District Attorney Edward S. Silver told Kings County judge George J. Joyce that John Mascia, 19, of 7321 Twelfth Avenue, Brooklyn, had admitted that he held up Mr. Allison with two companions. The judge then freed Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Gotti, both of whom had not yet been sentenced.
Mascia is in custody for a Brooklyn burglary.
Carmine Gotti? I wonder if his last name held any weight in 1957. (And what on earth is a presser?) My mother had told me that my father had gone to prison for stealing a car and possibly for armed robbery between Tina’s and Angie’s births, but I didn’t know he was charged with another crime while still in jail. I couldn’t find anything on the 1963 murder. But I had more than databases at my fingertips; I worked among the cream of the journalistic crop. I scanned the Metro directory for the reporter most likely to be of assistance, and landed on William Rashbaum, who worked the Brooklyn federal court beat. I gathered up my courage and jotted off an email, explaining that I was the girl who answered his calls and filed his stories, my dad had been a freelancer of sorts for the Mafia and had served time for killing someone, and could he possibly find anything on him for me? I gulped a pocket of air and hit Send.
He wrote back almost immediately, and I became a bundle of nerves as I double-clicked on his reply. He wanted details, he wrote, and after I supplied what little I knew, he called the desk.
“Hey, Jennifer, I think I found some clippings that might help you,” he said. “How about we meet for a drink?”
This was it. I told one of my co-workers that Willie Rashbaum had found information about my father’s crimes, and wow, isn’t this exciting! He looked at me a little strangely, and I reminded myself that not everybody’s father counted Sing Sing as an alma mater. I left work at nine and headed uptown. I got to the bar first and ordered a scotch and soda, which seemed like the most appropriate drink. Willie joined me ten minutes later—I believe he was wearing a trench coat, but perhaps my memory is drenched in newspaper schmaltz—and handed over what he’d dug up. The first item was a court ledger with a case number on it: 1810/63.
“Here’s his name, the offense”—Decedent shot and killed in park, it read—“and the judge hearing his case,” Willie explained. Barshay was scribbled next to “Judge.” The ledger was handwritten, the scrawled details of one case crowding the next. Despite its dearth of details, the inclusion of a case number would be useful if I wanted to go searching for court records, Willie said. Next he handed me two photocopied newspaper clippings—before coming to the Times he’d had a run at the Daily News, and he was able to retrieve the articles from their database. The first I had seen before, in my mother’s drawer, the one my grandparents had saved when my father was sentenced:
The Daily News, January 9, 1964
MASCIA GIVEN 20-TO-LIFE IN DOPE MURDER
John Mascia, 26, of Miami Beach, Fla., once a big-time dope distributor in the metropolitan area, was sentenced yesterday by Supreme Court Justice Hyman Barshay in Brooklyn to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of a bush league dope pusher.
Last Sept. 27, Mascia interrupted his trial before Barshay on first-degree murder charges to plead guilty to murder, second degree.
Pal Changes Plea
At that time, the state was presenting evidence designed to show that Mascia and Anthony Piracci, 23, of 1593 E. 53d St., Brooklyn, shot to death Joseph (Joe Fish) Vitale, 22, in Owl’s Head Park, Brooklyn, on May 25, 1963. The killing was attributed to Mascia’s belief that Joe Fish held out money on drug sales and also informed for the cops.
Four days before Mascia threw in the towel, Piracci had pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the first degree.
Piracci was to have been at the sentencing yesterday also, but his counsel, Joseph Fontana, advised Barshay that Piracci wanted to withdraw his guilty plea and stand trial on the original murder indictment.
The justice instructed Fontana to present the necessary legal papers in court next Wednesday.
Detectives seeking Vitale’s killers last spring found their first clue in a letter which had been torn in fragments. Patched together, the letter led to Piracci, who in turn linked Mascia with the crime.
Who the hell was Anthony Piracci? The first time I read this I didn’t absorb the “news” the piece offered me: My father had help. When my mother first told me about this murder I pictured my father driving into a deserted park in the dead of night and splattering some poor guy’s brains all over the windshield, and I didn’t imagine he had company. Alone or not, it was a gruesome image. I reminded myself that it wasn’t even his idea to kill Joe Fish in the first place—it was Robert Wyler’s. My father had committed the crime out of a misplaced sense of loyalty for his former partner.
