by Philip Carlo
Since their time in prison together, Bright had become a born-again Christian, though he was a paradoxical born-again. He believed in God, the Ten Commandments, the many dictates of the Bible, but he was also willing to sell drugs, rob, and steal. Bright had no reservations about robbing a woman in her home and readily agreed to do the job. Bright and Gangi soon sat down with Larry Santoro and Larry explained that he would leave the back door of the house open, that they should get there early in the morning, that at that point there should only be the jeweler’s “young wife” home.
“It’ll be a piece of cake,” Larry said.
After the meeting, Billy said that he would use one of Pitera’s guns, that he was holding Pitera’s stash of weapons. This was an interesting anecdote. Pitera always had a cache of guns being held by someone else. These guns Billy Bright was holding for him now were for killing. Pitera in fact had a gun permit for target shooting. The gun he had the permit for he actually did carry around with him, though he never used it in any crimes and never would. When Jim Hunt learned that Pitera had a gun permit, he felt it was an infamy, a miscarriage of justice, a wrong that would soon be righted, he’d make sure.
By now it was late February of 1989. Gangi and Billy Bright made their way to the Canarsie home of the Russian family, the Blumenkrants. The house was on a quiet residential street. The homes were set apart from one another. Frank and Billy parked their car down the block, got out, and walked back to the house. They had guns in their waistbands. The sun shone brightly. Sparrows and blackbirds chirped gaily in trees that lined the block. Self-absorbed, people were on their way to work. Though it was early, children were out playing on lawns. Unchallenged, unnoticed, Gangi and Bright made their way to the house. Calm on the outside, their faces relaxed, though nervous inside, they reached the home and, as though they owned it, walked to the backyard. As they had planned, they found the back door open. Without hesitation, they went in. Bright pulled out the gun. It was hot and they were both sweating. They had been expecting to find the wife of the jeweler but instead were confronted by an elderly lady—his mother.
“Be quiet,” Bright ordered. “We don’t want to hurt you. We just want the jewelry. We don’t want to hurt you.”
Her eyes were nearly popping out of her head. Bright’s words, however, did seem to soothe her. She calmed down somewhat. They demanded the jewelry. They wanted to know where the safe was. They threatened her. She apparently knew little English, as she kept answering them in Russian, saying over and over again, “I have a bad heart. I have a bad heart. I need my medicine.” Not knowing what the hell she was saying, they threatened her, pointed guns at her, demanded “the jewelry.” In Russian, she kept begging for her medicine, desperately pointing to her bag.
Bright finally retrieved the bag, found the medicine, and gave it to her. She immediately took a pill. They now went and found Larry’s cousin, the other cabinetmaker, handcuffed him, and took him and the elderly woman to the finished basement. It was there that they found the trove of jewelry. Neither one of these two was particularly informed about the worth of jewelry, different stones. They took everything they found. With the jewelry in a bag, Billy Bright and Gangi left the house, walked back to the car, and took off, overjoyed. Everything had gone as planned. They high-fived one another and slowly drove away, back to Gravesend.
Unbeknownst to Larry Santoro, Manny Maya, Billy Bright, and Frank Gangi, the Russian jeweler was friends with a capo in the Gambino crime family, Joe “Butch” Corrao. They could not have found a worse person to rip off. This capo was a particularly tough, jaded individual. He was not just a capo, he was a war capo. His wife had left a very expensive pair of diamond earrings with the Russian family. Joe Butch wanted the earrings back. He also wanted a part of what was taken. The Gambinos had heard that whoever did this had earned $250,000 from the rip-off.
In that neither Gangi nor Bright was a professional thief, a professional B&E person, they did not have fences readily available, though it didn’t take them long to find fences willing to take the jewelry off their hands. Gangi split up his part and sold pieces to the owner of the Wrong Number, a Genovese captain named Salvatore Lombardi, aka Sally Dogs, and to a jewelry store on Fourth Avenue called Bianco Jewelers.
