New Orleans Radio Host Charged with "Mob" Hit on Wife

To friends and listeners, radio talk show host Vince Marinello was "Vinnie" -- a racetrack regular straight out of "Guys and Dolls," a New Orleans native with a Brooklyn accent, a guy who liked to imply he had mob connections.

Now, Marinello stands accused of donning a disguise and shooting his estranged wife to death gangland-style in a suburban parking lot. Listeners who enjoyed his fan talk or found comfort in his post-Katrina broadcasts are wondering what went wrong. Marinello, 69, surrendered to authorities and was jailed Thursday on murder charges.

Mary Elizabeth Marinello, a 45-year-old respiratory therapist, died September 1, a day after she was shot twice in the face as she stood in a parking lot. The attack was first described as a botched robbery, but Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee said Wednesday that it was being treated as a "hit" based on surveillance tapes.

"I think that before Katrina they had some problems," said Bertha Norman, the victim's mother. "But after Katrina, all that stress brought on a lot of things. I think Katrina made everything worse."

So much worse that in July, Mary Elizabeth filed for a divorce. That was when she learned that her husband of less than two years was still married when they wed. "The lawyer called and told her, `You don't need a divorce; you need an annulment,"' Norman said. Marinello "had told her so many lies -- that's why she was divorcing him. But this was the one he didn't want known."

Marinello was put on a suicide watch after turning himself in Thursday. The charges carry a mandatory life sentence.

Detectives said that on August 31, Marinello put on a fake mustache and beard, rode a bicycle to a parking lot he knew his wife used regularly, lay in ambush and shot her before pedaling away. Marinello's lawyer, Donald Foret, said he was trying to help his client post $250,000 and get out of jail. Other than that, he had no comment.

Authorities initially thought the shooting was a robbery gone bad, until they were able to take a closer look at surveillance tape.

Late Wednesday, authorities searched Marinello's Katrina-damaged house, the FEMA trailer he lived in, and the home of a friend. In the trailer, the sheriff said, they found a handwritten checklist of the alleged plans for the attack. "It was almost as good as a confession," Lee said.

Initially, Marinello had said he was in Jackson, Mississippi, at the time of the shooting, but Lee said his alibi unraveled and "things started to fall into place."

Marinello grew up in the close-knit Italian community in the French Quarter. He was a New Orleans sportscaster for a quarter of a century and also did a handicapping show from the Fair Grounds Race Track that was televised to betting establishments nationwide.

After Hurricane Katrina hit, he switched his WWL talk show's focus from sports to hurricane relief. "He was everybody's idea of a New Orleans guy," said Michael Diliberto, who worked with Marinello at the Fair Grounds for 15 years. "He'd do anything for anybody." Marinello knew everyone, Diliberto said, including the sheriff, who acknowledged that the arrest pained him.

Marinello was not above dropping hints that he was mob-connected. "I know from his life in the news media that he knew a lot of people that were known as bad guys," Diliberto said. "Working at the racetrack, in Chicago, around boxing, he came in contact with all kinds."

Despite that, Diliberto said he has a hard time thinking of Marinello as a bad guy himself. "I can think he might think he would know somebody that would do it," Diliberto said. "But I can't believe he would do it himself. He is such a kind man. I just can't picture him pulling the trigger."

Bob Mitchell, who co-hosted the show with Marinello, said during Thursday night's broadcast that he is still trying to make sense of what has happened. "If my friend is innocent, then I hope God will lead investigators to the guilty person or person. If he's not, and he did the crime, then he should pay the price whatever it is," Mitchell said. "This is a tragedy for all of us."

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Snitch from "Mafia Cops" Case May Have Sentenced Reduced

A former mob associate who helped convict the "Mafia cops" could have his prison sentence reduced because of his testimony, according to a published report.

During Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa's trial, Burton Kaplan told jurors he acted as a middleman, passing secret police information -- including names of confidential informants and imminent mob arrests -- from Eppolito and Caracappa to Luchese crime family underboss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso.

