The body of a reputed organized-crime figure, once accused of extorting money from a prominent Queens nightclub owner who was later murdered, was found stuffed in the trunk of a rented car early yesterday in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

Two other men, also with reported mob connections, were found murdered yesterday about 10 blocks apart in the nearby Sheepshead Bay area.

Meanwhile, detectives here pressed their hunt for the two gunmen who on Tuesday night fatally shot Salvatore Briguglio, 48 years old, who had been regarded as a key suspect in the 1975 disappearance of James R. Hoffa, the teamster leader.

Lieut. John J. Yuknes of the First Homicide Zone in Manhattan said detectives were looking into many possibilities, including speculation that Mr. Briguglio was murdered to silence him in connection with either the Hoffa case or a murder trial scheduled to start May 1 in upstate New York.
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Mr. Briguglio, a business agent for Teamster Local 560 in Union City, N.J., had been indicted together with Anthony Provenzano, the secretary‐treasurer of the local, and another man for the 1961 kidnap‐murder of a rival union official.

Lieutenant Yuknes said that it was now believed that someone or some persons had taken Mr. Briguglio to Mulberry Street in the Little Italy section of lower Manhattan, where he was suddenly set upon from behind by two gunmen who knocked him to the sidewalk and shot him five times.

Detectives in Manhattan and Brooklyn said that they had no information that would link the Briguglio murder with any of the bodies discovered yesterday in Brooklyn or that even connected the Brooklyn killings with one another.

They also said that they did not have any; reason to suspect that there was war. under way between organized crime factions that would account for the Brooklyn murders. They noted there were a number of coincidences, but one detective, added, “The world is full of coincidences.”

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The man found in the trunk of the car was Pasquale Macchirole, 56, who was known as “Paddy Mac,” and reportedly had been associated with both the Vito Genovese and Joseph A. Colombo crime factions.
The extortion charge against him was dropped after the murder on March 30, 1972, of the key witness, Conrad Greaves, owner of the lucrative Conrad's Cloud Room nightclub in the El Capitan Motel near La Guardia Airport.

The Queens District Attorney's office had charged that Mr. Macchirole, whose name has been spelled in different ways at different times, would pose as “peacemaker” after hoodlums beat up employees or customers in restaurants or nightclubs. Mr. Greaves had asserted that he was forced to pay $400 weekly for “protection.”

Four men were charged with Mr. Greaves's murder. One was convicted, but the conviction was overturned on appeal; two were acquitted, and charges against Thcmas DiLio, a nephew of Mr. Macchirole. were dropped.

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On March 28, 1974--virtually two years to the .day after the murder of Mr. Greaves—Mr. DiLio's body was found in the trunk of a car in Maspeth, Queens.

The police found Mr. Macchirole's body yesterday after his family received an anonymous phone call telling them where to look, He had be ‘missing for three weeks.

Americus Scotes, a 48-year-old trucker, was walking his dog at 6:30 A.M. yesterday near his home on East Fourth Street, near Avenue U, in the Sheepshead Bay section, when he was fatally shot in the head and chest.

Police sources said that he had at one time been “loosely” tied to the Colombo faction.

On another Sheepshead Bay street—Boynton Place at Avenue X—was the body of Patrick Presenzano, 35. He had been beaten, shot in the head and his throat was cut. He was reputed to have been a member of the Genovese faction and to have been active in the narcotics trade in the Fulton Market area.
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Although the police said he lived on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, a driver's license found on the body gave a Miami address. Lieut. John J. McCarthy of the 10th Homicide Zone said that he had probably been killed elsewhere and dumped where he was found.

Mr. Briguglia had also reportedly been a member of the Genovese organization.

Along with his brother and another man, he had been implicated by a Federal informer as being in the July 1975 kidnap‐murder of Mr. Hoffa, the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

But authorities could not develop any evidence and no charges were ever brought against the three, even though investigators have believed that Mr. Briguglio was still a key to unraveling the unsolved mystery surrounding the onetime teamster leader.