The Butcher Read online

  One such place was the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge, some eight miles as the crow flies from the great-grand Verrazano Bridge. A caporegime in the Bonanno crime family out of Gravesend, Brooklyn, had made this sanctuary his private burial ground. Here were bodies that had suffered tremendous trauma while the person was still alive—here were bodies that had been neatly cut into six pieces: the legs, arms, head, and torso, all separated by skillful cuts that showed no tears. Whoever dismembered these bodies was experienced, methodical, as cold and efficient as a butcher in the meatpacking district of lower Manhattan.

  Here there were no tombstones, no reminders of the many who had lost their lives.

  Part I Seeds

  CHAPTER ONE

  SANCTUARY

  It was June 6, 1990. The skies over Staten Island were clear and unblemished, as blue as the eye of a dove. An unusual caravan of police slowly made their way off the Staten Island Expressway and toward the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. It was a task force composed of crack, hard-faced DEA, FBI, and ATF agents as well as hardcore NYPD organized crime detectives. Prosecutors from the Brooklyn D.A.’s office were also present. Each of these prosecutors, agents, and detectives was tense and uptight. What they were doing today, the reason they were approaching the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge on Staten Island, was the culmination of three and a half years of hard work, blood and sweat and tears—literally.

  In the second vehicle of this solemn caravan sat DEA agent Jim Hunt, the lead investigator of a DEA task force that had been pursuing a notorious Bonanno capo by the name of Tommy “Karate” Pitera. Hunt was a five-foot-ten, thickly muscled Irishman; he had a pale, handsome countenance and large, all-seeing, Paul Newman-blue eyes. A stoic, exceedingly dedicated third-generation cop, Jim took his work very seriously, was highly motivated, tenacious, though he was quick to laugh and quick to smile with no strings attached. He would gladly help a colleague or friend in need.

  Hunt had an unusual sense of fair play for a cop. As much as he hated drug dealers, drug abusers, and bad guys, he empathized and sympathized with some of their plights. Hunt viewed drug abuse more as a medical problem. He well understood that while some people can have a social drink or two, others become alcoholics…the dregs of society. What Jim Hunt was after, what he had his sights on, were the drug lords—those in faraway places, distant lands, who had learned to manipulate the system in such a way that they had become some of the wealthiest people in the world. The drug lords not only usurped the rule of law but gleefully defecated all over it. This foe, this enemy, was not only in distant lands. It was here, also. Homegrown. The Mafia, the bosses and capos of each of the families, was dealing in drugs, Jim knew.

  What was particularly unusual about this group of law enforcement agents serpentining through Staten Island that June day was that they were all cooperating with each other. Most often, there is a fierce, bare-knuckled competition between the FBI and the DEA, the NYPD and the ATF; they were competitors in perpetual pissing contests, not colleagues. But this case was so unusual, the stakes so dire, that each of the agencies had made peace and were truly cooperating with one another on a large scale—a rare thing.

  Sitting alongside Hunt was his fellow DEA agent and partner, Tommy Geisel. Geisel and Hunt were so close that they were more like brothers than partners in the war against drugs. For years, they’d been trusting one another with their lives. Geisel was a large, broad-shouldered, strapping individual. He had, in the parlance of the DEA, “brains, balls, and brawn,” a phrase commonly used within the agency to describe the type of men they were looking for. Geisel was the kind of guy that Jim wanted in his foxhole, and there was no one else he wanted watching his back.

  Accompanying this variegated army of police was a bad guy—someone who wore a black hat, who would ultimately draw the curtains back and reveal the true horrors that even this group of law enforcement would soon be shocked and stunned by. He was tall and thin; his nose resembled a toucan’s beak. This bad guy was nervous and unsettled to the core of his being. Over the last four years, he had become, quite literally, unhinged—pushed to his limits by mind-numbing violence and unspeakable barbaric acts as people around him were tortured, cut up, summarily discarded.

  Some thirteen months before, ASAC Hunt had heard that a Bonanno family capo, Tommy Pitera, was leaving bodies on Staten Island. An Israeli drug dealer named Shlomo Mendelsohn had gotten himself in trouble and offered to give up the whereabouts of Pitera’s cemetery. The only problem was Shlomo couldn’t remember exactly where the cemetery was located. He had only been there once and it was at night. He had never been to Staten Island before the time he went with Pitera to dispose of a body. At one point during their quest to find Pitera’s cemetery, Shlomo had even said, scratching his head, “I’m thinking maybe it was New Jersey, not Staten Island.”

  Shlomo was deeply immersed in selling huge amounts of cocaine in Manhattan, but Staten Island and New Jersey were completely foreign to him. Though Shlomo had seemed sincere and truthful, he had stepped up to bat and struck out.

  Now Jim Hunt was back with another man who said he knew where Pitera’s victims were. Hopeful, though wary, Jim’s keen blue eyes moved left and right as the caravan slowly crept forward. As they approached a desolate street, the bad guy said, “Here…here, this is it! I’m almost sure.”

