FEDS LAUNCH CHILLING HUNT FOR CORPSES IN QUEENS DUMPING LOT

By KATI CORNELL SMITH, LARRY CELONA and KATE SHEEHY
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October 5, 2004 -- Authorities yesterday unearthed a suspected Gambino graveyard in an overgrown Queens lot where at least five men — including the unlucky guy who accidentally ran over and killed mob don John Gotti's son in 1980 — are believed to have been buried.

FBI agents, backed by cadaver-sniffing dogs, a helicopter and heavy construction equipment, swooped down on the site on 75th Street in Ozone Park, specifically searching for at least two bodies believed to have been stuffed into steel drums, and three more wrapped in canvas, sources said.

In addition to Gotti's tragic former neighbor, those believed to be buried there include Tommy DeSimone — the crazy hit man portrayed by Joe Pesci in the flick "GoodFellas" — and Bonanno capos Dominick "Big Trin" Trinchera and Philip "Philly Lucky" Giaccone, sources said.

The fifth man was described as a thug who refused to carry out the hit on DeSimone, only to wind up being personally killed by a furious Gotti.

Sources added that the five men may be just the beginning of a long list of victims hidden in the Mafia dumping ground.

As many as 15 more corpses could be buried at the empty, weed-choked spot — most of them the remains of victims killed by the Gotti-run Gambino crime family, sources said.

"From what I understand, there are a lot of things down there," one source said of the site between Blake and Dumont avenues, on the Brooklyn border.  

At the top of the list of suspected victims entombed beneath the three to four feet of concrete is John Favara, Gotti's one-time neighbor in Howard Beach.

The 51-year-old dad of two was driving home from work March 18, 1980, when Gotti's 12-year-old son, Frankie, who was on a minibike, darted in front of his car and was struck and killed.

After four months of being terrorized by Gotti goons, Favara disappeared after leaving work.

Witnesses said they last saw him being ambushed and then beaten bloody by Gotti thugs before being thrown into the back of a van.

Meanwhile, Trinchera, an obese 350 pounds, and Giaccone were fatally gunned down along with fellow capo Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato during a nearly botched rubout at a Brooklyn social club on May 5, 1981.

Indelicato's body was found wrapped in canvas later that month at the same site now being excavated. He had been shot once in the head and twice in the chest.

The bodies of Trinchera and Giaccone — part of a trio accused by family honcho Joe Massino of trying to undermine his control — were never found.

The hot-headed DeSimone, a mob associate, was rubbed out in 1978 after flying into a rage and killing two close pals of Gotti.

Law-enforcement sources said they launched the massive dig based on new information from several informants.

The feds said the stunning development at the graveyard came as they also are finally piecing together exactly what they believe happened to Favara in his final minutes. They say it appears Favara, a manager at a Castro Convertible plant in New Hyde Park, L.I., was eating at a diner near his office when a group of Gotti's goons pulled up outside the day he disappeared.

The group — including Gotti's brother Gene, John Carneglia, Wilfred "Willie Boy" Johnson and Anthony "Tony Roach" Rampino — ambushed Favara as he left, beating him to a pulp with a baseball bat, the sources said.

Favara was then shoved into a van and shot, they said.

The sources said he was then driven to an auto-body chop shop owned by Carneglia, and his body dismembered.

The group put the body parts and cement mix in a drum before burying the steel container at the lot, the sources said.

John Gotti, who has since died of throat cancer, was reportedly in Florida on vacation at the time.

Sources said the burial of Favara's body by the Gambinos and of the three capos by the Bonannos at the same spot was extremely unusual.

Organized-crime families rarely use the same spot to dump their victims, since those involved in the hits aren't supposed to discuss the killings with anyone not directly involved in them.

But federal sources noted that Gotti and Massino were old buddies, having grown up in the same Howard Beach neighborhood. They say this might account for the move.

Law-enforcement workers at the lot yesterday said it had been deemed a flood zone, and that construction crews over the years built it up with concrete so that it wouldn't be saturated with water and ruin their equipment.

Now, with up to four feet of concrete to rip up and sift through, the agents said the dig could last several weeks.

"Two weeks of digging, that's what they have planned," a source at the site said.

