mafia links with public officials, street crime
Twislok
BY ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
Associated Press Writer
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) -- Getting shot on Christmas Eve 1996, Paul Gains says,
was a good thing.
Five men with mafia links are accused of trying to kill Gains, the Mahoning
County prosecutor-elect when he was shot. They go to trial in federal court
early next year.
Lenine ``Lenny'' Strollo and associates of his Strollo Enterprise are accused
of committing a wide range of mob-related crimes in Youngstown, a former steel
powerhouse limping towards economic recovery.
Gains and others say a tipster's phone call three months after his shooting
provided crucial details about Gains' case and the June 1996 slaying of
Strollo's organized crime rival Ernest A. Biondillo Jr.
It was a break that also illuminated long-denied links between the area's
mobsters, public officials and inner-city crime, said James Callen of the
Youngstown Area Citizens League, an anti-mob group.
Officials who pleaded guilty to mob-related crimes this year included a senior
aide to U.S. Rep. James Traficant, the former county engineer and the police
chief, law director and two sergeants from Campbell, a small city bordering
eastern Youngstown.
Rumors swirl through the city, dubbed one of America's 10 most corrupt by
George magazine this year, that more federal indictments will name judges,
other officials and prominent lawyers.
``We really have lived in a town where there have been people above the law,''
said Callen. ``What remains to be seen is whether that's still the case. A
couple of people have been nailed -- there's still more to be done.''
Beginning in December 1997, federal prosecutors charged Strollo and 43 other
people with murder, illegal gambling, bribery, obstruction of justice, fraud
and extortion in violation of the 1962 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act.
Almost all have since pleaded guilty and many are expected to testify at the
trial of the remaining five defendants.
They are Strollo, 67, of Canfield; his older brother Dante ``Danny'' Strollo,
71, also of Canfield; Bernard ``Bernie the Jew'' Altshuler, 68, of Youngstown;
Lavance Turnage, 26, of Youngstown; and Jeffrey Riddle, 38, of Youngstown.
Lawrence ``Jeep'' Garono, 56, of Hubbard, identified in the indictments as a
close associate of the Strollos, pleaded guilty in July to RICO violations and
faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Prosecutors say members of the Strollo Enterprise plotted to murder Gains and
Biondillo.
The enterprise extorted $100,000 from the B.J. Alan Co., a Youngstown fireworks
business, and ran illegal gambling and bookmaking operations with revenues of
$2,000 a day, according to prosecutors.
Lenny Strollo had illegal interests in an Indian-run casino in California and a
Puerto Rican hotel and failed to pay thousands of dollars in income tax,
prosecutors say.
In March, Charles O'Nesti, 70, of Youngstown, district director for Traficant,
pleaded guilty to perjury and racketeering conspiracy charges. He retired and
is awaiting sentencing.
Federal documents have identified him as the man who delivered a $10,000 bribe
to the campaign of Phil Chance, who was elected sheriff in 1996.
An attorney for Chance, Leonard Yelsky, said his investigation found that
Chance has ``no culpability.'' He wouldn't comment further.
Charles Xenakis, the former Campbell police chief, pleaded guilty to charges
that he took $500 monthly payments from Strollo and $2,000 in 1995 for a
Hawaiian vacation in exchange for ignoring illegal gambling.
Michael Rich, once Campbell's law director, pleaded guilty to taking payments
of $2,000 in exchange for rigging civil service tests. Prosecutors say Rich let
Strollo control police hiring and promotions.
William Fergus, the former county engineer, pleaded guilty to taking bribes of
up $14,500 from Strollo for paving work. O'Nesti, the congressional aide, was a
go-between.
People in Campbell, a city of small houses perched on a hill above the Mahoning
Valley's largely defunct steel mills, ``are ashamed and distressed and trying
very hard to overcome the stigma that's been attached to the being a resident
of Campbell,'' said Monsignor John Ashton, 68, pastor of St. Lucy Roman
Catholic Church, an Italian-American parish.
Mob influences go back decades in the Youngstown area, where mafia families in
Cleveland and Pittsburgh long fought for control.
A three-number lottery game called ``the bug'' was so common that police
officers used to take people's betting slips from door to door, recalled
Patrick Ungaro, mayor of Youngstown from 1984 through 1997.
``My grandmother used to play the bug,'' Gains said.