As thanks, prosecutors are expected to ask U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein to resentence Kaplan, 72, who has served 15 years of a 27-year sentence, according to the New York Daily News. "Burt was an incredible witness, he was certainly telling the truth and was responsible for getting convictions against two really bad people," a legal source told the News. "If anybody deserves a sentence reduction, it's him."

While Eppolito and Caracappa, a former Great Kills resident, were found guilty of every count in the racketeering conspiracy case -- from murder for hire to kidnapping to witness tampering to bribery -- the verdict was tossed out June 30 by Weinstein, who ruled that the statute of limitations had run out on the pair's racketeering convictions. Weinstein has ordered a new trial on charges of money laundering and drug trafficking.

Thanks to Staten Island Advance

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Paris Hilton - 'Mafia Princess'

Paris Hilton is a singer, actress, accidental porn star - and, we now learn, a bit of a Mafia princess. The hotel heiress' parents almost didn't get married because her maternal grandmother was married to a mobster, a new book reveals.

Jerry Oppenheimer reports in "House of Hilton" that Kathy Richards - known as "Big Kathy" -was hitched to a notorious gangland figure when her daughter, "Little Kathy," fell in love with Paris' dad, Rick Hilton.

Oppenheimer, whose Crown book comes out in November, is withholding the mob guy's name for now. But he reports that federal prosecutors linked him to Mafia families in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago.

"Big Kathy used to boast to friends … that 'if you ever need someone taken care of,' her husband had the muscle to handle it." But Big Kathy got nervous when her daughter hooked up with Rick. "I can't have the Hiltons finding out what [my husband] does," she told a friend.

Big Kathy promptly divorced the potential wedding-spoiler, one of four husbands she collected. The gentleman later died of a heart attack - just before he was due to serve 15 years for counterfeiting, money-laundering and other charges.

Even so, Mama Richards was banned from the Hilton estate in Los Angeles unless the family patriarch, Barron Hilton, was out of town, according to Oppenheimer. "Barron couldn't stand being around Kathy's mother," a source told Oppenheimer. "He used to call her 'The Madam' - as in bawdy house madam."

Word is her mobster gave Big Kathy the same big honking diamond ring that he'd given earlier molls. "He'd always get it back from them," a source tells us. "But he never got it back from Big Kathy."

A spokesman for the Hiltons, who are said to be dreading the book, declined to comment. But Paris still cherishes the memory of her grandma, who died in 2002 at the age of 63. "We were, like, best friends," Paris says in September's issue of Blender. "She would say, 'You're my Marilyn Monroe. You're my Grace Kelly. You're going to be the most famous woman in the world.' … I feel like she made all this happen."

Thanks to Rush & Molloy

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Missing Mobster?

Friends of ours: Anthony Zizzo, Sam "Wings" Carlisi, Anthony Chiaramonti, Anthony Spilotro, James Marcello
Friends of mine: Michael Spilotro, Phillip Goodman

Westmont police Wednesday asked the public for information about the whereabouts of Anthony Zizzo, an elderly organized crime figure who was last seen Aug. 31 driving away from his home in the suburb.

While the Police Department is taking the lead in the investigation, which was launched after Zizzo's wife filed a missing person report, federal authorities are now also participating in the investigation, law enforcement sources said.

Westmont officials confirmed Wednesday that Zizzo's vehicle was recovered Saturday in the parking lot of a restaurant in Melrose Park. Police said he suffers from kidney failure and did not take medication with him when he left home.

Zizzo's wife reported him missing Friday morning. She had last seen him the day before as he drove away from their home in the 5700 block of South Cass Avenue, police said. When last seen, Zizzo, who is 5-foot-3 and 200 pounds, was wearing a gray shirt, black pants, a black windbreaker and black athletic shoes. He has thinning gray hair, blue eyes and wears metal-rimmed glasses.

