Gang Land News 05 November 2020

[chin_gigante]

End Comes For Ex-Prosecutor Whose Dad Was Gunned Down In Flubbed Mob Hit

William Aronwald, a former mob-busting prosecutor who survived a lethal mob rubout plot three decades ago, died last week of an apparent heart attack in front of his Palm Beach, Florida home.

Aronwald, who convicted Gambino underboss Aniello (Neil) Dellacroce of tax evasion in the 1970s and went on to become a leading criminal defense attorney, was the target of a mob assassination contract in 1987. But instead of killing Aronwald, the inept Colombo family gangsters assigned to the task gunned down his elderly father in a bizarre case of mistaken identity.

The Long Island City native, who often stated that he would "never get over" his dad being killed because a mobster had a grudge against him, never unraveled the mystery of what is believed to be the only time the mob has actually attempted to carry out a plot to kill an ex-prosecutor for simply doing his job.

CarmineAronwald, who was 79 — one year older than his late father, George at the time of his murder — could never fathom why Mafia boss Carmine (Junior) Persico allegedly ordered his killing, ten years after he became a defense lawyer, since he had never prosecuted the mob chieftain.

Persico was never charged with the crime and is said by his attorney to have denied any role in the murder. The feds say he ordered the hit, and Colombo consigliere Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace pleaded guilty to it and served a 20 year prison term for the crime. The motive, according to prosecutors was that Aronwald had "prosecuted members of organized crime in a 'disrespectful' manner." But the feds have never detailed the onetime prosecutor's alleged "disrespect" or who were the victims of that disrespect.

Even though the murder of George Aronwald had all the earmarks of a well-planned mob rubout, Aronwald was convinced from the outset that his father, who was a part time hearing officer for the Parking Violations Bureau, had not been targeted for death by the mob, or anyone else for that matter.

"I don't believe anyone had a grudge against him," he said as the investigation began. "I'm inclined to think it was a case of mistaken identity or someone was trying to get revenge against me,'' said Aronwald. The younger Aronwald had worked in Manhattan as a rackets bureau prosecutor for the District Attorney's Office and later headed the U.S. Attorney's Organized Crime Strike Force.

But for years, as the NYPD-FBI investigation stalled, Aronwald was hard pressed to come up with a viable suspect as the architect of what he knew in "my heart and my head" had to be a mob execution that had been intended from him, he once told Gang Land.

Even after Cacace was charged with George Aronwald's murder in 2003, and prosecutors in Brooklyn stated at Joe Waverly's arraignment that he had carried out Junior Perisco's order in supervising a three man hit team that had killed his father, Aronwald still couldn't figure out what he had done to incur Persico's wrath.

He told Gang Land it was "very disturbing that because someone had a grudge against me, my father's life was cut short." But he noted he had left the government ten years earlier, and had nothing to do with Junior's two Manhattan federal court convictions in the mid-1980s, or with a 1969 loansharking case that the DA's rackets bureau had filed against Persico, a case that he beat at trial.

But in discussing the case with New York Times reporter William Glaberson that same day, Aronwald hit on what several former federal officials — and one current one — point to as the likely motive for why Persico had marked him for death: the 1973 prosecution of Persico's older brother, Alphonse (Allie Boy) Persico.

In The Times, Glaberson wrote that Aronwald stated "he could not figure out what had provoked" Carmine Persico to target him for murder, noting that he had handled only "a handful of Colombo cases" and that while one was against Carmine's "brother, Alphonse," that case, Aronwald said, had "ended with an acquittal."

Sources say that case, in which Allie Boy and mobster Gennaro (Jerry Lang) Langella were acquitted of federal weapons charges on October 30, 1973, was the genesis of the grudge that allegedly drove Junior to mark Aronwald for death in early 1987, after Persico had been sentenced to 139 years following two federal racketeering convictions.

The sources say Persico's anger stemmed from the fact that Aronwald, who was Strike Force Chief at the time, had gotten the FBI to arrest Allie Boy and three others on gun charges as they drove away from the large Persico compound in Saugerties, New York, back on April 24, 1972, a few weeks after Crazy Joe Gallo had been killed in Umberto's Clam Bar in Little Italy.

Carmine Persico, who had begun serving a 14 year sentence for hijacking that January, "was really pissed that Aronwald got the FBI to raid his farm in Saugerties and seize a bunch of guns and arrest Allie Boy," recalled one former federal mob buster.

At the time, Allie Boy, who had been released from state prison in 1967 after serving 16 years for killing longshoreman Steve Bove in 1951 — a murder that Carmine is said to have committed but that Alphonse allegedly admitted under pressure from their mother — was "running the family for his brother," the former official continued.

