by Philip Carlo
They didn’t find anything at Pitera’s house on Ovington Avenue. Agents discovered that it was essentially a construction site. There were slabs of expensive marble, beautiful Italian tiles. It seemed Pitera had big plans to turn this building into an upscale town house—a place to be proud of. The DEA, in conjunction with the Justice Department, would move to confiscate the house as a result of criminal enterprise.
All during that day, the fourth of June, twenty-five other Pitera associates were arrested, including Vincent Kojak Giattino, Thomas Carbone, Lorenzo Modica, Manny Maya, Michael Cassesse, Frank Martini, Luis Mena, Angelo Favara, and Richie David.
The agents offered them deals. Anyone willing to cooperate would be treated with leniency. This had become the standard operating procedure for the government. Federal prosecutors, the United States Justice Department, had learned to manipulate and pit one defendant against the other, thus ensuring they would get the bigger of the two fish. They used Sammy the Bull Gravano to nail John Gotti and some thirty-six other mafiosi (though Gravano never testified against anyone in his own crew); they used Phil Leonnetti in Philadelphia to convict several busloads of wiseguys and send them packing off to jail, all grumbling, all fit to be tied, all swearing murder and mayhem—revenge; they would use, shockingly so, Mafia royalty Joe Masseria to unhinge the Bonanno family.
Now the person they wanted the most, the person they were focused on, was Tommy Karate Pitera. The debriefings began. The questioning of Pitera’s people was long and tedious.
With Pitera and his gang safely behind bars, Jim Hunt and his people decided it was time to see if they could find the bodies, Pitera’s victims, the graveyard. Finding the bodies would be the coup de grâce; finding the bodies would put everything into perspective.
When Gangi’s partner Billy Bright got wind of what was happening, he took off. Billy was adept at leaving Brooklyn quickly and adapting to new surroundings. He had been on the lam several times before. Because the bust caused such media attention, Billy Bright ended up on America’s Most Wanted. With his distinctive looks, dark hair, and large eyes, he was recognized and identified and quickly arrested in Las Vegas. Unlike some, including his childhood friend Frank Gangi, Bright refused to cooperate with the feds. He would, down the road, plead guilty to the murders of Solomon Stern and Richard Leone, which took place at Overstreets, as well as to drug conspiracy, and would serve a seventeen-year sentence. Had he gone to trial, he would surely have been given a much stiffer sentence. At face value, one would think that the story of Billy Bright was now over, said and done, but that proved not to be true.
Incorrectly believing that Billy Bright had murdered his son Greg, Mark Reiter wanted revenge, wanted blood. No matter how you cut it, he felt his son had been unjustly and unfairly killed. Though Greg’s body would never be found, his father, Mark, knew he was dead. Greg, his brother Michael, and his father were all close. No way in hell would Greg stay away for so long and not contact his father or brother. The first to feel the wrath of the Reiters was Michael Harrigan. Michael and Mark Reiter knew that Greg was going to meet Michael Harrigan that evening and they never heard from him again. Michael Reiter stalked Mike Harrigan, and when Harrigan went to use a public phone outside of a grocery store in Howard Beach, Queens, an unknown, nameless, faceless killer walked up behind him and blew the back of his head off. The Reiters were pleased that Michael Harrigan was gone, but they were not satiated.
They believed that Billy Bright had killed Greg Reiter, and Mark Reiter—coincidentally housed in the same federal facility as Bright—took out a murder contract on Billy Bright’s life. He turned to the lethal, deadly Aryan Brotherhood, paid them five thousand dollars, numbering the days Billy Bright had left on this planet. Billy felt all his troubles were behind him and that he could walk around the facility with a clear head. Unaware, innocently, a year after he had been sent to the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, Billy Bright was making his way across the common yard when two Aryan killers approached him, one from behind and one from up front. Each of these men was a three-time loser with a life sentence who would never see freedom again. They had nothing to lose. Billy Bright, innocent of the murder of Greg Reiter, was suddenly and viciously attacked from the rear and the front. Each of the muscular, animalistic killers had homemade shivs, long metal blades sharp as razors, pointed as pins. Billy was repeatedly stabbed in the back, in his chest, mercilessly, until he was dead. These two Aryans were like bone-cracking, hysterically laughing hyenas—pets of the grim reaper himself. Like this, Billy Bright’s life came to an end.
