Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 15, 1991 TAG: 9104150126
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HARTFORD, CONN. LENGTH: Medium
"It's like when you're digging for gold and you've already found a lot of gold, and suddenly you break through and find a mother lode," said Stanley Twardy, a top aide to Gov. Lowell Weicker.
"The Grasso murder led us to the mother lode," he said.
Within a year of Grasso's death in June 1989, authorities had rounded up 21 reputed members and associates of the Patriarca crime family. They were indicted under federal racketeering statutes, charged with running a criminal enterprise that was supported by murder, extortion and intimidation.
Jury selection begins this week for the trial of nine of them in Hartford on charges ranging from racketeering to murder. Seven others will be tried later in Boston. The remaining defendants have already struck deals or will be tried separately.
Prosecutors hope to introduce as evidence a secret recording of a mob induction ceremony in which mobsters worried over Mafia etiquette before inductees cut their trigger fingers for a blood oath of silence.
The recording was the first use of a 1986 federal law that allows authorities to install so-called roving microphones: microphones planted before authorities know for certain that the conversations they want to record will take place at that location.
Witnesses are also expected to testify about an alleged mob graveyard, where hit men buried their victims.
Grasso was a despised and ruthless leader, the FBI says. Evidence collected through hidden FBI microphones shows that the Connecticut and western Massachusetts factions of the Patriarca mob believed he demanded an exorbitant percentage of the money generated by mob rackets, officials said.
Grasso's body was found in the Connecticut River on June 16, 1989. He was 57. Authorities interpreted his death as evidence of a power struggle within the Patriarca family, which allegedly has controlled the rackets throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island since the 1940s.
Prosecutors got a break in the Grasso case when two of the defendants cut a deal. John "Sonny" Castagna and his son, Jack Johns, both Patriarca associates in Hartford, agreed to plead guilty and testify in return for reduced sentences.
Defense attorneys plan to challenge their credibility.
"By their own history, anything they say has to be questioned," said Michael Jennings, lawyer for Frank Colantoni Jr. "If they told you they were sitting in a chair, you'd have to question it."
Jury selection in the Hartford trial is expected to begin Wednesday; the trial could last three months. The Boston trial is expected to start later this spring.
by CNB