Gangland June 8th 2023

[Dr031718]

Grim Reaper Calls John McNally, A Legendary NYPD Detective, And A Legendary Private Eye


In 1989, when Venero (Benny Eggs) Mangano was told by his boss, Vincent (Chin) Gigante, to deal with a budding legal problem involving his son, the Genovese family underboss knew what to do. He did the same thing that many topflight lawyers across the country often did during the 1970s, '80s, and '90s: He called John McNally, a legendary private investigator for help.

Those calls now go sadly unanswered. McNally cashed in his chips last week after losing a battle with cancer. He was 89.

In his day, McNally was a remarkable cop. He became the youngest NYPD officer to become a first grade detective after he arrested the legendary jewel thief known as "Murph the Surf" in 1964 for stealing the 563-carat Star of India sapphire from the Museum of Natural History. His exploits only grew over the next three decades after he became a private investigator.

His many high-profile cases included the Watergate break-in, O.J. Simpson, Patty Hearst, Claus von Bulow, and the Bernhard Goetz cases.

"He was a legend in a lot of circles, a good guy and a good friend," said Stan Kochman, a retired private eye who worked with McNally for decades. "He worked for a lot of lawyers and they all loved him. All the meetings I attended with him over the years, with people from all walks of life, John was always the smartest guy in the room."

Kochman, and several lawyers who McNally worked for, told Gang Land that he would always show the police report he had obtained to witnesses, then ask them if they had said what it claimed they said. "To get a little, sometimes you got to give a little," McNally would say. The tactic enabled him to learn if the witness had any "good stuff" and to ascertain the "bad stuff" that his lawyer had to confront.

"John had a non-threatening demeanor, even though he was an ex-New York City Irish cop who looked like he was right out of central casting," said Boston-based attorney T.K. Akner, a former law partner of F. Lee Bailey, who teamed up with McNally in 1972, a year after he retired with 22 NYPD commendations.

"I started out at the top with Lee way back when," McNally told Gang Land a few years ago when we chatted briefly about some of the high-powered lawyers he'd worked for, including James LaRossa, Gerald Shargel, Gustave Newman, Barry Slotnick and Alan Dershowitz.

"John would talk very causally to people, whether he ponied up to them at a bar, their office, or home," said Akner. "And they would talk to him. He was very effective, had a great investigative mind. He had a good radar for bullshit, but he wouldn't say you're bullshitting me," he continued. "He would listen, let them talk, and usually he would find out enough information to verify what had really happened and discredit what the witness would say."

McNally's fame as the NYPD detective who arrested Jack (Murph the Surf) Murphy for the Star of India heist, was a boon to his follow-up career as a private investigator.

Whenever, we would meet the head of security somewhere, the guy would look at him and say, 'John McNally, I know you,'" said Akner, recalling that McNally's friendship with an ex-NYPD detective had a profound effect on him when the Bailey team flew into the West Palm Beach airport after a short trip to the Caribbean.

"The head of security told me I had to step aside to be interrogated and strip searched," he said. "I didn't know what the hell was going on until I saw John in the corner laughing," said Akner. "He loved being a prankster, did that constantly. He was a blast," said Akner, but he was "invaluable to us" and "was so good at his job" because "he worked so hard."

Kochman agreed that McNally was "quick-witted" and "could always figure out what was really going on. He stated that while "John really worked hard, sometimes he could be a real pain in the ass. We'd be working for days on something, and looking to take a break but John was intense about his work."

"John was one of a kind," Kochman continued, "but that is not to say that with all the work he did, that he ever neglected his family. He was a very special guy, and they were special to him, and they were always on his mind," said Kochman. "He never neglected his family."

My father was the epitome of a family man," said his daughter Lynn. "He was all about family," she said, after first declining to comment. "My dad was a Navy man," she told Gang Land with a chuckle. "He taught me that loose lips sink ships and not to have diarrhea of the mouth."

"We were part of his team when he was a detective, and we became part of his team when he went private," she said. "(My sister) Deborah was like his secretary," Lynn continued. "We grew up in Brooklyn, and family was always important," she said, noting that her dad would often take her and her siblings on outings into what was "the city" to Brooklynites, Manhattan.

"One day," she said, "he sees one of the bad guys he's been looking for a long time in the Automat. So he tells us – It was just Deborah and I that were with him that day, I was about five or six – 'Get down in the back seat of the car.' He goes in the doorway, he arrests the guy, he calls the cops, he gets back in the car and we go on our merry way."

And a year or two later, when McNally arrested Murph the Surf, "the courts were closed or something, so he brought him home for dinner, and my mother cooked dinner for him," Lynn recalled. "And I sat on his lap," she continued, "So I get up and go into the kitchen, I go, 'Ma, don't worry, he's not a bad guy, he's got the cross of Jesus around his neck.'"

