A Brooklyn man was shot and killed in his family's restaurant late Friday in an incident that the police said might have been mob-related.
The police identified the man as Rocco Rubino, 28 years old, of 2339 Jerome Avenue in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. They said he had an arrest record, including a 1980 conviction on a weapons charge.
Yesterday's killing was the latest in a series of possibly gang-related slayings that have puzzled police investigators. Since the beginning of the year, the violent deaths of at least 10 men in Brooklyn have had the markings of gangland murders.
Those who were killed were associated with either the Colombo or Bonanno crime familes, and some knew each other. The police described them as low-level operators involved in various criminal activities ranging from narcotics to credit-card fraud. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
The United States Attorney for the Eastern District, Andrew J. Maloney, and some other officials speculated that at least some of the killings seemed to indicate a lapse in discipline resulting from the recent convictions of many senior mob figures.
Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. Mr. Rubino had been renovating a rear portion of the family restaurant, Rubino's Crab House at 2003 Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay, when shortly after 11 P.M. one or more gunmen entered, shot him several times in his chest, and then fled, the police said. A passer-by notified the police, who said there were no signs of forced entry into the restaurant.
The police said they believed Mr. Rubino was a low-level member of an organized crime family.
No weapons were recovered and the motive has not been determined, the police said. As of late yesterday afternoon, they were unable to determine the caliber of the weapon used.
Mr. Rubino's body was picked up late yesterday afternoon, more than 14 hours after the shooting.
Suzanne Halpin, a spokeswoman for the Health and Hospitals Corporation, said she did not know the specific reasons for the delay, though she noted that the agency has only one morgue wagon in the borough, and it is often tied up for long periods.
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An employee of Joe's Clam Bar, near the Rubino restaurant, said that the family had lived in the Sheepshead Bay area for many years, and that Mr. Rubino was well liked. Mr. Rubino was convicted of a felony in 1980 for attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He received a five-year probation, the police said. He was also convicted the same year of a misdemeanor, possession of marijuana, and was fined $250. In 1977, he pleaded guilty and was convicted of harassment, the police said.
Two people - one of them a woman storing laundry in a hallway closet in her home - were killed during a gangland attempt to assassinate a convicted pornographer and Mafia member last night on a quiet, residential side street in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, the police said.
A third person was seriously wounded by men firing shotguns from at least one car as it passed 431 Lake Street, off Avenue W, a police spokesman said.
That man, Joseph Peraino Sr., who was convicted in Miami on Dec. 6 of six counts of interstate shipments of pornography, was the target of the gunmen, according to other law enforcement officials familiar with the case. Linked to Crime Family
Mr. Peraino, who is in his 50's, is listed by the Justice Department as a ''made'' member of the Mafia crime family of Joseph Colombo. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
The slain woman was identified as Veronica Zuraw, 52 years old, who was in her Lake Street home at 8 P.M. when shotgun pellets fired at the two men in front of her house went through the bottom part of her white front door and hit her, said Detective Sgt. Anthony J. Marra, as he stood outside the three-story brick building later.
Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. Detective Marra said Mrs. Zuraw and her husband, Louis, had recently moved into the second floor apartment in the three family detached building. The couple were finishing their laundry when the shooting occurred.
''He was folding the laundry; she went to put some things in the closet; he heard shots; and she fell,'' said the detective. The man killed outside Mrs. Zuraw's home was identified by the police as Joseph Peraino Jr., 30, the son of the man said to be the target of the assassination attempt. Mr. Peraino was hit several times as he apparently tried to run from the gunmen and seek shelter in the Zuraw apartment.
Joseph Peraino Sr. was hit at least once in the buttocks, the police said. He was taken to Coney Island Hospital, where he was listed in serious condition.
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Law enforcement officials said this was not the first attempt on the life of Joseph Sr. in New York City in recent months and added that he was wounded in at least one of the previous attempts. Both men were found on the concrete patio outside the second floor entrance to the apartments, the detective said. ''We don't know whether they were running away from their attackers or going visiting,'' said the detective in a comment about the father an d son being on the second floor patio.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up He added that Mr. Zuraw said that the Perainos were unknown to him and his wife. The police spokesman, Sgt. Leroy Barr, said there was no reason to connect the Zuraws to the Perainos. Buckshot Penetrates Door
Detective Marra said that it was ''the angle of trajectory'' that caused the shotgun blasts to enter the bottom of the Zuraws' front door and yet strike Mrs. Zuraw in the head. The buckshot left a pattern of holes in the bottom half of the door. And the detective said several spent shells were found in front of the building.
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''We heard sounds like firecrackers,'' said Ann Virgilio, a neighbor of the Zuraws in the same small detached building. Mrs. Virgilio said the Zuraws were ''very quiet people'' who had just moved into the neighborhood and had not even had time to put up curtains.
She described the Lake Street neighborhood of small brick buildings and family homes with lawns and trees as ''quiet, except for when the kids light off firecrackers.''
According to law enforcement officials and court records, Joseph Pe raino Sr. has a long history of involvement with organized crime. Along with a brother, Anthony, Mr. Peraino has been described in court papers as one of the major figures invo lved in the production and distribution of hard-core pronography. Linked to 'Deep Throat'
The two brothers have been identified as providing the initial financing for the movie ''Deep Throat,'' which has grossed more than $25 million. The brothers are said to have collected much of the profits from the distribution of that film. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
In May 1977, Joseph Peraino Sr. was convicted in Federal Court in Memphis of obscenity in connection with ''Deep Throat.'' His conviction a month ago in a Federal Court in Miami resulted from a nationwide sweep by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of its undercover operation known as Miporn, for Miami pornography.
Besides the six convictions for transportation of pornography, Mr. Peraino was also convicted in Miami of conspiracy to transport obscene films across state lines.
He faces a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison and $40,000 in fines on those seven charges when sentenced sometime this year.
Two brothers were shot to death in a barrage of gunfire late last night as they sat in their Queens cafe in what the police said may have been an ''organized crime-related execution.'' A third man was wounded.
The brothers, identified by the police as Joseph Licata of 2 North Drive, Whitestone, Queens, and 28-year-old Andrew Licata of 71-27 67th Place, in the Glendale section, were found inside Licata's, which they owned, at 63-59 Forest Avenue in a quiet part of a residential and commercial section of Ridgewood. The police identified the wounded man as Salvatore Cuchiara, 26. He was shot in one leg. Mr. Cuchiara was said to be in good condition in Wyckoff Hospital.
Sgt. Raymond O'Donnell said investigators believe the shooting might be connected to Tuesday's execution-style slaying of a convicted narcotics dealer, Micahel Papa, and his wife, Carla Anna. The two were found in their Queens home, in which the police found drug paraphenalia.
The police said Mr. Papa was a nephew of the slain Vincent C. Papa, a major drug dealer who was linked to the theft in 1972 of $70 million worth of drugs from the New York City Police Department's property clerk's office. The drugs had been seized in the so-called French connection case. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
Sgt. O'Donnell did not say how the killing of the Licata brothers might be connected to the slaying of the Papas. Shortly after the shooting last night, teams of detectives converged on the scene. The plate glass windows of the cafe were shattered by what one officer on the scene said was ''heavy artillery.'' Investigators said a shotgun and a pistol were used to kill the two brothers.
Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. According to Officer John Clifford, the two brothers were inside the cafe when suddenly one or more men opened fire on them through the glass door and front window. Both men were pronounced dead at the scene.
''They were wise guys,'' said Sergeant O'Donnell, using a slang term for organized crime figures. ''They have these little feuds.'' The body of one of the victims lay in the entryway to the cafe, , covered with a bloody white cloth. A second body lay in a patio behind the cafe.
Licata's is a small establishment on the ground floor of a twostory building of brick and wood. Above the shop are several apartments. Inside the cafe last night a few tables and chairs could be seen.
In a dining room connected to the cafe, some playing cards were scattered over one of the tables. The cafe was roped off by the police immediately after the shooting as more than a hundred neighbors crowded around the scene.
Several informers provided information leading to a major racketeering indictment that accused an organized- crime group of 25 murders, according to court documents.
The documents are complaints that police officers submitted for the arrest of some of the 21 defendants named in the indictment, which was unsealed March 30 in Federal District Court in Manhattan. The arrest complaints, which became available on Friday, referred to at least four informers.
Paul Castellano, identified by the authorities as the boss of the Gambino crime family, is the main defendant. The indictment attributed the 25 murders and many other crimes to a ''crew'' headed by Mr. Castellano.
Mr. Castellano, who is 68 years old and lives on Staten Island, has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is free on $2 million bail while awaiting trial. Most of the other defendants also pleaded not guilty and remained free on bail. One Informer Named ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
The only informer identified by name in the court documents is James Fratianno, described as ''formerly a high- ranking member of La Cosa Nostra,'' who has testified against many organized-crime figures.
Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. According to the arrest complaint against Anthony F. Gaggi, a defendant in the racketeering indictment, Mr. Fratianno provided information about an extortionate loan that Mr. Gaggi had made to the Westchester Premier Theater in Tarrytown, which went bankrupt amid fraud charges involving organized crime.
''He was told by persons associated with the management of the theater that Anthony Gaggi, also known as Nino, had loaned approximately $200,000 to the organization,'' the complaint said of Mr. Fratianno.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up Another informer was identified only as C-2, referring to a ''cooperating witness.'' The complaint described the informer as a former member of the crime crew, which Mr. Gaggi was accused of supervising for Mr. Castellano. 1980 Slaying Recalled
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From 1979 through 1982, the complaint said, Mr. Rendini ''supplied and sold firearms on a regular and repeating basis to CW-1 and at least 10 individuals for use in the commission of felonies, such as murders, thefts, loan- sharking and drug trafficking.''
Mr. Rendini was said to have ''provided quantities of handguns (including .380 Barettas), machine guns and silencers.'' Slaying of Witness Cited
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Another defendant, Joseph C. Testa Jr., was accused of taking part in the 1975 murder of a witness named Andrei Katz in Queens. The complaint against Mr. Testa said Mr. Katz had agreed to give the authorities information about car thefts by Chris Harvey Rosenberg, identified as a member of the crew, and others.
Mr. Rosenberg was slain in 1979, the complaint added. It said two informers, one of them a woman, had provided information about the slaying of Mr. Rosenberg, whose bullet-riddled body was found in a car in Brooklyn.
Walter S. Mack Jr., the Federal prosecutor in charge of the racketeering case, declined to specify how many informers were in the case or name any of them. Other law-enforcement authorities said a key informer was Vito Arena, described as a Long Island man cooperating since his arrest on theft charges almost two years ago.
One of the defendants, Joseph Guglielmo, has been missing since Federal agents searched his Brooklyn home a few weeks ago.
Two more suspects were arrested yesterday in the murder of a police detective and the wounding of his partner in Queens on Tuesday night, the police said.
A man identified by the police as Steven Maltese, 52 years old, of 1720 Greene Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens, near the Brooklyn border, turned himself in at his lawyer's Manhattan office at 2:05 P.M. yesterday because ''he knew we were looking for him,'' said the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, Alice T. McGillion.
Three hours later the police arrested another man, identified as Carmine Gualtieri, 55, at his home at 147-33 71st Road in Flushing, Queens, according to a Police Department spokesman, Lieut. Edwin LeSchack, who said, ''The investigation led to this guy.''
The two men were charged with second-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, and possession of a deadly weapon, he said. Shot Twice in the Face ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
Authorities yesterday said the detective who was wounded, Kathleen Burke, had identified herself as a police officer when she came upon the three men who were holding her partner, Detective Anthony J. Venditti, against the wall of a diner-style restaurant.
Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. The men shot Detective Venditti twice in the face at point-blank range, wheeled and fired at Detective Burke, then shot Detective Venditti two more times.
State law reserves the charge of first-degree murder, which is punishable by death, to the killing of a police officer or prison guard while the officer or guard is performing his duty, or to provable premeditated murder. The second-degree murder charges indicate that investigators were uncertain whether the suspects knew Detective Venditti was a police officer.
