Investigators Dig in Queens in Attempt to Unearth Bodies from Mafia Killings
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Federal agents and police yesterday began digging up an empty lot in Queens to search for answers in two decades-old mob slayings long shrouded in mystery.
Law enforcement sources said yesterday that the hunt in south Ozone Park by the Queens-Brooklyn border involves the bodies of three men whose deaths, for unrelated reasons, are enshrined in mafia history.
A team of FBI investigators suspects that the lot, located in a residential area, holds the remains of the neighbor of John Gotti who accidentally struck and killed the late Gambino boss’ son in March 1980. The neighbor, John Favara, disappeared months later, just as his family planned to move.
The sources said that federal agents also are looking for the bodies of two Bonanno crime family members rubbed out in the legendary 1981 “three captains” slayings at a Brooklyn social club. The bodies of two of the captains, Philip “Philly Lucky” Giaccone and Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera, were never found.
An FBI spokesman declined to give details about the dig, which began early yesterday morning and involves a backhoe and dozens of FBI agents and police officers.
“We’re coordinating a search with an ongoing investigation,” said the spokesman, James Margolin.
Mr. Margolin did say that the FBI team had found “a little more concrete than they anticipated.”
“This could take several days or longer,” Mr. Margolin said.
Police cut off access to the site near Ruby Street and Dumont Avenue. By day’s end, the dig had attracted a crowd of reporters, photographers, and curious children on bicycles.
Shortly after the Bonanno murders, children had discovered the body of the third Bonanno captain, Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato, in a shallow grave at the site of the current search.
Law enforcement sources yesterday did not say what had provoked the search. Nor is it clear why three men whose deaths are linked to different crime families – the Gambinos and the Bonannos – would be buried in the same area.
The Gambino and Bonanno bosses have had close relations in the past. Gotti, who died of cancer in 2002, was known to be friendly with Bonanno boss Joseph Massino.
The Gambinos allegedly played an important roll in the three captains slayings.
Massino, who was convicted this summer of orchestrating the murders, had asked then Gambino boss Paul Castellano for his blessing before luring the three captains to their deaths.
At the time, the Bonannos were locked in a bloody intra-family feud and the Gambinos were backing the faction of Massino and Bonanno boss Philip Rastelli.
At his trial, Massino’s former underboss, Salvatore Vitale, testified that the Bonannos had placed the bodies in a van and dropped them off in Queens, according to prosecutors. Vitale testified that the bodies were passed off to three Gambino members, prosecutors said.
The motives for the deaths of Trinchera and Giaccone are unrelated to the slaying of Favara, who had disappeared the previous year after striking a minibike driven by Gotti’s 12-year-old son, Frankie, in the men’s Queens neighborhood.
Favara tried to apologize but he soon received death threats. Gotti’s wife tried to attack him with a baseball bat. The Favara family planned to move, but then Mr. Favara disappeared in July 1980. Witnesses reportedly described seeing Favara abducted as he left work.
Journalist Jerry Capeci, whose columns appear in The New York Sun, has written accounts of the killing based on sources that described Favara’s abduction by a Gambino crew.
According to an FBI informant cited by Mr. Capeci, Favara spotted the crew as he left as his job at a Long Island warehouse. Favara was shot as he tried to flee. He pleaded “‘No. No. Please my wife,” Mr. Capeci wrote, but was then beaten with a two-by-four and thrown into a van.
What Mr. Capeci’s sources described next appears to contradict the FBI’s current investigation. According to Mr. Capeci, the sources said that Favara was placed in a barrel that was filled with concrete and dumped in the Atlantic Ocean.
No one was ever charged with Favara’s murder.
It’s unclear what impact a discovery of any of the bodies would have on future cases, but a successful dig could aid prosecutors in Brooklyn, who are trying to extradite from Montreal an alleged triggermen in the three captains shooting, Vito Rizzuto.