke on Monday with Janet Koupash, director of the Office of Victim Assistance at the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, who insisted that letters notifying his family about Leonor’s parole hearing were mailed out Jan. 13.
Koupash also said said that she had spoken with her office’s counsel, who said that the survivors were notified in October 2012 that Leonor would get another parole hearing this year, and that served as sufficient legal notice, Weinstein said.
When Weinstein asked why the subsequent letters were supposedly sent on Jan. 13, Koupash “became flustered and uncomfortable” and ended their conversation, he said.
“I do not think this is a United States Postal Service problem. I wonder if the Department of Corrections even sent those letters,” Weinstein said.
He added: “It would be nice if someone at the Department of Corrections owned up and admitted that they screwed up here.”
Harvey Weinstein, who died in 2007, owned the Lord West Formal Wear factory when he was kidnapped at knifepoint by Antonio Rodriquez, whose brother, Fermin Rodriquez, was Leonor’s boyfriend and a former Lord West worker who masterminded the scheme.
Antonio served 15 years in the slammer before being paroled in 2008 and deported to the Dominican Republic, while Fermin was denied parole last year and has another hearing set for April 2015.
Retired NYPD Deputy Inspector George Duke, who headed the Major Case Squad that investigated Weinstein’s abduction and rescued him from the hole, said there was no question of Leonor’s guilt.
“She kept making the phone calls,” Duke said.
“She was very much involved, and I have no doubt that once they got the money, they were going to leave Harvey there to die.”
The Department of Corrections didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.