A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf declined to comment.

Victoria Gotti, John's widow, yesterday griped that he's now an easy target for those wanting to pin Favara's disappearance on him.

"They blame too much on John Gotti," she said.

Of Favara — whom she herself once attacked with a baseball bat shortly after her son's death — she said only, "I didn't really know him."

But neighbors said Favara's story was tragic from the start, beginning with the accident.

Just after that, his family started receiving threatening mail. Then his car was stolen from in front of his house and later recovered — with "Murderer" spray-painted on it.

Favara was so distraught that he frantically gave his wife power of attorney in the days after the accident and tried to sell their house so they could escape the area.

He was two days away from closing on the sale of their house, which was just around the corner from the Gottis, when he disappeared.

Margherita Lange, 39, who now lives at the Favara home, said, "I never really think about it because it happened so long ago.

"But I wish someone had told me it was his house when I had bought it. If I had known, I wouldn't have bought the house."

Really funny. Really funny.
Whattya mean I'm funny?
You're just funny, y'know, the story. It's funny. You're a funny guy.
Whattya mean? They way I talk? What?
It's just, y'know, it's just funny, you know the way you tell the story and everything ...
Funny how? I mean, what's funny about it?
Tommy, no, you got it all wrong ...
Whoa, whoa Anthony! He's a big boy, he knows what he said. What'd you say? Funny how? What?
Just you know you're funny.
You mean, let me understand this ... cuz I ... maybe its me, maybe I'm a little fucked up maybe. I'm funny how, I mean funny, like I'm a clown? I amuse you. I make you laugh? I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? Whattya you mean funny? Funny how? How am I funny?
I don't know just ... you know how you tell the story. What?
No, no I don't know. You said it. How do I know? You said I'm funny.
How the fuck am I funny? What the fuck is so funny about me? Tell me. Tell me what's funny?

Why would the mob wrap bodies in canvas or put them into steel drums before burying them?  It seems like it would delay the decomposition process.  Also, why bury the bodies in Queens?  Queens is pretty close to the ocean, why not just dump the bodies in the water?

Remains of mafia captains identified
Pieces of human skeletons found in vacant lot

From Jonathan Wald and Adam Reiss
CNN
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 Posted: 1455 GMT (2255 HKT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Authorities have found the skeletons of two mafia captains, believed to be victims of a gangland shooting over 20 years ago, FBI officials said Monday.

An FBI agent said the two week long excavation in a Queens lot has uncovered the bones of Bonanno capos Philip "Phil Lucky" Giaccone and Dominick "Big Trin" Trinchera.

Agents from the FBI's Bonanno and Gotti squads along with the New York City Police Department's Cold Case Squad have been digging through concrete and sifting through dirt since October 4 following a tip by an informant.

Giaccone's remains were identified by pieces of personal property found with his bones, including a Piaget Watch which matched a description given by family associates, a law enforcement official told CNN.

Authorities identified Trinchera's remains after finding his credit card and other pieces of personal property with his bones, the official said.

The discoveries were made in an area that borders Brooklyn and Queens near John F. Kennedy International Airport where Alfonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato's body was found by children playing in 1981.

Indelicato, a captain in the Bonanno family, had tried to take over the family with Giaccone and Trinchera, a plan that led to the murder of all three of them in a Brooklyn social club in 1981, according to court testimony from the brother-in-law of Joseph Massino, the Bonanno mob boss.

Investigators are working with New York City's Medical Examiner's Office to conclusively identify the remains by matching samples of DNA provided by families of the Bonanno captains, a process which could take weeks.

Law enforcement sources told CNN that over the last 10 years they have been able to develop good sources within organized crime. Those sources eventually pointed investigators to the location in Queens.

Authorities believe as many as six murder victims were buried in the lot in the late 1970s early 1980s, including Luchese family associates Joseph Spione and Thomas DeSimone and John Favara, a Queens furniture store manager, who they say was killed because he accidentally ran over the 12-year-old son of former Gambino mob boss, John Gotti, when he darted from behind a garbage container.

DeSimone, from Queens, was reported missing in January 1979 and is suspected of being part of the Lufthansa Airlines cargo heist in 1978.