Or had he? Was it possible my mother lied to me? Would she confess the crime but not the motive? Murder is murder, it doesn’t matter why.
The next clipping was some serious shit.
The Daily News, June 16, 1963
PIECING A MURDER CASE TOGETHER
A piece of paper found torn into a hundred scraps and later patiently reassembled by a detective has led, police say, to a solution of the rubout of Joseph Vitale, 24, suspected junk pusher.
Vitale was found dead in Owl’s Head Park, Brooklyn. He had been shot six times, his body stomped, his right hip and left leg fractured. In his pockets were pawn tickets for $2 and $3, a billfold with $5, a hypodermic needle and syringe.
Six shells ringed the body, showing that he had been shot at the scene. The shells were from a .32 caliber automatic and a .32 caliber revolver, indicating that there were two killers.
A List of Names
Detective Stephen Crowley of Brooklyn South Homicide found the tell-tale scraps of paper. Police would only reveal that the torn bits were picked up “far from the scene of the crime.” Crowley pieced them together and discovered that they gave details of a major narcotics operation.
Besides disclosing where the stuff was coming from, its price and destination, the paper yielded a number of names. Following those leads police questioned 30 to 40 characters, mostly known pushers.
Finally the pursuing cops came up with the name of Anthony Piracci, 23, of 1593 E. 53rd Street, Brooklyn. He had no record. They arrested him at his home. Under questioning, police said, Piracci admitted firing one of the six shots that caught Vitale in the head. He named a companion and said the latter fired the other five shots.
Next day in faraway Miami detectives picked up the alleged accomplice, John J. Mascia, 25, described by detectives here as “a big distributor of narcotics in the New York area.”
The “Ride” Car
Miami police said Mascia was toting a .32 caliber revolver and a Luger, both fully loaded, and a pair of handcuffs. He was seized in a motel a few blocks from 960 N.E. 80th St., Miami, where he had moved his family from Brooklyn two months ago. He has a wife and two children.
Parked outside the motel was Mascia’s 1963 white Pontiac, which police said was used to take Vitale from Manhattan to Owl’s Head Park where he was viciously stomped and shot.
Detectives believe that Mascia suspected Vitale was a stool pigeon and, additionally, had held back money received from narcotics sales.
Vitale, who was identified by fingerprints, had been arrested eight times on drug charges. His father, Raphael, operates a luncheonette on E. Houston St. He said he put his son out of his home at 174 Grand St. some years ago because he was on junk and wouldn’t work. The Grand St. address was close to police headquarters and Vitale used to run copy from the police press room.
Piracci was held without bail on homicide charges. Detectives flew to Miami and returned Mascia. He, too, was charged with homicide and held without bail.
Mascia’s record dates to May 25, 1955, when he was put on a year’s probation as a wayward minor for stealing an auto. On Oct. 16, 1956, he was dismissed on his own recognizance on a charge of assault and robbery. On the following Nov. 3 he was sent to Elmira Reformatory on the same charge. On March 27, 1957, he was retu
rned to Elmira on a third similar count.
The main photo that ran with the piece was of a priest leaning over Vitale’s dead, blanket-covered body and administering last rites, a melodramatic photo op if there ever was one. And I loved the stylized terms they used back then: “junk pusher,” “stool pigeon,” “rubout,” “faraway Miami”—which must have seemed far away in 1963 if it took a plane ten hours to get there. So my father had murdered a copy boy, a job similar to the one I had now. That saddened me, as did Vitale’s addiction to drugs, which obviously played a role in his death. Another photo, an old mug shot of Joseph Vitale’s, depicted a handsome man with brown hair grown just past his ears, dark, penetrating eyes, and a friendly, boyish face. Someone I might be attracted to. Next to that was my father’s mug shot. He had the same dominant eyebrows that I took great pains to pluck, black eyes framed by heavy eyelids, a crooked nose, and plump lips drawn so perfectly an artist could have rendered them. But where Vitale’s mug shot from one of his eight arrests reveals a bit of his personality, my father’s expression is totally empty—blank, defiant—and devoid of the life and the humor I so cherished thirty years later, and missed terribly today. This man was not my father; this man was John J. Mascia of 960 N.E. 80th St., Miami—a stranger.