Part IV Traumas and Trials
CHAPTER FIFTY
THE WILLIAM T. DAVIS WILDLIFE REFUGE
It was now time for the task force to look for bodies in earnest, to find Pitera’s private burial ground. It was June 6, 1990. A caravan of cars left for Staten Island. In these cars were stoic, hard-boiled, seasoned, cynical NYPD Organized Crime detectives, DEA and FBI agents. In that the Pitera case had been a multi-agency effort, Jim Hunt was obligated to involve all the different agencies on this day. Frank Gangi was in a light-colored Plymouth with black wall tires with Jim, Mike Agrifolio, and Tommy Geisel. Because Gangi had only been to the burial site at night, it was difficult to find the bird sanctuary. But now he’d been sober for weeks, had his head screwed on his shoulders properly, and, with a little luck, he managed to find the right turns and the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. They all got out of their cars. The sky was clear that day. The sun shone strongly. The sound of birds came from many directions at once. The agents and NYPD detectives faced a wall of deep green, the smell of flowers and summer foliage coming to them.
“You sure this is it?” Jim asked Gangi.
“I’m…pretty sure,” Gangi said, looking at the forest spread out before them, shaking his head in the affirmative. Everyone there that June day donned disposable white jumpsuits. They wore these so as not to contaminate the crime scene in any way. Anxious, curious, they moved as one into the forest, tall and gangly Frank Gangi leading the way. A gaggle of residential crows made a lot of noise. They were annoying, distracting. All that day, the task force, with Frank Gangi’s directives, looked for bodies, searched the ground for some indication that a body was buried here, or there. Curiously, they sniffed the air; they scrutinized the ground for some sign that human beings were buried in this dirt, in this ground, in this desolate place.
That first day, they had no luck. Even the second day, upon their return, they came up with nothing, zilch, a big zero. They brought in happy-to-please, tail-wagging cadaver dogs, pretty certain they’d do the trick. The dogs weren’t able to find any cadavers. The cops began thinking that there weren’t any bodies. The third day they brought a man who had a machine that, supposedly, could find bodies. That proved to be a wash also. It was on the third day that the task force began using four-foot metal probes with a T-shaped handle to probe the ground. Working in assigned grids, walking in straight lines shoulder to shoulder, they probed the ground, looking for cadavers…no luck. They discussed, prompted by Agent David Toracinta, using the telephone poles with streetlamps as a starting point. Toracinta’s reasoning was that Pitera might have used the ambient light from the pole to make his way into the foliage at night. Thus, he said, the bodies could be buried perpendicular to the poles. It was a good hypothesis, but in reality, Pitera had used flashlights to guide the way.
It was on the fourth day, with the help of NYPD Detective Bobby Pavone and the old-fashioned metal probe, that they hit pay dirt. The day was coming to an end. Long shadows appeared. Birds chirped insistently. The task force had just finished taking a break. Bobby Pavone was sitting on the stump of a tree. When it was time to get back to work, as he made his way to the task-force line, he absently probed the ground and struck something…odd. He called out to his colleagues.
“I’ve got something! Hey, over here! I’ve got something!” It was decided for the sake of expediency and proper protocol that they would wait unt
il the next day; they would reach out to the medical examiner’s office and use the light of a new day to continue their ghoulish task.
