The Big Heist

by Anthony M. DeStefano

  Well, Asaro just got home from prison about two months ago so, no, he wasn’t doing anything yet to earn money, explained Cammarano. To get Asaro back on track, they needed to put him under somebody’s command so Cammarano was going to have to include him as part of his crew.

  A month later, the same three old timers met at a diner, and again Asaro’s woes came up in the conversations. He was definitely on everybody’s radar but not in a good way. Asaro may have been going back to the track, but if he couldn’t kick in $25 a week to the Bonanno-family war chest, a fund to help members who needed help paying for lawyers, which were quite in demand, he should stay away from the horses, said Urso.

  “Let me tell you something,” said Tartaglione in agreement with Urso. “If anybody like him can’t give twenty-five dollars a week, he shouldn’t be in this life. Not unless he’s got cancer, he’s dying, not unless he’s definitely sick and there’s no way for him to earn something like that.”

  But the fact of the matter was that Vincent Asaro was in “the life.” It was just not a life that was doing him any good. Aside from being broke, Asaro’s stature had been reduced. He had once been a captain. But when he went to state prison, he turned over his meager crew of soldiers to his son Jerome, who was made an acting captain. Jerome Asaro was the latest of the Asaro men to become blooded to the Mafia and was one of a number of them who followed in their fathers’ footsteps to join the Bonanno family. There were at least nine father-and-son combinations in the borgata at that time. Massino is believed to have wanted to have such familial pairings because it gave him more power over the fathers. Informants said Massino had been the one to approve the induction of the sons, including Jerome, into the crime family and in some cases presided over the ceremonies.

  After Vincent Asaro was released from prison, he had to eat crow and as a soldier was placed in the crew of his son Jerome, who by that time had been promoted to official Captain position by Massino. So, after years of having his son do his bidding, Vincent Asaro found himself under his son. The relationship between them was fraught with tension, with Vincent resenting his son for his ambition and tightness with money.

  For the most part, Tartaglione was a convincing double-agent. He made recordings of Cammarano, Urso, and Basciano in which he put them at ease and drew out useful tidbits of information that helped the FBI in its understanding of the Bonanno family and the instability it was suffering since the arrest of Massino and some others. At one meeting at the Sea Crest Diner, the conversation among the four men led to their commiserating about the way informants had riddled the ranks of the family, with Tartaglione saying over coffee, “We’re in trouble, we’re in trouble.”

  However, Basciano had a nagging suspicion about Tartaglione and wondered why he had suddenly returned from Florida to hang around with his old Bonanno friends, action which could easily get him nabbed on a parole violation.

  “It was strange. All of a sudden, out of the clear blue, Big Lou wanted to come around and start running the Bonanno crime family,” Dominic Cicale, a then-up-and-coming member of the crime family would recall later.

  So, for a meeting Tartaglione had with the three ruling members of the Bonanno family on January 18, 2004, at the Sea Crest Diner, Basciano had Cicale conduct a counter-surveillance on the diner. Cicale was to watch for any law-enforcement cars outside the diner, and if he spotted any he was to signal Basciano with the pager code “5050.” After noticing a number of clean cars, devoid of any winter road splatter and salt, Cicale went to a pay phone and entered the code.

  Tipping off that the meeting was under surveillance and that Tartaglione was an informant, Basciano moved the conversation at the table away from anything incriminating. Sensing a sudden coolness of the three other men, Tartaglione left the diner and later reported to his FBI handlers. Two days later, Urso, Cammarano, and some other Bonanno crime-family members were arrested on racketeering charges. The leadership of the family had all but been decimated. Only Basciano wasn’t charged and in effect he became Massino’s acting street boss. His time for a jail cell would come later.

  After the ruling committee members were arrested on January 20, the crime family Vincent Asaro and Jerry Asaro knew was in disarray. Dozens of members and associates had been arrested. No one could trust anyone and Basciano even held meetings with captains in which he asked them all to strip to their underwear in case any of them were wearing a secret tape recorder or transmitter.