  The problem was that, like Shlomo, this bad guy had only been there in the dead of night. Daylight cast the stage of horrors that existed here in warm, welcoming light. That June day was cloudless, and the sun shone with such unharnessed brilliance most all the agents donned sunglasses. Because of the fierce sunshine, it looked more like the south of France or a Mediterranean island than a Mafia burial ground.

  The caravan moved right. Like a giant anaconda coming to a sudden stop, all the vehicles became immobile. Serious-faced and curious, each of the law enforcement professionals stepped from an air-conditioned car. The hot, humid air struck them like a wet towel. As though on cue, an unruly gang of crows noisily cawed in different trees spread throughout the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge.

  Concerned about contaminating the area, losing potential evidence, all the agents and NYPD cops began to put on white jumpsuits made of thin, malleable paper. Having a good, easy rapport with the informer, Jim Hunt asked, “Where?” his eyebrows raised skeptically.

  “Oh, man,” the informer said, his brow creasing, the weight of the world suddenly on his shoulders. Sweating, licking his lips, smoking a cigarette, the bad guy moved into the thicket of poplar and elm and pine trees spread out before them. He had a worried look about his face. He seemed confused—lost. He took about thirty cautious steps into the sanctuary, stopped, looked around as some twenty-five pairs of cynical-wary cops’ eyes regarded him with a mix of trepidation and curiosity.

  He began moving north, stopped, turned around and moved south. He looked down. He scratched his head. He regarded Jim Hunt. He liked Hunt. He wanted to please him. Hunt was a straight shooter and the bad guy knew that whatever Hunt promised him, he would get. It was already agreed that the federal government, because of his cooperation, would put him and his family into the Witness Protection Program. He had no reason to lie. If he had any future, he had to cooperate with the feds. He knew he had to give them what they wanted.

  “The problem,” the informer apologized, “is that I was here at night. It’s very hard to tell one spot from another. You know, it’s like really the same.” He looked down at the ground. It was covered with a carpet of dead leaves and foliage. The thick smell of wet soil and mildew hung in the humid air. There was nothing to indicate that humans had been buried here; no bald spots; no sudden bursts of greenery—no telltale sign of human death. The crows continued to caw. Their ruckus was distracting. A chain-smoker, the informer lit one cigarette after another. Beads of sweat ran down his face. Jim called an impromptu brainstorming session among all the law enforcement there that day. They, as a collective body, believed what the informer had said.
They knew Pitera was murdering people as though he had a God-given right, as though he had a license to kill, and that the informer had no reason to lie. They decided that until proven otherwise, they’d believe him and move full out until they found Pitera’s victims. Hunt and Geisel believed that Pitera had killed over sixty people.

  The NYPD set up a command center. Uniformed cops were posted all around the bird sanctuary, roughly twenty-five acres in size. They knew that once the news media got wind of a Mafia burial ground, they’d have reporters sniffing around like hungry hounds within hours. Finding bodies buried months and years ago here, without coordinates, without landmarks, would be no easy task, like looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack, though none of that was going to dissuade any of the hardcore law enforcement professionals there that fateful day. They continued looking without luck. The fierce June sun reluctantly dropped below the line of trees. Long shadows appeared. Silently, dusk descended onto the sanctuary. The sounds of crickets and frogs came from every direction at once. Large flocks of sparrows chattered rapidly. The birds, troubled and nervous by the cops’ sudden presence, knew the secrets that their sanctuary held.

  Foul flesh, silent screams, and nightmares. As dark continued to envelop the sanctuary, agents and police there decided they would again start up the search the following morning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  DARK SECRETS

  Mechanized, organized, as succinct as a well-run military operation, the Pitera task force gathered at eight A.M. the following morning.

  Again, the skies were clear. The birds that dwelt in the sanctuary made a racket. They were used to peace and quiet. They did not like the hurly-burly gathering around their homes. Above, a pair of red-tailed hawks circled over the sanctuary, hunting for prey, hunting the abundance of food they knew lived below.

  It was decided that the first thing the strike force would do was bring in cadaver dogs. Given the circumstances, this seemed logical. When the dogs arrived, unremarkable mutts anxious to please, anxious to find the rotting bodies they would receive rewards for, they made their way into the sanctuary. They moved north and south and east and west in prearranged grids. This went on all that day to no avail. Everyone there was sure that if there were bodies, these dogs would find them; they had proven themselves in the past.

  Nothing.

  Not willing to accept defeat, the task force brought the dogs in a second day. They worked slower but still found nothing.

  How, the task force members wondered, could the dogs miss the scent? Some of the victims here were buried several months ago. Some of the victims one year, some two or even three years ago. Surely, the stench of death, the stench of putrid meat, organs, should still have been real and tangible—outright offensive—but the cadaver dogs seemed oblivious.

  Later, at a meeting back in Manhattan at the DEA’s office on West Fifty-seventh Street, the task force members sat down and brainstormed some more. They questioned the informer’s validity. They discussed the probability of his being mistaken about the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. They consulted maps to see if there were other bird sanctuaries nearby, to see if there was another logical explanation. There wasn’t.

