Accused Triggerman In Meldish Murder: I Shot The Other Guy

Gang Land Exclusive!Terrence CaldwellThey could call it the Bob Marley Defense, as in the great Wailers song covered by Eric Clapton: "I shot the sheriff. But I did not shoot the deputy."

That was the gist of a stunning opening statement offered to the jury by the lawyer for Terrence Caldwell, the accused triggerman in the 2013 gangland-style slaying of former Purple Gang leader Michael Meldish. Attorney George Goltzer admitted that six months before Meldish was killed, his client had attempted to kill a Bonanno soldier. But he insisted Caldwell wasn't the one who shot Meldish to death as he sat in the driver's seat of his car in the Throg's Neck section of the Bronx.

In a packed courtroom in White Plains Federal Court, Goltzer stated that Caldwell shot gangster Enzo (The Baker) Stagno in May of 2013, as a personal favor for Meldish, a longtime pal. But he added: "We absolutely deny that Ted Caldwell killed Michael Meldish."

AGeorge Goltzernd even though Caldwell admits shooting Stagno as he sat behind the wheel of his SUV at the corner of 111th Street and First Avenue in East Harlem, Goltzer insisted that his client wasn't guilty of that attempted murder charge either. That's because neither Caldwell, nor the shooting, had anything to do with Luchese crime family business, as the racketeering conspiracy indictment alleges.

In an intriguing beginning to the long-delayed trial that didn't play very well with Caldwell's three wiseguy codefendants, Goltzer also told jurors he was going to call a controversial mob turncoat named Frank Pasqua III who told the feds he didn't know Caldwell and was "shocked" to learn that he had been arrested on state murder charges for the slaying back in 2015.

Pasqua is the drug dealing, drug abusing snitch who wrongly fingered his wiseguy father as Meldish's killer, and was still going to be the government's key witness about the murder until he was canned for gun possession and dealing drugs — twice — while cooperating. Pasqua, whose dad is a Luchese soldier, maintains, according to court records, that the three mobsters on trial with Caldwell were part of the plot to whack Meldish.

The indictment accuses Caldwell, 61, former acting Luchese boss Matthew (Matty) Madonna, 83, underboss Steven (Stevie Wonder) Crea, 72, and soldier Christopher Londonio, 45, with the Meldish murder as part of a 20-year-long racketeering conspiracy involving the Luchese crime family. Only Caldwell is charged with shooting Stagno.

Frank Pasqua IIIGoltzer told the jury that contrary to what prosecutor Celia Cohen had stated in her opening statement, the evidence would show that his client's shooting of Stagno "had nothing whatsoever to do with the Luchese crime family, and (nothing) to do with a war or an argument between the Lucheses and the Bonannos."

Caldwell decided to help Meldish get even with members of the Bonanno family who had given the drug dealer a nasty beating "outside of Rao's restaurant" in East Harlem several years ago, said Goltzer."The Bonannos really gave him a beating," said the defense attorney. "They left him on the street, and he never got over it."

The lawyer said Caldwell wasn't a Luchese mobster or associate and had "never conspired with anybody from that crime family." Caldwell was also not a loanshark, bookmaker, or involved in "construction unions," said Goltzer. "There will be no evidence that he ever paid a red cent, a wooden nickel, or one thin dime in tribute to the Mafia family that they claim these folks were a part of. Not a red cent."

Michael MeldishHe was only guilty of being a good friend, said the attorney. Caldwell, said Goltzer, "had a long-term relationship and a friendship with Michael Meldish" who drove Caldwell "to the hospital so he could get chemotherapy" several times in 2012, a year before Meldish was killed. "They were friends, and Ted helped him get even with the people who beat him up," said Goltzer. "I don't say it was the right thing, but it's explainable in human terms rather than the government's theory that it was part of the Luchese crime family."

The lawyer also stated that the government's theory that the shootings of Stagno and Meldish were both part of a Luchese family racketeering conspiracy were "inconsistent" with mob protocol. He argued that jurors should use their "common sense" and reject the murder and attempted murder allegations against his client since he had nothing to do with the mob.

"On the one hand, the government says, 'You can't kill somebody unless you get the approval of those two guys,'" said Goltzer, referring to opening remarks by Cohen who claimed Madonna and Crea had ordered Londonio and Caldwell to whack Meldish. But regarding Stagno, the lawyer said, "now they tell you, 'Meldish ordered it.'"

