Prosecuting John Gotti & The Westies

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Jeff Schlanger is a former Manhattan District Attorney who has prosecuted some high-profile criminals like John Gotti and members of the notorious Hell's Kitchen Gang, The Westie. His new book, Doing Right, From Prosecutor to Reformer, A Journey Through Crime, Corruption, Complacency, and Chain, is available on Amazon, and it's an excellent read. Jeff Schlanger, welcome to the show. Thanks very much, Vic. Pleasure to be here. Pleasure is mine, Jeff. Jeff, can you share for our listeners how you learned of the murder of New York City Housing Police Officer Robert Bonds? Yeah, it was an interesting story. We had been involved in prosecuting and investigating the Westies, and ultimately that led to the Gambino connection. But one of the cooperating witnesses was a fellow by the name of Billy Beattie. And as you do as a prosecutor with cooperating witnesses, you let them know that whatever deal they have is dependent upon them being totally truthful during the debriefings. And I had probably spent four or five full days debriefing Billy. And we're on our way to the grand jury. And I say, Billy, you remember you have to have told me everything. And if you didn't, the deal is uh the deal is off. And he stops as we're walking down the hall on the seventh floor of Jon Hogan Place, and he looks at me and he says, Did I tell you about the cop I killed? And needless to say, we went back to my office rather than to the grand jury, and we learned about the murder of Robert Bonds, uh, who was in fact a housing police officer, but was a corrupt housing police officer who was working with the Westies at that time. Did you find out how he fell in with that gang? Because he was African American. The Westies were predominantly an Irish gang. How these people found each other? Yeah, you know, I I don't really know for sure. As I sit here now, I'm sure I knew way back when, but it's been more than a moment. And uh I I really don't remember exactly how it happened. I believe that there may have been some connection. I he was a housing cop at the time, and I think he may have been uh on the west side of Manhattan in one of the projects there, but I'm not a hundred percent sure about it. Did Beattie go into how they lured him because he was killed, he was bound. So they had time to do this. Can you kind of go into how the murder went down? Well, he was with a another individual, a guy by the name of Larry Patrick, uh, who was a Westy affiliate, not a major member, if you will, but ultimately Patrick was indicted and convicted of the murder as well. But they had brought him to a location, um, had shot him, and then in fact bound him, uh bound his wrists and his feet to cinder blocks and dumped him in the Hudson River. And what happened with the body is that the the body becomes bloated and the body actually separated from the hands and the feet and floated to the surface. And we actually got the call when the body floated to the surface and went out. And I remember being uh on that Hudson River pier when the body was it had already been brought out, but on the scene. What I found unusual from reading newspaper reports, he was wearing a belly band, which is uh an elastic band with a pouch that a lot of off-duty cops in the 80s and 90s would wear. And I remember reading that two of his guns were not recovered. Did they did did you ever find out what happened to the fire? No. No. Didn't and uh or if we did, and we may have, I just don't remember. Was there something that the shooter, I don't know if it was Billy Beattie or Larry Patrick, shot themselves? Is is is that true? Like when they were shooting him, that one of them It wasn't Billy Beattie who shot himself. That I know, and I don't remember Larry Patrick having shot himself either. I where are you getting that from, Vic? What happened was I did it, I I did an episode on this to promote your book. Right. And and I put out there and people started reaching out to me. Retired cops on Facebook. Yeah, oh yeah, you know, I kind of started a fire with this thing. Larry Patrick did 22 years. He took it to trial, I'm assuming. Yeah, he did. Well, Jeff, you spent a lot of time interviewing and preparing for several trials in vet with the westies. Let me throw a few names at you and see just your take on what you remember from them. Sure. Did you did you deal with Mickey Featherstone? I dealt with Mickey a lot. So the Genesis, we had been investigating the Westies. And Mickey, as you probably know, had been charged with a number of murders. He had uh evaded conviction, either by reason of insanity with the help of some tainted juries. He then came into our purview as part of the Westies investigation. There was a homicide of an individual by the name of Michael Holly, who was working at the convention center. And within a week of that homicide, we had an indication that Mickey Featherstone