The Butcher (20 page)

R
ats…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.

I
t 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 fluently. 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.

He, the surfer, drove straight to a B-rated strip club on Astoria Boulevard. Jim sat outside wondering what to do. He decided to go in and see what was up. Inside, it was air-conditioned and the cool air was a much welcome change. The place was empty. The surfer was sitting at the bar near the door. Jim audaciously walked over, sat down right next to him, and ordered a beer.

“How you doing?” the surfer said.

“Good, good. Yourself?” Jim said.

They began to talk about the weather. The surfer introduced himself as Giles and they shook hands. As Jim enjoyed the cold beer, the surfer ogled, somewhat excessively, the broken-down stripper up onstage. Out of the corner of his eye, Jim eyeballed the surfer—he was looking at a somewhat baby-faced, innocuous man who didn't seem capable of hurting a fly. Jim would soon find out that his appearance was a far cry from the truth. Jim soon finished his beer and left. In his gut, Jim felt for sure that something big was in the air. It was one of those things you could not learn in school. It was a gritty, gut-like sensation—some would call it a sixth sense, some would call it street sense. Jim wasn't sure where this would go but he would take it seriously. He called headquarters, told his boss what he had seen, and asked for backup. Within minutes, two teams of DEA agents, Jim's colleagues, were speeding toward Queens with their sirens on and red lights flashing. While Jim sat in the car waiting for his people, his beeper again sounded. It was again Maria. He called her right back.

“Hector called and said he wanted to meet me,” she said.

Jim knew Hector to be a Colombian coke dealer.

“I met him in the restaurant. He was with two guys. One of them was Mafia. I'm sure he's Mafia. His name was Vincenzo. The other one was this blond guy, Giles—”

“I met him,” Jim said, “in a bar a couple of blocks away.”

“Well, this Giles guy, he's a fugitive, and a very dangerous man, and the thing of it is that he wants to buy cocaine. A lot of cocaine. They want, like, two hundred kilos. The problem is that Hector can't get what they want right now, so he lied, he lied and said he bought a lot of cocaine from me ten times. He lied and now he wants me to come up with cocaine. All two hundred kilos. What should I do, James?”

“I want you to play them. You're very good at what you do. Don't worry. I'll make sure nothing happens to you. Tell them you'll get the drugs no problem. You understand?”

“I understand,” Maria said in her peculiar Brazilian accent.

“I'll get back to you,” Jim said.

Jim's people drove up. He quickly ran down what was happening. As he talked, Giles the surfer left the club, got into his car, and pulled away, not noticing the agents. Jim and his colleagues decided to follow him. He led them all the way to Secaucus, New Jersey, then went into a town house. They ran his plates. The car was a rental car registered out of Florida under the name Vincent Mancino. At that juncture, that meant nothing one way or another. They eyeballed the house for several hours. A woman in her thirties left, got in a car, and drove away. Near midnight they decided to wrap it up and begin early the next day.

Still, Jim was not sure where this would go, but in his business, fortuitous situations could fall from the sky and they had to be worked diligently. He did not like the idea of taking his attention away from the Pitera case and its cast of characters, but Jim was in the business of responding quickly, being malleable, when potential situations arose, and fighting fires whenever and wherever they burned.

The day had been long, hot, arduous, and somewhat nerve-racking. When Jim's head hit the pillow, he had no trouble falling asleep.

The following day, Maria Polkowski, big and round and colorful, wearing far too much makeup, clownlike, showed up at the DEA's office on Fifty-seventh Street. Jim and Tom sat her down at a desk and listened to her story. She first talked about Vincenzo. She described him as a good-looking man with dark hair, definitely in the Mafia, married to a Canadian woman. He was on the lam, she said, and lived in Canada. She said, too, that Hector was creating problems for her. She didn't have coke like that. She didn't want to be put into a position where she was asked for something she could not deliver. Jim calmed her down, told her she was the best they'd ever had.

“If anyone can pull this off, you can. I know you can,” he reassured her. “I will make sure nothing happens to you, I promise,” he said.

She looked at him long and hard. She liked Jim, trusted him, had a bit of a crush on him.

“Okay,” she said.

Jim told her to phone him the moment she heard anything further, that he'd be at her beck and call twenty-four hours a day. Bolstered by his kind words, she left, a newfound spring in her heavy step. Jim proceeded to call an old contact/good friend of his—Mike Spataro, a retired NYPD detective out of the Organized Crime Unit who was now working for the DEA. Nobody knew more about organized crime characters than Mike. He had a memory like a steel bear trap. He had copious notes that included aliases, nicknames, tattoos, etc. Jim asked him about this Vincenzo. He said he was good-looking, in his forties, had dark hair, and was married to a Canadian woman. Spataro told Jim that he'd see what he could find out and then get back to him.

