The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer
The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez
Smiling Wolf
Predators & Prayers
Stolen Flower
FOOTNOTES
To return to the corresponding text, click on the asterisk and reference number.
11. Armed, Dangerous and Aggressive
*1 It should be noted here that Richard Kuklinski, aka ‘the Ice Man’, would later claim to have been involved in the Galante murder, though it turned out to be untrue.
49. Revelations
*1 The Brooklyn DA’s office got involved because Gangi had first spoken to NYPD detectives.
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This book is dedicated to ASAC Jim Hunt and the members of the Pitera task force out of Group 33 in the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York office – Ken Feldman, Tom Geisel, Bruce Travers, Mike Agrifolio, John McKenna, Mike Rubowski, John Welch, John Wilson and Violet Szelecky. Every day, these brave men put their lives on the line fighting the scourge that drugs are, warring with extremely wealthy, diabolical, highly motivated drug lords from all over the world.
In respectful memory of the DEA agents
brought down in the war on drugs.
Charles A. Wood
Stafford Beckett
Joseph Floyd
James T. Williams
James E. Brown
James R. Kerrigan
Spencer Stafford
Anker M. Bangs
Wilson M. Shee
Mansel R. Burrell
Hector Jordan
Gene A. Clifton
Frank Tummillo
Richard Heath Jr
Emir Benitez
Gerald Sawyer
Leslie S. Grosso
Larry D. Wallace
Octavio Gonzalez
Thomas J. Devine
Marcellus Ward
Enrique S. Camarena
William Ramos
Raymond J. Statsny
Terry W. McNett
George M. Montoya
Paul S. Seema
Everett E. Hatcher
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath would not have been possible without the kind help and never-ending cooperation of ASAC Jim Hunt of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Thanks to his steel bear-trap memory and his willingness to sit down with myself and my assistant, Kelsey Osgood, for endless hours, we were able to understand and portray this very complex, epic tale involving the war on drugs – the Bonanno crime family on one side and the DEA on the other, mortal enemies both. I came to believe that Jim Hunt is a real live hero – men like him are one in a million. The agents who work under Jim, out on the streets with Jim, like him and respect him and told me they’d rather have Jim Hunt watching their backs than anyone else.
I wish to also express my heartfelt gratitude to Kelsey Osgood for her quick wit, sharp intelligence, her ready willingness to do whatever she was asked. Without Kelsey, this book would not have been possible. I also wish to thank Matt Bialer at Sanford Greenburger for his enthusiasm and encouragement, dedication and loyalty. Matt comes from the old school of literary agents – he truly cares for his clients, their work and artistic sensibilities. My thanks to Matt Harper at HarperCollins for his good cheer and excellent editorial input. Many thanks also to my family, my parents, Dante and Nina Carlo for understanding why I missed so many family functions. Also many thanks to my Los Angeles agent Jerry Kalajian for always being there and for promptly returning phone calls, for his guidance, experience and friendship. My heartfelt gratitude to my wife, Laura Carlo, for her help and support, input and understanding, for her sitting down with me and line reading, out loud, this whole book. I would be remiss if I didn’t here thank the kind people at the Savoy Hotel: Carlos Mendes, Fernao, Sergio Coniglio. Also many thanks to Raf Pasquet and the wonderful, amazingly hospitable Boucher brothers, Michael and Perry. I would also like to thank the mean streets of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, where I received most of my education, where I learned about the culture of La Cosa Nostra, its walk and talk, mindset, bloody rhyme and rhythm.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Contained in this book are particularly unsettling crime scene photos of Tommy Karate Pitera’s victims. We realise the photos are horrible and shocking but we feel the hardcore reality of exactly what Pitera did, the Mafia culture that begot him, is important for the reader to see and know and experience. Exclusively, the DEA provided author Philip Carlo with these photographs; they have never been given to any journalist before.