Investigators will keep excavating until the end of the week. "The search is continuing," FBI spokesman James Margolin said. "There is still 40 percent of the lot left untouched."

The FBI believes this area may be a graveyard used by the Mafia for targets of hits ordered by Gotti and his Bonanno family counterpart, Massino.

Massino was recently convicted of murder and racketeering and will be sentenced November 17. His brother-in-law, Salvatore Vitale, was the government's star witness at his trial.

The ties of loyalty in the Bonanno family unraveled after the undercover FBI agent known as Donnie Brasco infiltrated their world in the late 1970s, a story told in the Al Pacino-Johnny Depp movie "Donnie Brasco."

Vitale, the family's underboss, agreed to become a government witness last year.

By October 11, investigators found what appeared to be a human fibula, a tibia, a hip or pelvic bone and a bone from either a hand or foot, according to Margolin.

Who ever squeeled about thos location will soon be dead.


Sgatr15

Quoted: Who ever squeeled about thos location will soon be dead. Sgatr15

+1

I left that neighborhood in 1976.  I will never go back.

To me, the "Goodfellas" movie is one of the most chilling and scary I've ever seen.

I used to work in a grocery store on 89th Street.  I delivered groceries to the homes of our customers by bicycle.  One day Harry told me to deliver these groceries to a customer but don't ask for payment, don't accept a tip.  Wierd, right?  It was his gift to a now grieving wife and mother of three whose husband had been found in the trunk of a car with his head cut off.

I lived in Ozone Park.  We used to call the O-Z (oh  zee, two words).  Then there was South OZ, closer to the airport, having lots of vacant and overgrown land at the time.  Our rivals were East New York (ENY).  The boundary between ENY and OZ is where these bodies were found.

Once you're in, you can't get out.

There were so many neighborhoods that looked 'questionable' to live in but BEAUTIFUL cars in the driveways and the doors were always open. You would think that they would get robbed. Safest place to own a home if you know what I mean. Goodfellas was one of the best movies ever made and the 'atmoshpere' it demonstrates reminds me A LOT of growing up in Queens.

Amazing. Everyone says how dangerous NY is to live in but now that I am about to reach the half point in my life when I lived in NY vs living in CA, I have felt safer in NY than CA. I have been burglarized 3 times here, had one friend try to contract kill her husband AND her boyfriend, almost carjacked.

Geez, maybe NYkers make up being unsafe to keep people away.

Quoted: Quoted: Who ever squeeled about thos location will soon be dead. Sgatr15 +1

Nah, no such thing as the mafia anymore. Too many rats that can't keep their oath.

Yo Tommy!

Quoted: Why would the mob wrap bodies in canvas or put them into steel drums before burying them?  It seems like it would delay the decomposition process.  Also, why bury the bodies in Queens?  Queens is pretty close to the ocean, why not just dump the bodies in the water?

Hey, it took 20 years and someone to talk to find it, buried in concrete is a good place to put something you don't want found. Dumping things in the water... it can turn up, just look at all the bodies found in the water. As for the canvas, it's probably easier to just keep the body in whatever it was transported in instead of taking it out and leaving evidence. Although DNA evidence isn't close then to what it is now by far.

Quoted: Quoted: Why would the mob wrap bodies in canvas or put them into steel drums before burying them?  It seems like it would delay the decomposition process.  Also, why bury the bodies in Queens?  Queens is pretty close to the ocean, why not just dump the bodies in the water? Hey, it took 20 years and someone to talk to find it, buried in concrete is a good place to put something you don't want found. Dumping things in the water... it can turn up, just look at all the bodies found in the water. As for the canvas, it's probably easier to just keep the body in whatever it was transported in instead of taking it out and leaving evidence. Although DNA evidence isn't close then to what it is now by far.

I didn't catch the part about burried in concrete.  Now that I think about it, the drum does keep blood from leaking all over the back of the van.

Sorry, I have to agree there have to be much better ways to get rid of a body.

These guys do it for a hobby, you would think they would have a wood chipper, a vat of acid for the shreddings and a burn pile for the acidic sludge, or something better that leaving the remains around for posterity.

They rely on people to keep their piehole shut.

I only trust two people, me and my Mother, and I aint so sure about her.

