Costabile Farace

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Costabile "Gus" Farace, Jr. (June 21, 1960-November 17, 1989) was a low-level Mafia associate who murdered a teenage male prostitute and a federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officer in New York City.

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[edit] Early Years

Born in Brooklyn, Farace moved with his family to Staten Island in 1960. His father, Costabile "Gus" Farace Sr. (1935-1987), opened a small grocery store in the island's Great Kills neighborhood (the store closed in 1983). Farace's first name, "Costabile", means "constable" in Italian — a monstrous irony given the course Farace's life took.

[edit] Hate Crime in Greenwich Village

On October 8, 1979, Farace and three companions (Robert DeLicio, David Spoto and cousin Mark Granato) viciously assaulted two male prostitutes in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. Farace and his companions were walking along a street in the early morning hours when the two teenage boys allegedly propositioned them. Enraged, Farace and his friends forced the two teenagers into their car and drove them to Wolfe's Pond Park in the Prince's Bay section of Staten Island (where both Farace and Granato resided). The four men then spent several hours punching, kicking, and beating their victims with driftwood. When they were finished, Farace and his pals left the two boys for dead.

One victim, 17-year-old Steven Charles of Newark, New Jersey, died on the beach. The second victim, 16-year-old Thomas Moore of Brooklyn, was critically injured but managed to get help at a nearby residence. Farace, DeLicio, Spoto, and Granato were arrested later that day. — December 10, 1979 — Four days later, Moore identified all four men in a lineup. Farace ultimately pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and received a prison sentence of 7 to 21 years.

[edit] Murder of DEA Agent

After being released on parole on June 3, 1988, Farace soon got himself into trouble again. He began selling cocaine and marijuana for a drug ring believed to be controlled by Gerald Chilli, a reputed capo in New York City's Bonanno crime family. In late February 1989, a cocaine deal was set up with Everett Hatcher, a DEA agent who had managed to infiltrate the ring. At approximately 10:00 P.M. on the evening of February 28, 1989, Farace was to meet Hatcher at a remote overpass of the West Shore Expressway in the Rossville section of Staten Island, New York, to complete the deal. However, before the deal took place, Hatcher was shot three times and killed while sitting in his parked car on the overpass.

Police theorized that Farace shot Hatcher from a van as it passed Hatcher's car. The van was found abandoned three days later on a street about two miles northeast of the murder scene. Ironically, this location was less than half a mile from the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, where Farace had spent the last two years of his manslaughter sentence.

[edit] Manhunt

Hatcher's death was the first murder of a DEA agent in New York City since 1972. He was also believed to have been the first law-enforcement officer killed in the line of duty on Staten Island.

After Hatcher's slaying, a nationwide manhunt commenced. Farace was placed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ten Most Wanted list. Both federal and local law enforcement authorities were constantly pressuring Farace's mob superiors for information. Against this backdrop, on August 15, 1989, Farace's wife, the former Antoinette Acierno, gave birth to the couple's first child, Anthony Gus Farace. Police hoped that Farace would risk an attempt to visit the infant, but this did not happen.

[edit] Shooting and Death

A few months after the Hatcher murder, the manhunt for Ferace would be over. At 11:08 P.M. on November 17, 1989, police dispatchers received a 911 emergency call about a car parked in front of 1814 81st Street in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. The car contained two male occupants, both of whom had just been shot (The call came in as shots fired, no other specifics).

Police rushed to 81st Street and found the two men, one dead and the other seriouly wounded. The dead man was identified as Costabile Farace. According to witnesses, a van had driven alongside their car and shot the two men nine times. Ironically, this was the same method Farace used to kill Agent Hatcher. The surviving man in the car was identified as Joseph Sclafani, a member of Farace's organization.

In a different version of this story, per the responding officer, Farace was still breathing when police arrived. They placed him in a trauma suite, but he died enroute to the hospital. Sclafani was outside of the vehicle, having been shot out of his shoes. Officers handcuffed him on the scene for weapons possession

[edit] Aftermath

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York refused to grant Farace a public funeral mass, citing his notorious life and death. However, the Archdiocese did permit his remains to be buried in the church-owned Cemetery of the Resurrection in Pleasant Plains, Staten Island, the same area where Hatcher was murdered.

A few years later, a reputed Mafia "hit man," or hired assassin, with ties to the Lucchese crime family who was in jail while awaiting trial on unrelated charges, confessed to the killing and also implicated two others, one of whom was by that time deceased, himself the victim of a Mafia-style execution.

On April 15, 1993, Farace's widow legally changed their son's name from Anthony Gus Farace to Anthony Carlo Acierno.

[edit] In popular culture

Farace was later portrayed by Tony Danza in the 1991 television movie Dead and Alive: The Race for Gus Farace. In an interesting sidelight, newspaper reports immediately following the slaying misspelled Farace's first name, rendering it as "Constible". This error would be repeated in this movie, the actors continually pronounced Farace's first name as "Kon-STEE-blay".

[edit] Further reading

  • Raab, Selwyn. Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2005. ISBN 0-312-30094-8

[edit] External links