That night there were no celebrations, no toasts, no back patting. Feeling whole and accomplished, that many months of hard work had panned out, Jim Hunt, the quintessential professional, went to sleep quickly, woke up when it was still dark, and headed from his home in Jersey back out to Staten Island. As he drove across the elegant expanse of the Goethal’s Bridge, as a fiery dawn lit up the eastern horizon, Hunt wondered how many mafiosi besides Pitera had crossed this very bridge, this very way, for the purpose of getting rid of bodies.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHEAP SUITCASES
Using oval-shaped, long-handled shovels, the agents slowly, carefully, uncovered the object Bobby had found. In the nascent, all-telling light of June 9, the task force regarded a large, checkered suitcase, the cheap kind that you could buy on Fourteenth Street; the kind that people filled with jeans and camera equipment, contraband, to bring back to their third-world countries. The agents gingerly lifted the suitcase out of the hole. Everything about it seemed normal except for the horrific smell that issued from it…unmistakably, the stink of human death, they all knew. The medical examiner’s office had been contacted. An ME and a morgue wagon had been dispatched by the New York City mortuary on First Avenue and Thirtieth Street. As the gloved hand of the medical examiner struggled with the rusted zipper, slowly opening the case, the smell became worse and worse still. Surrounding the suitcase in a neat circle stood the members of the task force, engaged and curious, quiet and solemn—as though in a church, engrossed in prayer—so very pleased that their efforts had worked out. Because of the thick summer foliage, they stood in a solemn, dappled light. They were looking at what was left of Marek Kucharsky. Off to the left, the crows returned and incessantly cawed, distracting everyone, annoying everyone.
“Wish I had my shotgun,” one of the agents mumbled.
This was the boxer with the rugs whom Pitera, Gangi, and Moussa Aliyan had murdered in Moussa’s loft. By pure happenstance, he was found first. Kucharsky had been put in the ground some thirty-four months earlier. In the suitcase were his severed head, trunk, arms, and legs wrapped in one of his nice Oriental rugs…the rugs he had died for. In that he’d been in the ground now for so long, the flesh had dried and shriveled up. The once thick muscular arms were mere remnants of what they had been. Now they were brown and wrinkled, parchmentlike, and the bones were clearly visible.
Now that they had struck pay dirt, that they knew bodies were truly here, a newfound energy, a pump of high-grade adrenaline, affected the task force. They, again, made lines and again started probing the ground, invigorated by the hardcore, horrible, homicidal reality of Marek’s body. It didn’t take long for more bodies to be found off to the left, off to the right, all some thirty steps from the road. They seemed dispersed without rhyme or reason, here, there, and everywhere. The only placement they had in common was the distance from the road. The roar of jet engines from planes passed overhead.
The fifth body found at the sanctuary was that of a woman. It was Phyllis Burdi. Finally, Phyllis had been found…Phyllis would have justice. Phyllis, of course, was the main reason Frank Gangi had turned on Pitera. She had been cut into six neat pieces. Now, as her remnants were filmed by the task force for evidence, as Jim Hunt described who she was and what had happened to her to the camera, there were only five pieces in the suitcase…two arms, two legs, and a torso. In that she had died almost three years earlier, her breasts were shrunken, barely discernible. Even though the flesh was as dry as a raisin, bullet holes in her chest, between her shrunken breasts, were still visible. Though Phyllis Burdi was barely recognizable as a female, a woman, the fact that she was a woman had a clear effect on all the detectives and agents that day. She could have been any one of their daughters or sisters, they all knew. She was helpless and defenseless— and the thought of her in the hands of Tommy Pitera was unsettling and disconcerting and affected them in a way the bodies of the men did not. Silently, privately, a few of the men there that day said prayers for Phyllis.
Next Sol Stern and Richie Leone, the two men who were tortured and killed at Pitera’s club, Overstreets, were found. As the body of Sol Stern was laid out in the field by the medical examiner, it was obvious that he had shat in his pants, no doubt because he was terrified, they all knew.
This little observation, insight, gave all the agents and medical examiners, forensic people, pause. They had come to despise Pitera. They had come to view his crimes as being particularly frightful and heinous; they now realized he had a mean-spirited, sadistic audacity that they grew to loathe. He killed at will, tortured, stole from people, sold drugs, and on top of everything, he was a woman-killer. They worked cohesively, as silently as though they were in a mortuary. The branches and leaves that canopied the area where they worked gave the whole scene the ambience of a funeral parlor—a funeral parlor designed, built, and decorated by nature herself.