  The FBI had already harvested a basket full of cooperating witnesses who were giving evidence against Massino, Urso, Cammarano, as well as Canadian gangster Vito Rizzutto. The agency strategy of building an historical case against the family that included numerous murders and other crimes was paying off. Agents also were gleaning information from informants about the Asaros, father and son. Jerome Asaro was established as an acting captain, soon to be full captain, the agents learned. There was also an intriguing tidbit about Vincent.

  Joseph D’Amico, one of the turncoats who had gone over to help the FBI, had an interesting pedigree with the mob. He was the cousin of Bonanno captain Richard Cantarella, who also became a cooperating witness. Know by the nickname of “Mouk,” D’Amico got his hands bloody for the crime family in February 1982 when he shot Bonanno captain Anthony Mirra at point-blank range as both men were exiting an underground parking lot in Manhattan. Mirra had been suspected of being an informant at a time when the crime family was paranoid over FBI activity. It had surfaced months earlier that a brash wiseguy named Donnie Brasco had actually been an undercover FBI agent with the real name of Joseph Pistone. Working for many months undercover, Pistone had penetrated the Bonanno family, particularly the group run by Sonny Black Napolitano. Mirra had even used Pistone as a driver, which showed how convincing the FBI mole had been in his undercover role.

  In a debriefing with agents on April 14, 2003, Joseph D’Amico talked to them about a number of things such as gun trafficking, the assassination in 1979 of Carmine Galante, and gossip about who was who in the Bonanno family. He had also heard something none of the other big cooperating witnesses had apparently reported to the agents: Vincent Asaro was involved in the “Lufthansa heist” with Jimmy Burke, who was around Paul Vario.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  NEVER SAY NEVER

  WHEN HE WAS ARRESTED ON JANUARY 23, 2014, there was no way that Vincent Asaro was going to be living anywhere else for the foreseeable future other than the Metropolitan Detention Center in Red Hook. Given the ugly things said about him in the prosecution’s fifty-three-page detention memorandum, Asaro was not going to get bail. In fact, defense attorney Gerald McMahon didn’t even try to get him out: any effort would have been an exercise in futility. Vincent was going to be a guest of the Bureau of Prisons until at least his trial—whenever that might be.

  As it turned out, McMahon was the one who got out first, in a manner of speaking. He didn’t stay with the case for very long. Asaro didn’t have any money to retain a private attorney and McMahon, although a tenacious lawyer who had bested Brooklyn federal prosecutors in a number of mob cases, couldn’t stay with the case. So, on February 12, 2014, Judge Allyne Ross appointed Elizabeth Macedonio of Queens to take on Asaro’s defense. A petite blonde with long straight hair, which fellow attorneys said never seemed anything but well-coiffed, Macedonio had cut her eyeteeth on some mob cases. A graduate of New York Law School, solo-practitioner Macedonio quickly earned a good reputation among her peers as she wrangled some very good plea bargains for her clients.

  The indictment in the Asaro case was really a legal hybrid. It contained the overall racketeering conspiracy charge and along with it a series of extortion and gambling counts involving a total of five defendants. But even a quick reading of the indictment showed that the main charges were those against Asaro: The Lufthansa robbery and the murder of Paul Katz for which the other defendants weren’t named, save for Asaro’s son Jerome who was fingered as an accessory after the fact in the murder for moving Katz’s corpse
.

  To the defense attorneys for Thomas DiFiore, Jack Bonventre, and John Ragano, the early strategy was to get the case against those defendants separated or severed from Vincent and his son. The Asaros were charged with the most serious crimes, including in addition to the Lufthansa heist counts of robbery, arson, and murder solicitation. The Asaro counts spanned nearly forty years. DiFiore, although said by prosecutors to be the new street boss of the Bonanno crime family, faced only an extortion charge involving one debt and attempts to collect it over a four-month period in 2013. Ragano, a big man nicknamed “Bazoo,” who looked like a mob tough and was considered by law enforcement to be a Bonanno soldier, was also only named in the one count with DiFiore. Bonventre, a reputed Bonanno captain, faced an extortion charge and claims that he ran an illegal gambling business from 2007 to 2008.