Here, now, we enter the macabre, bloody netherworld of Tommy Karate Pitera.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
THE GOOD GUYS
Agent Jim Hunt
Pitera task force street captain
Agent Tommy Geisel
Jim Hunt’s partner
Joe Hunt
Jim’s grandfather
James Hunt Senior
Jim’s father, DEA agent
Bruce Travers
Group 33 agent
Mike Agrifolio
Group 33 agent
JohnWelch
Group 33 agent
Dave Toracinta
Group 33 agent
Timmy MacDonald
DEA agent
John McKenna
DEA agent
Vinnie DeMarco
DEA informant
Maria Polkowski
DEA informant
Inspector Martin
head of Canadian Mounties in Toronto
Inspector McDonald
head of Canadian Mounties in Montreal
Joe ‘Dish’ Senatore
DEA informant
David Shapiro
Federal prosecutor
Elise Liang
Federal prosecutor
Andrew Maloney
US attorney
Matthew Mari
criminal defence attorney
David Ruhnke
criminal defence attorney
Cheryl Mackell
criminal defence attorney
Reena Raggi
judge
THE BAD GUYS
Tommy Pitera
Bonanno family capo
Frank Gangi
Pitera associate
Billy Bright
Piter associate, Gangi’s partner in drug dealing
Shlomo Mendelsohn
isreali drug dealer, Pitera associate
Anthony Bruno Indelicato
Bonnano family member
Joseph Bonanno
former head of the Bonanno family
Anthony Spero
Bonanno family underboss
Alphonse ‘Sonny Red’ Indelicato
Bonnanno family member, father of Bruno
John Gotti
Gambino boss
Eddie Lino
Bonnano war captain
Frank Lino
Bonanno capo, Pitera boss, Eddie’s brother
Angelo Favara
Pitera associate
Judy Haimowitz
Pitera associate
Arthur Guvenaro
Gangi and Bright’s drug-dealing associate
Talal Siksik
Israeli drug dealer, Pitera asscoiate
Moussa Aliyan
Israeli drug dealer, Pitera asscoiate
Richie David
Pitera asscoiate
Joey ‘Pizza’ Tekulve
Pitera asscoiate
Vincent ‘Kojak’ Giattino
Pitera asscoiate
Manny Maya
Pitera asscoiate
Frank Rubino
Eddie Lino business associate
Lloyd Modell
Pitera associate aka Lorenzo Modica
Frank Martini
Pitera associate
Carlos Acosta
Colombian drug dealer
Fernando Aguilera
Colombian drug dealer
Paul Castellano
former head of the Gambino family
Joe ‘Butch’ Corrao
Gambino family member
Ross Gangi
Genovese captain, Frank Gangi’s cousin
Richard Leone
Pitera associate
Hector Estrada
Queens-based drug dealer
Vincenzo Lore
Canadian drug dealer
Giles
Canadian drug dealer, fugitive
John Gotti Jr
son of John Gotti, drug dealer
Greg Reiter
Gotti Jr associate
Michael Harrigan
former Gotti Jr associate
Mark Harrigan
Michael’s father
Thomas Carbone
Pitera associate
Michael Cassesse
Pitera associate
Andrew Miciotta
Pitera associate
THE INNOCENTS
Phyllis Burdi
Frank Gangi’s girlfriend
Celeste LiPari
Tommy Pitera’s common-law wife
Barbara Lambrose
Tommy Pitera’s girlfriend
Sophia Gangi
Frank Gangi’s wife
Marek Kucharsky
Russian boxer
Andy Jakakis
friend of Frank Gangi
Joey Balzano
Brooklyn guy
Wilfred ‘Willie Boy’ Johnson
government informer
Solomon Stern
Richard Leone associate
Courtesy of the DEA
PROLOGUE
Gravesend, Brooklyn, is a 7,000-acre swathe of land sandwiched between Bensonhurst and Coney Island. The area initially drew its name from a small graveyard located at McDonald Avenue and Neck Road. Beaten and battered and worn down now, the graveyard is still there today. Gravesend was settled by the Dutch in 1640. Between the years 1641 and 1645, the Dutch had a campaign to rid the area of its indigenous peoples, and they remorselessly murdered over 1,000 American Indians; they beheaded them, dismembered them and burnt them alive at the stake in the years before the area became an English settlement.
Gravesend was strategically close to estuaries fed by the nearby Atlantic Ocean. It was well located for importing and exporting various goods and commodities. The forests of Gravesend were abundant in all manner of game, moose, deer and beaver, wild pig and huge numbers of rabbits. (Nearby Coney Island is Dutch for ‘Rabbit Island’.) The waters of the Atlantic were teeming with many varieties of fish. During the summer months, the pristine, unpolluted Atlantic literally boiled with huge schools of anchovy, cod, mackerel, bluefish, bass, fluke and flounder. Tons of succulent lobster and blue claw crabs were there for the taking. Mountains of oysters, mussels and clams were easily accessible. The vast, blue skies of seventeenth-century Brooklyn were filled with edible fowl – quail, duck and goose. The dark, fertile soil was ideal for bountiful crops. With the exception of the brutal and unforgiving winters, Gravesend was a place of sweet abundance.
As Brooklyn grew to be a large, bustling metropolis, so did Gravesend. In the early twentieth century, the New York Mafia began using the more desolate areas of Gravesend as a convenient dumping ground for bodies. The Five Points Gang, Joe ‘The Boss’ Masseria, Salvatore Maranzano, Lucky Luciano, Murder Incorporated, the five New York crime families – Genovese, Profaci, Bonanno, Lucchese and Anastasia – all gladly used Gravesend as a convenient place to leave their victims – stabbed, ice-picked, butchered, beaten, battered or shot to death.
Up to the day of his arrest, Sammy ‘The Bull’ Gravano had his office smack in the heart of Gravesend, at Highland and Stillwell Avenues. The Lucchese, Genovese, Gambino, Colombo and Bonanno crime families all had secretive black-windowed social clubs in Gravesend and Bensonhurst. Here, mafiosi played cards, drank strong espresso, planned new crimes, murders and hijacks, and settled disputes. Thus, Gravesend, Brooklyn, took on a more sinister, morbid connotation to its inhabitants and the people in nearby Bensonhurst and Coney Island. Here, people minded their own business. Here, no one saw anything. The citizenry could readily be likened to the three wise monkeys . . . they saw no evil, spoke no evil, heard no evil.
