Feds fear for jurors and witnesses safety as mob trial gets underway
New York is about to experience a mob murder trial where the safety of witnesses and jurors will become an unusually high priority.
Gambino crime-family associate John Burke is charged with three different hits, at least one dating back to the iron-fisted mob days of John “Dapper Don” Gotti.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors say they are particularly wary about this case.
Burke, 51, is charged with the shotgun murder of Daniel Zahn in August 1982, just months after Zahn allegedly shot him in the throat.
During a state criminal trial for the Zahn murder later that year, a relative of Burke’s “contacted and intimidated a witness,” prosecutors wrote to a judge.
A witness said that before the Zahn trial, the relative “came to her house . . . and stated that she should say that she was drunk the night of the Zahn murder and that she did not remember anything,” federal prosecutors wrote to federal Judge Sterling Johnson Jr.
Burke was acquitted of the killing in the 1982 trial, but he will be tried for murder in aid of racketeering in today’s trial at Brooklyn federal court for the rub-outs of Zahn, as well as John Gebert and Bruce John Gotterup, two killings allegedly linked to drug dealing.
Gambino crime-family associate John Burke is charged with three different hits, at least one dating back to the iron-fisted mob days of John “Dapper Don” Gotti.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors say they are particularly wary about this case.
Burke, 51, is charged with the shotgun murder of Daniel Zahn in August 1982, just months after Zahn allegedly shot him in the throat.
During a state criminal trial for the Zahn murder later that year, a relative of Burke’s “contacted and intimidated a witness,” prosecutors wrote to a judge.
Burke was acquitted of the killing in the 1982 trial, but he will be tried for murder in aid of racketeering in today’s trial at Brooklyn federal court for the rub-outs of Zahn, as well as John Gebert and Bruce John Gotterup, two killings allegedly linked to drug dealing.
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