Shortly after the shooting, the police arrested Frederick Giovannielo of Queens and charged him with second-degree murder. Authorities said he was a member of the Genovese organized-crime family.
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Last night the police would not say whether either of the two new suspects had links to organized crime. An Unwritten Rule The two suspects were held at the 104th Precinct station house in Ridgewood until shortly after midnight when they were moved to the central booking facility at the Queens Criminal Court House in Kew Gardens.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up If the assailants knew that their victims were police officers, some experts said, the shootings may be a case of organized crime breaching the conventions that have existed between it and law enforcement agents.
''There's an etiquette between law-enforcement officers and the mob,'' said Robert G. Blakey, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame and a former Federal prosecutor who specialized in organized-crime cases.
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''The mob knows in its heart that if they actually attacked law enforcement directly and law enforcement responded in kind, the mob would be wiped out,'' he said. ''But its not a code. It's better to describe it as a practice that is often breached.''
Professor Blakey said it was his guess that the gunmen ''did not know who the cops were.'' He added, ''The fact they they went back and shot him again is an indication they wanted to kill him.''
However, he went on to cite cases in which the customary etiquette had been violated.
In 1963, six men related to Carmine Lombardozzi, a reputed leader of organized crime, were charged with beating F.B.I. Agent John P. Foley, who was on assignment at a Lombardozzi family funeral in a Roman Catholic church in Brooklyn. The agent was hospitalized with a fractured skull and a concussion.
According to Mr. Blakey, ''thereafter a series of guys from the Lombardozzi family ended up beaten up in ash cans.'' ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story ‎MARVEL Strike Force iPhone owners are obsessed with this Marvel game Sponsored by ‎MARVEL Strike Force See more
Ultimately, he said, the head of the family assured authorities ''it wouldn't happen again and everything went back to normal.''
Ronald Goldstock, head of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force, agreed with Professor Blakey. ''By and large, organized crime has restricted themselves from attacking law enforcement, and the reason has not been out of any great sense of love or respect.''
Mr. Maltese surrendered to the police outside 950 Third Avenue where the law firm representing him, Zerin & Cooper, has its office, Lieutenant LeSchack said.
Detective Burke was listed in satisfactory condition yesterday at Bellevue Hospital, recovering from a wound to her left shoulder. Meanwhile, the Detectives Endowment Association said that a funeral mass for Detective Vendetti would take place tomorrow at St. Mel's Roman Catholic Church in Flushing, Queens. He will be buried in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y.
Robert DiBernardo, a reputed captain in the Gambino crime family and a key target of a Federal investigation into child pornography, is missing, authorities said yesterday.
The Nassau County police have issued a nationwide bulletin for information about Mr. DiBernardo, who is said to have been a close associate of the slain Gambino crime boss, Paul Castellano.
Mr. Castellano and a key aide, Thomas Bilotti, were shot to death outside a midtown Manhattan restaurant on Dec. 16. According to law-enforcement officials, the killings cleared the way for John Gotti of Howard Beach, Queens, who is now in prison awaiting trial, to assume leadership of the Gambino family. They said Mr. DiBernardo also was close to Frank DeCicco, a Castellano lieutenant who was killed in a bomb blast in Brooklyn on April 13.
Last Seen June 5
Detective Sgt. Eugene Flamm, commanding officer of the Nassau County department's missing persons squad, said Mr. DiBernardo, of 1101 Harbor Road, Hewlett Harbor, L.I., left his office at 418 Broome Street in lower Manhattan at about 2 P.M. on Thursday, June 5. He was last seen by his business partner, Ted Rothstein, the sergeant said. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story ‎MARVEL Strike Force iPhone owners are obsessed with this Marvel game Sponsored by ‎MARVEL Strike Force See more
Mr. DiBernardo and Mr. Rothstein are officers of Star Distributors, a company that Federal prosecutors are investigating for involvement in child pornography. A search warrant was executed at the company's office by postal inspectors on March 7, according to an assistant United States attorney in Manhattan, Harold E. Heiss. He declined to discuss the case in detail. But authorities said business records and literature were seized.
Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. A woman who answered the phone at Star Distributors yesterday said Mr. Rothstein was not available and that she could not answer any questions.
The director of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force, Ronald Goldstock, said Mr. DiBernardo held ''an important position in the Gambino organization and was believed responsible for criminal activities that brought in large amounts of money.'' The police and Federal authorities said that he held the rank of captainand that he had become increasingly active in aspects of the construction industry in recent years.
When Mr. DiBernardo left his office on June 5, Sergeant Flamm said, he got into his gray 1986 Mercedes Benz and drove away. ''At about a quarter of three, he called his family on the car telephone and discussed a dinner date that they had that evening,'' the sergeant said. The family never heard from him again, he said.
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The next day, the family made numerous phone calls trying to locate Mr. DiBernardo, the sergeant said. Then, at about 9:30 P.M. on Saturday, June 7, the family called the Nassau County police to report him missing. Mr. DiBernardo, described as 6 feet tall and 160 pounds with graying blond hair, has two sons and two daughters.
''According to the family,'' the sergeant said, ''he was a routine person who leaves work at the same time each day and comes home at the same time. He always keeps in touch.''
A man with a police record and possible ties to organized crime was shot and killed on a Brooklyn street yesterday afternoon by two gunmen who fled in a car. The police said the killing was similar to a series of gangland-style murders in Brooklyn in recent months.
The victim was identified from personal papers as John Otto Heidel, about 30 years old, whose last known address was 2151 East 70th Street in the Bergen Beach section. He was shot in the chest, buttocks and back at about 4:15 P.M. as he changed a car tire on East 35th Street between Avenues T and U in the Marine Park section. The gunmen fled in a light-blue 1983 Oldsmobile.
Nothing was taken from the victim, and the motive for the killing was unclear.
Since January, nine other men, most of them believed to have been members or associates of organized-crime families, have been killed in gangland-style attacks in Brooklyn.
A Brooklyn man was shot and killed in his family's restaurant late Friday in an incident that the police said might have been mob-related.
The police identified the man as Rocco Rubino, 28 years old, of 2339 Jerome Avenue in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. They said he had an arrest record, including a 1980 conviction on a weapons charge.
Yesterday's killing was the latest in a series of possibly gang-related slayings that have puzzled police investigators. Since the beginning of the year, the violent deaths of at least 10 men in Brooklyn have had the markings of gangland murders.
Those who were killed were associated with either the Colombo or Bonanno crime familes, and some knew each other. The police described them as low-level operators involved in various criminal activities ranging from narcotics to credit-card fraud. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Engagement Rings Why These Gorgeous Engagement Rings Are A 'Top-Value' Sponsored by Engagement Rings See more
The United States Attorney for the Eastern District, Andrew J. Maloney, and some other officials speculated that at least some of the killings seemed to indicate a lapse in discipline resulting from the recent convictions of many senior mob figures.
Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. Mr. Rubino had been renovating a rear portion of the family restaurant, Rubino's Crab House at 2003 Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay, when shortly after 11 P.M. one or more gunmen entered, shot him several times in his chest, and then fled, the police said. A passer-by notified the police, who said there were no signs of forced entry into the restaurant.
The police said they believed Mr. Rubino was a low-level member of an organized crime family.
No weapons were recovered and the motive has not been determined, the police said. As of late yesterday afternoon, they were unable to determine the caliber of the weapon used.
Mr. Rubino's body was picked up late yesterday afternoon, more than 14 hours after the shooting.
Suzanne Halpin, a spokeswoman for the Health and Hospitals Corporation, said she did not know the specific reasons for the delay, though she noted that the agency has only one morgue wagon in the borough, and it is often tied up for long periods.
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An employee of Joe's Clam Bar, near the Rubino restaurant, said that the family had lived in the Sheepshead Bay area for many years, and that Mr. Rubino was well liked. Mr. Rubino was convicted of a felony in 1980 for attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He received a five-year probation, the police said. He was also convicted the same year of a misdemeanor, possession of marijuana, and was fined $250. In 1977, he pleaded guilty and was convicted of harassment, the police said.
Three masked men walked into an Ozone Park, Queens, barbershop yesterday and, in a barrage of gunfire, killed a barber as he reclined in a chair watching television.
Although detectives said that at least 10 shots were fired and that the gunfire must have been heard in the residential neighborhood, the police were not called for 30 minutes.
Law-enforcement officials said the victim, Vito Scaglione, 36 years old, had ties to organized-crime figures and was suspected of being involved in narcotics trafficking.
In the early 1980's, John Gotti, whom law-enforcement officials have identified as the head of the Gambino organized-crime group, frequently was a customer at the scene of the slaying, the Father & Sons Haircutters, at 83-01 101st Avenue, according to Lieut. Remo Franceschini of the police. 'They're Hits,' the Police Say ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The Children''s Trust This Organization Provides Parent Programs, Children's Book Clubs and More in Miami Sponsored by The Children''s Trust See more
Police officials said, however, Mr. Gotti was not linked to the shooting.
The slaying was the fourth gangland-style death in the city in a week. But police officials said they had no evidence the shootings were connected.
''They're hits,'' the deputy commissioner for public information, Alice T. McGillion, said. ''But as far as we know, they are not related,''
Police officials also said they had no information linking the murder to the shooting and wounding of another barber, Amedeo Azzaro, in his home in Astoria on Tuesday.
The slaying of Mr. Scaglione was similar to one of the most notorious Mafia murders in the city, the assassination of the head of the Gambino crime family, Albert Anastasia, on Oct. 25, 1957, as he was having his hair cut at the old Park Sheraton Hotel on Seventh Avenue and 55th Street. Convictions in Weapons Case
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Mr. Scaglione, who, the police said, lived at 1070 Frances Drive in Valley Stream, L.I., was convicted in 1981 in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on a charge of providing an unlicensed 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and a silencer to an undercover Federal informer. Mr. Scaglione's brother-in-law, Dominick Cataldo, who, the authorities described as an important figure in the Colombo crime family, was also convicted in the case.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up After pleading guilty, Mr. Scaglione was placed on probation. Mr. Cataldo was sentenced to eight years in a Federal prison.
''He did not look like a typical wise guy, or a tough guy,'' said Laura A. Brevetti, who, as a lawyer with the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force in the Eastern District, prosecuted Mr. Scaglione on a gun charge in 1981. ''He was a mild, almost meek-looking person.''
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Deputy Chief Joseph R. Borrelli, commander of Queens detectives, said Mr. Scaglione was alone in the shop at 10 A.M. when the gunmen entered. They shot him at close range in the face, neck and chest, detectives said. Spent .380-caliber cartridges were scattered on the floor.
Chief Borrelli said Mr. Scaglione's body was found 30 minutes after the shooting by his brother Nino.
Later, several witnesses told detectives they had heard the gunfire and saw two men wearing ski masks and a third in a stocking mask drive away in a green and white 1983 or 1984 Chevrolet.
Police officials said detectives did not press the witnesses for their reasons for failing to call the police. Ties to Crime Groups ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Cleaning Services Housekeeping Services Near Me Sponsored by Cleaning Services See more
Mr. Scaglione, the police said, was a partner in the shop with his father, Salvatore, who was said to be in Italy.
A law-enforcement official said that in addition to his connections to the Colombo group, Mr. Scaglione had been observed with associates of the Gambino crime family.
Lieutenant Franceschini, the head of detectives in the Queens District Attorney's office, said that in the early 80's, Mr. Scaglione's brother, known as ''Frank the Barber,'' was occasionally called to cut the hair of Mr. Gotti, at Mr. Gotti's hangout, the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club, in South Ozone Park, Queens.
Lieutenant Franceschini said that Mr. Gotti had been observed at the Scagliones' shop in the early 80's, before he became the purported head of the Gambino group, but that he had not been seen there in recent years.