"That's why Carmine tried to kill him and ended up killing his father instead," said the source, who noted that Persico had "a long memory." It also wasn't the only time Persico angrily tried to take out revenge on prosecutors.

In 1988, a year after the elder Aronwald's murder, federal investigators foiled a separate plot to kill former assistant U.S. attorneys Bruce Baird and Aaron Marcu, the prosecutors who convicted Persico of racketeering charges in a 1986 trial for which he was sentenced to 39 years in prison, according to court records.

Court records regarding the 1973 case have been in storage for decades. But according to two 1972 New York Times reports, Persico, Langella and two others were arrested on gun charges after FBI agents stopped them as they drove off the large Perisco-owned Saugerties estate and "seized a cache of about 50 weapons" in a court-authorized search of the grounds.

The FBI had gone there to arrest Alphonse "for allegedly making false statements" for a bank loan and the search warrant had been granted after agents reported "having seen persons engaged in target practice on the grounds of the farm," according to an August 13 account.

Mathew Mari, who represented Carmine Persico for several years in his unsuccessful efforts to win his release from prison before he died last year, said Persico "aggressively denied" any involvement in the Aronwald killing while trying to overturn his 100 year sentence for bid-rigging in the Commission case as unwarranted and unjust.

"He brought it up while we were talking about how he was blamed for so many things he didn't do, both in court and on the street," said Mari. He noted that in the Commission case sentencing memo, prosecutors accused Persico of ordering the 1979 murder of mobster Thomas (Shorty) Spero and the 1984 murder of Mary Bari, two killings that the feds later attributed to others.

Mathew Mari"I believed him then, I still believe it," the lawyer added. "It never made sense to me."

In addition to Joe Waverly, Colombo associate Frank Smith also pleaded guilty in the March 20, 1987 killing. Smith admitted being part of the hit team that killed George Aronwald as he picked up his shirts at a laundry across the street from his Long Island City apartment at 2 PM. Three months later, Smith escaped his own execution by being late for a meeting with his cohorts in the killing, brothers Vincent and Enrico (Eddie) Carini, who were whacked that night on Cacace's orders, according to FBI reports obtained by Gang Land.

In 2001, Smith agreed to cooperate and fingered Joe Waverly as his mob superior in the hit, according to the FBI reports. Smith also told the feds that in early 1987, after Persico was sentenced to 100 years in the historic Commission case, the mob boss ordered the hit on Aronwald, who was then a 46-year-old -defense lawyer.

In a 2003 court filing, prosecutors wrote that Persico was the architect of the Aronwald murder plot in seeking Joe Waverly's detention without bail. In her ruling, Judge Roanne Mann stated that Smith "would testify" that he, Cacace and the Carini brothers had plotted the murder of William Aronwald on "orders of Carmine Persico, the jailed boss of the Colombo family," and that Smith and the Carinis killed his father by mistake.

The prosecutors wrote that "Cacace and Eddie Carini decided to case Aronwald's law office." But the bozo gunmen mistakenly went to his father's law office in Manhattan, where William's name was also listed in the lobby, where they "identified the wrong target." As a result, the prosecutors wrote, Carini "followed George Aronwald back to his home" in Queens.

"No one was more dedicated to a client than Bill," said attorney Lawrence Hochheiser, who met Aronwald in the 1960s when they worked in the DA's office. "He was a good guy, not a 9 to 5 guy and the most honest and generous person you'd ever want to meet. Over the years whenever I ran into someone who met him, no matter what walk of life, I would hear how Bill helped that person."

"I knew him well," said lawyer Murray Richman. "Bill was always very focused, a very hard working and dynamic lawyer, both as a prosecutor and as a defense lawyer. He was a very serious guy, and he was also a good guy."

Aronwald was laid to rest following a private service on Sunday. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, a son Jeffrey, a daughter Kimberly, grandchildren Max, Henry, Kellie, and Jack, and his sister, Barbara Lasher.

Sometimes Defendants In Mob Cases Go Missing; Sometimes They Plead Guilty When They're Innocent

Turncoat gangster John (J.R) Rubeo and his attorney, Louis Fasulo, went missing this week. Not that they went on the lam, but they never filed their reply to the federal judge who angrily cited Rubeo for violating his order by taking part in a podcast about organized crime with convicted felons.

Fasulo's reply to Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Sullivan was due Monday. But both he and the spokesperson for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office were mum about the matter. They each declined to explain whether the attorney had gotten an extension from the Court, or if he perhaps had filed his reply under seal, without indicating that on the docket sheet, something that lawyers do more and more these days.