 

With no new developments in the case Maria had just brought them, two days later, Jim and Tommy were back in Brooklyn's Gravesend, continuing their surveillance of Tommy Pitera and the jaded constellation of bad guys that revolved around him. They were still working out of the house in Bensonhurst that monitored all the many taps they had
on cars and homes relevant to the case. They had come to know that Pitera was far more devious than he seemed on the surface. Over and over again, Pitera had warned all his people about talking on phones or in their cars. They, the Pitera strike force, noticed Frank Gangi—that he was a “Pitera regular,” as they started calling his people, and there seemed to be something…unhinged about him. They already knew that Gangi was from a Mafia family, that he had uncles in the Mafia and his father had been immersed in that world. They knew, too, that Frank had been involved in a murder—the killing of Arthur Guvenaro.

Still, recorded conversations Judy Haimowitz had with XXX porno lines came in on a regular basis.

They noted that the Canadian woman Jim and Tom had met outside of Angelo's house that first day had suddenly gone missing. Her mother had been calling both Judy's house and the Just Us looking for her daughter. The agents heard her pleading with Judy.

“Where is Janice? Have you seen her?”

Jim, Tommy, and the task force could not help but wonder if Pitera had something to do with her disappearance.

 

Some five days after Maria first contacted Jim, she called him again.

“Oh my God!” she said. “The Colombian guy called and they're coming to my house.”

“They know where you live?” Jim asked.

“Yes, I told them. You know that's how I get people's trust.”

Jim didn't like this. He shook his head. Rather than admonish her, he said he'd be right there. Jim and his boss Ken Feldman sped over to Queens. As they pulled up in front of the house, by pure happenstance, the yellow convertible pulled up and Giles walked into the house with a green duffel bag. This piqued the agents' interest in a large way. What, they wondered out loud, was in that duffel bag? Within minutes, Giles exited the house, got back into his yellow con
vertible, and took off unconcerned, seemingly unaware. With that, Jim got out of his car and went upstairs to see what was up. He knocked on Maria's door. She opened it. Her eyes were all wide.

“My God,” she said, “look what he gave me!” She opened the bag and inside was four hundred thousand Canadian dollars. Jim looked. He was as shocked as she was. Maria continued. “He gave me this as a down payment for the two hundred kilos.”

This, Jim knew, changed the complexion of the case. These were serious players. If they were willing to just drop off almost half a million dollars as a good-faith deposit, they were the real deal.

“What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” Maria asked.

“Just relax,” Jim said. “I'll help you through it. I'll guide you through every step. You're the best. Just remember that.”

“Okay, James, okay,” she said, seeming more relaxed.

Jim had an uncanny way of getting people in his business to like him, warm to him, trust him. He now took the bag from Maria. He would take it to the office, where it would be marked as evidence. As he made his way downstairs, shockingly, Giles the blond surfer was coming up. They passed each other. Giles was so wrapped up in thought he didn't notice Jim or his bag. Jim was shocked. Surely, he thought he'd make him.

Outside, back in his car, Jim put the duffel bag in Ken's lap and said, “You're not going to fucking believe this. He brought up this bag, gave her four hundred thousand Canadian dollars as a deposit, good faith. I took it from her, and as I'm walking down the stairs, he walks right past me. We walked right past each other. We touched shoulders.”

“No,” Ken said.

“Yes,” Jim said.

“Four hundred thou?” Ken asked, opening the bag, his eyes wide.

“Four hundred thou.”

Jim immediately called Maria. He wanted to know what was up.

“Is everything okay?” he asked.

“Yes, there's no problem. Everything is okay. He came back to give me the phone number to call in Canada.”

“In Canada…where in Canada?”

“Canada,” she said.

“Where in Canada?”

“Toronto…I think,” she said.

“You think? You don't know?”

“Toronto, I know.”

“Are you sure, Maria?”

“I'm sure…Toronto.”

As proficient as Maria was, Jim knew her to be, as he would later explain, “crazy.”

He explained it like this: “That is, she was somewhat spaced out. Out to lunch.”

“So let me get this straight,” Jim said. “He wants you to bring him the drugs in Canada…in Toronto…and call this number that he gave you when you get there.”