Bonanno Capo May Call Children Of Murder Victim As Defense Witnesses In Lufthansa Trial

Lawyers for Bonanno capo Vincent Asaro say they may call the children of murder victim Paul Katz as defense witnesses in Asaro's upcoming trial for Katz's 1969 murder and the Lufthansa Airlines robbery. Prosecutors say Asaro and James (Jimmy The Gent) Burke, the mastermind of the storied $6 million heist, allegedly killed Katz because they believed he was a "rat."

Asaro's attorneys raised the possibility of calling Katz's son and daughter last week in a court filing in which they indicated that they intend to blame a Katz underworld crony for the murder at trial. If Katz's children do make it to the witness stand, their testimony may be somewhat hostile: At an emotional sentencing in March, Katz's offspring berated Asaro's son Jerome for helping to cover up their dad's murder.

When he left his home, never to return, Katz had told his wife that he was going to meet mob associate Joseph Allegro, who, along with Katz and three others had been arrested on robbery charges two months earlier, wrote attorneys Diane Ferrone and Elizabeth Macedonio.

The attorneys say they would prefer to introduce an NYPD file that includes a Missing Persons Report that Katz's late wife Dolores filed with police on December 7, 1969 — the day after he disappeared — rather than subpoena his children to testify. But in the event that Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Allyne Ross decides that the file cannot be admitted the lawyers would "likely have to call one or more of Mr. Katz's children" to testify.

Ferrone and Macedonio argue that Asaro should have the right to use the police report to counter the proposed testimony by his cousin, key prosecution witness Gaspar (Gary) Valenti, that "Asaro told him that he and Jimmy Burke killed Katz."

In court papers, prosecutors Nicole Argentieri and Alicyn Cooley say that Valenti will testify that Asaro told him that he and Burke killed Katz "because they believed he was a 'rat' who was cooperating." Those suspicions were allegedly aroused after police raided a Richmond Hill, Queens warehouse where Burke and Asaro had stored stolen goods and arrested Asaro and others back in 1969, according to court filings.

"Burke was known to have corrupt police officers on his criminal payroll who would provide Burke with information about individuals seeking to cooperate with law enforcement," the prosecutors wrote.

They say that Valenti will also testify that he helped Asaro and Burke bury Katz after they brought his body "into the basement" of a vacant home on 102nd Road in Queens after Asaro asked Valenti to set up a "meeting" at one of several vacant houses to which he had access.

The NYPD file that defense lawyers want to place into evidence states that Katz's wife last saw her husband at 6:30 pm on December 6, 1969, according to the defense court papers. The report also states that Katz "failed to return home after he left to meet Joseph Allegro," who had been arrested with Katz "for taking a shipment of gold in the Bronx on October 17, 1969," according to the attorneys.

The file should be admissible at trial since it is a "business record of the NYPD" and was relied on by detectives investigating Katz's disappearance in 1969, and by FBI agents who cited the document in a June 2013 search warrant affidavit, wrote Ferrone and Macedonio. That search led to the discovery of bits of Katz's bones and hair that were buried in the basement of an Ozone Park home.

Judge Ross, who gave Jerome Asaro 90 months in prison for digging up and reburying Katz's remains in the mid-1980s after cold case cops re-opened the investigation into his disappearance, has not yet decided whether to allow the defense to introduce the Missing Persons Report into evidence.

At the March sentencing, Katz's son Lawrence told the court: "He came home with me carrying him in an evidence bag."

Katz's remains were later cremated and his daughter Ilsa, who was nine when she saw her dad for the last time, trembled as she clutched a small cloth pouch containing her father's ashes. She tearfully told the court of the grief that she and her siblings lived with after their dad left "to meet the guys at the candy store" and never returned home.

In addition to growing up without a father, they suffered the daily torment of not knowing what had happened to him, she said.

"When we were asked, 'Where's your father?' We'd say he died in a plane crash," she sobbed.

Last week, Ross precluded prosecutors from informing jurors that 80-year-old Vincent Asaro is a "degenerate gambler," but the judge ruled that government witnesses will be allowed to testify about Asaro's gambling habits as they related to the Bonanno family's gambling operations that he ran over the years.

But Ross barred prosecutors from introducing evidence that Asaro was a heroin addict as a "teenager and in his twenties" since there was no evidence "that this early heroin use is related to racketeering acts, the RICO conspiracy or is relevant to (his) relationships with witnesses or co-conspirators."

The selection of an anonymous jury is scheduled to begin on October 8.

BOP Says Westward Ho To Wiseguys At Danbury Federal Prison

There's been a Bonanno split at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut.

Prison officials have transferred a pair of high-ranking family mobsters from the nearby Nutmeg State to the home of the Texas Rangers.

The first to go was Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso, whose "nephew," Frank (Frankie Boy) Salerno, a recently inducted mobster, was caught delivering messages from his "uncle" to 77-year-old capo John Palazzolo (no family relation to Genovese associate Mikey P below) who was returned to prison for another year.