We'll try to catch up with Fasulo and Rubeo in the coming days. But we were able to reach John Alite, one of the convicted felons who hosts The Johnny and Gene Show, the podcast that Judge Sullivan was angry that Rubeo was part of without getting permission from the probation department in advance. Alite told Gang Land that J.R., had told him before appearing on the show that he had received permission from his probation officer. "I always ask them that before they come on the show, and he said he had," said Alite.

This gives us a few paragraphs to discuss Judge Sullivan's remarks that contrary to what the Daily News and Gang Land each wrote back in September — that Rubeo stated on the show that he had "framed" Anthony (Anthony Boy) Zinzi for an arson he didn't commit — that Zinzi wasn't framed by Rubeo because the gangster pleaded guilty to the arson in court.

Sometimes in Gang Land, as we wrote back on November 30, 2017, in a column about a guilty plea by the son of Gambino capo Daniel Marino to illegal gambling that Judge Sullivan accepted after refusing to do so in an earlier proceeding, a defendant in a mob case will plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit for any number of reasons.

We won't go into the specifics of that case again, but that is exactly what happened, in Gang Land's view, in Zinzi's case. Anthony Boy was framed, but was happy to plead guilty to conspiring to set fire to a car belonging to owner of a rival gambling club in deal calling for less than five years because by doing so he avoided a slam dunk conviction on federal weapons charges.

During the podcast, Rubeo stated: "I had two guys with me and they threw some gas in the car and they threw a match in it and it blew up." J.R. explained that he did that after Zinzi had told him "as a joke" as they were walking down the street one day, "You know it would be nice if that fucking kid's car burns down."

"It was a joke," Rubeo said on the podcast. "But before I was cooperating I didn't take it as a joke. I wanted to impress these people. That was the mentality I had" and "I blew the kid's car up."

In dismissing the claim Rubeo had "framed" Zinzi, Sullivan wrote that when the "government proffered that Zinzi 'suggested that coconspirators set the car [of the rival gambling club operator] on fire'" during his guilty plea and "the Court asked Zinzi if he disagreed with any of the government's statement, Zinzi responded, 'I agree with it 100 percent.'"

And when Zinzi was sentenced, the judge wrote, while his attorney stated that his client's "only role" in the arson conspiracy was to "suggest it" and "wasn't giving . . . an order" to set it afire and that neither he nor Zinzi ever suggested that "Zinzi was not guilty of the offense or that he had been framed."

"And when the Court sentenced Zinzi to four years," the judge wrote, "his lawyer called it 'a very appropriate sentence.'"

But what didn't come up at either proceeding was that by pleading guilty to arson charges, Zinzi, a convicted felon who is prohibited from possessing a gun, knew he was getting a pass on a sure fire weapons conviction for possessing "a shotgun and a handgun" and "an assortment of ammunition" that agents seized at his home when they arrested him.

Both Zinzi and his attorney were ecstatic with the outcome because the case ended without Anthony Boy being convicted of a federal weapons rap that would have cost Zinzi a minimum of five years, most likely on top of time for gambling and loansharking charges in his case.

Following Zinzi's 2016 arrest, Judge Sullivan cited the seized weapons and ammunition as well as an allegation that Zinzi was involved in "gun trafficking activities" in 2012 when he "allegedly encouraged a co-conspirator to obtain 'at least a hundred [guns]'" to remand him without bail as a violence prone danger to the community.

Dirty Danny Gets COVID Compassion From His Judge, But Not From His Victim's Mom

Thirty years after he lured a longtime friend to his death as a sop to mob boss John Gotti, Bonanno wiseguy Daniel (Dirty Danny) Mongelli was granted a compassionate release from prison this week. His release was ordered by a federal judge who slammed the "Bureau of Prisons for failing to prevent and control a COVID-19 outbreak" at his federal prison in New Jersey.

The decision by Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis to release Mongelli, who has served nearly 18 years behind bars, comes less than three months after the judge turned thumbs down on the 54-year-old mobster's earlier bid to win his freedom. In August, Mongelli argued that the prostate cancer he developed while in prison and had made him a likely candidate to contract the killer virus.

At the time, Garaufis stated that Mongelli had not "demonstrated" a "likelihood of contracting the virus at FCI Fort Dix." But he reversed himself on Tuesday, a day after the U.S. Attorney's Office confirmed an assertion by defense attorney Gerard Marrone that his client had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus last week.

In ordering Mongelli's release, over the objection of U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme, the judge wrote that as of Tuesday, a total of 166 inmates at the Fort Dix facility had tested positive for COVID-19, which was nearly three times the number of inmates — 59 — who tested positive four days earlier, on October 29, "suggesting that the virus has spread rapidly in the last week."