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The police said Frank Scaglione has been missing since July 17, 1982. On that day, ''Frank the Barber,'' accompanied by two other men - John Cavallo, 37, of 101-12 101st Avenue, and Eugene Gotti, 40, the brother of John Gotti - had an argument with Raymond Mareno, a bartender, at the 101 Bar, on the corner of 101st Street and 101st Avenue in Ozone Park.
The police said the argument spilled out onto the street, where Frank Scaglione quarreled with Mr. Mareno and shot and killed him. Frank Scaglione has not been seen since the shooting and no one was charged in the case, the police said.
Two men described by the police as members of the Colombo organized-crime family were slain in Brooklyn yesterday by one or two gunmen who strode up to them on a quiet sidewalk, opened fire, leaped into a car driven by an accomplice and sped away.
The motive for the slayings was unclear, but the police said they appeared to be gangland assassinations. Investigators last night were checking the background of both victims for clues in the attack.
The victims were identified as Frank Santora, 51 years old, of 2134 79th Street in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, and Carmine Varielle, 31, of 18 Allen Court, in Port Richmond, Staten Island. Both were described by authorities as members of the crime family named for the late Joseph Colombo, one of the smallest of the five organized crime groups in New York City.
Detectives in the Police Department's intelligence division said Mr. Santora had emerged from Federal prison last year after serving about six years for involvment in the swindling of more than $11 million from the estate of Frederick Lundy, a millionaire Brooklyn restaurant owner who died in 1977. The police said Mr. Santora and Mr. Varielle were shot at 4:22 P.M. outside a dry cleaning shop at 1508 Bath Avenue, near Bay 10th Street, in Brooklyn's Bath Beach section, a middle-class, predominately Italian neighborhood of well-kept homes and small shops on quiet, tree-lined streets. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
No weapon was found, but investigators said they believed a .38 caliber revolver had been used.
A telephone paging device and an unspecified amount of cash was found on one victim - the police did not say which one - and the police ruled out robbery as a motive. Neither man carried identity papers, but identifications were made from papers found in vehicles they had left nearby.
''We don't have any witnesses who saw the shooting,'' Deputy Inspector Charles R. Prestia, commander of Brooklyn North detectives, said last night at a news conference at the scene of the shootings.
But he said that some residents had heard shouts and a series of gunshots, and he added, ''My guess would be that it was an organized-crime assassination.''
The police said one or two gunman had apparently approached the victims on foot and had fired at close range. Mr. Varielle was shot in the back of the head, in the right chest and in the right shoulder. He fell dead on the sidewalk in front of the Bath Avenue Dry Cleaning and Tailoring Shop, the police said. Dark Blue Car Speeds Away
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As the assailant or assailants leaped into a dark blue car and sped southwest on Bath Avenue, the police said, Mr. Santora, who had been shot twice in the body, staggered next door to the entry of a grocery store, G & T Salumeria, at 1510 Bath Avenue. But patrons and employees inside said he did not go in. Instead, bleeding profusely, he staggered back along the sidewalk to an alley between the grocery and the dry cleaners and collapsed there beside a fence. Local residents called the police and an Emergency Medical Service ambulance rushed Mr. Santora to Victory Memorial Hospital, 12 blocks away at 92d Street and Seventh Avenue.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up Medical assistance was given to Mr. Santora in the ambulance and by a team of three doctors and three nurses led by Dr. Ahmed Nafif, the director of the emergency room at Victory Memorial, but the measures were unable to save him. Mr. Santora was pronounced dead about 5 P.M., 40 minutes after the shooting.
Though there was no hard evidence to indicate that the shootings were mob-related, the background of the victims and the methods employed by the gunmen, the police said, suggested that they were contract killings set up by the underworld.
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The number of assailants was unclear, the police said, but one investigator said a witness saw a blue car speed southwest on Bath Avenue immediately after the shootings.
An earlier report said an anonymous caller had told the police the getaway car was a blue Chevrolet Malibu with the New York license plate KFC 260, but the police said that the license number could not be verified and that the account could not be confirmed.
Sgt. Maurice Howard, a police spokesman, said last night that members of the Police Department's intelligence division had identified Mr. Santora and Mr. Varielle as members of the Colombo family. The group has been headed in recent years by Carmine (Junior) Persico, who was convicted last year with other organized-crime leaders as members of a ''commission'' that directed criminal activities. Victim Jailed in Scheme in 1980
The Colombo family, according to police intelligence officials, has about 115 ''made'' members, and 500 associates; the group is based in Brooklyn and Staten Island. Only the Lucchese group, with 110 members, is said to be smaller. The largest is the Gambino family, with 250 members and 500 associates. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
Revival Animal Health® - Free Shipping On Orders $99+ High-Quality Pet Care Products & Expertise. We Offer Pet Care From The Heart. Enjoy Quality Pet Care Solutions At A Great Price | Revival Animal Health® Sponsored by www.revivalanimal.com See more The police had no background information last night on Mr. Varielle, other than to say that he was associated with the Colombo group. They said, however, that Mr. Santora was one of seven men who received prison terms in 1980 for a swindle that systematicaly pillaged an estate of more than $11 million in stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets.
The police did not provide details about Mr. Santora's role in the swindle, and other information on his involvement was not available last night. News accounts of the case from 1979 and 1980 did not mention Mr. Santora's name.
News accounts of the time detailed a swindle against the estate of Frederick Lundy, the eccentric recluse who owned Lundy's seafood restaurant in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. The swindle, according to prosecutors, began eight months before Mr. Lundy died in 1977 at the age of 82 and continued long after his death.
One of the men convicted in the case was Ciro Autorino, who had served as Mr. Lundy's manservant.
Eugene Gold, the Brooklyn District Attorney who took part in the investigation, called it one of the most complex cases he had ever seen, indicating that it involved plans to buy a slaughterhouse and meat-packing plant in Uruguay, impersonation of Mr. Lundy, the transfer of large sums of money to South America and Europe and exchanges of real estate and paintings by such masters as Raphael and Goya.
One day in October 1988, the police found the body of 28-year-old Victor Filocamo stuffed inside the trunk of a white B.M.W. parked on 73rd Street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
At the time, investigators suspected that Mr. Filocamo was killed because of his ties to the underworld, and, over the last decade, three known mobsters pleaded guilty in the slaying. But yesterday, federal prosecutors announced that two additional men were responsible for the mob hit, and charged them in Federal District Court in Brooklyn with conspiracy to murder Mr. Filocamo.
The murder charges were part of a broad racketeering indictment against seven reputed members of the Luchese crime family, two of whom were accused of taking part in Mr. Filocamo's death more than a decade ago inside a mob-connected social club in Bensonhurst. The seven men were also charged with other crimes, from loan sharking to drug dealing to arson.
While the indictment charged the men, Joseph Tangorra, 51, and Joseph Truncale, 69, with participating in Mr. Filocamo's murder, it made no mention of a motive. But investigators said that Mr. Filocamo was killed because of suspicions that he was a government informer. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Cleaning Services Housekeeping Services Near Me Sponsored by Cleaning Services See more
The indictment said Mr. Truncale and Mr. Tangorra were members of a Luchese family group known as the Bensonhurst Crew. It also said five other men -- Eugene Castelle, 40; Lester Ellis, 50; Robert Greenberg, 29; John Castellucci, 43; and Scott Gervasi, 36 -- were members of the group.
From 1987 to earlier this year, Mr. Tangorra, who is known in the underworld as Joey Flowers, and Mr. Castelle, who goes by the nickname Boopsie, supervised the Bensonhurst Crew as it ran illegal gambling dens and loan-sharking businesses throughout southern Brooklyn, the indictment said. The crew has also been accused of attempted murder.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up Investigators have said that Mr. Tangorra's crew was once led by a Luchese captain named George Zappola, who was known to mobsters and federal agents as Georgie Neck. Mr. Zappola is serving a 22-year sentence in a federal prison in Brooklyn where, four years ago, he attempted an unusual scheme to perpetuate his family name. Hoping to have a grown child waiting for him when he got out of prison, Mr. Zappola arranged to have his sperm smuggled out of the Metropolitan Detention Center in 1996 with the help of a corrupt prison guard, court papers show. Although the sperm was eventually sent to a Manhattan fertility clinic, where it was frozen for future use, the woman who was to carry Mr. Zappola's child changed her mind about being artificially inseminated and cooperated with federal agents long enough to derail the plan.
Mr. Tangorra is facing separate state charges in Manhattan, where he was accused in September of bribery, bid-rigging and other racketeering schemes that investigators said siphoned millions of dollars from construction projects in the last two years. The state indictment, which named several union officials, contractors and other reputed mobsters, was the most significant case focusing on organized crime's role in the construction industry in a decade, the authorities said.
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All seven men in the current federal case pleaded not guilty yesterday and are scheduled to appear for bail hearings on Monday. Their lawyers were dismissive of the government's accusations.
''If these defendants represent a high level of organized crime figures,'' said one defense lawyer who spoke on the condition that he not be named, ''then America is safe.''
A man killed another on Friday afternoon as the two strolled down a busy street in the East Village, and the police believe the suspect is an organized-crime figure who testified against two associates in a 1978 murder trial.
The police said the suspect, Salvatore Sinno, 61 years old, shot the victim four times at point-blank range at 12th Street and First Avenue and strode calmly away before being arrested moments later by an off-duty police officer and an off-duty correction officer.
The victim, Louis Santos, 52, was not carrying identification, but his fingerprints were on file with the Police Department, and officials said he had a record of arrests on charges of weapons possession and robbery.
The commanding officer of Manhattan detectives, Assistant Chief Aaron Rosenthal, said the killing was ''very professionally done.'' Apparently a Personal Dispute ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The Children''s Trust This Organization Provides Parent Programs, Children's Book Clubs and More in Miami Sponsored by The Children''s Trust See more
The police said they had not ruled out the possibility that the shooting was Mafia-related, but said it appeared to stem from a personal dispute.
Chief Rosenthal said Mr. Sinno had known Mr. Santos for some time. He said the dispute apparently ''just boiled over.''
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up The suspect, a stocky man in expensive clothing, declined to make statements to the police and refused even to give his name. H Police records showed variations on the spelling of his name and indicated that he had also used the alias Edward Schwarock.
The police believe he is the organized-crime figure who came forward to the Federal authorities in the late 1970's and told them that he had taken part in the 1961 killing of a New Jersey teamsters official. He said he had spoken out because he needed protection from other Mafia figures who wanted to kill him. Witness Received Immunity
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Because of Mr. Sinno's statements the case went to trial. He received immunity in exchange for his testimony, which led to the conviction of the two defendants, Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, described as a high-level organized-crime figure who had ordered the killing; and Harold Konigsberg, the man who had joined with Mr. Sinno in carrying it out. Mr. Provenzano and Mr. Konigsberg were sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Sinno entered the Federal Witness Protection Program after the trial, said Donald Williams Jr., the chief assistant district attorney of Ulster County, N.Y., where the case was prosecuted.
It was unclear whether Mr. Sinno had left or been removed from the program.
A law-enforcement official who asked not to be identified said Mr. Sinno, who was charged with second-degree murder, has a record of about a dozen arrests for crimes such as larceny and robbery. The last arrest was in 1987 on a charge of criminal possession of stolen property.
The police said the shooting took place just before 3 P.M. Friday, when Mr. Sinno and the victim reached the corner of 12th Street and First Avenue.
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The suspect took a step back, pulled a .9-millimeter pistol from his pocket and then fired four shots into Mr. Santos's head and neck, the police said.
He put the gun into one pocket and his hand in the other and began to walk casually away, Chief Rosenthal said. ''He didn't run and he didn't hide,'' he said.
Mr. Sinno was seized by the two officers, and the gun was recovered.
A man sitting in the driver's seat of his stretch limousine parked on a quiet Greenwich Village street was shot to death mob-style yesterday morning by a helmeted man who sped away on a motorcycle.
