May 31–June 7, 2001

news

Witless Protection

Sometimes, bad guys in hiding stay bad.

by Jim Barry

Last week an aging thief turned government witness took the stand against Joey Merlino and six other defendants in the federal racketeering trial. The witness, Fred "Freddy Steam" Angelucci, was no big deal. Angelucci testified that he had been part of a South Philly crew that stole tractor-trailers from Delaware Avenue and that he and his crime partners were forced to share their loot with the local mob. And last week wasn’t the first time Angelucci appeared as a witness for the prosecution. Back in 1974, Angelucci sold more than $10,000 worth of phony $10 bills to an undercover Secret Service agent. (One of Angelucci’s partners in the counterfeit ring was Nicholas "Nick The Crow" Caramandi, a future mob soldier under Nicky Scarfo and a future mob turncoat and government witness.) When Angelucci was arrested in 1974, he agreed to switch sides and help the government. The U.S. Marshals put Angelucci into the federal witness protection program with a new identity and a chance to start over.

Once in the witness program, Angelucci was arrested for burglary, and served seven years in prison before returning to Philadelphia in the mid-1980s.

Angelucci isn’t the first crook turned witness to flunk out of the federal witness protection programs — the official one is run by the U.S. Marshals Service and a more informal version is run by the FBI. One out of four federally protected witnesses returns to a life of crime — often while in the witness protection program, according to a U.S. Senate Committee which investigated the Justice Department program four years ago. And 23 people have been killed by federally protected witnesses.

Yet no mob prosecution could take place without them.

Remember Brenda Colletti? Her husband was a hitman for mob boss John Stanfa. Brenda Colletti testified that she helped her hubby dump the car used in a mob hit that left Joey Merlino wounded and his friend, Michael Ciancaglini, dead.

The FBI stashed Brenda Colletti in a condo in Ocean City, NJ, while she and her husband waited to testify in the Stanfa trial. Husband Phil waited for his turn in a jail cell. But when the former go-go dancer took the stand, defense attorneys got her to admit that she had been having an affair with another man. Then defense attorneys asked husband Phil Colletti if it was true that while a member of the witness protection program in prison, Colletti had hired a hitman to kill his wife because of the affair. Phil Colletti denied the allegations but the feds were embarrassed.

Several months after testifying, Brenda Colletti was arrested for shoplifting and spent 30 days in county jail. She had already received a suspended sentence for possession of a gun.

Brenda Colletti eventually left town but not before parading in front of the Federal Courthouse on Market Street with a bullseye on her back to bolster her claim that she would be killed by the mob if the feds didn’t take her back into the witness protection program. And she appeared on a national network news magazine and on a cable show to complain about her time in witness protection.

Angelucci and Colletti were just two of the Justice Department’s low level screw-ups, but last week, to the government’s substantial embarrassment, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano pled guilty to running a multimillion-dollar ecstasy ring in Arizona.

It was the federal witness protection program that relocated Gravano to a suburb outside Phoenix where he opened a pool cleaning business under the name of Jimmy Moran.

Gravano is the former underboss of the Gambino crime family in New York and his testimony sent more than 40 gangsters, including John Gotti, to prison. Gravano admitted to murdering 19 men himself while in the Mafia.

Once he was resettled in Arizona, Gravano went right back into business. He hooked up with a member of the Israeli mob from Brooklyn and started organizing his own crime family in Arizona.

Angelucci, Colletti and Gravano are just three of the flaws in the Witness Protection Program. Since the program was started over 30 years ago, more than 15,000 people have entered the program — the majority of them with criminal records.

Several years ago a U.S. Senate hearing into the Witness Program revealed a number of critical problems with the program including the fact that former criminals have little or no supervision once they are relocated with new names and new stories. And that the Justice Department doesn’t know how much it spends on the program.

There are thousands of crooks who have testified against their cohorts and gone on to find refuge in the Federal Witness Protection Program. Many have gone right back to committing crimes — including nearly two dozen homicides.

In 1991, James Allen Red Dog, a federally protected witness, got a new name, and on his release from prison, journeyed to Wilmington, DE, to join his wife who had been relocated there by the program. His wife introduced Red Dog to their nice neighbors, a middle-aged mom and her son. Red Dog murdered the son and raped the mother. That same year, out in California, another federally protected witness, Christopher Jackson, killed an armored car guard during a robbery.

The federally protected witness with the biggest body count is Marion Pruett, who murdered six people in a cross-country killing spree in the early 1980s. Sometimes criminals in the witness protection program are unable to pull the trigger themselves and end up hiring hitmen to do the job for them. In 1994, Michael Raymond, a federally protected witness, was arrested and was awaiting trial in New York City. Raymond hired a hitman to murder a Staten Island woman who was going to testify against him. The woman was gunned down in front of her 9-year-old son inside her apartment.

In Del Mar, CA, a former insurance broker for the mob, Herman Goldfarb, lent money to a legitimate businessman. Goldfarb was living in California with his wife and family after helping the FBI run a sting operation against the New York Mafia. After testifying for the government Goldfarb and family were given new names and relocated to the San Diego area.

Goldfarb got pissed off because the businessman, Donald Crake, was too slow in repaying his loan. Goldfarb sent a hitman to Crake’s home. The hitman shot and pistol-whipped Crake to death and then turned his attention to Crake’s wife and daughter. The hitman shot at Crake’s wife but missed her.

So the assassin severely beat Mrs. Crake. Then he went after the teenage daughter, Kathryn. Kathryn Crake outran the hitman and lived to tell the cops, who caught the hitman and Goldfarb.

When Bobby Simone was Nicky Scarfo’s attorney, he would often rant about federally protected witnesses. Simone would warn any member of the media who would listen that, "the federal government is busy renaming and relocating violent career criminals to peaceful suburban neighborhoods across this country. Maybe your new next door neighbor killed 20 people but you’ll never know it unless he wakes up one day and decides to shoot your wife, rape your daughter and slit your throat. That’s when Americans will start to pay attention to what the federal witness program is really up to."