It is unclear what his plans were when he left home, but some sources familiar with the case said he may have been headed for a meeting in the Rush Street area of Chicago.

Zizzo, 71, was a major figure in the organization of mob kingpin Sam Carlisi and went to prison with his boss and several others in 1993. He was released in 2001.

Zizzo, who lived in Melrose Park before his conviction, was described as the No. 3 person in command of the late Carlisi's crew. He supervised loan sharking and gambling operations, prosecutors said.

According to court records, Zizzo was the former boss of a Carlisi crew enforcer and debt collector, Anthony Chiaramonti, who was gunned down outside a Brown's Chicken and Pasta restaurant in Lyons in November 2001. That killing was the last-known hit in the Chicago mob world.

At the time of Zizzo's conviction, federal authorities said he and some co-defendants were believed to have information about several unsolved mob murders. Each was named in connection with events that preceded the murders of Anthony and Michael Spilotro and bookmaker Phillip Goodman, according to a prosecution filing in the Carlisi case. It did not link anyone to the actual crimes, however.

Last year, federal prosecutors charged several reputed Chicago mob leaders in connection with a number of unsolved murders. Zizzo was not named, but one of his 1993 co-defendants, James Marcello, was charged in the massive federal conspiracy case.

Thanks to David Heinzmann and Jeff Coen

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Junior is Dopey

Friends of ours: John "Junior Gotti, Gambino Crime Family

The way John A. (Junior) Gotti sees it, if the feds were so convinced he was a dummy, how could he have run the city's most murderous crime family? In recorded prison chats played for jurors yesterday, Gotti mocks the tag he earned after government agents said he didn't have the smarts his father possessed to run the Gambino crime family.

"I'm the Dopey Don, remember?" he tells pal Steve Dobies during a July 2003 prison conversation intercepted by the feds. "That's what I was. I had no problem with that. But you can't just now say, 'Well, we thought now because we're gonna put him in jail for life, he wasn't really the Dopey Don. You can't do that. ... You gotta lock them into something."

The Dopey Don chat was among more than a dozen prison conversations played for jurors yesterday as prosecutors wrapped up their racketeering case against the 42-year-old mob scion by presenting evidence they say shows Gotti never truly renounced the mob life as he claims he did.

When Gotti's lawyers begin calling witnesses today, they may start with Curtis Sliwa, the radio host allegedly shot twice by thugs prosecutors say were sent by Junior. Sliwa testified for the prosecution at two previous trials but was not called this time.

On the tapes recorded in 2003 and 2004, Gotti weighs in on numerous topics, from "vulture" uncles to a "bum" brother to his interpretation of the Torah.

Among Junior's greatest hits:

Gotti told pal John Ruggiero during a 2003 chat that if uncles Peter or Richie Gotti turned up in the upstate New York prison where he was being housed, they'd suffer the consequences. "I swear it to you on my dead brother and my dead father, I swear to you, I will meet them by the [prison] door, with two padlocks in my hands, and I will crack their skulls."

On brother Peter, whom he crossed off his prison visitors list in 2003, he said: "I love him, but my brother's a bum. That's all he is. No more, no less. ... I have a hard time respecting any man who doesn't spend any time with his wife and kids at all. If Pete has an available moment he'll take whatever's in his pocket, like my father would have done, and go to OTB or go to Atlantic City."

Gotti's anxiety heightens throughout as it becomes clear the feds are preparing to indict him on new charges. He muses about leaving New York once his five-year prison hitch is over. And when Gotti lawyer Richard Rehbock complains about having to buy Dobies - who is Jewish - lunch every day, Gotti offered his take on the Torah. "Isn't that like supposed to be a Jewish pact or something that youse got with each other to feed each other to shelter them in their shelter or some s---?" Gotti asked. "Isn't that in the Torah?"

Thanks to Thomas Zambito

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