Enzo StagnoThat "makes no sense," said Goltzer. If Meldish ordered Caldwell to shoot Stagno, he said, it couldn't possibly be considered Luchese business since Meldish wasn't a made guy, much less a boss with the power to order an execution. Meldish, said Goltzer, was merely a family associate, albeit a longtime one with ties to Caldwell's codefendants.

It was also not surprising, he said, that Caldwell's DNA was found on the front inside door handle and also on a rear inside door handle of Meldish's car. But that wasn't proof of guilt, he said. It was there because Caldwell and Meldish were not "strangers" and there "was every reason for a good friend of Michael Meldish to be in his car."

Goltzer tiptoed carefully in his remarks to avoid implicating his client's three wiseguy defendants in criminal activity. But when he told the jury he was going to call Pasqua III as a defense witness to establish Caldwell's innocence of the Meldish murder, Gang Land — and any jurors who may have been looking — saw Stevie Wonder Crea glare at the lawyer.

David Evangelista"I expect he will tell you that he didn't know Ted Caldwell, didn't agree with Ted Caldwell to kill Michael Meldish, and when Ted Caldwell was finally arrested in May of 2015 for the murder of Michael Meldish, (Pasqua) was shocked," said Goltzer.

Judge Cathy Seibel okayed Goltzer's decision to bring up Pasqua at a sidebar conference at which she also denied a motion by Madonna's lawyer Joshua Dratel to sever Caldwell's trial on the grounds that him calling Pasqua at a joint trial when the government decided not to would be "unduly prejudicial" to his client.

In a rousing, rip-roaring conclusion to the opening remarks, attorney John Meringolo told jurors that the "government created a crime of attempted escape" against Londonio by using a snitch he had just met in prison. And that it used the jailhouse informer, and a mob associate he had known for years, to manufacture evidence that his client was the getaway driver in the Meldish murder when it had none that proved he did it.

Joseph FotiMeringolo, who apologized to the jury several times for shouting when the judge told him to lower his voice — Gang Land counted four times — assured jurors that after his cross-examination of jailhouse informer David Evangelista and turncoat mob associate Joseph Foti, they would have so much "reasonable doubt" they would vote "not guilty."

After his first apology, the lawyer told jurors they would hear Londonio discuss loansharking, gambling and drug dealing activity he was involved in, but when he was taped by Foti, a longtime pal a few weeks after the Meldish rubout, he never admitted anything to do with it.

"He has a potty mouth like you've never seen," Meringolo warned them. "Every other word is an F word. And he's not an educated guy, but that's the way he talks, okay? We all talk different. Some of us maybe think we're talking, and we're loud, but we're really just talking," he continued, waving both his hands up high for emphasis. "It's the way it is, right? God makes us all different."

They would hear tapes of Foti talking to Londonio before and after the Meldish murder, said Meringolo, noting that in one on December 3, 2013, some 18 days after the killing, they'll hear Londonio remind Foti that several weeks before Meldish was killed, Foti had said he was going to get shot, and Foti replied: "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It came true. Don't make me a jinx."

Christopher LondonioBut five years later, on October 24, 2018, Foti recalled an amazing fact, said Meringolo. "Hold me to this," the lawyer shouted, "eighteen hundred days after he's speaking with Chris Londonio," Foti contacted the government and said: "Londonio confessed the whole murder to me. He was at a medical facility and he was throwing up because he was so sick he killed his friend. And I was there."

"We're regular people," he told the panel. "If the guy Chris Londonio is telling Foti, 'You told me the guy was going to get shot and he got shot,' where did that come from? Space? Why didn't Foti say, 'Whoa, you said you killed him, why are you saying I did it?' Right? Why didn't Foti say, at the time, 'Chris, didn't you have something to do with it? I thought you were sick at the medical facility the week before and I met you over there?'"

"Because that's the new story," said Meringolo. "That's reasonable doubt and that's not guilty."

John MeringoloAnd while his co-counsel asked for a severance if Pasqua testifies, Meringolo honed in on the fact that in all his taped talks with Pasqua, the mob associate never got Londonio to admit killing Meldish, but that somehow, with no tape recorder running, Evangelista, whom he had just met, did.

"They wired Pasqua up, sent him in" to tape record conversations with Londonio, said Meringolo: "Where is the wire with Evangelista? They rely solely on this guy's word."

"Wait till you get a load of this guy," said Meringolo, reminding the jury that he had stated at the start that "the government created this crime (of escape)" by getting Evangelista to say that his client, who weighed 350 pounds at the time "was going to go out a window eight stories (high.) "And they say he's got eight bed sheets and going to go out the window of the MDC in Brooklyn. If you believe Evangelista after the cross-examination, you can convict me."