was the perpetrator of that homicide. We arrested Mickey Featherstone. I convicted him at trial. And a few weeks after the trial, as I'm getting ready to leave for my honeymoon, I get a call from Mickey who indicates that yes, he had done these other murders, but this one that I convicted him of, he hadn't done. And he had proof that he didn't do it and would work with us to bring that proof to light. I, of course, was skeptical, to say the least, but nonetheless had an obligation to investigate. And investigate we did. We met with Mickey along with the feds. We worked hand in glove with the feds on this investigation, and we ultimately wired the visiting room at Rikers Island and recorded conversations uh between Mickey and Kevin Kelly and Billy Boken. And ultimately those conversations led to me going into court and asking for the conviction to be vacant. So during that entire period of time, I was dealing extensively with both Mickey and his wife, Sissy, who then went into federal custody and ultimately into the federal witness protection program. I think he went into witness protection. He's like a success story, I I think. I think so too, although nobody will tell me exactly if that's the case or not. So let me throw another name at you that was fascinating in your book, Jimmy McElroy. Yeah. So uh Jimmy was part of the the the case that the feds brought against the Wespees. He wasn't cooperating, and Mickey's testimony led to his arrest and ultimate conviction in federal court, where he was sentenced to 60 years in federal custody. He reached out to me as well after that conviction and indicated that he wanted to cooperate. And in a fairly unprecedented move, we took him out of Rikers Island and essentially took custody of him. We set up a our own little witness protection program at SUNY Maritime College under the Throgznack Bridge. We had uh Kevlar panels installed in a series of two rooms that he and another witness in an unrelated case uh were occupying. And I would visit McElroy there almost every other day during the week and debrief him. And he was instrumental in bringing about the prosecution of John Gotti relative to the shooting of the Carpenter Union head, John O'Connor. There was nothing really you could do for him, and he got 60 years, but yet he cooperated anyway. What why was what was his motivation? He was pissed at the feds generally. We built a rapport. There was always the the potential that we could prevail upon the federal authorities to reduce that sentence, and I'm sure that played a role as well. But he always knew that that was not a given and that it was possible that uh that would not succeed. The feds were resisting. They were pissed that he didn't cooperate with them. They were pissed that we were bringing this case against John Gotti and not them, and uh so they didn't want to help in any way, to be quite frank. I don't know whether we'll get into it, but there was some additional aspects of that federal versus state rivalry that reared its ugly head. And the last guy you would mention earlier, Billy Beattie. What was your take on Billy? I've I've seen him in documentaries. He seems like a character, like he could befriend you, but he could kill you in the same instant. Yeah, and that was exactly how I felt about it. We two built uh a very good rapport. And I I remember, it's funny you say that, because I remember telling my wife at the time we had a I guess our child was about two at that time. I said, I would have Billy babysit our our our daughter. And she said, What are you out of your laughing mind? But that was that was he was a nice guy. And uh yeah, the the the line between nice guys and crazy mad men killers is uh a very blurry one indeed. Jeff, you responded to the crime scene of Big Paul Castellano and Tommy Bellotti in front of Spark Steakhouse. What do you remember from that night? It was interesting. I was with a couple of guys from the DA squad and Mike Cocoza and John Gurney, and we had been up in East Harlem on uh another organized crime case that we were working, and I think something came over the radio about the the shooting, and we went to a a payphone, and some of your listeners may not know what a payphone is, but they used to be phones that were on the street where you drop in a quarter and or maybe it was a dime then and you you make a call. John called the Intel unit of MYPD, was given the details, and then we went up to the scene. It it's interesting, obviously, the commission case was going on at that time. I remember seeing Barbara Jones at the scene. She was at the the feds in the Southern District at that time. And the scene was obviously a gruesome scene, but just interesting to be a part of that that history and having been there was it it was really a a part of organized crime legend, I suppose, right? Definitely. And did the Manhattan DA's office convene a grand jury following Big Paul's death and subpoena, like members