When Gang Land voiced disbelief, Lynn stated, "Do you think I could make up a story like that?" and insisted the story was true. "Yep, it's true" said an attendee at McNally's two-day wake Thursday and Friday, adding, "My understanding," he said, "is that Murphy stayed overnight, after John told him he'd find him and shoot him if he escaped."

Eight years later, F. Lee Bailey, who'd been hailed as "the shiniest new star in the criminal law field" by the New York Times after winning an acquittal at the murder retrial of Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Ohio doctor whose case inspired the TV series and the movie, The Fugitive, hired the recently retired McNally as a private investigator for a murder trial.

Bailey had heard that prosecutors were planning to conduct a mock trial proceeding in an empty courtroom over the weekend to prepare the witness for trial, and asked McNally to check it out. The ex-cop posed as a janitor, and while mopping the courtroom, saw the witness being questioned. That kind of creative approach to his job made the duo a formidable team over the next 30 years, until Bailey was disbarred in 2002.

They teamed up in a 1993 murder case against Gambino family hitman, Joseph Watts, as well as the trials of Patty Hearst and O.J. Simpson.

In 1994, Bailey, and McNally, who rarely spoke to the press, lashed out at a Time Magazine story about the Simpson case that cited two Brooklyn mob cases in which McNally had been retained as a P.I. The story stated that the feds had alleged that McNally was a "confidant" to Gene Gotti and other Gambino family mobsters who were accused of heroin trafficking.

"If John were a confidant of the mob, I wouldn't be introducing him to any of my clients," said Bailey. "If I work for five different lawyers, am I the confidant of five different defendants?" asked McNally, who answered: "No. It's because of the lawyers I work for."

In 1991, prosecutors asked Judge Reena Raggi to bar McNally from serving as a court appointed PI for Bonanno soldier Thomas (Tommy Karate) Pitera, who faced the death penalty. The reason, they claimed, was because McNally had tried to help the Gambinos learn if the home of a wiseguy was bugged and had "thus served as a resource for determining the corruptness of potential conspirators."

Attorneys David Ruhnke and Mathew Mari objected, arguing that as a candidate for capital punishment, Pitera was entitled to a court-appointed PI of his choice. And in a letter to Raggi, McNally argued that he had merely recommended a colleague for a "debugging assignment, something we and anyone familiar with the laws of this country know is not illegal."

But Raggi ousted McNally, according to Mari, so "she and the government could sleep better at night." That infuriated the ex-detective, recalled Mari and another attendee at McNally's wake. McNally sent an angry letter to Raggi for characterizing him as a mob investigator when he had spent most of his life as a decorated police officer and a private investigator for clients who included Patty Hearst, von Bulow, Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan and President Nixon.

John "treasured" the reply letter the judge sent him that merely stated she was "in receipt of your letter," said one McNally pal.

Over the years, McNally's clients won some cases, and they lost some too. But McNally came through for Benny Eggs Mangano in 1989, when cops were looking to arrest Gigante's son, Vincent Esposito, for assaulting a woman at Wo Hop in Chinatown on May 14, 1989, the night he graduated from NYU.

McNally located the woman, and during a visit by him and attorney Michael Pollack, she agreed to accept $7000 for pain and suffering she endured during what she described as a "civil altercation" that she did not want to pursue criminally.

From my perspective," said Mari, who met McNally in 1982, "John was the greatest man who ever lived, and the best friend that a man can have. I know those words sound too strong, too powerful, but no words can be too strong to describe John. People who knew John, know those words are not an exaggeration."

Following a well-attended wake at the Bedell-Pizzo Funeral Home in Staten Island, and a funeral mass at nearby St. Charles Church, McNally was laid to rest at the Resurrection Cemetery on Staten Island.

In addition to daughters Lynn and Deborah, McNally is survived by his daughter Eileen, six grandchildren, Justin, John-Charles, John-Vincent, Elaine, Trevor and Delia, two great-grandsons, Ethan and Owen, a sister, Emily, and many nieces and nephews.

To Catch A Thief — Times Five: Mob-Tied Armed Robbery Crew Nabbed In Jewel Heists

A quintet of ex-cons who allegedly grabbed $2 million in diamonds and gems during a pair of brazen early morning gunpoint stickups at Manhattan jewelry stores were rounded up by the feds this week.

The crew, who collectively have dozens of prior arrests, were led by a veteran Genovese mobster who killed a grand jury witness 33 years ago while he was toiling for the Luchese crime family, Gang Land has learned.

