Bobby Glasses helped in murder because of spilled drink
A senior Gambino mobster who sits on the crime family’s ruling panel
helped execute two men decades ago because of a simple spilled drink in a
smoky Queens tavern, prosecutors said today.
Bartolomeo “Bobby Glasses” Vernace — now a 63-year-old Gambino capo who sits on the crime family’s ruling commission — took up arms with colleagues against a pair of bar owners who they “murdered in cold blood” at a Woodhaven tavern in 1981.
”They were killed over a spilled drink” that splashed a wiseguy’s girlfriend, Assistant US Attorney Amir Toossi told the jury at the start of Vernace’s murder racketeering trial in Brooklyn.
Vernace pulled the trigger and shot bar owner Richard Godkin “through
the chest,” the prosecutor said, while another Gambino shot co-owner
John D’Agnese point-blank in the face.
”I seen him fall. The blood was pretty vivid. I knew that he was in trouble,” tavern patron Douglas Lindberg recalled on the witness stand.
Not long after the shooting, one of the gunmen met Gambino associate Anthony Ruggiano Jr. and confided in him about the double murder.
Ruggiano — a Gambino associate who now is a government informant in witness protection — testified that mob associate Frank Riccardi admitted to participating in the shooting, along with Vernace and Gambino associate Ronald Barlin.
After the double murder at the Shamrock Bar on Jamaica Avenue, Vernace“in Mafia-speak, went on the lam,” Toossi told jurors.
In his opening statement, defense attorney Charles Carnesi reminded jurors that Vernace was acquitted of the same murders in a 2002 state court trial.
“This act — as senseless as it was — had nothing to do with the crime family,” Carnesi told jurors.
The defense attorney also portrayed Ruggiano as a drug addict who had murdered his own brother-in-law.
The mob trial continues tomorrow.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/gambino_thug_helped_in_execution_yWp4s40vBA5zu6sAuIJ5tK
Bartolomeo “Bobby Glasses” Vernace — now a 63-year-old Gambino capo who sits on the crime family’s ruling commission — took up arms with colleagues against a pair of bar owners who they “murdered in cold blood” at a Woodhaven tavern in 1981.
”They were killed over a spilled drink” that splashed a wiseguy’s girlfriend, Assistant US Attorney Amir Toossi told the jury at the start of Vernace’s murder racketeering trial in Brooklyn.
”I seen him fall. The blood was pretty vivid. I knew that he was in trouble,” tavern patron Douglas Lindberg recalled on the witness stand.
Not long after the shooting, one of the gunmen met Gambino associate Anthony Ruggiano Jr. and confided in him about the double murder.
Ruggiano — a Gambino associate who now is a government informant in witness protection — testified that mob associate Frank Riccardi admitted to participating in the shooting, along with Vernace and Gambino associate Ronald Barlin.
After the double murder at the Shamrock Bar on Jamaica Avenue, Vernace“in Mafia-speak, went on the lam,” Toossi told jurors.
In his opening statement, defense attorney Charles Carnesi reminded jurors that Vernace was acquitted of the same murders in a 2002 state court trial.
“This act — as senseless as it was — had nothing to do with the crime family,” Carnesi told jurors.
The defense attorney also portrayed Ruggiano as a drug addict who had murdered his own brother-in-law.
The mob trial continues tomorrow.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/queens/gambino_thug_helped_in_execution_yWp4s40vBA5zu6sAuIJ5tK
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