The police would not classify the killing of the man, Gregory DeCurtis, 29 years old, as a mob execution, but his father and uncle were described by law-enforcement sources as members of the Gambino crime family.
The killer was ''very cool about it, very gutsy and very professional,'' said the Chief of Manhattan Detectives, Assistant Chief Aaron H. Rosenthal.
Mr. DeCurtis was killed across the street from his home at 259 Bleecker Street, a six-story, worn brick tenement from which he operated his one-vehicle car service, W.G.T. Limousine Inc. Witness in Car Not Hurt ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story AARP Do You Suffer from Dry Eyes? Sponsored by AARP See more
Chief Rosenthal said that two men, their faces shielded by the visors of the helmets, pulled up next to Mr. DeCurtis's tan limousine on a red and white motorcycle.
''One guy got off, went up to the window and fired what appears to be five shots,'' he said. ''I looked at the body and the best I could understand there may be four holes in him, three in the left side, upper shoulder area, and one in the back.'' But, he said, it was difficult to distinguish entry and exit wounds.
Another man sitting in the passenger seat alongside Mr. DeCurtis was uninjured in the fusillade of .38-caliber bullets that crashed through the tinted glass of the driver's window. Investigators were questioning the man, whom they identified only as an acquaintance in his late 20's.
About 15 minutes before the shooting, which occurred at 8:20 A.M. in front of Grampa's Bella Gente Restaurant at 252 Bleecker Street and Leroy Street, students in gray plaid uniforms from Our Lady of Pompeii Catholic Elementary School, about 20 feet from the limousine, had been allowed into the school building ahead of schedule because of the freezing cold weather.
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The restaurant was closed at the time. Other businesses on the quiet street include bakeries, fish and meat stores, and specialty shops. Connections to Crime Family Investigators said they were trying to determine if the slaying had been ordered by any of the organized-crime families in the area. Chief Rosenthal declined to call it a mob slaying, although he added, ''indications that one sees here are symptomatic of a mob hit.''
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up The authorities said yesterday that it did not appear that Mr. DeCurtis had a criminal record or was connected with any organized-crime family.
But law-enforcement sources said that his father, Eddie DeCurtis, also known as Ettore, was believed to have been involved with pornography, gambling and extortion for the Gambino crime family before he died of natural causes in 1985.
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And the victim's uncle, Guido DeCurtis, the sources said, was a soldier in the Gambino family until he was shot to death on Lexington Avenue near East 27th Street in 1977.
Few of the merchants and residents of the neighborhood said they knew the victim but the principal of Our Lady of Pompeii, Sister Joyann Gallant, recalled that he was a graduate of the school. About a month ago, he had asked for a tour of his alma mater and ''seemed happy'' as he reminisced about his school years, she said. 'A Good Kid, a Quiet Kid'
''I saw him Saturday morning at church at the 8 o'clock Mass,'' Sister Joyann said. ''I had seen him in church - though on and off - just making a visit or whatever during the week. A couple times I saw him in there just praying.''
Mr. DeCurtis's younger sister, Julie, stopped by the bakery next to his residence and the owner, Vincent Zito, asked her how her mother, Theresa, was holding up. She responded that her mother was hysterical. She later said she did not want to speak to reporters. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
Mr. Zito described Mr. DeCurtis as ''a good kid, a quiet kid.'
Claudia McNulty, a 35-year-old painter who has lived in Mr. DeCurtis's building two years but never met him, said she had heard a noise but did not realize it was gunfire.
''I thought it was somebody closing or opening a metal security grating,'' she said.
Sister Joyann said teachers at the school would deal with the students' questions about the shooting as they came up, especially if they expressed fear.
''I am sure they would reassure them that this is a safe place, here in the school is safe, and you didn't have anything to do with this, and sometimes these things happen,'' she said.
''I don't know what else you can say,'' she added. ''You just want to reassure them that it's not going to happen to them, and that you wouldn't want to get involved with people who would be violent.''
The main suspect in the murder of a Federal drug agent last February was killed in a blaze of bullets fired from a blue van on a Brooklyn street Friday night in what law-enforcement officials said appeared to be an execution by local organized-crime groups.
The death of the suspect, Constabile (Gus) Farace, 29 years old, ended one of the country's most intense manhunts. Mr. Farace was suspected of having killed Everett E. Hatcher, a 46-year-old Drug Enforcement Administration special agent, who was shot to death eight months ago on a desolate road in Rossville, S.I.
Law-enforcement officials said the agent had been engaged in an undercover investigation involving negotiations to purchase cocaine from Mr. Farace. It was the first death of a Federal drug agent in the line of duty in New York since 1972, and it brought one of the largest Federal rewards ever posted - $250,000 - and provoked calls by President Bush for a mandatory Federal death penalty in cases in which law-enforcement officers are killed.
In the shooting Friday night, a companion of Mr. Farace, Joseph Sclafani, 24, was critically wounded. The gunmen fled in the van, the police said. Companion Fired Twice ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The Children''s Trust This Organization Provides Parent Programs, Children's Book Clubs and More in Miami Sponsored by The Children''s Trust See more
Mr. Farace was killed shortly after 11 P.M. in front of 1814 81st Street in the Bensonhurst section. Officers from the 62d Precinct, who arrived minutes after the gunfire stopped, found a man, whom they identified early yesterday as Mr. Farace, near death in the passenger seat of a 1982 gray Pontiac. He had gunshot wounds to the head, neck, back and leg.
Officials said Mr. Farace, who was seated nearer to the van, had not had time to reach for the .38-caliber handgun he carried in a waistband.
Officials of the drug agency said Mr. Sclafani, whom they described as a Staten Island bar owner and ''long-time associate'' of Mr. Farace, fired two shots from his own .38-caliber pistol in an attempt to ward off the assailants. Mr. Sclafani was found on the ground near the car. He was wounded in the chest, back and arm.
Before losing consciousness, officials said, he told the police, ''I was only trying to help my friend.'' Appearance Was Altered
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Residents of the narrow one-way street of two-story houses and low-rise apartment buildings where the killing took place told the police that the burst of gunfire, at least 16 shots in all, had sounded like fireworks. The police said they did not immediately recognize Mr. Farace, because when last seen he had short-cropped brown hair. When his body was found, Mr. Farace had curly hair and a long beard, both dyed red, they said. He was identified about 4:30 A.M. yesterday after fingerprint checks were performed in the Staten Island Medical Examiner's office.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up Mary Cooper, a spokeswoman for the drug agency, said: ''It is ironic that Gus Farace died in the exact manner as Everett Hatcher - sitting in a car, shot through an open window by an assassin in a van. The only difference is he was on the passenger side while Hatcher was on the driver's side.''
Mr. Farace was pronounced dead on arrival at Coney Island Hospital, where Mr. Sclafini remains in critical condition.
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An assistant United States attorney in the Eastern District of New York, Jerry Ross, who headed the investigation into Mr. Hatcher's murder, said there were no immediate suspects in Mr. Farace's death. ''We are still investigating it, but everything would tend to suggest this was a mob hit,'' he said. #30 to 40 People on Case Following Mr. Hatcher's murder, Mr. Farace, who was on parole after serving seven years for a first-degree manslaughter conviction, was placed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's list of 10 most wanted fugitives.
The special agent in charge of the New York office of the drug agency, Robert M. Stutman, made the pursuit of Mr. Hatcher's killer his staff's top priority. Officials said a team of 30 to 40 people, including agents from the drug agency, the F.B.I., the New York City Police Department and the United States Marshal's Service have worked ''full time, seven days a week,'' to find Mr. Farace.
For months, acting on the belief that Mr. Farace had never left Brooklyn and Staten Island, agents used electronic surveillance, canvassed entire neighborhoods and arrested friends and family members in their efforts to flush the suspect out of hiding.
Last month, Mr. Farace's wife and brother-in-law were arrested on charges that they had been part of a drug ring operated by Mr. Farace. Agents said the organization had brought large amounts of marijuana from Texas to New York since 1987. In May, a Staten Island woman, Margaret Scarpa, was arrested for arranging temporary haven for Mr. Farace in a neighbor's home. Pressure on the Mob ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The Children''s Trust This Organization Provides Parent Programs, Children's Book Clubs and More in Miami Sponsored by The Children''s Trust See more
But law-enforcement officials said the most successful tactic seemed to have been pressure placed on local organized-crime families - particularly the Bonnano and Colombo groups - to ''deliver'' Mr. Farace to the authorities.
A police official said of Mr. Farace's death, ''It certainly appears that the mob decided to offer him up.''
''There has never been as intense an effort to put pressure on organized crime, and we have had information that they were indeed feeling it,'' said Mr. Ross, the Federal prosecutor.
At the time of his death in February, Mr. Hatcher, a 17-year veteran of the drug agency, had radioed members of a surveillance team backing him up that he was driving to meet his target, Mr. Farace, at a Staten Island diner.
The five agents who were tracking the undercover operation lost radio contact with Mr. Hatcher, whom they later found dead in his car with four gunshot wounds, including one to his head.
A businessman who admitted participating in a $100 million gasoline tax-evasion scheme and having ties to mobsters was shot to death as he drove his Rolls-Royce in Brooklyn early yesterday, the police said.
After his car smashed into two parked ones in the Mill Basin section, the businessman, Michael Markowitz, staggered out and collapsed, Detective James J. Coleman said. Mr. Markowitz, who would have turned 43 years old on Saturday, was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital.
In 1986 and 1987, Mr. Markowitz, a wholesale gasoline distributor, pleaded guilty to evading Federal, New York State and Florida excise and sales taxes. He agreed to repay $5 million and was sentenced in Federal District Court in Brooklyn to six months under house arrest and five years probation.
As part of the plea bargain, he cooperated with Federal prosecutors investigating gasoline bootlegging and tax-evasion in the New York City area. Laura A. Brevetti, a Federal prosecutor, said yesterday that Mr. Markowitz had admitted being a member of an organized-crime group of East European immigrants in Brooklyn and an associate of Michael Franzese, a captain in the Colombo crime family. Shot at Least Twice ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
Federal agents ''are looking into'' the killing, she said.
Another Brooklyn gasoline distributor involved with mobsters in similar tax-skimming deals, Philip Moskowitz, was strangled in 1987. Law-enforcement officials have said they believe he was killed to prevent him from aiding Federal investigators.
The police said Mr. Markowitz had been shot at least twice in the chest at close range while driving on East 66th Street between Strickland Avenue and Ohio Walk at 1 A.M. Mr. Markowitz, who lived at 455 East 86th Street in Manhattan, once lived in Mill Basin.
Mr. Markowitz, a native of Rumania, came to the United States from Israel in 1979. From 1982 to 1984, prosecutors said, he was one of the chief architects of a scheme that used false documents and bogus companies to pocket about $100 million in excise and sales taxes that had been collected from retail gasoline stations.
A prosecution witness who testified against three reputed mobsters in the killing of a New York City police detective - and then recanted -was found shot dead in the Bronx, the police said yesterday.
The body of the witness, Frank Simone, 30 years old, of 1665 Madison Street, Ridgewood, Queens, was found shortly before 11 P.M. Wednesday near Miles and Balcom Avenues in the Throgs Neck section, said a police spokesman, Sgt. Norris Hollomon. The victim had been shot once in the head, the spokesman said.
Mr. Simone was passing a diner in Ridgewood on Jan. 21, 1986, when Detective Anthony Venditti was fatally shot and his partner, Detective Kathleen Burke, was wounded.Mr. Simone identified Carmine Gualtiere, Federico Giovanelli and Steven Maltese as being at the scene and said Mr. Gualtiere was the gunman.
Federal and local investigators had identified the three as members of the Genovese crime family, and the detectives were following them as part of a routine surveillance. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
VacMaster® Kegerator Dispensers - Free Shipping on VacMaster® Increase shelf life with ARY VacMaster® chamber vacuum packaging machines Sponsored by www.webstaurantstore.com/VacMaster/Equipment See more A 1977 trial ended in a hung jury. During the second trial, in April 1988, Mr. Simone recanted key parts of his testimony, saying he had seen Mr. Gualtiere fire two bullets into Detective Venditti's face. Mr. Gualtierre was acquitted, and the jury was unable to agree on the charges against the others.