But their tools of trade were handguns, not hammers. The duo simply walked into the stores, threatened employees, and walked out both times with about $1 million in jewelry.

In the first caper, on January 3, DiPietro, 66, pushed open a lobby door entrance of Bayco Jewels on Madison Avenue, pointed a handgun at an employee who was about to place $1 million in diamonds into a showcase and said, "Give it to me." Sellick, 67, walked in right behind the mobster, and shouted, "Get in the closet," according to a complaint by NYPD detective Stephen Jones.

The duo reversed their roles in the May 20 robbery of a Chinatown jewelry store on Elizabeth Street. "This time," prosecutors Justin Horton and Alexandra Messiter stated in a detention memo, "Sellick, wearing a black hood over his head, pulled out a gun. He ordered the store's occupants to the ground while DiPietro rifled through a tray of jewelry and wrested it from its display case."

DiPietro was a Luchese associate back in 1990 when he took part in the execution murder of a 23-year-old victim, for which he later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 19 years. Sources say that after his release from prison in 2016, he switched mob clans and was inducted into the Genovese family. Sellick, his alleged gun-toting cohort, was released from prison a year earlier after his own 19-year-bid for a series of armed bank robberies.

But the Chinatown robbery didn't go as smoothly.

DiPietro and Sellick fled into a getaway car driven by a fifth member of the team, Samuel Sorce, 25, of Florham Park, NJ. But the car got quickly stuck in traffic, so they jumped out while it was still on Elizabeth Street, stuck in traffic, and managed to escape in a pickup truck driven by Spagnuolo, who was waiting nearby, the prosecutors wrote.

Sorce, who allegedly supplied two of the three cars the quintet used that day, after placing stolen license plates on them, tried to drive away as police responded to the robbery and gave chase, the prosecutors wrote. The frantic wheel man crashed the car and abandoned it a few minutes later on Montgomery Street. He then tried to escape on foot, racing through the Lower East Side streets like the famous chase scene in the 1948 black and white classic, The Naked City.

He did somewhat better than the culprit in that thriller who was nailed climbing the towers of the Williamsburg Bridge. "Minutes later," the prosecutors wrote, Sorce "was stopped by police officers who had not seen him ditch the car and knew only that he appeared suspicious." He was released, but not before the cops "took a clear photograph of his face" which along with vehicle registrations that tied him to the getaway cars, established that he was involved in the robbery.

Cerchio, a longtime Gambino associate was allegedly spotted at the scenes of the Chinatown robbery with both DiPietro and Sorce. He was also seen with DiPietro on the day of the Bayco robbery as well as the day before when the duo and Spagnuolo "cased the site," the prosecutors wrote.

While casing the Madison Avenue site on January 2, they wrote, Cerchio "wore the orange construction jacket that DiPietro would wear during the robbery the next day."

All five defendants were detained without bail. Preliminary hearings for the quintet, who are charged in two separate complaints, are set for July 6.

k"This is a terrible case of mistaken identity," said Sellick's attorney, Gerald McMahon. "There is no way my client can be on Madison Avenue when he is hard at work painting the Verrazano Bridge," the lawyer told Gang Land. "He makes $55 an hour painting bridges. He doesn't need to be involved in heists on Madison Avenue."

DiPietro's arrest reminded his lawyer, Mathew Mari, of Peter Lorre's famous quote in Casablanca.

"They were under pressure to make an arrest, so they decided to 'round up the usual suspects' when they spotted my client looking for construction work near the scene of the crime," Mari told Gang Land.

Attorneys for the other defendants declined to comment, or did not return calls for comment.

Ivy League Professor Says New Jersey Wiseguy Wronged By The Law

Lawyers for Luchese mobster Martin Taccetta who is serving a life sentence in a New Jersey state prison in Rahway say that prosecutors hid FBI records from him during his 1993 trial that would have helped back up his alibi for a 1984 murder. The alibi? He was at the dentist.

On its face, the blockbuster accusation — backed up by a newly discovered FBI analysis — that Taccetta has come up with proof that he was framed for the 1984 murder doesn't matter much since he was acquitted of the killing at his 1993 trial. But it matters a lot to Taccetta, his lawyers say, since the murder charge was considered by the judge who gave him life after he was found guilty of two counts of extortion.

Under a provision of New Jersey state law that is similar to federal procedures that allow judges to sentence defendants for acquitted conduct, Taccetta's Ocean County Superior Court Judge had sentenced him to a life term without parole eligibility for 30 years.

