Mob trial halts over alleged hand signals between wiseguys
Bet it wasn’t rock-paper-scissors.
The trial of reputed Colombo crime family boss Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli ground to a brief halt yesterday after a juror told the judge that Gioeli appeared to be exchanging hand signals with the Mafia rat testifying against him.
The alleged gesticulations between Gioeli and Joseph “Joey Caves” Competiello could not be seen from the gallery, and weren’t described in open court.
But Brooklyn federal-court Judge Brian Cogan was not amused.
The judge pulled prosecutors and defense lawyers aside for a short powwow, out of earshot of jurors and the audience, then issued a warning:
“I’m not saying this happened,” the judge told Competiello, Gioeli and co-defendant Dino “Little Dino” Saracino.
“But there can be no exchange of hand signals between the defendants and the witness.”
The “sign language’’ slap-down came as Competiello admitted that when he signed up as a rat in 2008, he at first neglected to tell the feds that he was involved in the 1997 slaying of NYPD Officer Ralph Dols.
Competiello claimed he had initially kept mum about being the getaway driver in the Dols hit because he feared “you wouldn’t take me” as a cooperating witness, he told the prosecutor grilling him.
But a week after becoming a turncoat, Competiello came clean, adding Dols’ name to the four other gangland-homicide victims he admits helping to whack.
“I was worried you’d find out,” the admitted Colombo killer explained of finally ’fessing up.
Competiello, 40, testified that while sitting in a parked car down the block from Dols’ home, he signaled Saracino and another Colombo, Dino “Big Dino” Calabro, that the doomed cop was approaching them.
Shortly afterward, “I heard a lot of shots,” Competiello told jurors.
The testimony corroborates what Calabro, himself a turncoat, told jurors last week: that Dols was shot by Saracino and himself.
The trial of reputed Colombo crime family boss Thomas “Tommy Shots” Gioeli ground to a brief halt yesterday after a juror told the judge that Gioeli appeared to be exchanging hand signals with the Mafia rat testifying against him.
The alleged gesticulations between Gioeli and Joseph “Joey Caves” Competiello could not be seen from the gallery, and weren’t described in open court.
But Brooklyn federal-court Judge Brian Cogan was not amused.
The judge pulled prosecutors and defense lawyers aside for a short powwow, out of earshot of jurors and the audience, then issued a warning:
Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli
“But there can be no exchange of hand signals between the defendants and the witness.”
The “sign language’’ slap-down came as Competiello admitted that when he signed up as a rat in 2008, he at first neglected to tell the feds that he was involved in the 1997 slaying of NYPD Officer Ralph Dols.
Competiello claimed he had initially kept mum about being the getaway driver in the Dols hit because he feared “you wouldn’t take me” as a cooperating witness, he told the prosecutor grilling him.
But a week after becoming a turncoat, Competiello came clean, adding Dols’ name to the four other gangland-homicide victims he admits helping to whack.
“I was worried you’d find out,” the admitted Colombo killer explained of finally ’fessing up.
Competiello, 40, testified that while sitting in a parked car down the block from Dols’ home, he signaled Saracino and another Colombo, Dino “Big Dino” Calabro, that the doomed cop was approaching them.
Shortly afterward, “I heard a lot of shots,” Competiello told jurors.
The testimony corroborates what Calabro, himself a turncoat, told jurors last week: that Dols was shot by Saracino and himself.
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