Lucchese family leaders facing mandatory life sentences after being convicted of murdering notorious Bronx gangster

Lucchese family leaders facing mandatory life sentences after being convicted of murdering notorious Bronx gangster

  November 16, 2019    Dapper_Don

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Four Lucchese mobsters were found guilty Friday of the brutal Bronx hit of a notorious gangster who’d refused to make good on a gambling debt.

Matthew Madonna, Steven “Wonder Boy” Crea, Christopher Londonio and Terrence Caldwell were convicted in White Plains federal court of carrying out the 2013 murder of Michael Meldish, 63, the leader of the ruthless Purple Gang.

Meldish’s crew once did dirty work for the Lucchese, Genovese and Bonanno crime families. But the trial revealed that Meldish made the fatal mistake of refusing to pay a gambling debt owed to Madonna, who was then the acting boss of the Lucchese family.

Madonna, 84, ordered Meldish be taken out. Crea, the underboss, helped Madonna make the decision and relayed the order. Londonio, a made member of the family, helped set up Meldish, who was his friend. Caldwell, a mob associate, fired the fatal shot and fled the scene in a car driven by Londonio.

Meldish was found Nov. 15, 2013 dead from a bullet fired to his head in a car parked in Throgs Neck.

“The violent and disturbing acts of these four organized crime figures included the brutal murder of associate Michael Meldish. Fittingly, all four defendants have been found guilty of their heinous acts of fraud, extortion, and murder on the six-year anniversary of Meldish’s death," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said.

Meldish’s Purple Gang once controlled the drug trade in the Bronx and Harlem. Authorities suspected his brother and longtime partner in crime, Joseph Meldish, was responsible for as many as 70 contract killings.

Joseph Meldish, 56, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 2011 for a 1999 murder.

Joseph Coffey, a former commanding officer of the NYPD’s organized crime homicide task force, did not mourn Michael Meldish’s death.

“Michael was a stone-cold killer,” Coffey told the Daily News in 2013.

“It should have happened a long time ago. I call it vermin killing vermin — poetic justice.”

The four men face a mandatory sentence of life in prison for murder in aid of racketeering. Fifteen other people have pleaded guilty in connection with the case.

Londonio, 45, was acquitted of attempting to escape the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after he was arrested.

That bizarre caper in 2017 allegedly involved a plan to use dental floss to weaken a window — the implausible idea was to poke a hole in the window, and use the floss like a string saw to gradually wear it down.

The caper also involved a stash of bedsheets that in inmate would have used to climb out of an eighth-floor cell. A priest was supposed to smuggle a hacksaw to Londonio. The 350-pound gangster also lost weight so he could fit through the window, authorities said.

Londonio’s attorney John Meringolo said that version of events was full of holes. Prosecutors didn’t prove Londonio had any foreign objects in his cell. A priest never actually visited MDC, he said. Dental floss was never smuggled in and the investigation of the supposed plan was seriously flawed, Meringolo said.

“He’s definitely going to appeal and we’re disappointed in the verdict,” Meringolo said. “We’re happy we beat the escape, but we won the battle and lost the war.”

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-lucchese-mob-verdict-20191115-ypuepussc5fjpkj4lbnwxbjx5m-story.html