  In March, Ragano’s attorney Charles Hochbaum moved to have his client’s case severed from that of Asaro. The other defense attorneys didn’t want to join in that maneuver until they had learned more about the government’s case. Attempts to get a severance are difficult tactics for a defense attorney to try generally. Hochbaum argued to Judge Ross that if Ragano had to go to trial with Asaro there would be “spillover prejudice” because he would have to do more extensive trial preparation than if he was tried separately. There were counts that Ragano was not charged in so it would be unfair to have him tried with Asaro, the defense argued.

  Ross made quick work of Ragano’s argument and in a short, four-page ruling on April 7, 2014, denied his motion. The indictment wasn’t so complex that the jury wouldn’t be able to weigh the evidence against each individual defendant on each charge, said Ross. The judge also said there was significant overlap in evidence on the charges facing Asaro and the few in which Ragano is mentioned. If she gave the jury proper instructions about considering evidence separately against each defendant, Ross didn’t think there was any risk of spillover prejudice. So for the time being, all of the defendants including Asaro would face the music of a trial together.

  The U.S. Supreme Court has said that “there is a preference in the federal system for joint trials of defendants who are indicted together.” But that preference wasn’t absolute, and if there is a risk that a defendant would be prejudiced by a joint trial, the court could grant a severance It was a tough burden, but it has happened that one or more defendants were tried at a different time from someone else.

  Ross’s decision showed that DiFiore, Ragano, and Bonventre would not have an easy time if they tried again to get separate trials. Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicole Argentieri, as was routine in Mafia cases, made some plea bargain offers to DiFiore, Ragano, and Bonventre. But as one defense attorney remembered it, the government offers on prison sentences if those defendants plead guilty were “nonsensical.” None of the defendants took the government offers.

  Argentieri and her co-counsels also began turning over evidence to the defense teams, which the government intended to use at trial. This was a routine procedure required under federal law, justified by the rationale that there shouldn’t be any trial by ambush in which a defendant was delayed in seeing and assessing the prosecution’s evidence. After about five months of getting evidence dumps, the defense attorneys believed they had a shot at getting Asaro’s trial separated from those of DiFiore, Ragano, and Bonventre. The chance of success still didn’t seem great but it was worth taking.

  To movie fans, particularly those of actor Bill Murray, the name Steve Zissou might just ring a bell. In 2004, Murray starred in the comedy The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, about an oceanographer who wants to avenge the death of a friend by a terrible shark. The film was a parody of sorts of the life of famed French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, although it was a fictional account. But as it turned out, the main character name of “Steve Zissou” happened to be that in real life of a Bayside Queens criminal defense attorney named, well, Steven Zissou.

  Because of the match between the name of Murray’s character and Zissou, Buena Vista Pictures came to a confidential agreement with the attorney in which the company could use his name. At the end of the film, there is a comment on the screen that reads, “The filmmakers acknowledge that the real Steve Zissou is a prominent attorney in New York City specializing in complex federal litigation.” That was not a bad plug for Zissou and most likely his deal with Buena Vista Pictures also proved financially rewarding.

  Still, Zissou, whose name is of Greek origin, had to continue to earn a living no matter what he got from the film. As a regular in Brooklyn and Manhattan federal courts, Zissou had a busy caseload of mostly criminal clients. He had shared a suite of offices for years with Macedonio, and both trooped from Bayside to the courts to handle a steady diet of cases. Zissou had represented some high-profile cases, notably that of a Guyanese immigrant accused of having people killed in an insurance scam. (The defendant, Ronald Malley, was convicted but spared the death penalty.) And he represented terror defendant Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who was convicted of conspiracy in the U.S. embassy bombing in Kenya but acquitted of all other charges.