In reality, La Cosa Nostra is one big fraternity. Except during times of war, they intermingle as freely as stockbrokers on the New York Stock Exchange. Even members from different families regularly have coffee, lunch, dinner. Part and parcel of why they’re so successful is how they network. This custom was something that they had brought over from Italy. In any town across Sicily, people walk and talk after dinner. Families, friends—it’s a built-in custom. The Italians in LCN kept this custom very much alive, and because they did not have nine-to-five jobs, they were free to meet as they pleased, walk and talk to their hearts’ content—until the cows came home. In that their business was crime, in that crime was their primary concern, what they talked about all the time were different aspects of different crimes.
When Joe Butch Corrao said he wanted to find the thieves who took the jewelry, word quickly spread throughout Mafiadom, from block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood—all over Brooklyn. Capos heard it, lieutenants heard it, soldiers heard it. It didn’t take long for the Bonanno family to hear what had happened. Tommy Karate quickly learned what went down. In that he was always interested in earning “brownie points” with the Gambinos, it didn’t take long for him to find out that Billy Bright and Frank Gangi had been involved. This was a shocking revelation for Pitera. What they had done could very well have caused problems between the Gambinos and the Bonannos. Neither Bright nor Frank Gangi had come to Pitera and asked his permission to do this score. They were way out of line—Pitera was responsible for them, their actions.
As it happened, there had to be an official sit-down over this incident. Gangi’s cousin Ross, a capo in the Genovese crime family, sat down with Joe Butch and Tommy. Joe Butch was bent out of shape. He not only wanted his wife’s diamond earrings back, but he demanded half the score. Ross Gangi explained the reality of the relationship he had with his cousin.
“Frank’s his own man,” he said. “There’s nothing I can do. I can’t order him to do anything. He’s been a problem all his life. He uses drugs, drinks too much. I’d do anything I can for you, Joe. You know that. But the kid’s a wild card.”
By Ross Gangi saying what he just said, he was, essentially, giving Joe Butch the right to kill Frank Gangi. If it wasn’t for Pitera’s intervention, if it wasn’t for the respect and admiration the Gambinos had for Pitera, the meeting might very well have ended there with the deaths of Billy Bright and Frank Gangi. Pitera spoke up for them. He promised to get what jewelry he could back and give it to Joe Butch. Joe Butch seemed to accept that. The meeting broke up. They all went their separate ways.
Watching, waiting patiently, agents were building a case against Pitera—fastidiously noting who came to and left the Just Us, what was said on the tapes, the rumors spreading throughout the dangerous Mafia jungle known as Gravesend.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
RATS
Rats…Pitera hated them with such fervor that he wouldn’t allow anyone in his crew to wear a mustache, for mustaches resembled whiskers and rats had whiskers. Richie Leone was a member of Pitera’s crew; Sol Stern was on the fringes of the Bonanno family. Through sources he found reliable, Pitera came to believe, with his obsessive paranoia about rats, that Stern and Leone were informers—talking to the FBI. He also believed that Richie Leone had stolen bearer bonds, some of which should have gone to Pitera but did not. For them, this was a death sentence, immediate and without appeal. Pitera devised a plan to kidnap both Leone and Stern. Initially, he was going to use Gangi as part of the kidnapping team, but he was still angry with him over the jewelry robbery. He had come to believe that Gangi was irresponsible because of drug and alcohol abuse. During the sit-down with Joe Butch, Ross Gangi, Frank’s cousin, had even told Pitera that Frank
was “irresponsible, out of control…unreliable.”
Pitera sent word to Leone and Stern that he had a sweet score he wanted to involve them in. It involved ripping off a large amount of marijuana from a couple of hippies. Unaware and unsuspecting, Leone and Stern showed up at Pitera’s club Overstreets at the prescribed time on the morning of March 15, 1989. Billy Bright and Richie David were already there as well as Pitera. Unwittingly, Leone and Stern were suddenly in shark-infested water.
