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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
