Colombo Crime Family
Neopolitan Noodle shooting
"The Godfather"was still playing in New York theaters five months after its release and audiences were still greeting that line with nervous laughter when, on Friday, Aug. 11, 1972, a hit man from Las Vegas walked into the Neopolitan Noodle, an Italian restaurant on Manhattan's East 79th Street, at the height of the dinner hour rush.
Mistaking four businessmen at the crowded bar for his actual targets, Colombo family acting boss "Little Allie" Persico and three mob lieutenants, the hit man opened fire with two long-barreled pistols, killing two of the businessmen — kosher beef wholesalers from Westchester County and Long Island — and wounding their companions.
The men were old friends meeting to celebrate a daughter's wedding engagement. They arrived at the Noodle as the Persico party was being seated for dinner. While the four wiseguys were out of harm's way at a table in the dining room, the hit man shot the four innocents who had taken their places at the bar. The businessmen were casualties of a Colombo family civil war that had ignited four months earlier in spectacular fashion when "Crazy Joe" Gallo was gunned down at Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy.
The shooting at the Neopolitan Noodle, by contrast, is hardly embedded in the public mind. The 40th anniversary on Saturday of the dimly remembered killings will pass with little fanfare or commemoration. And the names of the real-life innocent bystanders felled by a mob gunman — Sheldon Epstein, 40, of New Rochelle and Max Tekelch, 48, of Woodmere — will probably remain as they have been all these years, largely forgotten.
Outlaw Motorcycle Gang, Florida
Rape, murder and mutilation
Outlaw member Joseph Spaziano
In January 1976, he was convicted of killing Laura Harberts, 18, and dumping her mutilated body along a roadside. His trial had extensive news coverage, spreading the biker lore.
In August 1975, an earlier jury convicted Spaziano of raping a 16-year-old girl, slashing her neck and eyes, choking her and dumping her, unconscious, in woods.
Was part of a series of vicious sexual assaults by members of biker gangs in florida:
In January 1970, a girl who rode with the Outlaws was chained to a warehouse ceiling in the Lake County city of Oakland Park. Bikers stripped, beat and sexually abused her as punishment for trying to flee the gang. Bikers threatened to kill her or nail her to a tree.
Two years earlier, Outlaws members did nail a teen-ager to a scrub oak, in Palm Beach County. She was dating a biker, and when she did not give him $10 as ordered one day, gang members nailed her hands to a branch. Her toes barely touched the ground, and she told investigators the bikers threatened to beat her if she cried. Investigators learned of the incident when bikers stole drugs from the hospital where the girl was being treated.
A biker and two friends burst into the Orlando hotel room of a 20-year-old woman in February 1974 and forced her to another room, where they beat, kicked and raped her. They gave the same treatment to a 16-year-old they lured into the room with the promise of a party. The two women were held overnight and threatened with death if they reported the crimes.
Four Outlaws were arrested in Fort Lauderdale in 1974 on charges they tied a 21-year-old woman to a chair, kicked her, beat her and burned her with hot spoons. They said she stole a decal from a biker's motorcycle.
In 1978, three Outlaws were convicted of killing a nightclub singer in Orange County. They beat her, then stabbed her 13 times and slit her throat on orders of a club enforcer.
Preachers Crew, Harlem
Donnell Porter Kidnapping and murder
In 1987 Clarence Preacher Heatly orders the kidnapping of 12 year old donnell porter, the brother of rival drug dealer rich porter. He demands $350,000 for the boys safe return, for added effect he cuts off one of the boys fingers and sends it to his family. Before rich could pay the ransom he is killed by friend and fellow dealer alpo martinez. The boy is then killed and dumped on the street.
"The body of a kidnapped 12-year-old boy whose finger was cut off and sent to his family in December to pressure them into sending ransom money was found Sunday afternoon wrapped in plastic bags off the Hutchinson River Parkway in the Bronx, the police said yesterday.
The body of William Porter of 155 West 132d Street in Manhattan was found on a bicycle path near the parkway's City Island exit by a homeless man looking for cans, Lieut. Raymond O'Donnell, a police spokesman, said. It was less than a mile from where the body of his older brother, Richard, who the police said was a crack dealer the kidnappers wanted to pay the ransom, was found shot to death on Jan. 4."