Why would he have left those scraps of paper in the park if they contained so much information? What was he thinking? Was he phenomenally arrogant or incredibly stupid? And—ew—why did he have handcuffs? I sat there lamely, thinking that I’d just read something that my mother, in all likelihood, had never seen. Would she have stayed with him if she’d known that he stomped on someone’s body after shooting him five times? Well, knowing her, probably, but my god. This was not a reluctant murder, as she’d led me to believe. It didn’t sound like he had to summon the anger and courage to pull the trigger. It seemed as if there was serious rage behind his violence. It was almost as if he’d enjoyed it. I wondered if what my mother had described as “psyching himself up” involved cocaine.
I was also surprised to read more about his accomplice, who actually did appear to be a reluctant participant. He only fired once, probably after Joe Fish was already dead. During my shift the next night I did a LexisNexis search for Anthony Piracci and found that he was still alive, out of jail, and living in Boulder, Colorado. I also discovered that he had been busted for cocaine in 1985, along with a scion of the Kellogg family.
I now knew more than my mother ever did about my father’s big crime, the one that derailed his life. Whatever he had told her about the murder was probably wrapped in the guise of a soulful midnight confession replete with scotch, sex, and tears, no doubt cushioning the blow. But to see such stark details in black-and-white might have been quite another experience for her, had she ever gotten the chance. They needed fingerprints to identify the guy!
Since this was knowledge she had discouraged me from finding, my success seemed unfair somehow, and not being able to ask her about it felt illicit. The truth might change me, harden me against my parents, and I wanted to stay just the same as when she last knew me, fearing that if I changed too much she wouldn’t recognize me if she returned—a grieving person’s logic. Just as when she was alive, I couldn’t bear the thought of eclipsing her somehow, of having to make the choice to grow up and leave her behind.
But she’d left me first.
“Thank you,” I muttered to Willie, who sipped a scotch of his own. “I can’t believe you found all this for me.”
“Well,” he said in his wry, gravelly tenor, “it’s not every day that a news clerk calls me and tells me her father was a murderer.”
SUMMER STILL HELD the city in its stifling grip on the September morning I traveled to Brooklyn Supreme Court to peruse the yellowing pile of records that the chief clerk had unearthed for me. As soon as I stepped off the subway I was enveloped in a hazy soup that would have frizzed my long brown hair into oblivion had I not tied it back. When I reached the twenty-third floor of the spanking-new criminal court building on Jay Street, I was handed a pile of papers—court minutes, affidavits, motions of appeal—and given use of a conference room, “for privacy,” the chief clerk explained.
“I can use this whole thing?” I asked, marveling at the view of downtown Brooklyn. “By myself?”
“Sure,” he said. I sat at the conference table and prepared to learn all I could about the crime that had sent me reeling when I’d discovered it online seven years ago. The clerk hoisted a box onto the table and removed a pile of yellowing documents, which he divided into two stacks. “Here,” he said, placing one of the stacks in front of me. “These are the actual court transcripts, which is what you’re looking for, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“And these”—he pointed to the other pile—“are appeals and various motions, but you probably won’t be interested in those.” I glanced at the second pile. That’s what you think. “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” he said, closing the door behind him and heading to his office next door. I lunged for the high-priority pile, and as I flipped through trial transcripts typed out on delicate, nearly transparent onionskin paper, I was transported to the months before the Kennedy assassination, when a twenty-six-year-old man from Bay Ridge with several prior convictions pleaded guilty to the murder of Joseph “the Fish” Vitale.
