The Big Heist

by Anthony M. DeStefano

  So, in the final analysis and to the media’s disappointment much of the sensational blood and gore surrounding the Lufthansa heist would be kept out of the case. That was a clear win for Asaro’s defense team. But Ross did permit some old Lufthansa evidence to come in. There was another interesting wrinkle that could prove helpful to Asaro. Ross also permitted his lawyers to use some NYPD reports and documents about the disappearance of Paul Katz. Consisting of the original missing person’s report and additional materials, the police documents added a new name to the disappearance of Katz: Joseph Allegro. The police documents showed that on the afternoon he left the house for the last time, Katz had told his wife Delores he was going to meet Allegro, one of the men arrested with Katz in an earlier hijacking case. Katz never returned that day. For a number of legal reasons, Ross said Asaro’s lawyers could use the police documents as evidence and by implication put before the jury the name of Allegro as another person who might have been involved in Katz’s disappearance and death.

  As the trial date of October 19, 2015, approached, Asaro had been in federal custody for twenty-one months, and the time of incarceration was wearing on him. He had suffered from heart trouble, having received a bypass operation and if his old gangster friends were right had liver troubles. Asaro had not lived a healthy life, even as a young man when he struggled with drug addiction and alcohol. It had worn him down. His face was angular and thin, making him look every bit of his octogenarian self. Also fatiguing for Asaro were the early 5:30 A.M. wakeups at the detention center whenever he had to be bussed to court. “This ‘Sleepfella’ wants to catch a few more winks before going to court,” joked one Daily News story.

  Through his attorneys, Asaro sent a letter to Ross claiming he should be released on bail because of his health issues and the strain of having to go back and forth to court. Asaro proposed that he be let out on bail to live under conditions of home confinement—meaning with an ankle bracelet monitoring device—at his girlfriend’s home, what better way to get your vigor and vim back. Besides, at his advanced age and with the Lufthansa and Katz murder allegations over four decades old, Asaro said he wasn’t a danger to anybody.

  No way, said prosecutors about Asaro’s request for bail. In a letter to Ross, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alicyn Cooley said that Asaro was still a violent man well into his seventies and that Valenti’s taped conversations proved it.

  “Even with home confinement and electronic monitoring, the defendant would have unfettered use of telephones and smart devices while at his girlfriend’s residence and could easily conduct the Bonanno family’s business with those resources and his newly obtained freedom,” wrote Cooley.

  Asaro could still try to intimidate witnesses either directly or indirectly, Cooley continued. She added that since Asaro was now aware of the strength of the government’s case, his incentive to flee was stronger than ever and he could rely on the resources of the Bonanno family to do so. In reality, the Bonanno family didn’t seem to hold Asaro in high regard, particularly after his coarse comments about his son and DiFiore had surfaced, so it is doubtful anyone in the borgata would have risked helping him to flee. The crime family also didn’t have the kind of financial resources anymore after years of prosecutions to help Asaro even if it wanted to. Nevertheless, Ross played it safe and kept Asaro in custody, but indicated to both sides that they might have to try and sort out a later jailhouse wakeup call for him on the days he had to come to court if things got too tiring for him.

  The solution that emerged to save Asaro some sleep time and make the day less stressful involved the U.S. Marshals Service. Instead of bundling Asaro on the regular Bureau of Prisons bus for the ride from Red Hook to the courthouse, the marshals awoke Asaro separately and then drove him in their vehicle to downtown Brooklyn. It might not sound like a big deal, but the arrangement saved Asaro from the fatiguing early wakeups at the jail. He also was able to strike up friendly banter with the marshals escorting him. When the trial day was finished, Asaro would then be put back on the regular bus for the ride back to the Metropolitan Detention Center.

  Jury selection in the Asaro trial took about two days and by October 15, 2015, a panel of six men and six women, along with four alternates had been selected from the hundreds of potential jurors who endured the selection process. Despite concerns about the impact the movies GoodFellas, The Godfather, and other mob films might have on juror impartiality, Ross and the attorneys quickly found a panel that seemed acceptable. Jury selection is always an important part of a big trial and both defense and prosecution want jurors who don’t appear biased and can keep an open mind—and will follow the law as laid out by Ross.

  On the defense side, Macedonio and Ferrone used their gut sense about the jurors and looked for candidates who showed some sense of independence, a certain swagger as she called it. The defense also didn’t want a panel composed of white-haired elderly women who might be turned off by the allegations of violence. The result was a fairly diverse panel of what Macedonio later said were mostly working-class people. Sometimes the selection process can drone on for days. But for Asaro, things went quickly and smoothly.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “SCORE OF SCORES”

  ANYONE WALKING INTO COURTROOM 8C in Brooklyn Federal Court—known officially as the U.S. District Court for The Eastern District of New York—at 9:30 the morning of October 19, 2015, would be struck by the fact that Vincent Asaro’s destiny was going to be determined by the hard work of a number of women. The prosecutors were all women. Asaro’s defense attorneys were all women. Lastly, there was Judge Allyne Ross.

