Gangland News 5/27/21

[mafiastudent]

The Two Faces Of An Accused Mob Associate: Violent And Dangerous; A Generous Community Member

Gang Land Exclusive!

Thomas ManzoState and federal prosecutors in New Jersey say Thomas Manzo is a violent and vindictive mob associate who orchestrated two vicious attacks against his ex-wife and her new husband. But scores of Garden State denizens, including police officers, clergy, elected officials and a retired police chief have a dramatically different view: They say he is one of the kindest and most generous persons they have ever met.

"He's a valued member of our community," a local police union leader told the court in one of a series of letters praising Manzo.

On Friday, following a contentious detention hearing before Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Paul Escandon and ten days in a county jail, Manzo was was released. He now awaits two trials for ordering assaults by Luchese gangsters against former reality TV star Dina Manzo and her current husband David Cantin in 2015 and 2017.

In seeking to detain Manzo for stalking and terrorizing his ex and her husband for four years, the prosecution cited 300 pages of documents about the couple that FBI agents had found during a November 2019 search of Manzo's office at The Brownstone, his Paterson, NJ banquet hall . The records include one with a "handwritten" arrow pointing to the street address of the home invasion where they were assaulted in 2017.

The undated document "has the address 57 Banyon Boulevard, Holmdel" on it, "and there's a handwritten arrow to the left of that address," said prosecutor Caitlin Sidley. "We don't know when that document was printed, but we can say for sure that is where the 2017 attack took place."

Manzo, 56, was charged in an indictment filed on May 10 with being an accomplice of Luchese gangster James (Jimmy Balls) Mainello in the May 13, 2017 baseball assault and robbery of Cantin and Dina Manzo. Mainello, 53, was arrested in May of 2019 after his DNA was found on zip ties that were used to restrain the couple. He has been detained since then.

The Manzo documents were gleaned in online searches from January of 2015 through January of 2019 through Google, LexisNexis, BeenVerified, and other investigative search engines, Sidley told the judge. They clearly showed that "Thomas Manzo very much cared about David Cantin, Dina Manzo, and their whereabouts" despite assertions to detectives that he didn't, Sidley said.

The prosecutor argued that Manzo's statement to detectives that he "had no interest in his ex-wife or Cantin" when he was questioned about the 2017 armed robbery in February of 2018 "was belied by Thomas Manzo's actions and the documents found in the defendant's possession almost a full year later."

FBI agents seized the huge trove of documents "about Dina Cantin and David Cantin, and even David Cantin's ex-wife" and Cantin's eight-year-old son from Manzo's desk at The Brownstone on November 13, 2019, Sidley said.

The earliest document that agents found in Manzo's desk was dated January 3, 2015, more than six months before the July 18, 2015 assault against Cantin, Sidley said. The report was about "Cantin and his ex-wife," and was obtained by one of three current and former "Paterson police officers who wrote a letter of support" for Manzo's release from detention, she said, without naming the police officer.

"Another startling discovery" establishing that Manzo had stalked the couple, Sidley told the judge, was that during the court-authorized search of The Brownstone, FBI agents also found a police report about the July 2015 assault of Cantin in a Totowa strip mall by John Perna, the Luchese mobster who has pleaded guilty to the assault.

Police never released the report, but Manzo somehow got a copy of it more than "a year before he was indicted" by her office for the armed robbery of the couple, and "seven months before" the feds charged Perna with assaulting Cantin in return for a "free or discounted" wedding party for more than 300 guests at The Brownstone in August of 2015, the prosecutor said.

Sidley told the judge that Manzo also had "two very specific pages of phone records" of a Mainello associate on "the night that Dina and David Cantin were assaulted in their home." She argued that the documents showed a close link between Manzo and Mainello, who have both maintained that they don't know each other, and have no connection to each other.

Sidley said she made the records "available only to Mainello and his attorney, but somehow Manzo had a copy of them in his desk with highlighting and handwritten notes all over them." She argued this showed he was "continuing to monitor his victims" even after he assaulted them and that he should be kept behind bars to await his trial to "keep the victims safe" from further harm. (Lawyer Marco Laracca told Gang Land he did not give the records to Manzo. Our report on that, and the motion he filed Monday seeking bail for Mainello, is below.)

Manzo stooped so low in his efforts to stalk and intimidate his victims, Sidley told Escandon that in 2018, a year after Manzo got Mainello to assault his ex-wife and Cantin, he dispatched a private investigator to scout out the little league baseball game of "Cantin's eight-year-old son in order to locate Dave Cantin."

The prosecution learned that a retired police chief who had sought out the boy's little league schedule for Manzo, "revealed that Manzo stated he already knew the little boy's game schedule, already knew the car that Dave Cantin drove" and that "he already had 'his guy' go to the Manalapan, New Jersey little league field, (and) check out the (boy's) games."

"I don't know anything about Mr. Manzo's claim that he was investigating Cantin to prepare for a lawsuit Cantin was going to be filing against him, and therefore he felt the need to go to his son's little league game," said Sidley. "That would be a new approach for me," said the veteran prosecutor.