Because Gravesend and its neighbour Bensonhurst had larger populations of ‘made men’ than anywhere else in the world, including Sicily, one of the by-products of their work – bodies – was always a concern. Where to hide them; how to get rid of them permanently; whether or not to blatantly leave them out in the open. These were decisions that either had to be made quickly, on the spot, or planned in advance. As vacant lots all across Brooklyn were filled with two- and three-storey red-brick homes, the impromptu burial grounds of the area systematically disappeared. The mob, as a collective whole, had to look for new places to hide their victims.
Thus, it was logical that nearby Staten Island came into play. On Staten Island, there were still huge tracts of uninhabited land, blackened swamps, fields covered with tall green grass in the summer that turned a golden, wheat-like hue in the winter. Here, too, were thousands of acres of thick forests of oak, hickory, maple and beech trees. More importantly, though, were the state wildlife sanctuaries which were protected by the government from any kind of development. No construction was allowed; no utility lines would be laid. Surrounded by hundreds of acres of empty land, there was little threat someone idling by would stumble across a body or members of the mob burying one. Inadvertently, the government had invented the perfect place to get rid of bodies for the Mafia, and it didn’t take long for particularly cunning members of La Cosa Nostra to take advantage of this convenience.
Always wily, always quick to exploit a situation, the Mafia turned Staten Island’s wildlife sanctuaries into its private burial grounds. Interestingly, all five New York crime families used the sanctuaries. One would think members of the mob would keep secret cemeteries private, not tell anyone about them, but just the opposite proved true. They actually shared the sanctuaries with one another. Members of all the five families came to Staten Island with bodies in the trunks of their cars. They drove Cadillacs and Lincolns, Mercedes and Jaguars and arrogantly made their way to private burial grounds scattered all over Staten Island, in the south, the north, the east and west. They were so sure and confident that they often came across the Verrazano Bridge in broad daylight with bodies and long-handled shovels in the trunks of their cars, as Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and other golden oldies came from their radios. Never speeding, always carefully abiding by traffic rules and regulations, signs and lights, they made their way to these prearranged burial sites, sometimes singing along with Sinatra. Occasionally, there were graves already prepared; most often, however, shallow graves would be quickly dug in the secret-holding sanctuaries.
One such place was the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge, some eight miles as the crow flies from the great-grand Verrazano Bridge. A caporegime in the Bonanno crime family out of Gravesend, Brooklyn, had made this bird sanctuary his private burial ground. Here, there were bodies that had suffered tremendous trauma while the person was still alive – here were bodies that had been neatly cut into six pieces: the legs, arms, head and torso all separated from one another by skilful cuts that showed no tears. Whoever dismembered these bodies was experienced, methodical, as cold and efficient as a butcher in the Meatpacking district of lower Manhattan.
Here, there were no tombstones.
Here, there was no reminder of the many who had lost their lives.
‘Right now, the federal government is fighting a war on drug abuse under a distinct handicap, for its efforts are those of a loosely confederated alliance facing a resourceful, elusive, worldwide enemy.’
– Richard Nixon, July 1973, upon creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration
‘There’s never been anyone like him. He was like a vampire. We believe he killed over 60 people.’
– James J. Hunt, Assistant Special Agent, New York Field Division, DEA
‘We followed him for three years. He always wore black. His face was very white. One night we saw him doing chins on a fire escape in a dark alley at four o’clock in the morning. It was an unsettling sight.’
– Agent David Toracinta
‘If anyone deserved the death penalty, it was Tommy Pitera.’
– Federal Prosecutor David Shapiro
‘Greed was the engine that fuelled his criminal enterprise.’
– Assistant US Attorney Elisa Liang
‘After what he did to Phyllis, I hated the fucker.’
– Frank Gangi
‘When he talked, he sounded just like a girl.’
– Lenny the pizza guy
‘Three men could keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’
– Santo Trafficante, Louisiana Mafia Boss
‘Just say no.’
– Nancy Reagan
1
SANCTUARY
It was 6 June 1990. The skies over Staten Island were clear and unblemished, as blue as the eye of a dove. An unusual caravan of police slowly made their way off the Staten Island Expressway and towards the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. It was a task force comprised of crack, hard-faced DEA, FBI and ATF agents, as well as hardcore NYPD organised crime detectives. Prosecutors from the Brooklyn DA’s office were also present. Each of these prosecutors, agents and detectives was tense and uptight. What they were doing today, the reason they were approaching the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge on Staten Island, was the culmination of three and a half years of hard work, blood and sweat and tears – literally.
In the second vehicle of this solemn caravan sat DEA Agent Jim Hunt, the man in charge of a DEA task force that had been pursuing a notorious Bonanno capo by the name of Tommy ‘Karate’ Pitera. Hunt was the man in charge of all the DEA personnel involved in this particular investigation; he was the eye of the storm, the skipper of the ship. Hunt was a six-foot, thickly muscled Irishman; he had a pale, handsome countenance and large, all-seeing Paul Newman blue eyes. A stoic, exceedingly dedicated third-generation cop, Jim took his work very seriously, was highly motivated, tenacious, though he was quick to laugh and quick to smile with no strings attached. He would gladly help a colleague or friend in need.
