The sex‐film distributor found beaten and shbt to death on Long Island Sunday had been “willing to talk” about reports of a mob take‐over of his business, an assistant Manhattan district attorney said yeserday.

The prosecutor, John Jacobs, said that in a preliminary interview, the distributor, Paul E. Rothenberg, had not challenged the assertion that “high‐level organized crime people” had forced themselves into the business as silent partners.

In another development, a high law enforcement source in Sullivan County said that Wantagh, L. I., man who was being questioned in connection with a murder case there was also being sought for questioning in the Rothenberg slaying.

The source gave his name as Michael Zaffarano, a Brooklyn restaurant operator who was said to have been a bodyguard to Joseph Bonanno, the Mafia leader.
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Mr. Zaffarano was not immediately reachable for comment, and police officials here and on Long Island said they had no information to provide.

Mob Pressure

Meanwhile, as the investigation into the slaying near Roslyn, L.I., continued, a wellplaced police official said pattern of mob pressure and violence against pornography dealers here had been detected.

“Known organized‐crime people have been frequenting distributors,” said the official, an expert in pornography investigations and operations. “That's a pretty good indication to me they're moving in lock, stock and barrel:”

The Chief of organized Crime Control for the Police Department, James Taylor, Said his office, too, had detected “this new aspect” of stepped‐up efforts by organized crime to control distributors, particularly of pornographic films.

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Mr. Jacobs also said there was information that organized crime “was cutting in like with Rothenberg” but he added there was no overall pattern of violence linking the Rothenberg slaying with recent firebombings of massage parlors.
One Man Indicted

Martin Hodes, a 42d Street peep show distributor and “massage” parlor entrepreneur, who Chief Taylor said had been “tied” to the Colombo Maffia family, was indicted July 13 with two associates in the firebombings of two of the parlors competing with one of his.

Mr. Rothenberg, 42 years old, was a partner of the Arro Film Labs at 75 Spring Street, which investigators consider the largest distributor of hard‐core 8 mm. sex films in the metropolitan area. He was found beaten and shot twice in the back of the head off Northern Boulevard Sunday morning.

Last fall, police investigators heard from informants that two men had visited Mr. Rothenberg, pointed pistols at him and informed the film distributor, that they were his new partners. According to the account, Mr. Rothenberg laughed —until they punched him in the face.

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Asked about this last spring in a telephone interview with a reporter, Mr. Rothenberg denied that the incident had happened.

However, Mr. Jacobs said he had reliable information that Mr. Rothenberg had been involved with “high‐level organized‐crime people,” among them a lieutenant in a Mafia family he declined to identify.

“There's no question someone moved in on the man,” said Mr. Jacobs, who had the case for investigation.

The questioning of Mr. Rothenberg had twice been put off by his lawyer, Mr. Jacobs said. He was due in again—and postponed it again—last Thursday or Friday.
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“I was anxious to have Rothenberg cooperate,” he said. “The people who killed him probably anticipated that too.”

Mr. Jacobs said that in a police raid of Mr. Rothenberg's film lab July 5 that netted about 9,000 reels iof pornographic films, no financial books or records were discovered to in dicate who was buying them.

“Everything Rothenberg was doing was cash,” he said, adding that without books it was impossible to trace the outflow of receipts to any partners. The Internal Revenue Service was also investigating, he said.

Mr. Jacobs also said the raid turned up subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking to question Mr. Rothenberg and a partner, Tony Aguila, in connection with an allegedly fraudulent stock deal.