Retired Paterson Police Chief Lawrence Spagnola, who wrote that he "never met a more generous, reliable or caring man than Tom Manzo," told Gang Land that he didn't investigate Cantin or his son for Manzo. "There may be someone out there who did that," he said, "but it wasn't me." Spagnola, who retired in 2005, said he didn't investigate Cantin and his ex-wife for Manzo in 2015.

"I did give Tom a letter," said Spagnola, who was a cop for 40 years, and has known Manzo since he was a teenager. "He's always been in the forefront to help people. Tom is like one of my sons. I go way back with the family. This is a family that gives. I am proud to say that I know them."

Detective Lieutenant Mason Maher, in a letter on stationery of the Superior Officers' Association of the Paterson PBA, wrote that as SOA president, his "professional dealings for events sponsored by" the SOA "blossomed into a deep friendship" for Manzo "who cares so deeply for people" and is a "valued member of our community."

Maher said he has "no knowledge" of any research about Cantin and his ex-wife that was done for Manzo by a police officer. "I can only speak to what I know about Tommy Manzo and the good that he has done for our community," said Maher. "That's what I was trying to express in the letter. I don't condone crime, and as a police officer I believe in innocent until proven guilty."

Detective Alex Cruz, the third member of the Paterson police force who filed a litter of support for Manzo, did not respond to a request from Gang Land left at the PBA, where he has been president since 2011.

On behalf of Manzo, attorneys Michael Critchley and Amy Luria argued that "the evidence" linking Manzo to the 2017 home invasion and armed robbery of Cantin and Dina Manzo "is, at best, extremely poor." They noted that federal prosecutors had agreed to bail for Manzo for his 2015 assault and did not move to detain him when he was charged with the 2017 assault.

In addition, the attorneys argued that the scores of letters that were submitted to the Court detailing "Manzo's incredible character," including one from Dina Manzo's sister Caroline had demonstrated that Manzo was "not a danger to anyone."

Judge Escandon, who seemed to put much stock in the fact that Manzo had fully complied with his federal bail restrictions since his arrest in June, and that the feds did not seek to revoke his bail when he was arrested last week, ordered the defendant to have no contact with his victims or members of their families and to check in with the court each week.

Sammy Bull Applauds Unusual Ruling By U.S. Appeals Court For Frankie Loc

Frank LocascioIn an unusual ruling, the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday shone a glimmer of light on the very dim chance that jailed-for-life Gambino wiseguy Frank (Franke Loc) Locascio will get a full blown hearing to determine whether he was wrongly convicted of the 1990 murder of mobster Louis DiBono.

The ruling was applauded by turncoat underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano who has provided an affidavit that backs up his former Mafia colleague's claims of innocence.

In a unanimous decision, a three judge panel granted a motion by Locascio's lawyers to appeal the most recent ruling by Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser that rejected Frankie Loc's claim of actual innocence. Glasser had ruled that Gravano's proffered testimony that Locascio was innocent was not "newly discovered" evidence, as the appeals court had stated, and decided that if it was, it was incredible.

The real issue, now that the appeals court has given Frankie Loc a very rare third crack at a habeas corpus motion, is whether the ailing 88-year-old mobster will live long enough to have a hearing before Glasser, let alone one he can win, and vacate his conviction. The judge has indicated numerous times in prior rulings that he believes Locascio is guilty and should die behind bars.

But Gravano, who helped sink Mafia boss John Gotti when he testified for the government in the mob trial of the century, said he was optimistic that he would be able to convince Glasser that Frankie Loc was innocent if the judge conducted a hearing on the issue.

Salvatore Gravano"I'm glad to hear that Judge Glasser, who I always regarded as a brilliant judge and a good person, may have to conduct a hearing," Gravano said when Gang Land told him about yesterday's appeals court ruling.

"I look forward to the opportunity to tell him what I know about this in court," said Gravano, who stated in a two page declaration in 2018 that Locascio had nothing to do with the planning or the decision to whack DiBono and had, in fact, opposed the decision by Gotti to kill DiBono for "refusing to come in when I called."

"I think he knows that I never lied," The Bull continued. "I'm not lying now, nor did I ever. There's nothing in it for me to lie. I believe that John Gotti dumped me, and Frankie Locascio too, and I think the judge knows that."

John threatened the lawyers and told them not to ask me any questions about the Louie DiBono situation," Gravano continued. "He knew I would tell the truth; he knew my truthful testimony would probably clear Frankie. The judge knows that," he said.

"He heard this before, at hearings when the lawyer, I don't remember his name, came in and said that in court. (It was Thomas Harvey, as Gang Land wrote back in 2005.) So all I'm doing is telling the truth, and trying to fix something bad that John Gotti did, not to me, but to Frankie Locascio. He's 88 years old. I don't see what the big deal is to let him go home and die."

It's a big deal for the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Office, which will undoubtedly argue that Judge Glasser's ruling is correct. And it's still a big deal for Glasser, as he has indicated in all his rulings on the issue.