Hunt had an unusual sense of fair play for a cop. As much as he hated drug dealers, drug abusers and bad guys, he empathised and sympathised with some of their plights. Hunt viewed drug abuse more as a medical problem. He well understood that while some people can have a social drink or two, others become alcoholics . . . the dregs of society. What Jim Hunt was after, what he had his sights on, were the drug lords – those in faraway places, distant lands, who had learned to manipulate the system in such a way that they had become some of the wealthiest people in the world. The drug lords not only usurped the rule of law but also gleefully defecated all over it. These foes, these enemies, were not only in distant lands. They were here, also. Home-grown. The Mafia, the bosses and capos of each of the families, was dealing in drugs, Jim knew.
What was particularly unusual about this group of law-enforcement agents serpentining through Staten Island that June day was that they were all cooperating with each other. Most often, there is a fierce, bare-knuckled competition between the FBI and the DEA, the NYPD and the ATF; they were competitors in perpetual pissing contests, not colleagues. But this case was so unusual, the stakes so dire, that each of the agencies had made peace and were truly cooperating with one another on a large scale – a rare thing.
Sitting alongside Hunt was his fellow DEA agent and partner, Tommy Geisel. Geisel and Hunt were so close that they were more like brothers than partners in the war against drugs. For years, they’d been trusting one another with their lives. Geisel was a large, broad-shouldered, strapping individual. He had, in the parlance of the DEA, ‘brains, balls and brawn’, a phrase commonly used within the agency to describe the type of men they were looking for. Geisel was the kind of guy that Jim wanted in his foxhole, and there was no one else he wanted watching his back. Throughout the DEA, these two were known as ‘the Perfect Storm’ by their colleagues.
Accompanying this variegated army of police, there was also a bad guy – someone who wore a black hat, who would draw the curtains back and reveal the true horrors that even this group of law enforcement would soon be shocked and stunned by. He was tall and thin; his nose resembled a Toucan’s beak. This bad guy was nervous and unsettled to the core of his being. Over the last four years, he had become, quite literally, unhinged – pushed to his limits by mind-numbing violence and unspeakable barbaric acts, as people around him were tortured, cut up and summarily discarded.
Some 13 months ago, ASAC Hunt had heard that a Bonanno family capo, Tommy Pitera, was leaving bodies on Staten Island. An Israeli drug dealer named Shlomo Mendelsohn had got himself in trouble and offered to give up the whereabouts of Pitera’s cemetery. The only problem was Shlomo couldn’t remember exactly where the cemetery was located. He had only been there once and it was at night. He had never been to Staten Island before the time he went with Pitera to dispose of a body. At one point during their quest to find Pitera’s cemetery, Shlomo had even said, scratching his head, ‘I’m thinking maybe it was New Jersey, not Staten Island.’
Shlomo was deeply immersed in selling huge amounts of cocaine in Manhattan, but Staten Island and New Jersey were completely foreign to him. Though Shlomo had seemed sincere and truthful, he had stepped up to bat and struck out.
Now Jim Hunt was back with another man who said he knew where Pitera’s victims were. Hopeful, though wary, Jim’s keen blue eyes moved left and right as the caravan slowly crept forward. As they approached a desolate street, the bad guy said, ‘Here . . . here, this is it! I’m almost sure.’
The problem was that, like Shlomo, this bad guy had only been there in the dead of night. Daylight cast the stage of horrors that existed here in warm, welcoming light. That June day was cloudless, and the sun shone with such brilliance most all the agents donned sunglasses. It looked more like the south of France or a Mediterranean island than a Mafia burial ground.
The caravan moved right. Like a giant anaconda coming to a sudden stop, all the vehicles became immobile. Serious-faced and curious, each of the law-enforcement professionals stepped from their air-conditioned cars. The humid hot air struck them like a wet towel. As though on cue, an unruly gang of crows noisily cawed in different trees spread throughout the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge.
Concerned about contaminating the area, losing potential evidence, all the agents and NYPD cops began to put on white jumpsuits made of a thin, malleable paper. Having a good, easy rapport with the informer, Jim Hunt asked, ‘Where?’, his eyebrows raised sceptically.
‘Oh man,’ the informer said, his brow creasing, the weight of the world suddenly on his shoulders. Sweating, licking his lips, smoking a cigarette, the bad guy moved into the thicket of poplar and elm and pine trees spread out before them. He had a worried look about his face. He seemed confused – lost. He took about 30 cautious steps into the sanctuary, stopped, looked around as some 25 pairs of cynical, wary cops’ eyes regarded him with a mix of trepidation and curiosity.
He began moving east, stopped, turned around and moved west. He looked down. He scratched his head. He regarded Jim Hunt. He liked Hunt. He wanted to please him. Hunt was a straight shooter and the bad guy knew that whatever Hunt promised him, he would get. It was already agreed that the federal government, because of his cooperation, would put him and his family into the Witness Protection Program. He had no reason to lie. If he had any future, he had to cooperate with the feds. He knew he had to give them what they wanted.
