Christmas Massacre

by Susan Murphy Milano

The house (left) in Carnation, Washington, was brightly decorated for the holidays. A freshly cut, eight-foot tree in the living room overflowed with presents as Wayne and Judy Anderson prepared for their Christmas Eve dinner. They awaited their adult children and grandchildren. 

Just before 5 p.m. on Dec. 24, 2007, Michele Anderson, 30, and her former live-in boyfriend, Joseph McEnroe, 29, entered her parents' home to bring them a present no one could have predicted. Like a scene out of a horror movie, each armed with hand guns they purchased at a pawn shop together, they executed her father and then her mother. 

Five minutes later, the joy and anticipation of sharing Christmas with the family turned into terror and fear for Scott Anderson, his wife Erica and children, Nathan, three, and Carolina, five, when they walked in the door. The family met with a blaze of gunfire. 

 

The pair (above) shot Scott and then Erica in front of the couple’s children. Somehow Erica, already shot twice, managed to call to 911.

* 5:13.47 p.m.: Communications Center receives a call lasting about 10 seconds from the Anderson residence. The 911 call receiver did not hear any talking on the call, and noted information for the dispatcher: "Heard a lot of yelling in the background….sounded more like party noise than angry heated arguing".

 * 5:15.11 p.m.: Call Receiver calls back into the residence but the call goes to voice mail. Two squad cars are dispatched to the caller's home.

Prosecutors say murder suspect Joe McEnroe yanked the phone out of Erica's hands, tore the phone apart, then shot her in the head. Afterward, McEnroe shot and killed her two young children.

Michele Anderson, in her bright orange county-issued jumpsuit, told a Seattle Times reporter in a June 2008 jail-house interview that she "killed her family in a fit of rage, claiming she had suffered years of physical and emotional abuse."

Justice is a long time coming. Defense attorneys for both of these animals have been granted one continuance after another since the prosecutor announced he would seek the death penalty. The defense attorneys claim that they are not ready to set a trial date because of the complexity of the case. They say they have approximately 200 witnesses to schedule and interview. At this point, the judge will set a trial date sometime in 2010.

If found guilty, Anderson and McEnroe face only two possible sentences for six counts of aggravated murder: execution, or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

These grisly murders, which might seem a prime argument for the death penalty, should instead make us reexamine death-penalty statutes across the country.

The costs necessary to obtain and carry out a death sentence, including many years of appeals, require more than the justice system can absorb, according to a recent report from the Death Penalty Information Center. The defense of Anderson and McEnroe is a case in point. They will drain the justice system dry of resources it can't afford and waste as much time and money as possible. Warehousing them would cost far less money, time and effort.

I would be in favor of abolishing the death penalty if it meant these offenders could be convicted within a reasonable amount of time and sentenced to live out the rest of their lives in a prison cell. 

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Wiseguy Protection Program—Your Tax Dollars at Work

by Michele McPhee

You want to know the secret ways in which untold amounts of our federal tax dollars are squandered? Recently, I was asked whether I thought Joseph Milano—the owner of a Florida pizzeria named Goomba’s—was really a Mafia hitman named Joey “Crazy Joe” Calco I wrote about in my first book, Mob Over Miami.

I did and it was.

Calco (pictured above) is a confessed killer who was part of the notorious Bonanno crime family’s Bath Avenue Crew. He served six years in prison for murdering two of his pals. He promised federal Judge Edward Korman that if given another chance he “won’t let this court down and I won’t let you down.”

With that, Calco became one of the many in the absurdly expensive federal Witness Protection Program and was relocated to Florida with a girlfriend and his parents.

On January 23rd, two customers came into Goomba’s to complain about a calzone they had purchased. Milano (at right) pulled out a Luger 9mm handgun, jumped over the counter, and pistol-whipped the men. The attack was captured on surveillance tape (below). After the incident, Milano was arrested at his parents’ home and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Two weeks later, once police caught on, Joseph Milano, a.k.a. “Joey Calco,” was rearrested as a felon in possession of a firearm.

In the years since Calco became a maggot in Florida, he has been accused of sexually harassing a teenage girl who worked in the pizzeria and he has logged a battery arrest for slapping another teen employee.

Richie Capie, 35, one of the men Calco attacked, said he has heard the news that he was brutalized by a Mob hitman helped by the government.

“Now that’s in the back of my mind—the guy’s a killer," Capie said.

Calco is not the only wiseguy to get in trouble again after making a deal. Who could forget Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, the Gambino crime family hitman? I guess their contributions help stimulate the economy with police overtime?