Garaufis noted that Mongelli's crimes — they included the 1990 murder of Louis Tuzzio, a mob associate Dirty Danny had known since he was 13 — "are very serious." But the judge ruled that since Mongelli "has fewer than three years remaining on his sentence" and serious health issues, he was reducing his prison term to "time served."

Mongelli was ordered to serve five years of post-prison supervised release, with the first six months under strict house arrest conditions.

"The court is convinced that Mr. Mongelli faces severe health risks and that he will be better able to access whatever care and treatment he may require if he is not incarcerated," Garaufis wrote. Mongelli' situation, he wrote, was "both unique and unfortunate, and no-rightminded observer would regard his release, at this juncture, as a windfall."

Dirty Danny was ordered to lure Tuzzio to his execution because the Dapper Don was "greatly angered" that Gambino associate Joseph (Joe Boy) Sclafani was mistakenly wounded in 1989 by a Bonanno family hit team.

The Bonannos were on the hunt for Costible (Gus) Farace, whom the mob had marked for death for bringing massive law enforcement heat on wiseguy operations thanks to his execution of DEA agent Everett Hatcher during an undercover operation that year, according to a government filing arguing against Mongelli's motion.

Then-acting boss, Anthony Spero, who had ordered his Bath Avenue crew to kill Farace, "ordered Tuzzio's murder" as a "sacrifice" to the Gambino Family, according to court documents in the case.

It's safe to say that Antoinette Tuzzio, the slain gangster's long-suffering mom, is not happy about the ruling.

"I don't want him to get out; I don't care if he gets the COVID," she said at the close of a virtual hearing regarding Mongelli's compassionate release motion in June. You might count her as one "right-minded observer" who disagrees with the judge's opinion that Dirty Danny's release isn't "a windfall."

[Tonyd621]

Have they released zinzi yet?

[dack2001]

The Aronwald murder motive, to this day, makes no sense. Had to be some other factors at play than an arrest of Carmine's brother on gun charges from 15 years earlier. My guess is its something no one knows about or something the Feds would never allow to see the light of day.

[JohnnyS]

Thanks for posting.

[Adam]

It is still amazing to me that Cacace is free today. Granted he did a decent amount of prison time, but with the number of murders, and high profile murders at that, that can be connected directly to him, normally you'd expect him to die in prison.

[Dapper_Don]

^agreed. Def a contender/if not already for an admin spot in the family

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks for the post.

Can someone post the picture of Mongelli?
Cheers

[slimshady_007]

It is still amazing to me that Cacace is free today. Granted he did a decent amount of prison time, but with the number of murders, and high profile murders at that, that can be connected directly to him, normally you'd expect him to die in prison.

Cacace is very lucky. He did hard time tho. (He was locked up for a time at adx supermax) My assumption is that he had a great lawyer because 20 years for 4 murders is almost unheard of.

[JohnnyS]

^agreed. Def a contender/if not already for an admin spot in the family

Capeci says above he's the consigliere?

[Pogo The Clown]

I think he meant he was Consigliere at the time he ordered the hit.


Pogo

[Southshore88]

^agreed. Def a contender/if not already for an admin spot in the family

Capeci says above he's the consigliere?

Is he not referring to the fact that Joe Waverly was Consigliere when he was convicted? I’m not positive but I am fairly certain that there been a more recently identified Consigliere of the Colombo family since his conviction in 2004.

[JohnnyS]

^agreed. Def a contender/if not already for an admin spot in the family

Capeci says above he's the consigliere?

Is he not referring to the fact that Joe Waverly was Consigliere when he was convicted? I’m not positive but I am fairly certain that there been a more recently identified Consigliere of the Colombo family since his conviction in 2004.

He would've said former consigliere, no?

[SonnyBlackstein]

^agreed. Def a contender/if not already for an admin spot in the family

Capeci says above he's the consigliere?

Is he not referring to the fact that Joe Waverly was Consigliere when he was convicted? I’m not positive but I am fairly certain that there been a more recently identified Consigliere of the Colombo family since his conviction in 2004.

He would've said former consigliere, no?

Capeci does it regularly. It’s annoying and lazy from a journalist, but it is what it is.

[Rocco]

It is still amazing to me that Cacace is free today. Granted he did a decent amount of prison time, but with the number of murders, and high profile murders at that, that can be connected directly to him, normally you'd expect him to die in prison.

Agreed. Cacace is lucky to walk the streets again. His was a player in the 90s war and then some.

[Shellackhead]

A shooter, I wonder how many hits he got during the 3rd Colombo war