In a blistering 28-page ruling in November, when Glasser rejected Locascio's motion for compassion, the judge mocked Gravano's claim that Frankie Loc was innocent of the murder as "disingenuous," and wrote that The Bull's "newly discovered evidence" was something he "created" either by "reading (Locascio's) mind or divine enlightenment."

Prosecution Wants To Bounce Manzo's Former Lawyer from The Case

A hotly discussed issue at the detention hearing of Thomas Manzo was whether attorney Marco Laracca gave Manzo, a friend and former client, so-called "discovery material" he received as the lawyer for Luchese associate James (Jimmy Balls) Mainello that was found by the FBI two years ago during a search of Manzo's desk at The Brownstone.

Laracca, who was not a party in the Friday session, told Gang Land he had heard the assertion by Monmouth County prosecutor Caitlin Sidley, but insisted that it never happened. "I don't know how he got [the records], but I know I didn't give them to him," he said, adding that he expects the prosecutor to seek to disqualify him from the case.

Sidley left no doubt that she believes that Manzo got the documents from Laracca. To make that point, she told Judge Paul Escandon that FBI agents had recovered "two very specific pages of phone records" from Manzo's desk in November of 2019. The records, she said, "had only been made available to James Mainello and his attorney" as discovery material a few months earlier.

But the prosecutor stated during the court session that she was not alleging any wrongdoing by the lawyer. She had raised the issue, Sidley said, to counter the long-stated claim that "Mainello has absolutely no connection, both physically or through any other parties, with Mr. Manzo."

"That is the reason" she placed that information on the record, Sidley said. "It was not done as a personal matter," the prosecutor insisted, although she indicated that she was likely to move to disqualify Laracca from the case for "conflict of interest" reasons in the coming weeks.

"I don't feel the need to get into that right now," said Sidley, who sought to oust Laracca from the case for conflict of interest reasons last year. "But there is more information involving Mr. Laracca's involvement with Mr. Manzo that will be presented at the proper time when it is our obligation to do so," she said.

At another point during the hearing, the judge asked Manzo lawyer Amy Luria if he "should be concerned" that the prosecution had inferred that Laracca had an improper relationship with her client.

"Mr. Manzo did not retain Mr. Laracca to represent Mr. Mainello. Period. End of story," she said, before continuing. "He hasn't paid his legal fees. He doesn't represent him. If they want to disqualify Mr. Laracca, that's their business, not our business," she said.

If that happened, Luria said, she might decide "to call Mr. Laracca" as a trial witness, which ironically is one of the reasons that Sidley argued that Laracca should be ousted as Mainello's lawyer last year. In moving to disqualify him, the prosecutor stated she wanted to call him as a witness to counter Mainello's claim that he had no ties to Manzo.

But the judge ruled that she had telephone and other records to get that evidence before the jury, and not deprive Mainello of the lawyer he chose to represent him.

Undaunted by the raging controversy about his role in the case, Laracca cited Escandon's release of Manzo on Monday and asked the judge to release Jimmy Balls and put him on equal footing with Manzo as they await their trial. If not, the lawyer wrote, the judge should sever Mainello from the case "so that he could proceed to trial as soon as the Court's open up for same," noting that his client has already been behind bars more than two years since his arrest.

"The undisputable reality," the lawyer wrote, is that if he is not released from prison or severed from the case, his client is likely to be behind bars for "closer to three and a half to four years" due to the courtroom backup caused by the COVID pandemic.

Ironically, Manzo's lawyers sounded like prosecutors when they compared their client's qualifications for release with Jimmy Balls. "The quality of evidence against Mr. Mainello was significant," and unlike him, they wrote, "Manzo has no history of violence, no criminal convictions, has never before been incarcerated, has significant ties to the community, (and) is not eligible" for a sentence of life imprisonment if he is convicted at trial.

[RamshackleMan]

Thank you for posting.

[Chopper]

Thanks for the post

[johnny_scootch]

Only 2 stories about Manzo! I know everyone was hoping for a few more.

[Adam]

And another Locascio article.

[JohnnyS]

Thanks for posting.

[Amershire_Ed]

Thanks for sharing

[SonnyBlackstein]

Thanks for the post.

I hate how Capeci uses terminology.

Is Manzo considered an 'associate'? IE on record? Or does Capeci mean he has an association, through his actions in employing Perna, to the Lukes?

[Southshore88]

Thanks for posting

[Pmac2]

thanks for posting. capeci isnt the same since the courthouse clousures cause of covid. the well is dry. only thing hes getting is scoops from the defense lawyers i think.

[Pmac2]

frank loc isnt getting out. that judge who is pretty fair just doesnt belive frank locs not guilty. 31yrs in dammm. only bobby manna been in longer with guys from the mafia angle

[BobbyPazzo]

Spags stepping up big for Tommy ... spags is a well respected guy. Very powerful.

[mafiastudent]

thanks for posting. capeci isnt the same since the courthouse clousures cause of covid. the well is dry. only thing hes getting is scoops from the defense lawyers i think.

There really isn't anything happening even with remote proceedings. A lot of sentencings have been pushed to July like Campos, Martino, etc. I think Capeci mentioned in a column that Amato's sentencing had been pushed back as well. And other than appeal stuff, there's really nothing else.