The trial resumes today. Evangelista and Foti will testify after the government's first major witness, turncoat mobster John Pennisi, who was inducted into the Luchese family in 2013 and began cooperating a year ago. Pennisi is expected to take the stand today or tomorrow.

The Plumber Got Himself A New Suit For His Mob Boss's Funeral

Carmine PersicoIt was March 8, the day after the death of longtime Mafia boss Carmine (Junior) Persico, and a freshly-minted soldier in the Colombo crime family was promising his capo that he wouldn't embarrass him at the upcoming funeral.

"I ordered a charcoal grey suit, something new," Thomas (The Plumber) Scorcia, told veteran wiseguy Joseph Amato, Sr."I don't want to be like a stumble bum like everybody else. I represent you. This way we'll be nice and sharp."

As it turned out, the embarrassment was all on Amato. Last week the feds rounded up Amato, Scorcia and 18 other mob-tied defendants and charged them with a slew of crimes, including a scheme to fix an unidentified NCAA college basketball game.

Joseph Amato Senior & JuniorThe lucky break on the case came when Amato, consumed with jealousy that his flame was stepping out on him, planted a GPS device on her car in hopes it would let him know her whereabouts.

Instead, the clever lady ditched the gizmo on a city bus. And when authorities went to track down the owner, they found that it held the key to a crew of active, but decidedly klutzy, Colombo mobsters and associates.

Amato Sr., his son Joseph Amato Jr. and newly inducted wiseguy Scorcia were among five defendants hit with racketeering charges that include extortion, loansharking and gambling from January of 2014 through last week.

The arrests came after a three year probe that began in November of 2016 when the GPS tracking device was found on an MTA bus. Traced to Amato, authorities learned that he had purchased it to keep tabs on an ex-girlfriend "who discovered the device on her vehicle and removed it," according to U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue.

In court filings which sought to detain the Amatos as dangers to the community, the feds charged the father and son team with assaulting Neil Devito, the cardboard thief who played Uncle Neil in Made In Staten Island, the short-lived reality TV show about young offspring of Staten Island mobsters that Gang Land told you about last month.

The elder Amato, 60, who spent a 15 year stretch behind bars for the killing of an innocent 18-year-old Brooklyn youth during the 1990s Colombo war was detained but Amato Jr., 26, was ordered released first by a U.S. Magistrate and then by Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser, who affirmed Amato Jr.'s release on $1 million bail that was secured by property.

Scorcia, 52, who was detained as a danger to the community, was inducted into the crime family on December 11, 2018 on Avenue U in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn at the Cafe di Giorno Lounge, or at the Panino Perfetto, a sandwich shop next door, "where they remained for a few hours," according to a detention memo filed by prosecutors Elizabeth Geddes and Megan Farrell.

Neil DevitoThe part owner a major plumbing company, Scorcia was sponsored for induction by the elder Amato and reports to him almost every day, prosecutors say. Scorcia also has a large loanshark book with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the street, and buys new cell phones each month for himself, Amato, and mobster Daniel (The Wig) Capaldo, the prosecutors say.

On the same phone call where the feds heard Scorcia brag about the new threads he was wearing to the Persico funeral, the prosecutors said they heard Amato suggest that Scorcia and Capaldo drive the dead boss's body back to New York from the North Carolina hospital where he died. Scorcia joked: "Do I move up in the ranks?"

In a court filing yesterday, attorney Vincent Romano appealed his client's detention, noting that he has no prior arrests, is a 24% owner of ABR Plumbing of Brooklyn, and has not been accused of a single violent crime by the government, which has been wire-tapping Scorcia's and the elder Amato's phones for months.

He also accused prosecutor Geddes with misleading the magistrate judge who detained Scorcia by accusing him of planning to assault codefendant Dominick Ricigliano, when Ricigliano was an "alleged loanshark" who vandalized Scorcia's office and assaulted him in 2017. His client may have discussed it, Romano wrote, but he "never retaliated against Ricigliano."

Ask Andy: Carmine Galante Hit Team, 40 Years Later; Four Dead, Two Behind Bars

Andy Petepiece The storied killing of Carmine (Lilo) Galante 40 years ago, with his picture on the front pages of New York newspapers lying dead with a cigar clenched in his teeth meant instant underworld celebrity status for the sextet of gangsters who pulled it off — even though Galante was not really a Mafia boss, but a "would be" mob chieftain who was killed for his trouble.