‘The problem,’ the informer apologised, ‘is that I was here at night. It’s very hard to tell one spot from another. You know, it’s, like, really the same.’ He looked down at the ground. It was covered with a carpet of dead leaves and foliage. The thick smell of wet soil and mildew hung in the humid air. There was nothing to indicate that humans had been buried here; no bald spots, no sudden bursts of greenery – no telltale sign of human death. The crows continued to caw. Their ruckus was distracting. A chain smoker, the informer lit one cigarette after another. Beads of sweat ran down his face. Jim called an impromptu brainstorming session between all the law enforcement there that day. They, as a collective body, believed what the informer had said. They knew Pitera was murdering people as though he had a God-given right, as though he had a licence to kill, and that the informer had no reason to lie. They decided that until proven otherwise, they’d believe him and move full out until they found Pitera’s victims. Hunt and Geisel believed that Pitera had killed over 60 people.
The NYPD set up a command centre. Uniformed cops were posted all around the bird sanctuary, roughly 25 acres in size. They knew that once the news media got wind of a Mafia burial ground, they’d have reporters sniffing around like hungry hounds within hours. Finding bodies buried months and years ago here, without coordinates, without landmarks, would be no easy task, like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, though none of that was going to dissuade any of the hardcore law-enforcement professionals there that fateful day. They continued looking without luck. The fierce June sun reluctantly dropped below the line of trees. Long shadows appeared. Silently, dusk descended onto the sanctuary. The sounds of crickets and frogs came from every direction at once. Large flocks of sparrows chattered rapidly. The birds, troubled and nervous by the cops’ sudden presence, knew the secrets that their sanctuary held.
Foul flesh, silent screams and nightmares. As dark continued to envelope the sanctuary, agents and police there decided they would start up the search again the following morning.
2
DARK SECRETS
Mechanised, organised, as succinct as a well-run military operation, the Pitera task force gathered at 8 a.m. the following morning.
Again, the skies were clear. The birds that dwelt in the sanctuary made a racket. They were used to peace and quiet. They did not like the hurly-burly gathering around their homes. Above, a pair of red-tailed hawks circled over the sanctuary, hunting for prey, hunting the abundance of food they knew lived below.
It was decided that the first thing the strike force would do was bring in cadaver dogs. Given the circumstances, this seemed logical. When the dogs arrived, unremarkable mutts anxious to please, anxious to find the rotting bodies they would receive rewards for, they made their way into the sanctuary. They moved north and south and east and west in prearranged grids. This went on all that day to no avail. Everyone there was sure that if there were bodies, these dogs would find them; they had proven themselves in the past.
Nothing.
Not willing to accept defeat, the task force brought the dogs in a second day. They worked slower but still found nothing.
How, the task-force members wondered, could the dogs miss the scent? Some of the victims here were buried several months ago. Some of the victims one year, some two or even three years ago. The stench of death, the stench of putrid meat, organs, should still have been real and tangible – outright offensive – but the cadaver dogs seemed oblivious.
At a meeting back in Manhattan at the DEA’s office on West 57th Street, the task-force members sat down and brainstormed some more. They questioned the informer’s validity. They discussed the probability of his being mistaken about the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. They consulted maps to see if there were other bird sanctuaries nearby, to see if there was another logical explanation. There wasn’t.
One of the task-force members talked about a machine a man in California had developed that could find bodies. His name was George Reynolds. They kicked the idea around of bringing him out, and then contacted Reynolds. He assured them seven ways from Sunday that the machine worked. It had proved itself over and over again, he said. Cops, fellow colleagues, attested to the machine’s working. At great expense, Reynolds and his machine were brought to New York and driven out to the bird sanctuary. There was excitement in the air. Finally they’d have the proof, finally they’d have the sorrowful remnants of Pitera’s handiwork. As some 30 members of the Pitera task force looked on, the man and his machine searched for bodies. It was hot and humid. Everyone was sweating. The crows were back and they made an awful racket. All that day, the man diligently searched and he, too, found nothing. Jim Hunt soon gave him the boot and sent him back to California.
This, combined with the heat, combined with the failure of the informer and the dogs, was discouraging. Was the informer pulling their legs; would he try to cut himself a deal for crimes he committed that they, at this point, knew nothing about?
These were not, however, the type of people who gave up easily. They were all alpha males and females, tenacious investigators, the type that would not let go. They were experienced – the best of the best.
Often with police work, it’s more than facts and figures, names and places, the who, what, when, where and why. Often it’s just a gut feeling, something deep inside that points the way, that has a voice and direction of its own. And almost all of them there, working the sanctuary, the Pitera case, felt in their gut that they were on the right trail; felt in their gut that they had discovered the Jeffrey Dahmer of the Mafia – that they had discovered a serial killer who was a capo in a Mafia family, and they would work this case tirelessly, to the very end, wherever it took them.
The following day the task-force members, wearing white jumpsuits, were back at the sanctuary. They were now doing it the old-fashioned way, the way their fathers and grandfathers had looked for bodies. They secured four-foot-long metal probes pointed at one end and with a five-inch handle at the other that would enable the task force to literally probe the ground.