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"Donnie Brasco" Refuses to Testify at Murder Trial

by Donna Weaver

Last month I wrote about the start of the murder trial of former FBI agent John Connolly, Jr. The prosecution has rested and this week the defense began calling its witnesses. One of those witnesses is perhaps one of the FBI's most famous agents, Joseph D. Pistone, AKA Donnie Brasco (pictured left). You'll notice Mr. Pistone is standing at a podium, speaking into a microphone, and is not attempting to disguise his appearance in any way. There are several such photographs available on the Internet. So why did Pistone refuse to testify in defense of his old friend John Connolly unless Judge Blake granted his request for an order allowing no photographs or filming of Pistone on the witness stand?

If you are not already familiar with former agent Pistone's legendary undercover work for the FBI, you may recognize the name Donnie Brasco from the 1997 film of the same name starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino. The movie depicts the six years of Pistone's life spent undercover as jewel thief Donnie Brasco. Pistone claims that as a result of his infiltration of the Bonanno crime family a $500,000 hit was put out on him for his perceived betrayal when it was discovered he was an FBI agent just doing his job.

According to The Boston Globe:

Judge Stanford Blake offered to let Pistone take the stand wearing a hat and sunglasses, but defense attorney Manuel L. Casabielle said that wasn't good enough because Pistone had told them that his wife didn't want him to be photographed at all.

Casabielle explained that after Pistone infiltrated New York's Bonanno family in 1976 and helped put away numerous mobsters, the five New York Mafia families had allegedly put a contract on his life.

"He's not in witness protection,'' said Blake, noting that in the decades since he went undercover Pistone has been a very public figure, promoting his two books, appearing on television, and all over the Internet -- his face clearly recognizable.

Holding a recent photograph of Pistone that had been pulled from a website, Blake said, "Unless his disguise was combed back thinning hair and glasses that were so crystal clear you couldn't see them, there does not appear to be any disguise.''

Blake said he just couldn't justify an order barring photographs of Pistone. However, the judge said he would find Pistone in contempt if he refused to comply with a subpoena from the defense seeking his testimony. But, Connolly told the court he didn't want to force Pistone to take the stand.

"He's a friend of mine,'' Connolly told the judge. "His wife is a friend of mine. I know his children. If something happened to him I couldn't live with myself.''

Years ago during the course of a missing person investigation, I received some personal photos from one of the "bad guys" involved in another undercover FBI operation. I was astonished when I was told the identity of one of the persons in two of the photographs—Joe Pistone. After I received the photos, I set out to find the famous former agent. I have to tell you it wasn't that difficult. I was certain I had the right guy, went to his house, and walked right up and knocked on his door using a pretext in an attempt to obtain an ID photo of him—pretty standard stuff. A rather nervous, confused-looking woman answered the door. It appeared no one else was at home. I waited, watching the house for a while, but he never showed. I did not have the time to put any more effort into the surveillance then. Of course, if I am ever again ready to interview Pistone regarding my case, all I have to do now is show up at one of his book signings or some other public appearance.

The old contract-out-on-my-life-for-over-a-quarter-century excuse for not testifying in defense of his long-time pal (Connolly and Pistone pictured left at Connolly's retirement in 1990) seems pretty lame to me. Could this just be a ploy by the defense to cast doubt on Connolly's guilt by implying his actions in handling his confidential informants could be likened to the undercover work of Pistone/Brasco? If so, this ploy may well backfire for the defense. By not putting Pistone on the stand, it gives the impression of more smoke and mirrors attempting to cover up FBI arrogance and possible wrongdoing.

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NOT-SO-WISE WISEGUYS

by Michele McPhee

It’s official. The New England Mafia sleeps with the fishes. This week, the man whom federal prosecutors call the underboss for the Boston underworld–Carmen “The Cheese Man” DiNunzio–begged a judge to grant him access to a bigger toilet after he was locked up for trying to bribe Big Dig officials into giving him a lucrative contract to sell the highway department dirt.

For those of you unfamiliar with the $15 billion boondoggle that was Boston’s Big Dig, that was the most expensive roadway project in the history of the United States paid for with your tax dollars. In 1982, Massachusetts politicians swore the Big Dig would only cost us $3 billion and take a few years to complete. Well, it’s 2008, the job has swelled to the $15 billion-range and reputed wiseguys are still trying to get a piece of the massive swindle. That tells you roughly all you need to know.

Anyway, why the bigger toilet for the New England Mafia underboss? DiNunzio, 50, who earned his nickname from the cheese shop he owns in Boston’s Little Italy, the North End, weighs 400 pounds and can only relieve himself on a super-sized toilet. At least that’s what his lawyer argued in front of a federal judge this week.

Out loud. In public.

