Costabile "Gus" Farace, Jr. (June 21, 1960 Bushwick, Brooklyn - November 17, 1989 Bensonhurst, Brooklyn) was a low-level criminal with the Bonanno crime family who murdered a teenage male prostitute and a federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent in New York City.
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Farace was born in 1960 in Bushwick to Costabile Farace Sr. a first-generation emigrant from Canastra, Italy, and Mary Granato. At the age of five they moved from Bushwick to Tottenville, Staten Island. He used several dates of birth, August 20, 1959, January 1, 1960, June 20, 1960 and June 21, 1960. He stood at 6'3 and weighed 220 pounds with a tattoo of a girl on his lower calf, another girl tattoo on his right leg and a butterfly on his stomach. His Later that year, Farace's family moved to Prince's Bay, Staten Island. His father Gus opened a small grocery store, G&S in the island's Great Kills neighborhood (the store closed in 1983) on Hylan Boulevard in Tottenville, Staten Island. Constabile Sr. and his brother Frank were fringe members of a Colombo crime family illegal gambling ring. Farace was a paternal first cousin of Dominick Farace, the son of Frank Farace and maternal cousin of Mark Granato. He also was a cousin to Michael A Farace, and Michael J Farace. He attended Totten Intermediate School 34 in Tottenville where he was considered the class flirt in grade eight. As a child he was considered the class clown, a poor student, popular and gregarious. He played Peewee football in Wolfe's Pond Park. In 1975 he entered Tottenville High School and joined a street gang of adolescent delinquents called 'the Bay Boys' who liked to intimidate, pick fights and break heads. In January 1977 he was pulled over for reckless driving and after being searched by the police they found a gun on his person. Three weeks later, he was arrested for forgery, but he avoided a jail sentence because he was a youth.
On October 8, 1979, Farace murdered a 17 year-old boy and brutally beat his 16 year-old companion. Farace and some friends were on a street in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan when the two boys allegedly propositioned them. Enraged, Farace and his friends forced the two teenagers into their car and drove them to the beach at Wolfe's Pond Park in New York. Once there, Farace forced one of the boys to commit an oral sex act on him. The men beat the boys using driftwood and other objects, then left them for dead. The 17-year-old, Steven Charles of Newark, New Jersey, died on the beach. The 16-year-old, Thomas Moore of Brooklyn, was critically injured, but dove into the pond and managed to elude his attackers. Moore then walked to a nearby residence for assistance. Later on October 8, the police arrested Farace, DeLicio, and Spoto. Four days later, Moore identified Farace and the other suspects from a police lineup.[1]
On December 10, 1979, Farace pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter. The state had accepted his manslaughter plea rather than go through the uncertainty and expense of a capital murder trial. Farace was sentenced to 7 to 21 years in prison.
It was in prison that Farace first met Gerald Chilli Sr. Chilli had unofficially "adopted" Farace who at that point was in his late twenties as a protegé and stayed in contact when they got out of prison. Farace used his contacts with old friends, and new ones he met in prison, to start a Marijuana selling business, which soon expanded into other drugs. In June 1985, Farace was released from prison. By June 3, 1988, Farace had become partners with his friend Gregory Scarpa Jr. who worked out of his criminal headquarters at Wimpy Boys Athletic Club. His father Gregory Scarpa, Sr. was a secret FBI informer. Farace married Antoinette Acierno, a sister of a criminal associate.[1]
After being released on parole on June 3, 1988, Farace soon got into trouble again. He began selling small amounts of cocaine and marijuana. In late February 1989, Farace set up a cocaine deal with Everett Hatcher, an undercover federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent.. At approximately 10:00 p.m. on the evening of February 28, 1989, Farace was to meet Hatcher at a remote overpass on the West Shore Expressway in the Rossville section of Staten Island to complete the deal. Hatcher had met Farace in prison and since his release had purchased cocaine from him on several occasions.[2] During the course of the drug transaction, Hatcher got separated from the surveillance team. When the team finally found Hatcher, he had been shot through the head three times in his unmarked Buick Regal. The window was rolled down and the Regal's engine was on, but Hatcher's foot was on the brake.
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. 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. It is not known why Farace killed Hatcher; it may have been because Hatcher was African-American and Farace was a racist. Another theory is that Farace had become suspicious of Hatcher from rumors he had heard.[1]
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 for Farace commenced. The Federal Bureau of Investigation placed Farace on the Ten Most Wanted list. Local and federal law enforcement increased their surveillance of Cosa Nostra members, stopping them to take photographs and ask questions. As pressure increased on the Bonanno family, its leadership decided to kill Farace.
Following the Hatcher murder, Gregory Scarpa, Sr. told David Krajcek of the Daily News that the Farace and Scarpa families were no longer close. No one from the Scarpa family had gone to Farace's wedding a few months earlier to Toni Acierno. Scarpa feared that a strong connection would send his convicted drug dealer son, Gregory Jr., to a distant federal prison.
Meanwhile, Farace was hiding with friends and criminal associates around the Greater New York area. He first stayed with Margaret Scarpa, an old girlfriend who was Gerard Chilli's daughter. Soon after Farace had departed, the police raided Scarpa's house and arrested her. At this point, an aggravated Chili wanted Ferace killed. A new mob associate with the Lucchese family, John Petrucelli, was helping Farace find places to hide. Chili met with Petrucelli and Lucchese capo Mike Salerno to discuss the situation. Chili demanded that Petrucelli kill Farace, but Petrucelli refused. Two months later, Petrucelli was found dead.[3]
A few months after the Hatcher murder, the manhunt for Farace would be over. At 11:08 p.m. on November 17, 1989, police dispatchers received a 9-1-1 emergency call about a car parked at 1814 81st Street in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. The car contained one male occupant, with another male laying face down on the sidewalk, both of whom had just been shot (the call came in as "shots fired", no other specifics).
Police rushed to the scene and found the two men, one dead and the other seriouly wounded. The dead man was identified as Costabile Farace. He had gunshot wounds to the head, neck, back and leg. According to witnesses, a van had driven alongside Farace's car and shot the two men nine times. This was the same method that Farace had used to kill Agent Hatcher. The survivor in the car was identified as Joseph Sclafani, a member of Farace's organization. Sclafani said he fired two shots at the assailants.[4]
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.
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.
On September 17, 1999, then-Bonanno mobsters James Galione and Mario Gallo admitted in court to murdering Farace.[5]
A 1991 made-for-TV movie, "Dead or Alive: The Race for Gus Farace" starred Tony Danza as Farace. The movie alleged that the mob was trying to kill Farace before the FBI could apprehend him.[6]
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