Great Moments In Goonery

The Advance has fun relating the details of radio host-gadfly Curtis Sliwa’s 1992 run-in with John Gotti’s goons — “Organized Crime? Hardly!”:

Mob snitch Joseph D’Angelo, in his second day on the stand at the retrial of John A. (Junior) Gotti in Manhattan federal court, recited a litany of disorganized screw-ups in their effort to carry out their mission.

First, they forgot to fill the tank. The taxi in which he and an accomplice lay in wait for Sliwa outside his apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side was just about out of gas, necessitating a hurried fill-up.

Then, D’Angelo, who was behind the wheel, had to shoo away a couple who thought the cab was legit. Had the couple entered the cab, they wouldn’t have been able to get out, as it was rigged to thwart Sliwa’s escape.

And, the surveillance was so lengthy and unproductive that alleged gunman Michael Yannotti complained that his wife suspected he was seeing a girl friend.

Early in the morning on June 19, 1992 the two were again waiting for Sliwa. A beat cop told the two to move their car. They circled around the block. Then Sliwa jumped into the cab:

Sliwa gave D’Angelo an address. As they started off, “Mike jumped up and said, ‘Give me your wallet!’ The next thing I know, Mike is shooting,” D’Angelo said.

“The gun is going off. We’re driving. [Sliwa is] jumping around in back. Mike’s wrestling with him in front. It was just a crazy scene,” D’Angelo recalled.

Sliwa escaped by jumping through the front passenger window, which was open.

Dr. Jeffrey Nicastro, now the director of Trauma and Surgical Critical Care at Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze, treated Sliwa in Bellevue Hospital’s emergency room.

Yesterday, Dr. Nicastro testified that a bullet tore through Sliwa’s rectum and bladder. The surgeon noted that a second bullet entered the outside of Sliwa’s right thigh, exited through the inside of the thigh, then lodged in the left thigh.

“I was a shooting duck in a duck pond,” Sliwa told jurors on Monday.

D’Angelo and Yannotti ditched the cab on Delancey Street, where they hopped into the getaway car, a Lincoln, that had been trailing them.

They repaired to an apartment in Brooklyn, where, according to D’Angelo, Gambino captain Nicholas (Little Nicky) Corozzo sputtered, “What the hell happened? You better hope this [expletive] guy don’t [expletive] die.”

D’Angelo said Corozzo offering to call him a cab to get back to Staten Island. “I said, no, I don’t feel like taking a cab.”

Westchester Amnesiac Found In Chicago

An amnesiac who left behind his family in August has been found living as a homeless man in Chicago, apparently unaware of his former life back in New York:

Raymond Power Jr. stepped out of his life some time on Aug. 1, 2005, the last day he awoke in Westchester County as a lawyer and New Rochelle resident, a 57-year-old husband and father of two, a Boy Scout leader and churchgoer.

Within two days, he had stumbled into a new, uncertain and evidently unwanted life: as a homeless man in Chicago who could remember nothing of his former existence but for a semblance of his name: Jay Tower.

Earlier this week, Mr. Power, who is apparently suffering from a severe case of amnesia, was found after a homeless friend discovered his picture on “America’s Most Wanted” Web site.

His wife, Jane, and the couple’s two children, 11 and 17, were overjoyed. But as he undergoes tests at a Chicago hospital before his return, they are bracing for what comes next.

“He doesn’t know who we are,” said Mrs. Power, his wife of 30 years, who has spoken with him on the phone. “He said, ‘Do I have children?’ and I said, ‘Yes, you have two children.’ Our prayers have been answered but yet they are very sad that he doesn’t know who they are and also very scared.”

In a telephone interview, Mrs. Power said that her husband, a Vietnam War veteran, had been treated for depression since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, both with medication and counseling.

Mr. Power walked between the two towers 15 minutes before the first plane hit, she said, but was on board a subway bound for the Bronx when the attack took place. She believes that Sept. 11 dredged up painful memories of Vietnam.