All three were convicted last July on Federal racketeering charges stemming from the Venditti killing. (AP)
In a soft voice that showed no emotion, an admitted captain in the Lucchese crime family testified yesterday that he carried out orders to murder several men, including a construction union official.
The witness, Peter Chiodo, appeared in the racketeering-murder trial of Vittorio Amuso, who is charged with heading the Lucchese family and authorizing nine murders. The trial began this week in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
Mr. Chiodo, known as Big Pete or Fat Pete, earned his nickname because of his 6-foot 5-inch frame and his massive weight, which has varied from about 450 to 550 pounds. It was third time in the last year that Mr. Chiodo has testified in an organized crime case.
Mr. Chiodo said yesterday that another Lucchese leader, Anthony Casso, told him to kill the union official, John (Sonny) Morrissey, while Mr. Amuso listened to the order being given in 1989. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Cleaning Services Housekeeping Services Near Me Sponsored by Cleaning Services See more
"Sonny Morrissey had to be taken care of and clipped," Mr. Chiodo quoted Mr. Casso as telling him. The reason, he added, was that Lucchese leaders suspected Mr. Morrissey of cooperating with the authorities.
Mr. Chiodo testified that he lured Mr. Morrissey to a construction site in Jefferson Township, N. J., supposedly for a meeting with Mr. Amuso. Instead, he said, two gunmen were waiting.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up "It was a very secluded, heavily wooded area," Mr. Chiodo said, adding that he took Mr. Morrissey into a small construction office and then went outside.
"The next thing that happened was I heard four shots," Mr. Chiodo continued. He said he and the gunmen wrapped the body in a carpet, dug a hole in the ground and buried the victim. He added that he later reported to Mr. Casso, "The Morrissey thing was done." Testimony from a Wheelchair
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Mr. Amuso is the only defendant in the trial, because Mr. Casso is a fugitive. Mr. Morrissey, who was described as a Lucchese associate in Local 580 of the Architectural and Ornamental Ironworkers Union, was a missing defendant in the so-called windows trial last year. His body was not found until Mr. Chiodo began cooperating with authorities last summer. Besides the Morrissey murder, Mr. Chiodo said he helped arrange at least four others, one ordered by Mr. Amuso and three by Mr. Casso. He said Mr. Amuso had him kill a rival gambler to help a Lucchese associate, Spyredon (Spiros) Velentzas, who "ran an extensive gambling operation in Astoria."
Mr. Chiodo, still recovering from an attempt to kill him, testified from a wheelchair, with his left arm wrapped in a brace and his right leg encased in a cast. His testimony began on Tuesday.
With jury members'eyes riveted on him, Mr. Chiodo described how two gunmen fired 12 bullets into him at a Staten Island gas station last year. He was in gas station to fix his car, he said, when a black sedan suddenly pulled up with two men who shot him. He fired back with a pistol, he said, but the assailants sped away.
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"I was shot, we believe, 12 times," he told the jury, adding that he was hit in the arms, legs, stomach, chest and neck. He said he believed that Mr. Amuso and Mr. Casso ordered him killed because "I had become a liability" after being arrested.
When a prosecutor, Charles E. Rose, asked if Mr. Chiodo saw any other Lucchese figure in the courtroom, he identified Mr. Amuso and pointed at him, adding, "He was the boss."
A garbage hauler who assisted in investigations of organized-crime involvement in Long Island's garbage-collection industry was killed, along with his brother-in-law, in their company offices early this morning, the authorities said.
The police had no suspects and would not say whether the killings of Robert M. Kubecka, 40 years old, and Donald Barstow, 35, were connected to Mr. Kubecka's testimony in a number of criminal and civil investigations of the industry. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been called in to the case, officials said.
Mr. Kubecka, a resident of Greenlawn, worked for two hauling companies: one named for himself, and one named for his father, Jerry M. Kubecka. Mr. Barstow, who lived in Stony Brook, had worked with him for several years. The two were likely to be witnesses in a pending civil case in Federal court that charges many of the Island's garbage haulers with conspiring to eliminate competition and divide the industry among themselves, Federal officials said. Known as a Rebel
The police said that shortly after 6 A.M. today, someone, possibly Mr. Kubecka, called to report a shooting at the company's offices at 41 Brightside Avenue, near this village's main commercial center. When the police arrived, they found Mr. Barstow, who had already died, and Mr. Kubecka, who died on the way to the hospital. The police said they did not know how many shots were fired; no weapon was recovered. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The Children''s Trust Experience the Virtual Support for Parents Sponsored by The Children''s Trust See more
Mr. Kubecka, who took over the garbage-hauling business from his father, has long been known as a rebel hauler who questioned the way the industry is run. Friends and neighbors said his battle with other haulers, and his testimony at their trials, was common knowledge in the community.
In a study for the Rand Corporation in 1987, Peter Reuter wrote that Mr. Kubecka provoked the ire of many members of the industry by refusing to go along with the industry's practice of carving up business and by his work with law-enforcement officials.
The Rand report said in the late 1970's, Mr. Kubecka's company was expelled from the industry trade group, the Private Sanitation Industry of Nassau-Suffolk, after he argued against a rate increase that the association supported. About 175 of the Island's 200 haulers belong to the trade group.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up The industry and its trade group have been the subject of a number of Federal, state and local investigations, both criminal and civil, in the last decade. In 1984 and 1985, both the New York State Organized Crime Task Force and the state Attorney General's office accused the Lucchese and Gambino crime families, the trade group and several dozen hauling company officials of conspiring to control the industry.
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Ronald Goldstock, director of the task force, said Mr. Kubecka's testimony was ''crucial in both developing the evidence and in setting it out for the jury.'' ''The carting industry has been controlled for such a long time that it is very unusual for individuals to speak out against those who were doing the controlling,'' Mr. Goldstock said. Massive Racketeering Suit
Many of the haulers pleaded guilty in the criminal case, and two were convicted on state antitrust charges. In the civil case, without admitting guilt, many of the haulers agreed to pay fines and to provide free trash collection.
Earlier this summer, Andrew J. Maloney, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, filed a racketeering suit against 44 Long Island hauling companies, the haulers' trade association, the Lucchese and Gambino crime families and 64 individuals. Anne Driscoll, a spokeswoman for Mr. Maloney, said Mr. Kubecka and Mr. Barstow would likely have testified in the case.
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The suit, filed under the Federal Racketeering Influence Corrupt Organization Act, charged that the defendants had effectively eliminated competition from the private sanitiation industry on Long Island. In announcing the suit, Mr. Maloney said the industry was run as a cartel ''under which individual carting companies are allocated specific residential and commercial waste collection stops, which beome the 'property' of the carter.''
Mr. Kubecka and his father, officials said, refused to join the cartel.
Mr. Maloney said the Lucchese family and various haulers forced the Kubeckas, in the early 1980's, to turn over parts of their business and to refrain from bidding on contracts. The defendants, the suit charges, threatened that if their demands were not met, they would harm the Kubeckas.
Ms. Driscoll said that it was too early to assess how the deaths of Mr. Kubecka and Mr. Barstow would affect the case.
Down the street from Mr. Kubecka's business yesterday, people working in the automobile-repair shops and stores said it was well known that Mr. Kubecka had taken risks by standing up to organized-crime figures on Long Island.
''If you shoot your mouth off, something's bound to happen,'' said an employee of an auto-repair shop, who asked not to be identified.
A Staten Island man described by law-enforcement authorities as the No. 2 leader in the Gambino crime family was killed yesterday by a bomb that exploded when he opened the door of a car in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.
The dead man was identified as Frank DeCicco, of 1300 Forest Hill Road, Willowbrook, S.I., who became the second in command to John Gotti, reputed head of the Gambino family, earlier this year.
Mr. Gotti took over the Mafia family, the authorities said, less than a month after the previous head of the group, Paul Castellano, was shot to death. Retaliation Suspected
Last night, Federal and local law-enforcement officials said it was most likely that Mr. DeCicco was slain in retaliation for Mr. Castellano's murder or as part of a power struggle within the Gambino family. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
Law-enforcement officials said Mr. DeCicco's death appeared to be the latest in a series of recent upheavals in the New York City underworld as a result of a major Federal crackdown on underworld activities. [ Page B10. ] The blast also seriously injured a man who had been standing with Mr. DeCicco at the time of the blast. He was identified as Frank Bellino, 69 years old, of 219 Cortelyou Avenue, Great Kills, S.I. and described by the authorities as a member of the Luchese organized-crime family.
A woman who was passing by also received minor injuries when, according to the authorities, an ''explosive device'' attached under the front end of a gray, four-door 1985 Buick Electra went off, causing the vehicle to burst into flames and shattering windows in buildings near the corner of Bay 8th and 86th Streets.
The two men were standing on the sidewalk by the car when the explosion occurred at 1:45 P.M., the police said. Lieut. Richard Rosa of the 62d precinct said Mr. DeCicco had opened the passenger side door.
''DeCicco took the brunt of the blast,'' Lieutenant Rosa said.
A police officer, Carmine Romeo, who saw the explosion said a black, mushroom-shaped cloud rose from the vehicle and flames burst from its windows. The bomb blasted a hole two feet wide in the street and shook buildings for several blocks. Bellino's Car Nearby
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According to a police spokesman, Sgt. Diane Kubler, the men were taken to Victory Memorial Hospital, where Mr. DeCicco, who was 52, was pronounced dead. Mr. Bellino was described as in very serious condition, Sergeant Kubler said. The two men were believed to have come to the car from a social club or an Italian restaurant nearby. The police said a white Cadillac owned by Mr. Bellino was parked a short distance away.
The car that was blown up was not owned by either of the men, according to Capt. Michael Julian, another department spokesman.
But law-enforcement officials last night said they believed Mr. DeCiccio had been driving the Buick for nearly a year.
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The car was registered to Angelo Giammarino, 46, of 684 Sheldon Avenue, Annadale, S.I., Captain Julian said. A man who answered the telephone at the Giammarino residence and identified himself as Mr. Giammarino's son, Carmine, said that a car matching the description of the vehicle in the explosion belonged to his father. Carmine Giammarino said his father was at work, but declined to describe his occupation. Method of Detonation Unknown
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up Investigators were trying to determine whether the bomb was detonated by a radio signal, by a timer, when the car door was opened, or by another method, the police said.
In January, law-enforcement authorities said that John Gotti, the reputed head of the Gambino crime family, had named Mr. DeCicco as his underboss, or second in command.
On Dec. 16, Mr. Castellano, who was 70 years old and had led the Gambino family since 1976, and a top aide, Thomas Bilotti, 45, were killed in a burst of gunfire outside a restaurant on East 46th Street between Second and Third Avenues. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
The designation of Mr. DeCicco as underboss was viewed by city, state and Federal organized-crime intelligence analysts as an effort by Mr. Gotti to pacify rival factions in the Gambino group after Mr. Castellano's murder. Mr. Gotti was considered an opponent of Mr. Castellano, while Mr. DeCicco was viewed as loyal to him, officials said.
Last week in Brooklyn, jury selection began in the trial of Mr. Gotti and six other defendants on Federal racketeering charges. It was not immediately clear last night what effect, if any, the death of Mr. DeCicco would have on the trial. Officer Witnessed Explosion
Officer Romeo, who was 100 feet behind the parked car issuing a summons witnessed the explosion, Sergeant Kubler said. She said Officer Romeo pulled both men away from the car, helped extinguish the burning clothes of one of the victims and drove them to the hospital in his police van.
After the explosion the sidewalk, in a mixed commercial and residential block, was smeared with blood and dotted with scattered pieces of charred clothing.