of the Gambino crime family kind of shake him up? You know, I am not sure whether that happened or not. I certainly didn't. I was transitioning then from special narcotics into the Rackets Bureau. So I think the answer is no, we left it to the feds because I would have known about it if we did it. And you prosecuted John Gotti for the shooting of Carpenter's Union Leader, John O'Connor. Can you go into that case? Yeah. So again, that was a case that pretty much got developed as a result of Jimmy McElroy and his cooperation. We worked on it. Myself, my very good friend Mike Cherkaski, who at that time was uh the chief of the Rackets Bureau. And we developed the the case, ultimately brought it to Mr. Morgenthal, the boss, right? And he he okayed the prosecution, and we decided that we were going to do it. And we did it and got the indictment. I was out on the street with members of the DA squad, members of the organized crime task force were also involved. Joe Coffey, who had been in in the DA squad, and I think then was with OCTF. He and he, I was in the an RMP, they went out, they locked him up, and uh I got to see it again. Uh just uh one of these moments on being at the edge of history, right? Fascinating, really. To be able to talk about it. But uh Gotti was was being uh a wise guy with coffee, and they had known each other for uh a not insubstantial period of time, and he was giving odds that he was going to beat the case, and coffee just told him to shut the fuck up and get in the car. During that trial, the feds had promised you guys that if they came across anything of jury tampering, they'd give you the heads up. And they didn't. They didn't. And they they decided for whatever reason that what whatever they were were doing was more important than convicting John Gottiet at that moment. And it was profoundly disappointing. We didn't find out about it until months after the uh the acquittal. The jury was out, I think it was five days, and ultimately they come in with the verdict, and it's not guilty. And we come to learn months later that in fact the jury had been tampered with. There was one individual who was gotten to. And that also the way that that came about was through a corrupt NYPD detective who was assigned from Intel who essentially guard the uh the jury, uh, which was anonymous, by the way, at that at that time. Were you able to find out who the gunman was that shot John O'Connor? Yeah, Jimmy McElroy was on the scene. The name is escaping me right now. Didn't John O'Connor at one point take the the victim, didn't he take the stand as a witness for John Connie during the trial? He did. We decided not to call him, and ultimately he is called by the defense, and I I believe took the fifth with respect to to most of his his testimony. But it was the whole thing was very interesting, the whole trial, obviously. It it was a media circus. It was it it it was quite the experience. Yeah, wasn't that the trial where like Mickey Rock and Anthony Quint showed up? There were all all kinds of celebrities showing up. There it was a zoo. And you know, when when he's acquitted, John Gotti and Tony Lee Guerreri, who was his his co-defendant, you know, run out of the courtroom to to cheering mobs and fireworks over Ozone Park. And it was just a crazy time. So, Jeff, uh as a prosecutor, you went up against Gotti's Hired Guns, Bruce Cutler, and Jerry Shargell. What was that like? Cutler and I didn't get along that well, and at a couple of points nearly came to blows. Uh, Jerry Shargell I I liked and respected a a lot. He was an excellent attorney. Cutler was more bombastic and uh half a mobster himself. So, Jeff, during your time in the Manhattan DA's office, can you give me your top three top defense attorneys to go up against? Jerry Shargell is certainly at the top of the list. Who else would I put it near the top of the list? There were some very talented legal aid attorneys, believe it or not, but who really cared about what they were doing and fought extremely hard for their their clients. Names are escaping me what right now, frankly. But many of them went on to become judges. Ruth Pickholz was one. And they were dedicated public servants, really, to doing what they thought was was good, good work. Did you ever have the occasion to go against Kuby or Counselor? Yes. And I forget exactly what case it was on, but he was he was a a very good attorney as well. Uh Kubi and I, I don't think we ever had a case together. We actually ran e into each other later on in the book I described the uh case of capturing the the freedmen's he was involved in in that case. Jeff, former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgato is a legend. Can you share an encounter you had with him or just a thought? Yeah, you know, he he was really one of a kind, and he obviously a long time in the in the office, but he instilled in in us, his assistants, assistant TAs, that we were there to do the the right