  One of the task force members talked about a machine a man in California had developed that could find bodies. His name was George Reynolds. They kicked the idea around of bringing him out, and then contacted Reynolds. He assured them seven ways from Sunday that the machine worked. It had proven itself over and over again, he said. Colleagues attested to the machine’s working. At great expense, Reynolds and his machine were brought to New York and driven out to the bird sanctuary. There was excitement in the air. Finally they’d have the proof, finally they’d have the sorrowful remnants of Pitera’s handiwork. As some thirty members of the Pitera task force looked on, the man and his machine searched for bodies. It was hot and humid. Everyone was sweating. The crows were back and they made an awful racket. All that day, the man diligently searched and he, too, found nothing. Jim Hunt soon gave him the boot and sent him back to California.

  This, combined with the heat, combined with the failure of the informer and the dogs, was discouraging. Was the informer pulling their legs; would he try to cut himself a deal for crimes he committed that they, at this point, knew nothing about?

  These were not, however, the type of people who gave up easily. They were all alpha males and females, tenacious investigators, the type that would not let go. They were experienced—the best of the best.

  Often with police work, it’s more than facts and figures, names and places, the who, what, when, where, and why. Often it’s just a gut feeling, something deep inside, that points the way, that has voice and direction of its own. And almost all of them there, working the sanctuary, the Pitera case, felt in their gut that they were on the right trail; felt in their gut that they had discovered the Jeffrey Dahmer of the Mafia—that they had discovered a serial killer who was a capo in a Mafia family, and they would work this case tirelessly, to the very end, wherever it took them.

  The following day, each of the task force members, wearing a white jumpsuit, was back at the sanctuary. They were now doing it the old-fashioned way, the way their fathers and grandfathers had looked for bodies. They secured four-foot-long metal probes pointed at one end and with a five-inch handle at the other that would enable the task force to literally probe the ground.

  Again, going back to basics, they drew precise, neat grids on different sections of the sanctuary, and working two and a half feet from one another’s shoulders, they began to walk in a straight line, every foot or so jabbing the probes into the ground. Luckily for them the dirt was soft and readily accepted the probes. For all that day, back and forth, quiet and solemn, a joke now and then—mostly macabre ones—the strike force moved. Toward the end of the day, as the fiery June sun began to set, the strike force prepared to break for the night. They had come across rabbits and raccoons, skunks and weasels, but no bodies.

  An NYPD detective out of the Brooklyn Racket Squad named Bobby Pavone made his way away from the group, sat down on a rock, and lit up a cigarette. He, like most of the law enforcement there that day, believed that there were bodies buried here. He had been hearing for years rumors about the Mafia burying victims out on Staten Island. Why not here? It seemed the perfect place. There wasn’t a house or human being anywhere nearby. It struck him as ironic that the federal government had created, in a very real sense, a place where the Mafia was able to hide bodies, bodies that would never be found because the EPA—Environmental Protection Agency—wouldn’t allow the birds to be disturbed.

  Slowly, reservedly, Bobby moved back toward the group, a tall, wiry, resolute individual. He kind of haphazardly, though pensively, probed as he went, pushed down, found nothing, withdrew the probe. He moved some twenty feet when the probe suddenly struck something hard but giving. He pulled out the probe, pushed it back down, pulled it out, pushed it back in still again…something was there; something not indigenous to the ground.

  “Hey! Hey! Over here!” He signaled to the others. They moved toward him. “Yo! I think I’ve got one.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT’S GOOD TO KNOW KARATE

  Thomas Pitera was born in Gravesend, Brooklyn, on December 2, 1954. His parents, Joseph and Catherine, were hardworking people of modest means. He had an older sister named Theresa, and a large, close-knit extended family. Joseph Pitera was a candy salesman. With samples of his wares secreted in the trunk of his car, he drove throughout the five boroughs selling Mary Janes, Pixie Sticks, Red Hots, Lemon Drops, and Bazooka gum. The Piteras hailed from southern Italy, the Campagna region. They were good Catholics, and Mrs. Pitera attended church on a regular basis.

  Tommy Pitera was an unusual child. He had thick, jet-black hair, piercing, blue-gray eyes, a strong jawline, and high cheekbones. Without wanting to, without meaning to, his intense stare and black hair drew attention to him, attention that he didn’t want, attention he would grow to dis
dain. As a boy, he was thin and pale, shy and withdrawn. Tommy had a particularly high-pitched voice that sounded more like a girl’s than a boy’s. It could readily be likened to Michael Jackson’s voice, though it was even more falsetto.

  Given his frailty, combined with his small stature and cartoonish voice, Tommy was an ideal target for Gravesend bullies, food for hungry carnivores. This was an extremely rough-and-tumble neighborhood—one of the toughest in all of America—filled with thickly muscled laborers and blue-collar workers. The young Tommy Pitera couldn’t have been in a worse place. Here, people did not turn the other cheek. Here, if you were abused, you struck back hard with bad intentions. Here, he who struck first was victorious. He who was left standing was the winner. Gravesend, Bensonhurst, and Coney Island were all particularly tough neighborhoods. You could liken these areas to concrete jungles filled with predatory creatures. Those who readily fed on the weak; those who took advantage of the lame; those who took advantage of the unaware.