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Sponsored Video Watch to learn more Sponsored by Advertising Partner The police closed two blocks of the street for several hours while investigators sifted through the rubble and work crews cleaned the area. The street near the bomb site is lined by gasoline stations, small businesses and restaurants, most of them occupying the first floors of row houses.
The injured passer-by, a 53-year-old woman who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, said she was on her way to her mother's house directly across the street from the explosion to celebrate the 46th birthday of her sister. 'The House Shook'
She said she was about 50 feet from the explosion, and added: ''I felt the vibrations, then the blast. I never went through anything like it before. It was a terrible, terrible thing.'' She was treated and released from Victory Memorial Hospital. The injured woman's sister, Anna Saburro, said as she stood in front of the house at 448 86th Street amid broken glass and charred pieces of the car: ''We were just about to sit down, have dinner, then share a birthday cake when we heard this big boom. Everything in the house shook, pictures started falling. We all jumped up. I will never, never forget this birthday.''
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Police investigating the bombing last night visited what they described ''a social club'' at 1628 Bath Avenue, several blocks from the bombing site, that Mr. DeCicco was said to frequent.
The police said they confiscated several firearms at the site and arrested Robert Fappiano, 43, of 68 Bay 13th Street in Brooklyn, and charged him with unlawful possession of a 9-millimeter pistol.
The owner of an Italian restaurant directly across the street from where the car was parked said that Mr. DeCicco and Mr. Bellino were ''very good customers'' of his establishment but had not been in the restaurant before the explosion.
Tommaso Verdillo, the owner of Tommaso's Italian restaurant at 1464 86th Street, said that one of his employees told him the car had not been parked there when he parked his own car across the street at 11 A.M.
Mr. Tommaso said the explosion was ''low sounding, but very forceful'' and shook the building housing his restaurant.
George A. Franconero, who had twice given law enforcement officials information concerning alleged organized-crime activities, was shot to death this morning outside his home in a fashionable section of nearby North Caldwell, the police said.
Mr. Franconero, 40 years old, had once told Federal prosecutors he feared for his life, but turned down offers of police protection for himself and his family, according to Government officials.
Donald S. Coburn, the Essex County Prosecutor, said the 40-year-old Mr. Franconero had been shot several times in the side of the head by two men. They were said to have approached him as he scraped ice from the windshield of his car in his driveway at 5 Cypress Avenue.
Mr. Franconero, the brother of the singer Connie Francis, was, for a short time in 1973, a law partner of Brendan T. Byrne in the firm of Telster, Byrne, Greenberg, Margolis & Franconero. Mr. Franconero joined the firm while Mr. Byrne was on the Superior Court bench, and was associated with it when Mr. Byrne returned to the firm and then left to seek the governorship. Testified About Mob Links ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
Mr. Franconero had testified before the State Commission of Investigation on alleged organized crime links to union dental plans and was a Government witness in a Federal investigation of bank fraud.
Authorities said that the two gunmen who shot him had been dropped off about 300 feet from his home, and were seen running from the scene after shooting him with small-caliber weapons from about 20 feet away. They then got into a car that had circled the block and fled, the police said.
Mr. Franconero's wife, Arlene, found him bleeding from a head wound and called the police, but Police Chief William T. Moore said that officers responding to her call found him dead.
The attorney, who was facing a two-to-three-year term on a conviction for land fraud in Morris County last year, pleaded guilty in 1978 to bank fraud charges and told authorities of his involvement in fraudulent loans and kickbacks to officials of Local 945 of the teamsters' union. He received a two-year suspended prison term and three years' probation.
ON THE AFTERNOON OF MARCH 26, Robert Colangelo, chief of detectives of the New York City Police Department, was in his office, posing for a celebratory photograph with a detachment of his men. ''Let's put up a sign,'' shouted a jubilant Colangelo. '' 'Westies - R.I.P.' Make it as big as you can!''
Colangelo had just come from a crowded press conference at which Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan District Attorney, had announced the indictment of 10 members of the Westies, a gang long known to law enforcement officials, if not to the public, as one of the most savage organizations in the long history of New York gangs. The group stands accused of a criminal enterprise involving eight murders and dozens of other cases of attempted murder, kidnapping, loan-sharking, extortion, gambling and drug dealing.
The Westies began to unravel exactly one year ago, when Francis T. (Mickey) Featherstone decided to sing. Federal and state prosecutors had already been investigating the gang - also known to the police as the Irish Mafia - when Featherstone, the Westies' fearsome enforcer, was convicted of the 1985 gangland-style execution of Michael Holly, a construction worker.
Mickey Featherstone, a short, slight 38-year-old with a blond mop and an almost-adolescent expression, had been charged with at least three other murders during the previous 17 years, but he was innocent of this one. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
Sponsored Video Watch to learn more Sponsored by Advertising Partner In the spring of 1986, suddenly facing 25 years in prison, he approached the District Attorney's office with an astounding offer: not only would he lead the prosecutors to Michael Holly's real killers, but he would expose the criminal activities of a gang that they had failed again and again to put behind bars.
THERE IS SOMETHING ALMOST QUAINT IN the image of Irish organized crime, something that calls to mind old movies with Jimmy Cagney lording over a troop of saucy wharf rats. That mythic era of Irish street glory appeared to end with the opening of Manhattan's dark, secretive slums to the forces of development and homogenization. But if the Westies seem like ghosts, they are harrowingly real.
New York law enforcement officials hold the Westies responsible for more than 30 murders during the last 15 years. ''This is the most violent gang we've seen,'' says Michael Cherkasky, the head of the Rackets Bureau of the Manhattan District Attorney's office.
Because the gang, until recently, has largely terrorized the insular world of Manhattan's West Side docks, living off extortion from bookmakers and loan sharks, the Westies never gained the notoriety of the Mafia. But in recent years they have attracted increasing scrutiny from law enforcement officials. Over the last decade, the Westies cemented an alliance with the far more sophisticated, far more powerful Gambino family of the Mafia. During that time, officials charge, gang members performed executions at the behest of the Gambinos, and shared in profits from the mob's traditional control over New York's docks.
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Suddenly, however, the Westies appear to be collapsing under the weight of a series of fratricides and the bitterness of Mickey Featherstone. Working with information provided by Featherstone, the District Attorney's office has indicted members of the gang on charges of killing Holly. The gang's leader and its principal members were charged with murder or attempted murder. The Federal indictments, coming on the heels of the state's charges, marshalled a staggering variety of criminal acts under the Federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act - the same law used so successfully earlier this year in the so-called Mafia Commission case. Between the Federal and state charges, law enforcement officials hope to make the Westies the latest casualty of their war on organized crime.
Already, detectives triumphantly report, the gang has virtually ceased to exist on the streets of the West Side.
''Law enforcement,'' says Joseph Coffey, a former police detective who is now the principal investigator with New York State's Organized Crime Task Force, ''has pretty much taken the heart out of the Westies.''
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Canon PIXMA G5020 Wireless Megatank Single Function Printer-$209.99 Sponsored by Canon See more THERE IS NO HELL'S Kitchen anymore; the area bounded by 42d and 59th Streets, Eighth Avenue and the Hudson River now goes by the genteel name of Clinton. The Irish bars are rapidly being replaced by French bistros; the tenements are going co-op.
Beneath the gentrified surface, however, lie generations of criminal violence. By the early part of the century, when the el spread soot along the rat-infested tenements of Ninth Avenue and the New York Central rattled up and down the median of 11th, Irish gangs were firmly entrenched in Hell's Kitchen.
In those dim days, the neighborhood was in the grip of the Gophers, a misbegotten army of 500 toughs who hid out in basements and emerged to raid freight cars and crack the skulls of an occasional foolhardy policeman and rival gang members. They were broken up by the authorities in 1910.
West Side crime regrouped during Prohibition when, it was said, there were more speakeasies than children on many blocks of the neighborhood. By World War II, when the crime of choice was the theft of weapons from battleships moored on the West Side, the gangsters of Hell's Kitchen were known collectively as the Arsenal Gang. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The Children''s Trust Improving Parent's and Children's' Lives in Miami Sponsored by The Children''s Trust See more
The Irish gangs never had the formal structure or initiation rites of the Mafia. ''The Italians had rules because they wanted to set up a major business,'' explains Ronald Goldstock, director of the Organized Crime Task Force. ''The Irish never got to that level of organization or sophistication.'' Each generation's leader was the bravest or craftiest member of the gang; a member was simply a young man from the neighborhood who chose to pursue a life of crime.
The gangsters, as neighborhood veterans recall, were a Hell's Kitchen cultural institution: they protected the neighborhood and recognized unspoken rules. They were extortionists and bookies, but they were not, in general, hired killers.
By the mid-1970's, the stable Hell's Kitchen in which the gangs had flourished had ceased to exist. Many of the Irish families had fled to Long Island or New Jersey; Hell's Kitchen was now a polyglot wilderness, a slum. A number of the older gang members had left the fold -moved away or taken legitimate jobs. Those who remained were open to challenge from a younger generation, which, perhaps reflecting the decay of the neighborhood, were an exceptionally unstable and violent group.
FEW MEN COULD have been more vicious and less self-controlled than Mickey Featherstone. Born into a working-class family on West 43d Street immediately after World War II, he looks, oddly enough, like a cherub. ''If you saw this guy, you'd swear that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth,'' says an acquaintance of his. ''But you'd hear the most horrible stories.''
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In 1971, for example, a man named Linwood Willis made the mistake of saying to the baby-faced Featherstone, ''You think you're a tough guy.'' The two stepped outside the Leprechaun Bar on 10th Avenue. Featherstone drew a gun and killed Willis. Hours later, the police found him wandering in a stupor, clutching his gun. He was later found not guilty by reason of insanity.
On the street, Featherstone was known as a ''jungle killer.'' He was a Vietnam veteran with a haunted mien. At age 17, he had lied his way into the Green Berets and was sent off to war. ''It's a very emotional thing for him,'' says Jeffrey Schlanger, an assistant district attorney, who has spent hours interrogating Featherstone since last April. Schlanger says he is not sure Featherstone ever went into battle, although ''he talks about seeing people killed.''
Featherstone left the Army with a medical discharge in 1967, suffering from hallucinations and disorientation. For the next eight years he was in and out of mental hospitals. In between stays, he killed people. ''He'd do wild things,'' says Joe Coffey, a boyhood acquaintance of many of the Westies. ''Like he'd walk into a gin mill on the West Side and spray the place with machine-gun fire.'' Mickey Featherstone was a weapon waiting to be grasped by someone shrewder than himself.
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IPSY is Better - Official Site The Only Personalized Beauty Box Subscription: Get 5 Beauty Products Picked Just For You. 1 Quiz. 3 Minutes. 5 Products. See Why Over 3 Million People Subscribe to IPSY! Subscribe. Sponsored by www.ipsy.com See more That man turned out to be James Coonan, now 40. Coonan, who was blond, chubby and, like Featherstone, as innocent-looking as a choirboy, was known and feared on the West Side as a murderer and kidnapper, as well as the bodyguard and apprentice of Charles (Ruby) Stein, a powerful loan shark. Coonan wanted to set himself up as the lord of West Side crime. Several neighborhood thugs had already begun to gather around him. Mickey Featherstone, Coonan believed, was just the sort of strong-armed lieutenant who could help him muscle his way to the top.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE NEWSLETTER: The best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week, including exclusive feature stories, photography, columns and more. Sign Up BY THE MID-1970'S, CONTROL over Hell's Kitchen crime had passed to the mythically named Michael (Mickey) Spillane. A bookmaker, loan shark and murderer, Spillane was one of the last of the old-fashioned gangsters, handing out turkeys at Thanksgiving and paying visits to the elderly.
In 1976, Coonan and his group began killing their way toward Spillane. Three of the gang leader's lieutenants were murdered. On the evening of May 13, 1977, he was summoned to speak with someone in a dark sedan parked outside his home in Woodside, Queens. Stepping out to the street, he was stitched by a string of bullets. The police arrested Featherstone for Spillane's murder. He was acquitted.