Ungaro, 57, says he was offered a considerable amount of money from a mob
intermediary -- in a church basement -- if he dumped Police Chief Randall
Wellington. He refused.
In fear of retaliation, Ungaro never let his children into his car before
starting it each morning.
Mob-related bombings weren't uncommon in Youngstown. Mary Catherine Sanders
recalls the night of her sister's wedding reception in October 1962 at a house
on stately Fifth Avenue. Three blocks away, a powerful explosion ripped through
a house.
``I don't remember my brother-in-law's reaction so much as my dad's dismay,''
said Sanders, 65, a retired city secretary.
When Youngstown's economy roared like the open hearth steel furnaces that once
lighted the city's skyline at night, the mob's influence on the city wasn't so
apparent.
Then Black Monday struck, Sept. 19, 1977, when Youngstown Sheet and Tube
announced 4,100 layoffs, the first of several economic bombs dropped by the
steel industry over the next four years.
Eventually, more than 23,000 steel jobs were lost. The city's population
dropped from 170,000 to 95,000.
Light manufacturing is taking root in small industrial parks, but many
storefronts remain boarded up. The state has control of the city schools, which
owe about $40 million.
Each summer, a few dozen street department workers battle high grass on the
more than 6,000 empty lots scattered throughout Youngstown.
As the Mahoning Valley's economy imploded, the impact of mob influence on the
city was slowly revealed, like rotting shipwrecks exposed by a low tide.
``The payoff in the old system was jobs and stability,'' said Mark Shutes, a
Youngstown State University anthropologist.
``Now people are seeing the loss of young people from the area, the decline of
the infrastructure, the 1/4-inch of asphalt on the roads,'' he said, referring
to shoddy paving work.
In early November in the nearby city of Warren, the auditor, another city
employee and seven Elks Lodge members were charged in a $600,000 gambling
operation.
When the federal mob indictments were announced a year ago, a Warren school
board member said on talk radio that they were an overreaction and that he
himself gambled occasionally.
``It's almost impossible for people in the valley to conceptualize these kinds
of activities as being fundamentally wrong,'' Shutes said.
Traficant himself was accused of taking a $163,000 mafia bribe as Mahoning
County sheriff in 1983. He represented himself at trial and a federal jury
acquitted him on bribery and tax evasion charges. He wouldn't comment for this
story.
Both Callen and Ungaro say they argued fruitlessly for years with people who
said street crime was a bigger problem than organized crime, and that the two
weren't connected.
Federal evidence gathered in the Strollo case says otherwise. Members of the
Strollo Enterprise recruited several men ``to assist in gambling activities
aimed at the black community in general, and wealthy, inner-city drug dealers
in particular,'' according to a federal affidavit filed by Assistant U.S.
Attorney Craig Morford.
The same affidavit links Lenny Strollo and Altshuler with attempts to fix local
cases, including a murder charge, and armed robberies of drug houses.
Morford declined to comment. Messages seeking comment were left with attorneys
for Strollo and Altshuler.
The FBI had been investigating the mafia in Youngstown for almost four years,
according to affidavits seeking wiretaps. Then came Christmas Eve 1996.
It was after 2 a.m. Gains had just fed his cats, Spooky and Sheba, in his
Boardman Township house. He was about to make a call on his cell phone when a
gunman walked in and shot him twice.
Gains was left for dead, surviving, he says, because the gun jammed after the
first two shots. He used the cell phone lying next to him to call for help.
The case sputtered for weeks, during which time Gains misidentified his shooter
and the wrong man was arrested. Then the phone rang at 11:30 p.m. on March 26,
1997, waking Gains from a deep sleep. For almost three hours, the female caller
whispered information about his shooting and the Biondillo hit.
``If I had not survived the shooting, or had I changed my phone number, I don't
think this young woman would have called the authorities,'' said Gains, 47, in
an interview in his courthouse office. He wouldn't identify the caller.
Pausing often to relight his Macanudo cigar, lacing his conversation with
bursts of cheerful expletives, Gains says he's limited in what he can say
because of the trial.
After talking almost an hour, however, he declares one thing is certain: The
informant's call was crucial to the case now headed for trial.
``I think that what this young woman told me and the names she gave me
corroborated what authorities believed and was instrumental in securing the
cooperation of individuals involved in the enterprise,'' he said.
Once the trial ends next year, he predicted, mafia influence over public
officials will be considerably diminished.
``My surviving was an act of God,'' Gains said.
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