It's not hard to imagine them congratulating each other for a job well done at a secret rendezvous after killing Galante and two others at Joe & Mary's Italian Restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn on July12, 1979. But none of them lived happily ever after. Four are dead, three from mob violence. Two are behind bars, and only one has a realistic chance of getting out alive.

The first member of the hit team to bite the dust was Dominick (Big Trin) Trinchera. His role in the Galante rubout was to keep the restaurant staff and any customers from interfering while two accomplices ran through the joint to whack Lilo and two Galante pals as they dined on an outdoor back patio. Big Trin did his job, firing one shot and wounding John Turano, the son of the owner as he reached for a hidden pistol to defend his family.

Galante Hit Daily News Frony PageTrinchera was promoted to capo for his work by the imprisoned Bonanno boss Philip (Rusty) Rastelli. But within two years everything would go south for Trinchera who was part of a group that planned a bloody coup to do what Galante had tried to do — oust control of the crime family from Rastelli. Along with two other rebel capos, Big Trin was lured to a Brooklyn social club on May 5, 1981 and killed by Rastelli loyalists led by Joseph Massino.

Santo Giordano was the wheelman in the Galante hit. He wielded an M1 carbine and kept onlookers at bay while standing next to the driver's side door outside Joe & Mary's. Two years later, he was a Rastelli loyalist in killing off Trinchera and two other insurgent capos but was accidentally wounded by friendly gunfire and ended up a paraplegic. Two years later, in July of 1983, Giordano died in a crash of a small private plane near Bayport, Long Island.

Galante OutgoingA year later, Cesare Bonventre, one of two Galante bodyguards who were in on the rubout plot, fell out of favor with underboss Massino and was killed by a hit team led by his brother-in-law, Salvatore Vitale. Bonventre, who had pumped several shots into Galante crony Leonard Coppola who was seated across from him, believed he was on his way to attend a meeting with Rastelli.

Russell Mauro was the triggerman who killed Galante, firing his double-barrelled shotgun into Lilo as the "would be" boss sat with Coppola and restaurant owner Joseph Turano. As a reward for his outdoor patio work, Mauro was made a capo in 1985/86. But in the early 1990s, he was suspected of being an informer and whacked by a Vitale-led hit-team on May 29, 1991.

Baldassare AmatoGalante bodyguard Baldassare (Baldo) Amato was sitting to Lilo's left when he was murdered. A witness saw Amato hiding behind a table with a pistol in his hand, so it's likely he fired his gun, but not at Mauro or the other assassin when the shooting started, since like Bonventre, Amato was more loyal to the real Bonanno boss than the "would be" leader.

But unlike Bonventre, since 1979 Baldo has remained in good standing with the crime family. And for the next 25 years, while he had troubles with the law, he managed to avoid any long prison terms while dealing drugs and overseeing a Ridgewood Queens gang of young wannabe wiseguys known as the Giannini Crew who robbed banks, bars, and other businesses and extorted storeowners for protection money. But that ended in 2004 when he was charged with two 1992 murders and held without bail to await trial.

But rather than take a double-digit plea deal like many Bonannos did after Massino flipped, Amato took his chances at trial. On July 12, 2006, he was found guilty of both murders and sentenced to life in prison. Now 67, Amato is doing his time in a federal prison in West Virginia.

Anthony IndelicatoAnthony (Bruno) Indelicato, the only Galante hit team member convicted of the crime, is the son of one of the rebel capos who were killed along with Big Trin Trinchera in the Three Capos Murders in 1981 — Alphonse (Sonny Red) Indelicato. Found guilty of the murders of Coppolla, Turano and Galante at the Mafia Commission trial, Bruno was sentenced to 40 years. That was cut in half on appeal. He ended up doing 13 years behind bars for his role in the three killings.

Wielding a pump action shotgun, Bruno had rushed into the back patio and blew away restaurant owner Joe Turano, then finished off the wounded Coppola as Mauro was killing Galante. Bruno was promoted to capo as a reward, but in 1981, when his father, Trinchera and Phillip (Philly Lucky) Giaccone were gunned down, Bruno was also marked for death, and went on the lam. It took two years before he believed assurances that he was safe to "come in."

Released from prison in 1998, Indelicato was assigned to the crew of capo Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano. In 2001 Bruno drove the hit car in the rubout of mob associate Frank Santoro. This came back to bite Indelicato five years later when he was indicted for the murder and held without bail. After copping a plea deal, Indelicato, now 72, was sentenced to 20 years. This time, he'll be behind bars for about 17 years. His projected release date is in 2023.