Concrete weights in the ocean didn't work so well for Scott Peterson.

Quoted: Concrete weights in the ocean didn't work so well for Scott Peterson.

He should have sealed her in a steel drum.

The mob types have not-so-impressive nicknames, I must say.

I was watching this story about the Hoffa investigation a few years back and broke out laughing at the string of names.

Buffalino, Giacalone (the newstype pronounced it "jackalone"),

Don't hogs work well?

55gal drums filled with concrete and body parts make it easy to drop in a hole and handle with a handtruck.....drop the whole cement filled drum off a boat and it will drop like a rock in any depth of water, deep enough water and it will NEVER surface.

Those assholes deserved what they got.  A lot of people want to idolize them, but forget how they made their money.  Putting Gotti's wife and family on TV is a slap in the face to every person they ever victimized.  They were nothing but a bunch of murdering thieves who made their living by extortion, drug dealing, prostitution and other illegal means.  They preyed on the shopkeeper, the man down on his luck and anyone who tried to stop them.  Scum of the earth.

Quoted: Those assholes deserved what they got.  A lot of people want to idolize them, but forget how they made their money.

Amen. There is a very special and particularly dark corner in hell for these bastards. I hope they're having fun.

Putting Gotti's wife and family on TV is a slap in the face to every person they ever victimized.

I thought it was his daughter and her kids?

Either way, you're right. I watched that show once, and I would LOVE to get into that house and teach those little punks just how low on the totem pole they are, and then teach them how to TALK for God's sake!

...and I'd love to see that bitch in a poorhouse. Poetic justice.

My mistake.  It is about his daughter.

Chipper shredders and meat grinders make things so much simpler.  grind/shred then dump in water makes nature take its course much faster and does not leave big recognizable parts for fisherman to find.

"At the top of the list of suspected victims entombed beneath the three to four feet of concrete is John Favara, Gotti's one-time neighbor in Howard Beach.

The 51-year-old dad of two was driving home from work March 18, 1980, when Gotti's 12-year-old son, Frankie, who was on a minibike, darted in front of his car and was struck and killed.

After four months of being terrorized by Gotti goons, Favara disappeared after leaving work.

Witnesses said they last saw him being ambushed and then beaten bloody by Gotti thugs before being thrown into the back of a van."

Hard to say if having a CCW or carrying ileagally would have saved this guy (I sure as hell would have... regardless of the law). Running, moving, relocating, new identity probably wouldn't have saved his ass (I doubt he would qualify for the witness protection program).

What alternative would this guy have had?

Alert the Feds and hope they can obatain enough eveidence to proesecute  the shit-stains for intimidation and making threats (RICO)... and placing himself and his family in even more danger.

Get your family well hidden and take matters into his own hands (get them before they get you... at least take a few of them with you).

Just sit back and wait for the bullet to come.

(Where's the "Punisher" or "Mac Bolan" when you need them?)

Quoted: Chipper shredders and meat grinders make things so much simpler.  grind/shred then dump in water makes nature take its course much faster and does not leave big recognizable parts for fisherman to find.

Chip shredder makes sense, but the meat grinder is kind of gross.  I don't think those cement-heads would bother cleaning it out before grinding up someone's hamburger.

Did they ever find Jimmy Hoffa at the Meadowlands?

Quoted: Did they ever find Jimmy Hoffa at the Meadowlands?

They dug up the body and re-buried it in the new Giants stadium.

Giants Stadium IS in the Meadowlands.....

Quoted: Giants Stadium IS in the Meadowlands.....

That is why I said the new Giants stadium.  Didn't they build a new one?

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Who ever squeeled about thos location will soon be dead. Sgatr15 +1 Nah, no such thing as the mafia anymore. Too many rats that can't keep their oath.

Uh huh.


Sgatr15

Quoted: Quoted: Giants Stadium IS in the Meadowlands..... That is why I said the new Giants stadium.  Didn't they build a new one?

Oh, geez. I have no idea. Don't know why they would. The one in the Meadowlands is just fine (even if it IS in No Joyzee...)

The Giants used to play at Yankee Stadium (IIRC).  When the Meadowlands was built, the Giants moved their games over to that venue.