Again, going back to basics, they drew precise, neat grids on different sections of the sanctuary and, working two and a half feet from one another’s shoulders, they began to walk in a straight line, every foot or so jabbing the probes into the ground. Luckily for them, the dirt was soft and readily accepted the probes. For all that day, back and forth, quiet and solemn, a joke now and then – mostly macabre ones – the strike force moved. Towards the end of the day, as the fiery June sun began to set, the strike force prepared to break for the night. They had come across rabbits and raccoons, skunks and weasels, but no bodies.
An NYPD detective out of the Brooklyn Racket Squad named Bobby Povone made his way away from the group, sat down on a rock and lit up a cigarette. He, like most of the law enforcement there that day, believed that there were bodies buried here. He had been hearing for years rumours about the Mafia burying bodies out on Staten Island. Why not here? It seemed the perfect place. There wasn’t a house or human being anywhere nearby. It struck him as ironic that the federal government had created, in a very real sense, a place where the Mafia was able to hide bodies, bodies that would never be found because the EPA – Environmental Protection Agency – wouldn’t allow the birds to be disturbed.
Slowly, reservedly, Bobby moved back towards the group, a tall, wiry, resolute individual. He kind of haphazardly, though pensively, probed as he went, pushed down, found nothing, withdrew the probe. He had moved some 20 feet when the probe suddenly struck something hard, but giving. He pulled out the probe, pushed it back down, pulled it out, pushed it back in still again . . . something was there; something not indigenous to the ground.
‘Hey! Hey! Over here!’ He signalled to the others. They moved towards him. ‘I think I’ve got one.’
3
IT’S GOOD TO KNOW KARATE
Thomas Pitera was born in Gravesend, Brooklyn, on 2 December 1954. His parents, Joseph and Catherine, were hard-working people of modest means. He had an older sister named Theresa and a large, close-knit extended family. Joseph Pitera was a candy salesman. With samples of his wares secreted in the trunk of his car, he drove throughout the five boroughs selling Mary Janes, Pixie Sticks, Red Hots, Lemon Drops and Bazooka Gum. The Piteras hailed from southern Italy, the Campagna region. They were good Catholics, and Mrs Pitera attended church on a regular basis.
Tommy Pitera was an unusual child. He had thick, jet-black hair, piercing blue-grey eyes, a strong jaw line and high cheekbones. Without wanting to, without meaning to, his intense stare and black hair drew attention to him, attention that he didn’t want, attention he would grow to disdain. As a boy, he was thin and pale, shy and withdrawn. Tommy had a particularly high-pitched voice that sounded more like a girl’s than a boy’s. It could readily be likened to Michael Jackson’s voice, though it was even more falsetto.
Given his frailty, combined with his small stature and cartoonish voice, Tommy was an ideal target for Gravesend bullies, food for hungry carnivores. This was an extremely rough-and-tumble neighbourhood – one of the toughest in all of America – filled with thickly muscled labourers and blue-collar workers. The young Tommy Pitera couldn’t have been in a worse place. Here, people did not turn the other cheek. Here, if you were abused, you struck back hard with bad intentions. Here he who struck first was victorious. He who was left standing was the winner. Gravesend, Bensonhurst and Coney Island were all particularly tough neighbourhoods. You could liken these areas to concrete jungles filled with predatory creatures: those who readily fed on the weak, those who took advantage of the lame and the unaware.
On a daily basis, often several times a day, neighbourhood bullies picked on Tommy. They made fun of his voice, his clothes, his walk. He was slapped or kicked for no reason. He was mocked and spat on for no reason. In short, the young Pitera had no peace, had no solace, had no way to strike back, had no friends. Not wanting to appear like a crybaby, a sissy, he said nothing to his mother and father about the abuse he suffered on a daily basis.
Frequently when he came home from school, he was on the verge of tears. In fact, he often cried alone in his room because of the grave injustices he suffered at the hands of the neighbourhood miscreants. Like most who are mistreated, Tommy fantasised about striking back, hurting those who abused him – getting even. As he got older, those fantasies became tangible realities and, unbridled, they grew to monstrous proportions. The abuse and ostracism caused in the young Pitera an antisocial mindset, a feeling of being alone in the world, a feeling he could not shake. It was him against them; he felt as though he was on an island alone and unloved. Whenever possible, he would readily express his feelings of anger in the only way he could – striking back and taking revenge in diabolical ways. He stole, as an example, the little league baseball equipment and sold it on the street. He did this not only for the money he was able to make but also, more importantly, it was his way of getting back at the establishment, it was his way of undermining, setting fire to, what he could not become a part of. In a very real sense, it was Pitera’s way of saying, ‘Fuck you, world.’
Tommy attended Boody Junior High School on Avenue S. When recently queried, teachers there had very little recollection of him. He was so quiet, so shy, so put-upon that he seemed to disappear into the woodwork. It wasn’t unusual for Tommy to sit at his desk and stare out the windows, imagining himself a valiant, badass fighter, a champion of the downtrodden. Because of his unusually high-pitched voice, it was difficult for him to make friends. In this tough, macho world, boys who spoke like girls didn’t have a chance. Even girls in his classes made fun of him, mocked him, imitated his voice. As days melted into weeks, and weeks into months, the young Tommy’s inner turmoil, animosity and hatred grew and grew. What was in him could readily be likened to a bubbling cauldron getting hotter and hotter still.