What is the underworld coming to when its bosses complain that their toilets are too small and continue to bloviate about themselves within earshot of wiretaps like DiNunzio did when he declared to an undercover informant posing as a dirty Massachusetts highway official: “I’m the Cheeseman."

The undercover replied: “You’re the Cheeseman?"

To which DiNunzio replied, “Ask anyone about me."

Oh boy.

But there is no one in law enforcement under the illusion that the Mafia anywhere in this country is intact. In New York City, Joseph Massino of the Bonanno crime family was the only Mafia boss not in prison. Shortly after I wrote a front page New York Daily News story dubbing him "The Last Don," Massino was arrested. He quickly rolled and became a government informant, ratting out his underlings.

Before Massino “went bad,” as underworld associates refer to government witnesses, Vincent “Vinny Ocean” Palermo, the boss of the New Jersey crime family the hit TV series The Sopranos was based on, rolled on his family. Since then, dozens of made guys have joined the witness protection program rather than serve time.

Now the feds are scraping the bottom of the barrel to sweep up wiseguys to garner those headline-grabbing arrests. In New Jersey this month, twenty-one Gambino associates were arrested in a sweep.

So as Boston’s underboss undertakes his battle for a bigger throne in prison, Brooklyn crime boss John “Jackie the Nose” D’Amico is arguing that he should be allowed to leave jail to resume his $700-a-week no-show job at a water-bottling plant. Only problem with that is that Jackie the Nose was caught bragging that he paid the company $700 a week to put his name on the payroll books to evade investigators. A judge is taking his request under consideration.

Covering the Mafia used to be so much fun. There was the crime family that plotted to kill Rudolph Giuliani and the Gotti son that wanted to kill the founder of the Guardian Angels Curtis Sliwa. Then there was Vincent “The Chin” Gigante and his famous wanderings through Greenwich Village, Manhattan in a bathrobe to shake the cops. It worked . . . for a while. What about Joey Gallo, the gangster who was shot dead in Umbertos, dying in a plate of pasta or Carmine Galante, who died with a lit stogie in his mouth.

My first book, Mob Over Miami, covered La Cosa Nostra in its glory years and exposed how South Beach, Miami was revitalized in the 1990s by gangsters' money. St. Martin’s Press announced this week it will republish the 2002 title in anticipation of a feature film, UnMade Man, based on my book.

Now, the mobsters in my book were wiseguys. This generation being chased around by the government is earning the reputation that they are the not-so-wise guys.

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Who Says The Party's Over?

In 2006, Gang Land News carried the headline "The Party's Over for Paciello," a mob informant who traded Miami nightlife for Club Fed. Chris Paciello's party days might be over, but festivities for the film based on his life are just beginning. Tonight in Miami Beach, WCI's Michele McPhee will be the guest of honor at a soiree celebrating the production launch of UNMADE MAN, the feature film based on her best-selling true-crime book Mob Over Miami.

The event is co-hosted by Miami Magazine; producers John Sherman, Josh Kagan, and Marilyn Haft; PR man Alan T. Brown; and lead actor Jeff Marchetti—whose acting debut was on The Sopranos as mafioso "Petey," a role he enjoyed for several seasons, including the final episode, "Made In America."

This time he's the UNMADE MAN in Florida. In the film, Marchetti (pictured below with Sopranos co-star Joseph Gannascoli) plays real-life thug Chris Paciello, a former member of Brooklyn's "Bath Avenue Crew," a particularly violent cadre of Bonanno crime family henchmen. When Paciello left New York in the early '90s, he tried to reinvent himself in the club scene in Miami, where he became a "South Beach King," running the glitziest nightspots and dating women like Madonna (pictured together at right) and hanging out with stars like Jennifer Lopez and supermodel Naomi Campbell.

Back home in New York, Paciello was the type of character real underworld figures had no respect for, but had occasional use for: "the type of man commonly found on the edges of organized crime, a fringe character who got some peculiar thrill or sense of power through his shady connections," Gay Talese wrote of another unmade Bonanno associate thirty years before Paciello assumed his own supporting role with the crime family. These types were never trusted "when situations were particularly dangerous," Talese added in Honor Thy Father: "types like [him] usually collapsed under pressure and could be coerced by the police into turning informer." History repeated itself with Paciello, who became a government witness.

"If Paciello did everything the government says he did," one of the former Club King's publicists told the Village Voice, "then he deserves an Oscar." Any acting awards won't be going to Paciello, who is doing his time at an undisclosed federal prison.

Michele McPhee (pictured left) was police bureau chief at the New York Daily News when she started covering the story. To learn how Michele became one of the nation's handful of women organized crime reporters, see her interview with South Beach Magazine.

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