Thomas Pitera
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Thomas "Tommy Karate" Pitera (b. December 2, 1954) was a New York mobster who served as a hitman and drug trafficker for the Bonanno crime family.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
Born in New York City, Pitera grew up in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. During the 1980's Pitera became a made man, or full member, of the Bonanno family. Pitera quickly earned a reputation for violence, and enjoyed doing hits for the family. At the time, Pitera was one of the more feared soldiers on the streets, amongst the likes of Anthony "Tony" Mirra and Roy DeMeo, who were two brutal underworld killers. Pitera belonged to a family faction headed by captains Alphonse Indelicato, Dominick Trinchera, and Philip Giaccone. This group opposed the current leadership under boss Philip Rastelli and his leading captains Joseph Massino and Dominick Napolitano. In 1981, Massino and Napolitano set up the murders of the three rival captains in a Brooklyn club. After their deaths, Massino quickly made peace with the rest of the leaderless faction, including Pitera.
[edit] Criminal career
Pitera soon earned a reputation as a vicious killer who enjoyed murdering people for the family. On August 29, 1988, Pitera ambushed Wilfred "Willie Boy" Johnson as he walked to car and shot him to death. Johnson had been a close associate of Gambino crime family boss John Gotti since the two of them had been petty burglars and thieves. Johnson had also had served as a driver to Gotti after Gotti became a made man and captain with the Gambinos. In 1985, Gotti discovered that Johnson had been a government informant since 1966. Pitera murdered Johnson as a favor to Gotti. Pitera was close to Bonanno consigliere Anthony Spero, who headed the violent Bath Beach crew. This group was involved in extortion, loan sharking, drug dealing, and dozens of murders.
Pitera's crew was notorious for robbing drug dealers and then reselling their drugs. Pitera murdered two Colombian drug kingpins and then resold their 40 pounds of cocaine. Pitera also killed Tala Siksik, an Arab drug supplier in his Brooklyn apartment. Pitera dismembered Siksik's body in the bathtub and disposed of it. Six of Pitera's victim's turned up at a mafia graveyard in the borough of Staten Island near a bird sanctuary. Pitera chopped off the victims' heads and buried them elsewhere to avoid identification through dental records.
On June 4, 1990, Pitera was indicted for heading a drug dealing crew and for his involvement in seven murders, including that of Johnson. Investigators alleged that Pitera had been involved in as many as 30 murders. Pitera's crew sold about 220 pounds of cocaine per year, multiple kilos of heroin, and hundreds of pounds of marijuana. FBI Agents discovered more than 60 automatic weapons, knives and swords, and literature on torturing and dismembering cadavers in Pitera's apartment in the Gravesend, Brooklyn.
One of Pitera's crew members, Frank Gangi, the nephew of Genovese crime family captain Rosario Gangi, decided to testify against Pitera to avoid the death penalty. Gangi described how Pitera murdered Gangi's girlfriend Pyhllis Burdi after couple went on a drug binge. Pitera and an unidentified shooter showed up at their Manhattan apartment, took Burdi into the bathroom, shot her in the bathtub, and then cut her head off. Gangi also testified that during a fight with a drug dealer named Marek Kucharsky, Pitera pulled a knife and repeatedly stabbed Kucharsky and cut his throat.
[edit] Sentence
On June 25, 1992, Pitera was convicted of murdering six people and supervising a massive drug dealing operation in Brooklyn. After the verdict was read, Pitera smiled and gave a thumbs up to reporters sitting in the Brooklyn courtroom. Pitera would avoid the death penalty and be sentenced to life in prison. As of April 2008, Pitera was still serving a life sentence at the United States Penitentiary (for high risk inmates) at the Federal Correctional Institute, Allenwood in Pennsylvania.