The young Pitera particularly liked a popular television show which would end up playing a large part in his life. It was called The Green Hornet and featured the brilliant martial artist Bruce Lee as Kato, the Green Hornet’s sidekick. Fascinated, fixated, Tommy watched Bruce Lee fly through the air, slide down poles, beat bad guys into submission before they knew what had hit them. He threw amazing kicks. His punches were lightning speed. Yet he was always respectful, particularly towards women; he was a gentleman. This, too, appealed to the young Pitera’s sense of fair play.
Naturally enough, Tommy became interested in martial arts. He viewed it as a way for him to be left alone and, if need be, strike back with great force. It was no secret now to Tommy’s parents that he was regularly bullied, and when Tommy told his mother and father he’d like to take karate classes, they acquiesced; they thought it would be a good thing for the boy. They understood the obvious – if the bullying continued, it might have a long-term negative effect on their son.
With great enthusiasm, Tommy began going to karate school in Sheepshead Bay, practising kicks and punches, turns and jumps with the dedication of a cloistered monk. He quickly moved to the head of his class. What was motivating the boy, what was driving him, was that karate gave him strength – an almost religious calling. When, in 1969, Bruce Lee’s first major feature film – Marlowe – came out, Tommy Pitera was hooked on martial arts for life. He became a zealous devotee of throwing accurate punches and kicks. He accepted all the constraints placed around martial arts: you were never to pick a fight, you were always supposed to avoid trouble; to turn the other cheek was the righteous thing to do.
However, when Tommy watched Bruce Lee beat sneering bad guys to a pulp, he felt justice had been done – street justice. Inevitably, Tommy’s muscles began to grow, become more defined. His skinny arms were replaced by strong sinew and muscle tissue. His fists flattened out and widened from constantly hitting heavy bags. His knuckles grew to disproportionate size. His stomach became cut up. The leg muscles between his hips and knees thickened and defined from endless practice kicks.
As Tommy entered high school and moved through the classes, he was a very different boy. He walked with his head high and his shoulders back – defiant and arrogant. He feared no one. In his feet and hands, he felt he had weapons that he could use quickly, discreetly or indiscreetly as he chose. He began to think of himself as a human weapon. He knew, as an example, that professional boxers were not allowed to fight outside of the ring, that the hands of professional boxers were thought of as weapons.
Now, when neighbourhood bullies started with him, made fun of him, they were confronted by a completely new person. Suddenly, the Tommy they used to abuse without response was kicking and punching them from three directions at the same time. He was tough; he was fearless. It didn’t take long for neighbourhood punks to walk around Tommy when they saw him coming. Despite the disapproval of his parents, who didn’t want Tommy looking like a ‘hippie’, Tommy also let his thick, straight black hair grow down past his ears and to his jaw line. His father and mother didn’t like the long hair. They wanted him to get it cut. For the most part, Tommy was a good son, an obedient boy, but in this he would not listen to them. Bruce Lee had long hair and so Tommy wanted it, too.
Still, Tommy Pitera had that awkwardly high falsetto voice. Previously, when in a new classroom, when a question was posed by a teacher all the students would look in his direction. Now, though, no one made fun of him, no one mimicked him. This voice would be a curse Tommy had to live with all his life, an imperfection that no amount of martial arts training could alter.
What he did do, almost as a way of balancing this feminine voice he’d been cursed with, was train harder and harder. He approached martial arts as though it would be his life’s work. Tommy’s karate teachers were proud of him. They saw in the boy a ferocious appetite to fight. They saw a particular acumen in the boy: not only in the punches and kicks he was throwing, but also in his speed; he was hard to hit. Some of his teachers, who were ten, fifteen years Tommy’s senior and had a hundred pounds on him, were astonished by how ferocious he was when he fought.
‘His punches stung as though you’d been hit by a hammer,’ one of his teachers recently explained. The resentment and pain that had been a daily part of Tommy’s life had been replaced by animus and anger.
As well as training for hours every day, Tommy lifted weights. His body took on the demeanour of a labourer; of a man who worked carrying heavy crates all day, every day. Tommy stood in front of a mirror in his parents’ home and marvelled at his muscles, moving slowly this way and that, admiring how his body had changed.
Inevitably, Tommy began fighting in martial arts competitions. Here he was pitted against boys his own age and weight, and he ate them up. It seemed that there was a full-blown ferocious man inside the teenage boy. He had a pent-up anger, hostility, that, when expressed, was a very difficult obstacle to overcome. It wasn’t just a matter of physical strength. It wasn’t a matter of larger biceps or thigh muscles, calf muscles. It was something inside the boy’s head that would inexorably grow and become a fearsome entity. The endless taunts, abuse and beatings he had endured had planted a kind of dragon seed in him that would grow into something horrifying and unspeakable.