For Pitera, this was not about questioning them, an inquisition, finding the truth. This was about retribution. Revenge. Pain. Suffering. Murder. On the left as you came into the club was a long bar. In front of the bar was a wood dance floor. On the far wall, there was a balcony with movie theater seats. Club-goers could sit there, smoke pot, and discreetly take a snort of coke without being bothered. In that it was a mob-controlled club, people who went there felt safe. There were few fights. Known troublemakers were kept out. The bouncers were like attack-trained Doberman pinschers. Pitera had an office there and next to the office was a bathroom where there was a Jacuzzi bathtub. Soon the Jacuzzi tub would be used in a most unspeakable way.
Pitera was in a particularly bad mood that night. Since the loss of Celeste, he had changed. He had become quiet, more introspective, and, in a word, meaner. He had little patience for anyone. He very rarely laughed. Both Stern and Leone were handcuffed. It was three o’clock in the morning. There was little traffic on the streets outside. In that the club’s windows were tinted, people could not see in, though you could see out. Pitera had Stern and Leone handcuffed to pipes bolted to the ceiling. Pitera first uncuffed Leone, shot him in the leg, and demanded he dance across the floor. Leone had no choice. He danced the best he could, blood seeping through the dime-size hole in his leg. Pitera shot him again and again and again. Bright uncuffed him. Leone lay on the floor, a heap of tortured muscle, bone, and flesh. Blood pooled around him.
“Please,” Leone begged. “Please, just kill me. Just fucking kill me!”
Bright did not want to see him suffer like this. Though Bright was a killer, he did not have the black heart, the lack of conscience, the lack of feelings, Pitera had. Bright moved closer to Leone and shot him in the head, killing him. Sol Stern was so horrified, so beside himself, that he shit in his pants, stinking the club up.
Next Pitera turned his attention to a very distraught Sol Stern. He proceeded to shoot him numerous times. The man howled and screamed as though he’d been pierced with red-hot pokers.
When Pitera was finished with this sadistic game, he had the bodies taken down and brought to the tub. He undressed, grabbed his dismembering kit, got into the tub, and cut them each—one after the other—into six pieces. He, with Bright’s help, then wrapped them in black plastic and stuffed them in large cheap suitcases. Sol’s valuable wedding ring was stuck on his sausage-thick finger. Pitera wanted it. He couldn’t get it off. He used a knife and cut the finger off at the joint and stole the ring. This ring would later come back to haunt Pitera. Again, clearly, Pitera was taking totems from his victims—a textbook serial killer phenomenon.
Pitera then made sure the dance floor and club were cleaned thoroughly. Stern was very heavy and they had difficulty fitting him into the suitcases. They had to wrap the two heads separately. After showering thoroughly, Pitera slowly got dressed and Bright and David grabbed the suitcases and they headed toward Pitera’s car, put the four suitcases and the heads in the trunk, and made their way to Staten Island, made their way over the two-mile stretch of the Verrazano Bridge, Brooklyn on their left, the city on their right. They could see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island from the middle of the bridge. The water in the Narrows was calm. After going through the tollbooth, they made their way to the bird sanctuary, driving slowly, making certain to abide by all traffic laws. They reached the street, which abutted the bird sanctuary, parked the car, retrieved the suitcases and heads, and quickly made their way into the forest. They went about thirty steps, found a clearing, and put down the bodies. In that it was March, the soil was somewhat firm. Digging was harder. They took turns trying to make a hole large enough to accommodate both suitcases. It was arduous work. When the hole was deep enough, they dumped the two suitcases in. Pitera wanted the heads buried separately, so he had a second hole dug some ten feet away and dumped the two heads there. They covered the holes up and left, a shy dawn slowly growing on the eastern sky, a chill wind blowing off the nearby Atlantic. Pitera felt good about what he had done. He felt justice had been served…street justice.
Billy Bright showed up at the pot stash house in Gravesend that he, Gangi, and Pitera kept. Gangi had slept there that night, with a girl he was seeing named Sophia. When Billy Bright arrived, he was covered in dirt and his face was long and sad. Gangi took one look at him and knew exactly what was wrong; the dirt told the story.
“Would you like to talk?” Gangi offered.