  A native New Yorker, Ross had been on the court since 1994 when she was nominated for a judgeship by President Bill Clinton. Educated at Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, Ross eventually landed a job at the same Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s Office that was prosecuting Asaro. After about ten years as an assistant U.S. attorney, Ross became a magistrate judge for eight years before Clinton nominated her for the bench. She had a reputation for being an even-tempered jurist and despite her past career as a prosecutor didn’t seem to have a pro-government bias. She was on senior status, meaning she could pick what kind of cases she would accept and had as much as three months off. But Ross, like most of the senior judges in Brooklyn federal court, kept a large workload. Ross liked to work full days when she was on trial and often held court five days a week. That is how things would go for Asaro’s case.

  Arrayed at tables directly in front of Ross’s bench were the prosecution team of Nicole Argentieri, Alicyn L. Cooley, and Lindsay K. Gerdes, as well as paralegal Teri Carby and FBI agents Robert Ypelaar and Adam Mininni. Argentieri, at the age of thirty-eight, was the senior attorney on the case and had been a prosecutor in the office since 2007, having worked previously as an associate at a prestigious Manhattan law firm. She had earned a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. As a prosecutor, Argentieri earned a reputation among defense lawyers as being aggressive, perhaps a bit strident and had garnered experience in the prosecution of a number of Mafia cases, notably that of Bonanno captain Vincent Basciano who was convicted of racketeering in 2011 but escaped the death penalty despite her vigorous argument to the jury for his execution. After eight years of experience, Argentieri rose to the position of acting chief of the Organized Crime and Gangs section of the office and secured convictions in most of the cases she handled, according to government data analyzed by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a non-profit group that crunches the numbers of a wide variety of Department of Justice data. One case that got away from Argentieri was that of Anthony Romanello, the reputed gangster who was acquitted of extortion charges despite the testimony of Massino.

  The other two attorneys at the prosecution table were less experienced than Argentieri but deemed up to the task of handling the case with her. Gerdes, thirty-four, was a product of the University of Cincinnati College of Law and had done a stint at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office where she
worked on homicide prosecutions before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn. Cooley, thirty-two, was Ivy League through and through. She graduated from Yale University and was also a graduate of its law school. Cooley was the youngest of the prosecution team but had earned legal experience at the high-powered Manhattan law firm of Davis, Polk & Wardell.

  Ever since she graduated from New York Law School, Macedonio had wanted to be a trial lawyer. She didn’t take the traditional route of working at a big law firm, which could have kept her out of the courtroom, but instead opened up her solo practice in Queens where she took office space in the Bayside firm of Steven Zissou. If it was criminal work she wanted, Macedonio got it in large quantity. She represented mobsters Jack D’Amico, once the close friend of the late John Gotti, as well as Joseph Cammarota Jr., a Bonanno family captain. Most of Macedonio’s cases resulted in plea bargains, and she earned a reputation for working out good deals for her clients. She had yet to win a complete federal acquittal.

  But as experienced as she was, Macedonio was just one attorney facing an entire prosecution team. Aside from paralegal Sam Tureff and investigator Ron Dwyer, Macedonio seemed out-matched in terms of the personnel the government had. At one point, Macedonio asked Ross to appoint her a co-counsel who would be paid by the court, the way Macedonio was being compensated. But Ross, apparently for budget reasons, balked at that suggestion. Finally, Macedonio turned to colleague Diane Ferrone to see if she would accept appointment at a lower “mentor” rate, which Ross approved.

  Tall and dark haired, Ferrone, thirty-nine, already had experience in the Lufthansa case, having worked on the defense of Jack Bonventre, one of Asaro’s co-defendants who got out of the case with a plea bargain in late 2014 and a sentence of twenty-one months and a $40,000 fine. Ferrone was a native of Long Island, growing up in North Bellmore and then going to high school in Syosset. Like Argentieri, Ferrone was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where they had been friends. After law school, Ferrone took a job with the well-known and highly respected white-collar defense firm started by the late Robert Morvillo, among whose clients was Martha Stewart.

  Ferrone later worked at the criminal defense boutique firm of Sercarz & Riopelle, where she worked along with named partner Roland Riopelle defending Annette Bongiorno, one of financial criminal Bernard Madoff’s employees who was ultimately convicted for her role in the fraud. After a couple of years at Sercarz & Riopelle, Ferrone eventually started her own solo practice. She seemed happiest as a lawyer working for herself. Ferrone was a good co-counsel choice for Macedonio since she had a mix of trial and extensive brief-writing experience. She also bonded with her clients, said a former colleague, something that could prove useful with a difficult client like Asaro.

  Surrounded as he was by mostly women, Asaro was the oldest person in the well of the courtroom, a fact that was obvious to even the most casual observer. To soften his image at the defense table, Asaro wore sweaters which made him look even more grandfatherly. If anyone was expecting to see a thuggish-looking man facing the jury, they were mistaken.

  The first order of business on the opening day of the trial was a skirmish among the attorneys over money—not theirs but rather what the U.S. government had paid the cooperating witnesses. The witnesses had been paid varying amounts, and Macedonio and Ferrone computed that the total was around $2 million, including $250,000 for the first witness Salvatore Vitale, an amount paid shortly before trial.