Not only did Tommy bury himself in martial arts, but he also began to read voraciously about war in all of its shapes, strategies and tactics. He learned how to torture, how to take apart bodies, where to strike for the maximum effect, where to strike to cause death, how to kill. When Tommy read these words, written carefully by learned men from all over the world, he felt that he was becoming part of an underground culture – a sophisticated society that was wiser and more in touch with the truths of life. His daily martial arts workout, his lifting weights, his reading and watching of violent movies, particularly martial arts films, was a combustible, dangerous recipe for disaster, chaos.
The fact that the young Pitera was growing up on the streets of Gravesend and Bensonhurst added jet fuel to the fire inside him, teeth to the dragon. Here was the largest concentration of Mafia members in the world; this was ground zero for the American La Cosa Nostra. Here was a culture in which the killing of human beings was the norm; here was a culture in which murder was as inevitable as the changing of the seasons. A young boy in this environment could not help but see and know and feel the tangible elements of the Mafia, which were as much a part of the place as pizzerias and espresso cafes. Tommy Pitera came to admire the mafiosi he was surrounded by. They were on every other street corner. They drove fancy cars. They sported silk suits and expensive Italian shoes and were always well barbered, cared for. They were a kind of aristocracy for that place and that time, exuding power and a feeling of danger – things Pitera was drawn to.
For the most part, Pitera was a loner; he was ideally suited to what they wanted. Tommy inevitably began fantasising about going that way, becoming a respected mafioso. He knew that, even with his Mickey Mouse voice, nobody would make fun of him any more; that people would speak to him respectfully, look the other way when they saw him coming. That if you fucked with Tommy Pitera, you would be dead.
To some, this might seem like a fanciful stretch, but when you look at bullied young boys taking up firearms all over the country and attacking their schoolmates and teachers, killing them, killing them without guilt or remorse, killing them in the light of day, you can begin to understand the hateful seed that had been planted and was growing in Tommy Pitera. They say the soul of a man is in his eyes. Well, when you now looked at Tommy Pitera, you saw hooded, bright blue eyes that had the cold, flat depth of ice. One could readily liken his eyes to those of a predatory animal that knows no fear, an animal that would readily tear open your throat – it’s in its nature.
Martial arts gave Tommy Pitera a calling. It gave him a belief system that would, he was sure, serve him well for life. Naturally competitive, he became so adept at throwing punches and kicks and avoiding being hit that he won contest after contest. When a large martial arts bout was held in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay, Pitera competed. In order to win his weight class, he had to fight seven different opponents and, ultimately, beat them all. This was no small task. There was not only a substantial cash prize, but a large amount of prestige also went along with the win. Tommy was also offered a ‘scholarship’ to go and live in Japan and study under one of the country’s most revered martial arts masters. For the young Pitera, this was an exciting, monumental event.
Initially, Tommy’s parents didn’t like the idea, but they changed their minds and gave him their blessing. They felt it would be good for the boy; he would further learn discipline and strengthen his character. The trip would give him a rare opportunity to see the world outside of Brooklyn, an opportunity that few boys in the neighbourhood were afforded. His winning the tournament and the prospect of travelling to Japan further bolstered Tommy’s commitment to martial arts. He surrounded himself, immersed himself in, martial arts, and he embraced the eastern culture’s way of thinking and behaving. Interestingly, he also embraced eastern cuisine. He began eating sushi before it was fashionable – he shied away from Italian food with its emphasis on dairy products and pasta.
When finally the day came for his trip, the Piteras drove their only son to Kennedy Airport and, tearfully, said goodbye to him. He was not only going to a foreign country; he was also going to a country where they didn’t speak English, a country far removed from anything he had known. They were worried for him, concerned.
However, as Tommy made his way to the gate, there was joy, a quiet rejoicing, in his every step. Tommy was not sure where this trip would lead, but he viewed it as an exciting adventure that would bring him in touch with the best martial artists in the world. He felt blessed. All the bullying; all the barbed, vicious taunts, the slaps and punches and kicks he regularly suffered, were now a thing of the past. The plane taxied and took off.
Tommy Pitera was soon high above Jamaica Bay. The sun was setting and it laid a flaming blanket on the wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Tommy Pitera of Gravesend, Brooklyn, was soon speeding towards Japan and his violent destiny at 500 miles an hour, the dormant dragon in him slowly awakening.
4
THE MAKING OF A DRAGON SLAYER
As Tommy Pitera made his way to Japan to learn the finer points of martial arts, DEA Agent Jim Hunt was 17 years old. Though he didn’t know it yet, Hunt had being a cop in his blood. Of course, he knew his father and grandfather were both dedicated to law enforcement, but he had no personal connection to their careers, to their morality, their sense of right and wrong – to their dogged adherence to the rule of law.
His grandfather, Joe Hunt, emigrated to America from County Roscommon, Ireland, in 1913. He heard that there were jobs that paid well in the mines of Montana. After arriving in New York, travelling with fellow Irishmen he made his way to Montana by way of trains. The work in the mines was backbreaking and bone-twisting, under the worst, most dire of circumstances, but Joe Hunt did not complain. He did what was required of him. He was a genuinely tough man, nearly six feet tall. He had black hair, dark eyes and chiselled cheekbones. In his mind, calluses and sweat went hand in hand with making a living, getting somewhere in life.