Even though there had been no official announcement yet to the media, reporters got wind of chopped-up bodies, a Mafia burial ground. As though vultures zeroing in on the smell of carrion, curious, nosy reporters showed up at the dig. The streets leading to the spot had been cordoned off with yellow police tape and reporters learned little. However, over the ensuing hours and days, press releases were given out and detailed feature stories appeared in all the major New York papers. Newsday ran a two-page feature story. All the local television stations covered the event extensively. Tommy Pitera was suddenly famous—infamous.
At the autopsy, in the medical examiner’s office in Manhattan, Phyllis Burdi’s remains were laid out on a gleaming aluminum table. Giant fluorescent lights illuminated what was left of her. As her chest cavity was cut open and peeled back, the medical examiner noted for the autopsy report that she had been shot with Glaser rounds—bullets that contained small BB-like pellets that caused horrific wounds inside her chest. The medical examiner noted with interest that all the cuts severing the limbs from the torso were neat and precise—professional-looking. He would later comment that whoever did this had experience; whoever did this knew what he was doing.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
THE EXECUTION OF TOMMY KARATE PITERA
All the officials who worked the Pitera case, were involved in the task force, were involved in Pitera’s prosecution, wanted him to die.
“If ever,” federal prosecutor Elisa Liang said, “someone deserved the death penalty, it’s Tommy Pitera.”
Elisa Liang was a small, soft-spoken, attractive Asian woman who was an excellent prosecutor…very good at her job. She, like everyone else involved in the case, was appalled not only by what Pitera had done, the ABCs of what he’d done, but by the fact that he’d done it with such aplomb; the fact that he could be so blatant about it outraged everybody. Here was a criminal who acted like he had a God-given right to kill. Regardless of what anyone’s feelings were, more importantly, there was a federal statute known as the Drug Kingpin Law that would clearly make Tommy Pitera eligible for the death penalty. As lawyers in the Justice Department put together a case against Pitera, they scrutinized the viability, mulled over the realities of a death sentence case. They came to the conclusion that Pitera’s crimes warranted the death penalty and legally he could be given a death sentence based upon the nature of the crimes. Due to date conflicts, however, the only charges that carried a death sentence were the murders of Richard Leone and Sol Stern, which had taken place in Pitera’s club.
It was announced by U.S. attorney Andrew Maloney that the United States Justice Department would officially be seeking the death penalty for Tommy Pitera. When Pitera heard the news, told to him by his lawyer, he said, with a smirk on his face, “Bring on the firing squad.”
At the Justice Department, Pitera had become the focal point of everyone’s energies. They felt he was one of the most heinous criminals they’d had to prosecute in modern times. No
resources were spared, any overtime necessary was quickly allocated. All the manpower needed to build the prosecution case properly was provided with alacrity. To further the government’s quest to execute Pitera, DEA and FBI agents again began, in earnest, talking to codefendants in the case—looking for people willing to turn, looking for people to become informers. They already had Frank Gangi and Joe Dish aboard. Judy Haimowitz also readily agreed to cooperate. As it happened, very little loyalty was shown to Pitera. Just about everyone arrested agreed to cooperate. The ones who didn’t were Vincent Kojak Giattino, Billy Bright (Billy Bright’s case had not been adjudicated yet; he had not yet been placed in a federal prison), and Richie David. When Jim Hunt spoke to Richie, Jim said, “Look, Richie. This guy is a first-rate scumbag. You don’t owe him anything. There’s no doubt about that. Why in God’s name do you want to go down with him?”
Richie responded, “Look…I understand that, but you don’t understand. This guy is insane. Sooner or later, he will get me. Sooner or later, I know he will.”
And with that, Richie David decided to plead guilty to a laundry list of charges and take the heavy sentence recommended by the government. Kojak decided he would take his chances at trial…he would not testify against Pitera.