thing. And it was really that which guided me in the featherstone case, for instance, right? You had somebody who you convicted who had escaped conviction two topics before, and you convicted, and he turns out to be uh innocent of this one. Some might say, Okay, he got what he deserved, and kind of look the other way, but that wouldn't have been the right thing to do. And so we did the right thing, and it was that the foundation that I I think assistance in that office during the time that he was there really built upon, and that was drummed into our heads that that was what we were there to do. And that was a good foundation for everything else that I did in in life. Interestingly, I come back as the chief of staff of that office when Civants is his DA. I guess it was almost thirty thirty years later, or twenty-five years later anyhow, that uh I came back and uh the office had changed, but certainly that that moral accompass was was still there. I'd say the office had changed. A lot of people were were still there who had been there in when I was there 25 years earlier, but it wasn't the same being a boss there as as being a Lionacist. Maybe the old adage of not being able to go home is is true. For those of you who don't know, New York State Supreme Court Judge Edwin Torres is another institution. And in addition to being this legendary judge, he wrote the book called Edo's Way that would later become a movie, and then he wrote the HBO book, or it became the movie on HBO QA, which is a great movie or television show that was on HBO. Do you have any Judge Edwin Torres stories? You know, so in the court system, in the DA's office, there were six trial bureaus that kind of were vertical with the judges. So I never had a case uh with Eddie Torres, but he he was in fact a legend, and I would all often go into the courtroom just to watch him. He was a a very funny judge. I mean, it was it it was an experience being in that courtroom, and he was on one side of the spectrum, and then there was another famous judge, Harold Rothwax, yeah, yeah, who was on the other side of the spectrum. And although he was in a a different vertical, if you will, a different trial bureau, I did appear before him on at least one trial, and he had a a number of sayings. And one day I came in and fumbled around, and what he said to me was, Mr. Schlanger, I can see once again you are not suffering from the ills of over preparation. He he had yes, he had a number of those kinds of sayings. Towards the end of my career, I never had a case with him, but I made it a point a couple of times to sneak into his courtroom and watch him. What was his one-liner? If he was sending someone to a lengthy sentence, he'd say, Son, your parole officer hasn't been born yet. He had those sayings for sure. Yeah. Jeff, you prosecuted former New York Jets players Mark Gaston and Ken O'Brien. I did. That was relatively early in my career and actually was my first media experience. And it was a case which grew out of a uh a barroom fight at Studio 54, who I know you know, Vic, but some of your listeners may not know. In the disco years of the early 80s, it was the place to be seen and to watch as well, who was there. And there was a barroom fight that involved a patron and uh started over arm wrestling and got out of hand. Long story short, it was at that time the longest misdemeanor trial in the history of the city. It lasted four weeks. Ultimately, Gaston was convicted. Ken O'Brien, who was the quarterback of the Jets at that at that time, was acquitted. And yeah, it it was certainly a formative experience in terms of dealing with the press and uh having to have somewhat of a thick skin because this was a prosecution that was not universally admired, let's say. Jeff, can you share for our listeners what a district attorney's responsibilities are on work and homicide duty? Yeah, certainly in Manhattan. Can describe it because I did that for a long time. You would be what was called on call. So you would be the on-call homicide assistant. And that would typically last 24 hours. In the early days, you were past a beeper. And again, for those listeners who may be younger, a beeper was a device which you wore on your belt. It clipped onto your belt. And somehow somebody who wanted to get in touch with you would dial in to the beeper, and up on a small display would come that person's number, and you would have to find one of those payphones that I mentioned before and make a call to that number to find out what was going on. So that was the way homicide assistants were notified of a call. We would take the beeper home. And if we were to respond, which was often what we did, not usually to the scene, but usually to the precinct after an arrest, although sometimes to a scene as well, we would get a beep. We would call the communications division at NYPD, an RMP from our local precinct would pick us up, and we would be transported to the precinct where an