As his mother, father, younger brother, and sister sat in the courtroom, the jury heard four days of witness testimony in The People of the State of New York against John Mascia, Defendant—until Friday, September 27, 1963, when John was informed by his lawyer that his odds of acquittal weren’t looking so hot. After a heated discussion in chambers, he entered a guilty plea. The judge, Hyman Barshay—who would go on to deny my father’s motions of appeal for the next eleven years—asked John a dozen times whether his lawyer had explained, and if he had understood, the implications of stating his guilt. “I understand, Your Honor,” he replied. When asked whether the damning witness testimony against him was true, my father responded, “Honestly, Your Honor, mostly.”
“What?” Judge Barshay asked.
“Most of it was the truth,” John said, sounding more like the cocky, self-assured father I’d known.
Q: Well, the main feature is this, Mr. Mascia. Did you on this day, May 25, 1963, in Owl’s Head Park, in Brooklyn, shoot Joseph Vitale?
A: Yes.
Q: How many times?
A: I really can’t recall.
Q: Did you have a gun in your hand?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Was it loaded?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Did you empty it? The medical examiner said he found a number of bullet wounds.
A: To my knowledge, it was emptied.
Q: Emptied by you?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Do you wish to tell me why you did it?
A: Well, quite a few circumstances, Your Honor.
Whenever my father cocked his head to the side and squinted he reminded me of Robert De Niro, though when I knew him, in his forties and fifties, his olive features were even more refined than De Niro’s and, I think, more handsome. I pictured him this way then, as he casually answered the questions posed by the man who was charged with determining the course of his life. The line of questioning at its end, John promised to elucidate these “circumstances” to the probation department, depriving me of something I’ll never obtain, though I would spend months trying: my father’s version of these events, in his own words. He shared them with my mother, but never with me. It seems I was never meant to know.
Immediately following this exchange, Piracci also pleaded guilty. But unlike my father’s replies, Piracci’s answers were short and sweet, with no hint of personality: “Yes, Your Honor,”
“Yes, sir,”
“No, Your Honor.” The state offered a lesser charge of manslaughter if John gave information regarding “other matters” in the criminal sphere, but my father was no rat. He refused. The way my mother told it, his brothers-in-crime from the neighborhood
—against whom he could have helped build cases—applauded him as he swaggered through the prison gate. A romanticized version, perhaps, but he’d earned their respect by keeping his mouth shut.
During the sentencing hearing, Judge Barshay took the court on a tour of the Early Criminal Life of John Mascia, formerly of 7321 Twelfth Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Just after his eighteenth birthday he stole a car; at nineteen he was charged with third-degree assault and discharged, only to be picked up two weeks later for assault and robbery. Two weeks after that, when my sister Tina was just a few months old, he was indicted for robbery in the second degree and spent three years at Elmira State Correctional Facility, a sentence that ran concurrently with yet another second-degree robbery charge. And then there was the early morning of May 25, 1963.
The victim was known as Joe Fish, Judge Barshay told the court, but his name was Joseph Vitale, and he was twenty-six years old. He was a known drug addict, and a police informant, and though Vitale was unaware of it, my father knew he was a rat. John’s close friend and partner, Robert Wyler, was in prison, but Vitale may have had information that would have kept him there and sent John back. Robert and John sent coded messages back and forth through Robert’s wife, Ann, and one of these notes, ostensibly from John, was the note that was found ripped to pieces next to Joe Fish’s body in Owl’s Head Park. Pieced together by police, it read, in true Godfather fashion (though years ahead of its time): “Your friend went fishing, but he didn’t catch the big fish”—apparently a reference to Vitale.
Vitale didn’t seem to suspect his fate, evidently oblivious to the dangers of stooling to the cops. He thought he and Johnny and Tony were all pals. So when the pair showed up at Vitale’s father’s luncheonette on East Houston Street promising a shot of heroin, he heartily agreed. John and Tony drove Joe Fish across the Williamsburg Bridge and into Brooklyn, to Owl’s Head Park at Sixty-eighth Street and Colonial Road, bordered on the northwest by the Belt Parkway. The pair was armed and their guns were loaded—John had given one of his to Piracci—and at 5:00 A.M., “in the gangland fashion,” they forged ahead into the park, Joe Fish trailing along behind them, expecting a shot of opiates. Instead, John turned and “emptied his revolver into the body of Mr. Vitale.” Piracci fired a final shot, as if to make sure he was dead.
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