Bright immediately told him everything that had occurred. Gangi listened sympathetically. He was glad Pitera had not chosen him to be a part of this.
“He’s fucking out of control,” Gangi said, wanting to distance himself from Pitera, wanting to distance himself from it all. He was still plagued by what had happened to Phyllis Burdi. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. He would later relate that this trauma caused him to drink and use drugs—he was now consuming a full bottle of whiskey every day, plus several grams of cocaine. If he hadn’t been such a naturally strong, robust individual, no doubt he would have passed out one night and not woken up.
Trouble, he felt in his bones, loomed large and foreboding. His answer was to snort a long line of glistening cocaine.
Part III The Beat Goes On
CHAPTER FORTY
THE COP KILLER
It was now early July of 1989. The temperature at noon that day was near one hundred degrees. Jim Hunt was in an unmarked DEA car, parked on Flatlands Avenue. He was watching the garage, body shop, and mob hangout where Manny Maya worked. Jim was certain the body shop was a front for cleaning cars used in murders and the distribution of large amounts of narcotics.
Over the days, weeks, and months since the Pitera case had begun, the DEA investigation into Pitera and his crew had finally swung into full gear. Through what they heard on wiretaps—there were now taps in the Just Us Bar, Club Overstreets, the Cypress Lounge, Judy Haimowitz’s house, and Frank Gangi’s house and there were also bugs in whatever cars Pitera drove, the strike force had come to learn that not only was Pitera regularly selling large amounts of both heroin and cocaine—through a rotating, ever-changing network of different people who worked for him—but he was an assassin for the Bonanno family and other families as well. They had come to believe that he was responsible for killing Willie Boy Johnson, that Eddie Lino himself had made him part of the hit team that brought down Johnson. Now the task at hand was finding tangible, viable evidence that could be used in a court of law that would hold up under blistering scrutiny from the best criminal attorneys in the country.
Jim Hunt was alone today, watching the garage. His partner, Tommy Geisel, had a wedding he needed to attend. Rather than lose a day, Jim had that itchy feeling in the nape of his neck and decided to go keep an eye on the garage and Pitera hangout by himself. For Jim Hunt, a successful case often came about by pure happenstance, good luck…being in the right place at the right time, or even the wrong place at the right time.
While he was sitting there sweating profusely, his beeper sounded. When he checked the number, he realized it was a DEA informant he’d been working with for several years who had successfully brought down major players in the cocaine and heroin business. Her name was Maria Polkowski. At this juncture, she had nothing to do with the Pitera case, though Jim thought she might very well get involved with the case down the road. She was an obese Brazilian woman who had larger balls than most men. She was amazingly adept at getting people to believe bold-faced lies. She spoke not only English and Portuguese but five other languages fl
uently. Maria was a stellar informer for the DEA. They paid her well for the services she provided. Not only was she an amazing actress, but she could readily think on her feet, adapt to any situation quickly, had the courage to go up against dangerous men with big guns, bad attitudes, and sharp knives. Jim called her. She said she was in Queens with one Hector Estrada and a “very important Mafia guy.”
“Why do you think he’s in the Mafia, Maria?” Jim asked.
“I know it. I’m sure he’s in the Mafia. He’s very connected.”
“Because he’s Italian?”
“No, don’t be silly. This guy’s really mobbed up. Come quickly, James. I don’t feel safe.”
Hunt did not want to leave the stakeout. Had it not been Maria calling, he would not have left, but she had proved immensely reliable, well informed, and had helped Jim make many cases. Reluctantly, he put his car in gear and sped over to Astoria Boulevard in Queens. Jim went to the Italian restaurant where Maria said she was. Neither she nor the Mafia characters were inside. Perplexed, he got back in his car. As he drove around the block, he spotted Maria in her amazingly colorful garb walking with two men. One was a gruff, tough-looking dude, a South American with dark skin, no doubt Hector Estrada. The other was like a blond surfer. This surfer-looking dude soon separated from Maria and Hector, got in a small convertible, and pulled away. Jim felt he could always find Maria and so he decided to follow the surfer.