interview with a prospective defendant had already occurred, and we were then going to do a videotape interview with that uh that defendant, and that was what we did. And then typically we would keep that case through the prosecution. Yeah, and I remember a lot of times you guys showing up in the middle of the night not too happy. You guys have to sleep. Yeah, there were lots of nights like that and lots of long days. I remember one particular Christmas. I I would volunteer for Christmas duty because I was Jewish and at the time wasn't celebrating Christmas, although I married a woman who wasn't Jewish and now do celebrate Christmas. But that's another story. One Christmas I had a total of uh five homicides that occurred with individuals who were unhappy with their their gifts and uh so on, and uh responded out to to five different interviews on that in that 24-hour period, which was the most I had ever done. Jeff, a story from your book, which fascinates me, is you worked on a cold case murder of Cornelia Krille, whose killer, Rodney Akala, the dating game killer, was arrested 40 years later. Yeah. So this was the case that haunted me when I had left the office because it remained unsolved. There was a detective in Manhattan South detectives who Chief. Or Chief Schneider. It's okay. There was a detective in Manhattan South by the name of Frank Donnelly, who had worked on the case initially. And detectives from Manhattan South and I were very, very close. So we decided to work on this case together to see what we could do. And probably for a total of three or four of my last years in the office, we would go back to this case see whether there was anything which we had missed, anything more we could could do. And I left the office with it still unsolved. There were a couple of other cold cases where we were more successful. But uh so I think nearly 20 years passes. It turns out that people who I was in the office with had uh taken up the mantle, so to speak, and ultimately through DNA technology had had learned that this dating game killer, Rodney Ocala, was in fact the individual kill Cornelia or Jeff the you investigated the Linda Vig murder, and that was a particularly gruesome murder, and what's wild about that is her killers dated back to Murder Incorporated. Yeah, so that was a uh a case that two Manhattan North homicide detectives brought to me. They had an individual who uh was cooperating with them or had reached out to them with a story, and uh that story involved her actually seeing three individuals, one of whom was her her husband, uh, three individuals beat beating to death uh Linda Vick in an apartment on the Upper East Side. We ultimately churned one of the three individuals uh by the name of Arthur Goldstein, who cooperated against the other two, uh Barry Shapiro and Lewis Rachels, and we executed, and I was there again for this, a search warrant in Rachel's apartment on the upper uh upper east side. And right where that cooperating witness had told us she had seen Linda Vig lying, we picked up the the carpet, and there was this waffle phone padding underneath the the little cuffs, and inside those little cubs were blood. And uh from that blood we got DNA. We used familial DNA from Linda Vig's sister and mother, I believe, uh were living in Michigan at the time, and ultimately convicted Shapiro and Rachel's of that homicide. Yeah, it was one of the first times that familial DNA was was used. So there was a what's called a fry hearing of that uh ultimately those three individuals, not Rachel's, but two of the three, I should say, Barry Shapiro and Arthur Goldstein, had grown up in East New York and had been essentially errand boys for those involved with the murder. The feds went wild. They the I in my opinion they overreached and they arrested them and and tried prosecuting them. Can you go into that? Yeah, well, that was my opinion too, and it really became a First Amendment case, number one, but this revolved around the downing of Flight 800, which was a TWA flight, which at least initially inexplicably crashed into the uh the ocean off of the Hamptons uh on Long Island. And uh the the Sanders and uh I it's Sanders uh the wife's name, I forget right now, but she was a TWA stewardess trainer, so she knew uh those who had perished from TWA, and they ultimately were sent this piece of piece of cloth because the captain believed that the the federal explanation of this was not uh not right. What happened then was the piece of cloth was tested and according to the laboratory results contained rocket propellant of some kind or missile propellant of some kind. They, the Sanders and the captain, were arrested and charged with taking evidence from the scene of a of a crime, I suppose, and ultimately prosecuted. I at the time left their defense because I moved on to the croll, but they were ultimately convicted. I still am not fully convinced of the story that that was told by the FBI