Taccetta has claimed from Day 1 he was having dental surgery on June 12, 1984. The dentist’s office was more than an hour's drive away from where mob connected contractor Vincent (Jimmy Sinatra) Craparotta was bludgeoned to death with a golf club. But when his then-defense lawyer discovered that the dentist's records obscured the time of the procedure, and his client's cash payment of $175, he opted not to pursue an alibi defense, reasoning that jurors would view it as not credible.

In their motion for a new trial, lawyers Marco Laracca and Steven Duke say they have obtained evidence that prosecutor Robert Carroll, and investigators Paul Smith and Ronald Donohue secretly obtained an FBI analysis showing that Taccetta's accurate and favorable dental records had been altered — a fact never disclosed to the defense.

According to the court filing, prosecutor Carroll requested an analysis of the dental records after learning about the alibi defense that Taccetta was considering. In their papers, Laracca and Duke write that Carroll "requested an analysis of them to ascertain if and how they had been altered." They add that Carroll "expressed his concern (that) entries regarding the key date, June 12, 1984, may indeed have been altered in some manner" and that "the date and time" of Taccetta's appointment that day "may have been tampered with."

Laracca and Duke wrote that even though the FBI lab returned the results of its analysis to Carroll's investigators a week after the trial began on June 2, 1993, and nine weeks before the trial ended, those records were never shared with the defense.

Those records, the appeal lawyers argue, represented potentially favorable Brady material and should be the basis for a new trial, as well as a hearing to determine whether one of Carroll's investigators had altered the dental records.

"The suppression of this evidence was a blatant violation of" the prosecution's obligation to turn over favorable info to the defense, they wrote, "because the FBI lab's restoration of the original dental records supported defendant's alibi and the alteration of those records was a criminal obstruction of justice."

"If a law enforcement member of the prosecution team defaced the dentist's records," Laracca and Duke wrote, "it casts into doubt every bit of evidence offered by the state, much of which would have been developed by the same agent or agents who falsified the exculpatory evidence."

Duke, a retired Yale Law School professor, has claimed for decades that Taccetta, 72, was framed by New Jersey and federal law enforcement officials who have covered up the frame for more than a quarter-century. Except for a three-year respite when Duke helped win a reversal of his conviction which was later restored, Taccetta has been behind bars for more than 27 years.

Duke credits the FBI with accurately finding that his client's dental records were altered, most likely by an investigator who obtained them from Taccetta's dentist in 1993. But he maintains that the FBI has had information in its files for decades that would have cleared Taccetta of the Craparotta murder, which taints the state of New Jersey's entire case against him.

"Several years before the 1993 trial," Duke told Gang Land, "the FBI prepared a report that exonerated Taccetta and named the actual alleged killers. An unredacted copy, revealing the names, has never been disclosed and I will be seeking to obtain it in forthcoming motions."

[Shellackhead]

Thanks for posting

[AntComello]

Thanks for posting…that robbery crew is toast.

[AntComello]

A made genovese guy doing broad day jewelry heists in Manhattan. Gotta love it.

[JohnnyS]

Thanks for posting.

[JohnnyS]

You missed this part of the article.

"Wiseguy Frank (Skip) DiPietro, and cohort Michael Sellick, a son-in-law of Genovese soldier Anthony (Rom) Romanello, dressed like construction workers for the robberies, the feds say."

[DonPeppino386]

Thanks for posting.

[TommyNoto]

You missed this part of the article.

"Wiseguy Frank (Skip) DiPietro, and cohort Michael Sellick, a son-in-law of Genovese soldier Anthony (Rom) Romanello, dressed like construction workers for the robberies, the feds say."

Isn’t Rom a captain of Queens crew

[Wiseguy]

You missed this part of the article.

"Wiseguy Frank (Skip) DiPietro, and cohort Michael Sellick, a son-in-law of Genovese soldier Anthony (Rom) Romanello, dressed like construction workers for the robberies, the feds say."

Isn’t Rom a captain of Queens crew

He was at least. He's like 85 now.

[mafiastudent]

Good to see Martin Taccetta finally get some ink.

[Hired_Goonz]

Thanks for posting. I think it's remarkable that these guys were pulling these Hollywood style heists in the modern surveillance state.

I have to say in regards to the Taccetta situation, a law that allows judges to sentence defendants for crimes they've been acquitted of is one of the most insane things I've ever heard of. Totally unworthy of a democracy - why even have a trial then? Whatever you think of Taccetta, that's complete bullshit. And that's not even getting to the possibility that the government fucked him over with the evidence of his alibi.

[dack2001]

Lot of cops and prosecutors think the ends justify the means...if this is true and the records were altered and that fact was not shared with the defense, he should be released.

[Tonyd621]

Does this mean Taccetta is going go get if?

[Dr031718]

Marty Taccetta

[Dr031718]

Frank DiPietro