  Among the federal criminal bar attorneys, Zissou was well regarded, and he had experience in complex criminal cases, experience which helped him to see down the road and anticipate possible moves a court might make and how it all might impact his clients. Criminal cases are as much about gamesmanship, and a favorable ruling by a judge could have far-reaching repercussions for both sides. The other defense attorneys involved, Gordon Mehlman and Diane Ferrone, who represented Jack Bonventre, and Charles Hochbaum who represented John Ragano, were also experienced in complex cases. All of the lawyers crafted their motion papers for the severance, with Zissou doing the bulk of the work and taking the lead in court.

  The papers for the new severance motion were filed on July 28, 2014, with Argentieri and her team filing their opposition a short time later. In a nutshell, DiFiore and Bonventre wanted Ross to sever their trial for the extortion counts from that of the Asaros, who as mentioned previously faced a more serious group of charges ranging from the Lufthansa robbery to arson and murder solicitation. Bonventre also wanted a severance for the gambling charges he faced.

  Severance motions are always a long shot. The tactic had already failed once in the Asaro case. Even prosecutor Argentieri predicted it was a lost cause, saying, “Oh, Steve you know she will not grant your severance motion,” the defense attorney remembered. Zissou knew the odds were against him but still held out hope. He then left for a vacation in Europe with his family.

  It was while he was at the Sofitel Hotel in Rome, having a cup of cappuccino at about 11:00 A.M. that Zissou noticed his iPhone ping, indicating he had a text message from his office. The message stunned him. In a short text, Zissou learned that the defense motion for severance had been granted by Ross, despite the fact that the odds were against a judge going along with the defense in such cases. In a twelve-page decision released on August 20, Ross said she agreed that some kind of severance was needed, particularly because the case had allegations of violence—the Lufthansa robbery and the Katz murder—which were inflammatory and likely to cause a greater “risk of substantial prejudice” to the defendants like DiFiore and Bonventre. While agreeing that a charge of extortion was a crime of violence, Ross said that particular allegation in the case was “starkly different in quality and nature from the violent and heinous acts spanning a forty-year period that Vincent and Jerome are charged with.” The risk of prejudice was so great that the case of DiFiore and Bonventre had to be severed, said Ross. Then, she allowed Ragano, the defendant who had made the earlier unsuccessful move for a severance, also to be tried separately from the Asaros.

  The defense had a nice, unexpected victory in the severance. But it was not the only thing Ross did that would have implications for the government’s case. She also ruled that the trial of DiFiore, Ragano, and Bonventre on the extortion counts should take place before the trial of the Asaros on the main racketeering count, which i
ncluded the Lufthansa heist and everything else they were accused of. While at first glance that might not seem like a big deal, such a trial occurring before the main Lufthansa event would give the world—and the Asaros—a preview of Gaspare Valenti’s testimony and also show how well he stood up on the witness stand. The government would then lose the element of surprise and by testifying first in a sort-of preview trial, Valenti would be locking himself in to his testimony. Ross did give Argentieri and her prosecution team that option of trying the Asaros on the extortion charges along with the other defendants. But that would have to be the government’s decision. Otherwise, Argentieri and company could wait and try the Asaros later.

  Faced with the prospect of two trials, prosecutors decided to push for more realistic plea bargains with offers the defendants would find more appealing. Given that DiFiore, Ragano and Bonventre were said by investigators to be members of the Bonanno family, the government wanted a so-called “global plea” to involve some prison time for each. Bonventre had been lucky enough to make a $2 million bail, but DiFiore, who suffered from health issues, and Ragano, had both been in custody since January 2014. DiFiore in particular had tried a number of times to get bail, arguing that his health wouldn’t improve while in jail, but hadn’t been able to convince Ross to spring him. What seemed to work against DiFiore was the fact that NYPD and federal surveillance had shown that he was a member of the administrative committee leading the Bonanno family. No longer was the borgata under the command of a single man like Massino. After being decimated by so many federal prosecutions, the crime family was being steered by DiFiore and Vincent Asaro, For Asaro, such a leadership role was something that was quite a change in stature for a man who had once been busted down to the lowly rank of soldier.