At about the same time Spillane was killed, Ruby Stein disappeared. Several weeks later, his torso floated to the surface of Jamaica Bay. Law enforcement officials now say that both the Spillane and Stein murders are the first signs of collaboration between the Westies - as the police came to call Coonan's gang - and the Gambino family.
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Near the time of the killings, Paul (Big Paul) Castellano, head of the Gambino faction, let it be known that he wanted to meet with Featherstone and Coonan. A session was set for Tommaso's, a restaurant favored by mobsters in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.
Castellano offered the two a deal they couldn't refuse. The Gambinos ''wanted to have some say in who was killed and who was not killed'' on the West Side, ''and they were willing to pay for this,'' says Jeffrey Schlanger. The deal they allegedly struck was that the gang would become an appendage of the Gambino family, carrying out approved killings and kicking back a percentage of earnings from their bookmaking and loan sharking. In return, the Westies would enjoy Castellano's protection and some sharing in West Side mob activity. The Westies became, as Schlanger puts it, the Gambino family's ''Coonan crew.''
Every Wednesday, according to Gambino informers, Coonan's group met with Roy DeMeo, a Gambino lieutenant, to parcel out profits from the week. Castellano essentially handed over control of several low-level organized-crime figures to the wild young Irishmen.
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For example, Castellano allegedly ''gave'' the Westies Vincent Leone, a loan shark and bookmaker and the secretary-treasurer of Local 1909 of the International Longshoremen's Association, a union with longstanding links to organized crime. Leone's local controlled employment at the U.S.S. Intrepid, an aircraft carrier converted into a museum and moored at West 46th Street. Profits from no-show jobs and skimmings from ticket revenue were allegedly kicked backed to Coonan.
FOR THE MOST PART, the Westies bore little resemblance to their new partners. Unlike the Mafia, they have never had the sophistication or manpower to run legitimate businesses. The core of the gang rarely numbered more than a dozen men. Most gang members and associates hold union cards, either from one of the construction trades unions, or one of the theatrical unions, especially the stagehands or the theatrical truckers, members of Teamsters Local 817. (Thomas O'Donnell, head of the local, says there is no systematic involvement by the gang in 817's affairs, adding that, to his knowledge, only two Westies are members.) The Westies served as a hit squad for the Gambino family. Several of the dozens of murders they allegedly committed were planned executions. As recently as last May, a Westie member, Kevin Kelly, was sent to kill a carpenters union official who had heavily damaged a restaurant frequented by Gambino associates. Kelly was indicted last August for the botched murder attempt.
But at the same time the Westies were cementing their relationship with the Gambinos and tightening their control over the West Side, they were becoming more and more chaotic, brutal and self-destructive. In 1975, Patrick (Paddy) Dugan, a gang member, killed his best friend, Dennis Curley, after a fistfight. Coonan and Edward Cuminsky, a non-Irish member of the gang, killed Dugan out of revenge. Cuminsky, according to police officials, then paraded through the neighborhood holding Dugan's severed head aloft. (While in prison, Cuminsky had learned to be a butcher, a skill he later practiced on human corpses.) A year later, Cuminsky was dead -hit in the back by a volley of bullets while sitting in his favorite bar.
The Westies' savagery permitted them to murder with virtual impunity - no one would testify against them. In 1978, Coonan and Featherstone were accused of killing Harold Whitehead - for calling a friend of theirs ''a fag'' - in the middle of a crowded bar. One witness committed suicide just prior to testifying before a grand jury in the Whitehead case, and another went completely mute on the witness stand.
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THE PROSECUTORS' inability to make murder indictments against the Westies stick was a source of tremendous frustration for them. In 1979, Featherstone was charged with the Spillane murder, and then acquitted. Then there was the unsuccessful prosecution for the Whitehead murder. In the bitterest loss of all, Jimmy McElroy, who had publicly boasted about murdering his own best friend, Billy Walker, was found not guilty. But the United States Attorney succeeded where the District Attorney's office had failed. Featherstone and Coonan had tipped two girls in a massage parlor with counterfeit $100 bills. One of the girls had seen ''Mickey'' tattooed on Featherstone's arm, and the fake money was traced to him. It was also determined that the two men had been together in Coonan's car, which had been impounded as a result of a traffic violation. In the trunk of the car the police found a gun with a silencer, and a bulletproof vest. In 1979, Coonan pleaded guilty to a gun charge, and Featherstone to counterfeiting. Both went to prison.
Coonan continued to run the Westies from his jail cell. According to an indictment handed up last December (based on information provided by Featherstone), Coonan ordered three other Westies to kill Vincent Leone, the gang's Gambino associate; Coonan felt Leone had cheated him out of $30,000 in bookmaking profits. On Feb. 11, 1984, two Westies drove Leone to New Jersey, pulled over to offer him a hit of cocaine, and shot him in the head. Investigators assume the killing had Gambino approval.
When he was paroled, in September 1984, Coonan apparently realized that the Westies' days as a territorial gang were numbered. Coonan, Featherstone and other gang members had already moved to northern New Jersey. The old life was over.
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''Gentrification may have more to do with the demise of the Westies than anything law enforcement can do, because it cuts off the base of supply of manpower,'' observes Michael Cherkasky, the head of the District Attorney's Rackets Bureau. ''Without these poor, tough boys from the gutter, with that anger and desire, you don't have these kinds of violent people.''
Taking a page from the book of Mafia tactics, Coonan attempted to expand into legitimate businesses. Prosecutors say that he laundered his sizable income by investing in a construction company called Marine Contractors, in Tarrytown, N.Y., a company that is now the object of a joint Federal-state-city investigation into the Westies. (Repeated calls to company officers were not returned.) Robert Morgenthau says that his office is also investigating Westie links to a real estate concern with holdings in New York and New Jersey. Morgenthau declines to identify the concern.
PERHAPS NOTHING would have stopped the Westies had Michael Holly not been murdered. It was yet another Westie revenge killing. The gang held Holly responsible for the 1977 shooting death of one of its members, John Bokun. Fearing for his life, Holly left Manhattan for two years, but returned and found a job as an ironworker at the site of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. On April 25, 1985, as Holly was walking down 35th Street near 11th Avenue, a man stepped out of a brown station wagon, screwed a silencer onto a gun and fired five shots at him.
Witnesses described the killer as short and slight, with light-colored hair. The car was quickly traced to Erie Transfer, the theatrical trucking company where Featherstone, who was making something of an effort to live a normal life, occasionally worked. When the police arrived at Erie several hours later, they found the car, its engine still warm. As they were interviewing employees, Mickey Featherstone sauntered right into their midst - short, slight and light-haired. The evidence seemed overwhelming, and the next day Featherstone was booked. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
For once there were witnesses. The driver of a dry-cleaning van described the sequence of events, and identified Featherstone as the killer. In March 1986, Featherstone was found guilty, and faced a sentence of 25 years to life.
He was shocked. His lawyers, Lawrence Hochheiser and his partner Kenneth Aronson, had always brought home either a verdict of not guilty or a comparatively short sentence, even when Featherstone had committed a crime. This time, he was innocent. What's more, he knew the guilty party: the night before the murder, he was told by Kevin Kelly, a gang member, that Holly was going to be killed. So Featherstone fully expected to get off. ''He had this naive belief that the system really works, in a sense,'' says Hochheiser.
Featherstone concluded that he had been framed by the gang and betrayed by his lawyers. He learned that John Bokun's brother Billy had confessed the crime to the attorney, Aronson, who represented both Bokun and Featherstone. Yet Bokun was never called to the stand. Hochheiser and Aronson contend that the attorney-client privilege prevented them from putting Bokun on the stand.
A week after his conviction, Featherstone called the prosecutors to claim that he had been framed, and he fingered Bokun. With his slight build and a light-colored wig supplied to him by Kevin Kelly, a gang member, Bokun could easily have been mistaken for Featherstone. Once prosecutors conceded that Featherstone might be telling the truth about his innocence, his wife, Sissy, in cooperation with the District Attorney's office, devised a plan to exonerate him.
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Armed with a concealed tape recorder, Sissy Featherstone drew Bokun and others into conversations, sometimes when they came with regular payments for the family - the traditional organized-crime inducement to loyalty.
On one tape, Bokun can be heard enthusiastically re-enacting the hit: ''Boom! I just shot him. One-two-three-four-five. Back in the car. Ten seconds! No more!''
Mrs. Featherstone also got Bokun to state his belief that Kevin Kelly had provided him with the wig in order to frame Mickey, presumably to clear the field of a powerful rival - one of the last moves, perhaps, in the Westies' never-ending internal warfare. Last September, in an extraordinary event, Jeffrey Schlanger asked Justice Alvin Schlesinger of the New York State Supreme Court to overturn the conviction that Schlanger had been so gleeful about winning; Judge Schlesinger agreed.
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FROM THE POINT OF view of law enforcement agencies, everything changed the moment Mickey Featherstone decided to talk. New York Police detectives had been gathering evidence against the Westies since 1983, and had arrested 14 members on drug charges the following year. But Featherstone provided fresh leads, and helped to tie many investigative threads together. The District Attorney's Rackets Bureau, whose performance in recent years had been disappointing, had just been reorganized under a new chief. The Westies became one of the re-formed bureau's first big cases.
The gang, says Michael Cherkasky, was now ''not just a bunch of thugs killing each other, but an organized group that was self-perpetuating, that had much more impact than we thought; and it was a group that we could break up.'' A Westies task force was organized, bringing together Federal and state prosecutors, as well as New York Police detectives and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Working with information provided by Featherstone, another gang member, Anton Lucich, and others, the task force began to gather the physical evidence needed to make solid charges against members of the gang. Featherstone, for example, described to prosecutors the 1978 murder of a loan shark customer, Ricky Tassiello, in Lucich's 10th Avenue apartment. Investigators discovered bullets embedded in the apartment's walls and found dried blood that had seeped between the floor boards.
By December, the Manhattan District Attorney had enough information to obtain indictments against six Westies and their confederates, including the gang's leader, Jimmy Coonan, who was arrested for the 1975 murder of Paddy Dugan. And last month, the District Attorney obtained indictments against four other gang members and associates. Those few Westies, including Kevin Kelly, who are not in jail, are fugitives from justice. Their contacts on the West Side are said to have vanished.
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Cherkasky worries that the forces that created the Westies have not yet played themselves out; a new generation may take over from the old. West Side Irish crime, he says, ''has been going for the last 60 or 70 years. Hopefully, we'll send a message by putting people in jail for long stretches of time. But we're not naive about it.''
William I. Aronwald, the son of the slain Parking Violations Bureau hearing officer, George M. Aronwald, earned a reputation as an aggressive prosecutor and a successful defense lawyer. Both careers enveloped the son in stormy controversies over the last 20 years.
As a state and Federal prosecutor in Manhattan in the 1970's, William Aronwald specialized in organized-crime cases and twice convicted one of the Mafia's top bosses in New York City, Aniello Dellacroce.
Because of his investigations of Mr. Dellacroce, Mr. Aronwald was called as a prosecution witness in the recent racketeering trial of John Gotti to testify about the code of silence in the Gambino crime family. Mr. Gotti, who the authorities say now heads the Gambino group, was acquitted on March 13 of charges that he ran ''a crew'' for Mr. Dellacroce before he died in 1985.
The police said yesterday that were considering the possibility that George Aronwald may have been killed to avenge some cases his son had handled as a prosecutor or defense lawyer. Client in Corruption Scandal ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
As a defense lawyer, Mr. Aronwald now represents a swindler who was instrumental in exposing the corruption scandal at the city Parking Violations Bureau, the same agency where his father worked part-time for the last decade.
The elder Mr. Aronwald, who was 78 year old, was shot to death Friday in a laundry near his home in Long Island City, Queens. Police officials said yesterday that they had uncovered no link between the murder and the racketeering convictions last year of officials and businessmen for rigging contracts to collect overdue parking fines.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up The officials also said there was no evidence that the father was murdered because of his son's background as a prosecutor or defense lawyer.