Haven’t They Heard Of Mail Fraud, Or At Least Something That Doesn’t Require Heavy Machinery?

Crazy:

Damages to Casale Jewelers, located at 1639 Richmond Rd., are estimated at $100,000, including the hole in the roof through which the thieves tried — and failed — to hoist an 8,000-pound safe out of the building.

“They got the safe, but they dropped it,” said manager Kim Scarlotta.

. . .

Even though nothing was stolen, owner Dominick Casale said he’s offering a $10,000 store gift certificate for information leading to the capture and conviction of the holes-in-the-store gang.

“They came on an excavator they stole from a job site down the road, drove it up one of the driveways and ripped the roof off,” said Ms. Scarlotta.

The intruders also drove the machine through the wall of the store, breaking a gas line.

“They almost blew up themselves and my building!” exclaimed Casale.

Water pipes were smashed, electrical wires severed and merchandise crushed, including jewelry and a Swarovski crystal piece.

. . .

“They were watching too many movies like the ‘Italian Job’ to think they could pull this off,” said Casale.

This Still Happens?

Things I’d rather not know about include extrajudicial mafia justice:

The Gambino organized-crime family, furious at the shooting of one of its bosses, is calling for a sit-down with the rival Bonannos to decide the fate of the ex-cop who allegedly pulled the trigger, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

The Gambinos are absolutely livid because the victim, Carmine Sciandra, who runs the Top Tomato produce market, is a top captain in the Mafia family and was once considered a successor to “teflon don” John Gotti, the sources said.

Both residents and law-enforcement officials fear that unless the dispute is resolved, it could lead to war between the two families.

Sciandra was shot in the belly outside the market on Dec. 7 by former cop Patrick Balsamo, who brought along two Bonanno thugs to use as muscle, police said.

Balsamo was angry because he believed Carmine’s brother, Salvatore, groped the cop’s 18-year-old daughter, Maria, a College of Staten Island student. The teen had worked as a cashier at the market before being fired.

Swinging a baseball bat, Balsamo smashed several windows before a melee erupted. During the fracas, the ex-cop drew a gun and blasted Sciandra, police said.

You may be thinking, “Eliot Ness wouldn’t allow these produce-pimping monsters get away with this!” but apparently the feds are watching them:

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn and the FBI’s organized crime task force are watching to see if any mobsters retaliate.

The feds fear a mob war could erupt because the brazen attack on Sciandra was not approved by other bosses.

“This was a renegade act,” a police source said.

And yet, the Top Tomato Code of Silence stays intact:

At the time of the shooting, witnesses said that they heard a shot and saw Sciandra go down.

Then they saw several men with baseball bats chase a sedan out of the parking lot.

Top Tomato employees would say only, “I don’t know nothin’.”

I Hate To Say It, But That (Alleged) Motherfucker Should Fry

The police officer (allegedly) killed by this idiot loved his (alleged) murderer’s best-known film — and in a strange twist, taped the movie to watch later when it aired on cable just a week before his death:

Days before he was shot dead trying to stop a burglary near his home, Officer Daniel Enchautegui asked a relative to record the movie “A Bronx Tale” — the coming-of-age film starring one of the men now charged in his murder.

The eerie twist emerged yesterday as family and friends packed a Bronx funeral home to pay respects to the heroic cop.

According to Charles Spruill, a cop who worked with Enchautegui at the 40th Precinct, “A Bronx Tale,” starring Lillo Brancato, aired on cable TV about a week before the shooting, but Enchautegui wasn’t home to watch it.

“He wanted his nephew to tape the movie because he really liked [it],” Spruill said. “It’s so ironic.”

Brancato, who played a teen torn between his father’s love and a mobster’s loyalty in the 1993 film, was charged with second-degree murder. He and a gun-toting friend were caught by Enchautegui, 28, Saturday morning as they tried to break into a Bronx home, police said.