Palazzolo was sent back to the slammer after the incident for violating his post prison restrictions after the NYPD and federal probation officials in Brooklyn spotted him dining with a handful of wiseguys and mob associates at a Queens Italian eatery.

But Mancuso, 60, whose official release date from prison is in March of 2019, also paid a price: He was shipped out to a federal prison in Seagoville, Texas, which is about 25 miles from Dallas.

Next to go was former acting boss Anthony (Tony Green) Urso, whose official release date for a 20 year stretch he's doing for murder and racketeering isn't until 2021. Urso, 79, was the crime family's "street boss" for a year or so after then-boss Joe Massino was indicted in 2003. He is now at a prison in Beaumont, Texas, about 100 miles east of Houston, on the Gulf of Mexico.

Citing privacy issues, the Bureau of Prisons never discusses reasons why inmates get moved. But knowledgeable sources say the BOP acted after prosecutor Nicole Argentieri, the deputy chief of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's organized crime unit, angrily cited Palazzolo's case as evidence that Mancuso was running the Bonannos from the nearby facility, and asked for the transfers.

Argentieri, and her office, declined to discuss the transfers.

In recent months, quite a few other New York area organized crime figures at Danbury were also shipped to far away outposts in the wake of the bloody recreation room brawl between Albanian gangsters and mobsters that Gang Land reported in March. No one was charged in the melee, or given any additional time behind bars for it.

Colombo associate Vito Guzzo and Albanian gangster Nardino (Lenny) Colotti were also sent to the Lone Star State, with Guzzo landing in Seagoville with Mancuso, and Colotti ending up in Beaumont with Urso. Gambino soldiers Michael (Mikey Y) Yannotti and Michael Roccaforte are even further away. Both are in California, with Yannotti at a prison in Victorville and Roccaforte at one in Herlong.

Albanian gangster Prenka Ivezaj ended up at prison that is new to Gang Land, a low security facility that houses about 2100 inmates in Yazoo City, Mississippi, a city of about 11,000 full time residents that is about an hour north of the state capital in Jackson.

Based on complicated formulas, the BOP also classifies the two Texas prisons as "low security" prisons and the California ones as "medium security." But they're all equally bad in a very important way: For the next 18 months, and probably longer, their family members will have to take much longer, more expensive trips to visit them.

Feds Raise Stakes For Genovese Associate Who Spurned Plea Deal

Powerful Genovese capo Daniel Pagano was sentenced to 27 months after he copped a plea deal to bookmaking rather than go to trial for racketeering. But codefendant Michael (Mikey P) Palazzolo, after talking about a plea bargain, opted to roll the dice and fight his racketeering and extortion indictment rather than accept a similar plea.

As a result, prosecutors quickly upped the ante for Palazzolo, obtaining a new racketeering conspiracy indictment that lists five additional extortion counts. The feds also expanded the time frame, which had been between 2009 and 2012. It's now from 2007 until last month.

The new charges could cost the longtime mob associate a double-digit prison term if he is convicted at trial. Palazzolo, 50, was initially charged with one specific extortion count, for shaking down a rival hoodlum between March and October of 2012 after he robbed a cohort of a "significant amount of marijuana."

Palazzolo's current indictment, which accuses him of being a Genovese family loan collector since 2007, alleges specific extortion counts beginning in 2010.

He is also charged with being a crime family enforcer responsible for the "extortionate collection of loans" from "various individuals, including certain victims who later began cooperating with law enforcement," according to assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Burns.

To collect payment from a suspected marijuana thief, "Palazzolo and a co-conspirator intimidated the victim to take out a loan or mortgage in order to repay the marijuana debt that the victim owed" through "threats of violence," Burns wrote. She added that Palazzolo has a "significant, violent criminal history."

In his first brush with the law, Palazzolo was sentenced to 11 years behind bars for being a member of a violent gang that kidnapped drug dealers for ransom — and which was also responsible for two murders.

On the eve of his trial, Mikey P copped a plea deal with a recommended prison term up to 71 months. He admitted his involvement in two attempted kidnapping but was hammered with a 135-month prison term when the sentencing judge ruled after a hearing that he had been involved in two successful kidnappings as well as a third attempt that failed.

He appealed, arguing that his sentence was a lot longer than what he had bargained for, but the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals upheld his sentence because his plea agreement stated that prosecutors were going to allege that he took part in additional crimes on sentencing day.

Palazzolo's trial, which had been scheduled to start this month, has been adjourned until November. Prosecutors declined to comment. Defense attorney Lloyd Epstein told Gang Land his client is going to trial, but declined all other comment.

Meanwhile, Pagano, 63, began serving his prison term last week at the federal prison at Fort Dix.

It would appear capeci and the authorities think mancuso is the boss of the bonnanos still

Its about time a good article came out, the last like 6 or 7 weeks it has just been bullshit. thanks for posting buddy!