  Argentieri didn’t think the payment had to be brought up in the testimony. Macedonio thought otherwise. Ross said she was troubled by it but wanted to read some other documents first before making a decision.

  * * *

  It fell upon Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsay Gerdes to give the government’s opening statement and as she faced the jury she wanted to make sure from her very first words that each of them knew that Asaro was no soft and cuddly granddad but a dyed-in-the-wool gangster who lived by the rules of the mob.

  “Omertà, the code of silence. Death before dishonor. Never talk to the police. These are the mottos of the Mafia,” Gerdes said. “And punishment for disobeying that code is death.”

  Right from the start, Gerdes brought up the most vile of the allegations against Asaro: the murder and anonymous burial of poor Paul Katz, the misguided hijacker and mob associate whose bones were sifted from the soil during the FBI dig at the house on 102nd Road

  Opening statements are not evidence, but prosecutors try to make them compelling and shocking, dripping the proceedings in blood so that a jury will wonder from the very start just what kind of defendant sits before them. Katz went out of the house one day in 1969 and never returned to his family, said Gerdes, adding that there was a simple reason for that: he was cooperating with police after being arrested.

  “After 44 years, all that remained of him, all that could be returned to his children were pieces of the man he once was; bones, hair, and teeth,” Gerdes continued. It was a horrible ending for any human being and the prosecutor then turned toward Asaro.

  “One of the men who killed Paul Katz, who murdered Paul Katz, who strangled him to death with a dog chain, who hid his body away from his family, the man with death before dishonor tattooed on his forearm sits in this courtroom today. That man is Vincent Asaro, the defendant,” she said.

  * * *

  Opening statements are useful because they can whet the appetite of jurors and ready them for what may come. A good opening can point out weaknesses in a case as well as strengths. But one thing is clear. If an opening statement promises too much it can come back and haunt the lawyer when it comes time to sum up everything at the end of a trial and what was promised in the opening never materialized in the proof.

  Gerdes’s job for the nearly forty-five minutes she spoke to the jury was to make sure that it was clear what she and the prosecution team believed they could prove. In broad strokes, she said Asaro was a Mafiosi who came from a long line of mobsters and was wedded to the life of La Cosa Nostra.

  “The defendant is a gangster through and through. He lived and breathed the mafia. He was proud to be a made member, but one thing that always defined him was that he always did things his way,” Gerdes explained.

  Of course, the most serious crime in the case was the Lufthansa heist and operation pulled off by Asaro and Jimmy Burke, “truly the score of all scores,” said Gerdes about the bold and nearly flawless robbery at Building 261 at JFK the morning of December 11, 1978.

  * * *

  Gerdes painted a very cinematic description, based on what Valenti had told the FBI, about what had happened when the Asaro-Burke crew sprang into action. Burke and Asaro lay in wait a short distance away in a crash car just in case the cops arrived.

  Her description was vivid and fast-paced. “The rest of the team piled into the stolen van and headed for the cargo terminal. They cut the chain-link on the fence and got inside, and there they huddled the employees together, and held them at gunpoint. They quickly made their way to the high-value vault. Jackpot. Boxes and boxes and boxes of money and jewelry, more money than everyone could have ever, ever dreamed.”

  Lufthansa made Asaro a rich man, said Gerdes, to the tune of a nice $500,000 share, money she said he used to fund his loansharking business well into the 1980s, increasing his street cred in the mob. Along the way, Asaro passed up some of the proceeds to his bosses in the Bonanno family, $100,000 to one and jewelry to another, Gerdes told the jury.

  “Life was good. It would be for the defendant,” she added.

  Gerdes wasn’t going to go into everything Asaro was charged with, but she told the jury that there had been much to his life of crime.

  “The defendant stands charged with his involvement in over 40 years of criminal activity, 40 years of conspiring to commit crimes for and at the direction of the Bonanno crime family,” Gerdes stressed.

  The prosecutor noted that the case was also about extortion, shakedowns in the Times Square porn industry, a
nd of course the murder of Katz. All of this would be proved through Valenti’s testimony and the myriad tapes he made that depicted Asaro reminiscing about his gangster life and then revealing the callous, brutish way he tried to intimidate people for money, said Gerdes.

  “You will hear him say 37 years a wiseguy, referring to the 37 years he spent as a made member of the Bonanno crime family. Then he says and another 50 years before that, referring to the 50 years his father spent in the family,” Gerdes continued.

  “You will hear the callousness and the ruthlessness of this man, how in talking about one victim he tells another soldier below him in the crime family to stab him, give him a beating, give him a beating,” added Gerdes.

  The prosecutor ended her opening as prosecutors always do, with the fervent hope that the jury would find the evidence against Asaro compelling and convict him of the 16 crimes for which he had been indicted.

  In the face of Gerdes’s drama, Diane Ferrone carried the weight for the defense when it came time for her to speak. She told the jurors that Vincent Asaro enjoyed the presumption of innocence, no matter what the prosecution had just said. That was a stock argument by defense attorneys but it was true: The American legal system presumed all defendants accused of a crime by prosecutors and police were innocent until proven convincingly that they weren’t.