in terms of what brought down the plan. Did they get time for it? They didn't. They received probation, as I recall, but uh just the conviction was was enough. And it was there were First Amendment aspects to this, obviously. They were acting in a journalistic capacity, but most importantly, what they were trying to do is uh to bring out the truth, or at least try to get to the bottom of it, right? And uh so that combined with my experience with the FBI at the Gotti trial, left a bad taste about it. Jeff, your book, Doing Right from Prosecuted Reformer, A Journey Through Crime, Corruption, Complacency, and Change is a great read. Please share for us what inspired you to write it. So initially, what inspired me was my the birth of my grandson. I decided that really for his benefit and for his future siblings and cousins, it would be good to have this all recorded somehow. I had a a friend of mine write a book as well, uh Bob Silvering, who was the special narcotics prosecutor in in New York City for a long time, still remains a dear friend, and uh those two things provided the the inspiration, and I just sat down, outlined what I thought might be interesting, and just went out and uh went the self-publishing route route. And somehow you found it and uh reached out to me. And uh thank you for doing that. I appreciate it. It was a great read. I enjoyed reading it. I spent the whole weekend reading it. Jeff, reading your book gave me the impression you've never stopped moving since your early days with the Manhattan DA's office. What are you doing now and what's next for you? So I I am now overseeing police departments, but in in between my stint as the chief of staff at the uh at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. And present, I also was a deputy commissioner at MYPD. I was the first ever deputy commissioner for risk management there and uh was dealing with all kinds of issues, including the issue of stop question and and frisk that the city was involved in litigation and ultimately had a a monitor imposed on them. So while I had monitored in the private sector, the LAPD, and other police departments as well, this is monitoring after consent decrees are reached with a jurisdiction. I learned what it was to be on the other side of that monitoring. I was the one who was spearheading from the NYPD's point of view uh the monitorship for those three years. Left the MYPD in March of 21, set up a company called Integriture, where I now provide oversight for a number of departments in a model that is either a consent decree model, and I am the consent decree monitor for Aurora, Colorado right now, or in a model that's called an independent police auditor, where a city essentially establishes a position and then outsources that position to me. So I'm trying to give back, I'm trying to make the profession as professional as it can be. There have been great strides in that realm. Body worn cameras are are providing us the ability to catch little mistakes before they become big mistakes, not through a gotcha kind of scheme, but rather through identifying those mistakes and coaching and mentoring cops to be better cops and to keep themselves safe, as safe as they can be, and to make sure that the residents of the community have the best possible view of the police that they can. Jeff, I'm sitting here doing this interview with you, and and it's so bizarre because my whole career in the NYPD, a district attorney was interviewing me. It's the strangest thing when you're asking a DA question. That's great. It's a beautiful turnaround. Jeff, Jeff, one last time. What's the name of your book and where can our listeners pick up a copy? So the book is called Doing Right. And just one thing I want to point out about the title is that it is aspirational. It is not meant in any way to indicate that I've always did right. There were challenges along the way. I will say I tried to do right throughout, but it is available on Amazon and available both in Kindle editions, in soft cover, and in hardcover. And I'm glad that you found it to be a good read and that it didn't put you to sleep. That's that's great. And uh I think at least some of your listeners would be interested as well. Definitely. Jeff Schlager, thank you so much for spending your time with us today. My pleasure, Vic. And as always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Melbourne, Australia, Boston Mass, Auckland, New Zealand, Tampa, Florida, and Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. If you worked in law enforcement or had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFerrari50. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the subscribe button. If you enjoy the content, please check out my Amazon author page where you find my series of behind the scenes NYPD books. Just type in my name, VicFerrari LikeTheCar, where you can preview all my books for free. Thanks again, everyone. I'll see you next week.