The younger Aronwald, who is 46, began his law career as an assistant District Attorney in Manhattan in 1967. Four years later, he joined one of the Justice Department's elite units, the Joint Strike Force against Organized Crime in Manhattan. In what was probably his most important courtroom victory, he won a tax-evasion conviction and prison sentence in 1973 of Mr. Dellacroce, who law-enforcement officials said was the underboss or No. 2 leader of the Gambino crime family until his death in 1985.
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Earlier, as an assistant District Attorney, Mr. Aronwald convicted Mr. Dellacroce of contempt for disobeying a court order to testify before a state grand jury that was looking into mob rackets. It was those investigations that led to his being called to testify at the trial of Mr. Gotti. Undercover Operations In 1975, Mr. Aronwald was promoted to the head the strike force in Manhattan and the Southern District of the state. However, one of his primary undercover operations - a joint investigation with a special Police Department unit - of mob extortions and political corruption in the garment center, ended abruptly with few major convictions. The inquiry led to charges and countercharges of incompetence and coverups and a Senate subcommittee inquiry into what had gone wrong.
There were no findings of wrongdoing against Mr. Aronwald. But the Strike Force in the Southern District was dissolved in 1977 and he became chief of the Criminal Division for the office of the United States Attorney in the Eastern District, a post he held until 1978 when he went into private practice.
For the last three years, Mr. Aronwald has been representing Michael Burnett, a convicted swindler, who provided Federal authorities with the first evidence in 1985 of widespread corruption at the Parking Violations Bureau.
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Mr. Burnett did undercover work for Federal authorities in Manhattan and one of his tapes was used as evidence in the trial and conviction last year of the former Bronx Democratic leader Stanley M. Friedman. However, Mr. Aronwald refused to permit Mr. Burnett to continue working for the United States Attorney in Manhattan, Rudolph W. Giuliani, after a dispute over possible leniency and help for Mr. Burnett in his own criminal cases.
Mr. Burnett was indicted last year on a state murder charge in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
An organized-crime gang that authorities say terrorized an Upper East Side neighborhood through murder, extortion and loan sharking was indicted yesterday under a new antirackeetering law.
For over two years, five key members of the gang engaged in violence, mainly in the vicinity of First Avenue and East 60th Street, the indictment said. Two gang members were accused of luring a rival loan shark to a restaurant in February, shooting him in the head and dumping his body in the East River.
The five men were identified as members and associates of the Gambino crime family, which the F.B.I. has said is the largest, most powerful Mafia group in the country. A Casino on First Avenue
The indictment also accused gang members of demanding $50,000 from a landlord who objected to their use of his building at 1122 First Avenue as a casino, of assaulting a merchant who refused to turn over his store to the gang's leader as an office and of demanding four apartments from another landlord by threatening her and her children. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
The apartments, at 338 East 61st Street, were given to the gang or rented to members for about $100 a month, prosecutors said. They had rented for up to $1,500.
Gang members also forced the owner of a Getty Gas Station at East 60th Street and First Avenue to give them an office and allow them to run a valet parking service at the station, the indictment said.
The Manhattan District Attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said the gang raked in about $12 million in illegal profits from gambling, loan sharking and extortion operations in New York City and in Westchester County over the last two years.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up Mr. Morgenthau said the five men were the first organized-crime figures to be indicted under the state's Organized Crime Control Act, which went into effect in 1986 and is similar to the Federal Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization law.
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The act established a new Class B felony called enterprise corruption. Under it, prosecutors must prove that members of a criminal group collaborated in a pattern of criminal activity and that each defendant committed three or more felony violations over a 10-year period. Mr. Morgenthau also said the men were part of a crew ''franchised'' by John Gotti, whom Federal and state law-enforcement officials have identified as the boss of the Gambino family.
''The owner of one store was warned that he was dealing with 'Gotti's boys,' '' Mr. Morgenthau said. ''And he was told that his arms and legs would be broken unless he paid $50,000 and ceased interfering with the crew's use of his property for an illegal casino.''
Mr. Morgenthau said investigators had no evidence linking Mr. Gotti to any of the crimes.
The indictment named Ernest Grillo Jr., 32 years old, as the leader of the crew and said he was a ''soldier'' in the Gambino family.
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A statement issued by Mr. Morgenthau's office described Mr. Grillo as the son-in-law of Aniello Dellacroce, who was the underboss or second-in-command of the Gambino family when he died of cancer in December 1985.
Mr. Grillo, who lives in Mr. Dellacroce's former home at 597 West Fingerboard Road in Todt Hill, S.I., was indicted on a murder charge in October.
At his arraignment yesterday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Grillo, wearing a gray leather jacket and carrying a Bible, pleaded not guilty to a superseding Organized Crime Control Act indictment that included the murder accusation. He was ordered held without bail. #11 Others Arrested Also indicted was Seymour Rand, 57, who Mr. Morgenthau said had been the crew's bookkeeper. Mr. Rand was arrested on a loan sharking charge in October, and the District Attorney's office has filed a civil suit against him to seize more than $1 million in cash and more than $1.5 million in real-estate holdings.
Mr. Rand, who lives at 1264 East 83d Street in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, was accused in court papers of trying to launder or camouflage $12 million for the Gambino family.
He pleaded not guilty at his arraignment yesterday and was released on $200,000 bail.
Also indicted under the act were Michael Scarola, 25, of 401 West 19th Street, who was additionally accused of murder; Nicholas Siciliano, 27, of 2916 St. Theresa Avenue in the Bronx, and Joseph Giordano, 22, who is a fugitive.
Eight men with ties to organized crime were charged yesterday with conspiring to control drug sales at locations in Brooklyn and Staten Island in a pattern of racketeering that included murder, extortion and bribery.
Federal officials said the suspects and two others still being sought made up a drug organization that since early 1985 had controlled wholesale cocaine distribution and street-level marijuana sales at a half-dozen key locations in the two boroughs.
To do so, a Federal complaint said, the group's members killed two drug dealers, beat another savagely with baseball bats, used violence and threats to force rival pushers to pay protection money and paid bribes to police officers they thought were corrupt.
The group sold $10,000 in marijuana a day at Staten Island College and large amounts of drugs at Wolf's Pond Park and Willowbrook Park in Staten Island and in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge section, officials said, and was smashed with the aid of two pushers who turned informer. #10-Member Group ''We dismantled an organization here,'' Robert Strang, a spokesman for the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration, said in announcing the culmination of an 18-month inquiry by the Joint Drug Enforcement Task Force, composed of Federal, state and city narcotics investigators. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
''No single case is going to solve the drug problem,'' Mr. Strang added, ''and we don't want to give the impression that this is going to clear up marijuana and cocaine sales in Brooklyn and Staten Island. But these people are definitely out of business, and it is this kind of case that ultimately will make a difference.''
He said the 10-member group, aged 23 to 33, was led by Gregory Scarpa Jr., a reputed captain in the Colombo Mafia family. Mr. Scarpa's uncle, Salvatore, another reputed Colombo captain, was the first of 10 men slain gangland-style in Brooklyn this year; another victim was a close associate of his father, Gregory Scarpa Sr. Besides Mr. Scarpa, those charged under the Federal Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law were Cosmo Catanzano, Nunzio DeCarlo, Leonard DeCarlo and Ralph B. Russo, all of Brooklyn, and Mario Parlagreco, William Meli and Kevin Granato, of Staten Island. Joseph Savarese and John arlagreco, of Brooklyn, were charged with extortion. #5 Suspects Seized in Brooklyn Five suspects were seized Tuesday in Brooklyn. Mr. Granato and Nunzio DeCarlo were already in jail on other charges and Mr. Savarese surrendered yesterday at the drug administration's offices at 555 West 57th Street. Mr. Scarpa and Leonard DeCarlo were still being sought.
The arrested men were arraigned in Brooklyn yesterday before a United States Magistrate, Simon Chrein. Mr. Russo was released on $500,000 bond and John Parlagreco on $250,000 bond; the others were held pending further hearings.
A complaint by United States Attorney Andrew J. Maloney accused the defendants of ''a pattern of racketeering'' in which ''each committed at least two acts.'' Among the crimes cited were the murders of Peter Crupi, found shot in Brooklyn Aug. 2, 1985, and of Albert Nacha, found shot on Staten Island Dec. 10, 1985, and beatings and oth
Murder charges against a man said to be a major organized-crime figure were dismissed yesterday by a State Supreme Court justice who ruled that evidence suggesting that the defendant had prior knowledge of the crime and had been at the scene was insufficient to try him.
The justice, Jerome W. Marks, dismissed the murder charges against Robert J. Hopkins, a former Trump Tower resident who has been linked by law-enforcement officials to the Lucchese crime family, and against Mr. Hopkins's associate, Alexander Rizzo.
Both men are still charged, however -along with 11 co-defendants - with operating a $500,000-a-week illegal betting ring through 100 storefronts in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Key Evidence Lacking
The decision, released yesterday by Justice Marks at a pretrial hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, threw out the most serious charges in a two-year-long investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. They accused Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Rizzo of ordering the murder of Pedro Acosta, a 37-year-old member of a rival gambling organization led by Cuban emigres. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story
In his 22-page ruling, the judge said that prosecutors had failed to connect the defendants with Mr. Acosta's murder outside a Manhattan restaurant in February 1986 or to explain why the killing might have been sanctioned by either Mr. Hopkins or Mr. Rizzo, the purported co-leaders of the Trump Tower ring.
The judge said circumstantial evidence indicating that the defendants - who had just met with Mr. Acosta in the restaurant - might have been aware of the planning of the murder was simply not sufficient to justify taking the case before a trial jury. Both Mr. Hopkins, who has remained free on $1 million bail, and Mr. Rizzo, free on $500,000 bail, have pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
SIGN UP FOR THE NEW YORK TODAY NEWSLETTER: Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Sign Up Mr. Hopkins's attorney, Michael Rosen, said he felt from the beginning that the evidence had been ''stretched'' to accommodate a murder charge.
''This decision reaffirms my faith in the system,'' he said.
District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said no decision had been made about appealing the order or submitting the case to another grand jury. Conversation Overheard
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In his ruling, Justice Marks specifically addressed one of the key circumstantial planks in the prosecution's case: a conversation between Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Rizzo just outside the restaurant a few moments before Mr. Acosta was gunned down. In that conversation, which was overheard by an undercover detective, Mr. Hopkins reportedly said to Mr. Rizzo: ''Hurry up Alex. Let's get out of here before it happens.''
Prosecutors argued to the grand jury that it showed that both men had knowledge of what was about to happen to Mr. Acosta, who had just left the restaurant after a meeting with the defendants.
According to the charges, several members of Mr. Hopkins's group were also seen by investigators outside the restaurant just before the shooting, at 72d Street and Third Avenue, but the gunman escaped.
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Justice Marks said the purported statement by Mr. Hopkins, while sufficient perhaps to raise suspicion, was not enough to carry the indictment to a jury trial.
''The most that one can infer from the statement made by Mr. Hopkins is that he was aware that a crime was about to be committed,'' Justice Marks said in the ruling. ''Knowledge alone of the pending commission of a crime is legally insufficient to render one either a principal or an accomplice
A convicted drug dealer was arrested early yesterday and charged with the murder of a suspected organized-crime figure who was found shot to death on a Brooklyn street Monday, the police said.
The suspect, Tito Ortiz, 46 years old, of 105-29 75th Street in Ozone Park, Queens, was charged with killing Francis James Burke, 26, investigators said.
Mr. Burke was a son of James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke, who has been identified as an organized-crime associate and as the suspected mastermind of the unsolved $5.8 million Lufthansa robbery of 1978. The younger Mr, Burke has been identified by law-enforcement authorities as an associate of the Gambino organized-crime family .
