Jurors to get education on mob in Las Vegas

Tuesday, April 27, 1999 | 10:47 a.m.

In his opening statement this afternoon, a federal prosecutor was expected to give jurors a primer on Las Vegas' organized crime, the business it conducts and a rundown on the people who have lived -- and died -- because of it.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Johnson is the main prosecutor in a case against reputed Buffalo mob members Robert Panaro and Stephen Cino. The men are among 19 people charged in a huge racketeering indictment that is connected to the Jan. 6, 1997, murder of Herbert "Fat Herbie" Blitzstein, a reputed high-ranking member of the Chicago mob.

The five men and nine women chosen as jurors Monday include a breakfast chef, a hotel events manager, a teacher and an engineer who assured federal Judge Philip Pro that he could remain objective even though he is of Italian descent.

Pro asked each juror if the fact that a person was of Italian descent or may be connected to organized crime would cloud their judgment.

Johnson said he planned to use a series of charts to show how the Los Angeles and Buffalo crime families are organized, their relationships to each other, the types of crimes they reportedly commit and a timeline for the street-racket takeover scheme that resulted in Blitzstein's murder.

Blitzstein once was an assistant to the late Anthony Spilotro, overseer of the Chicago mob's street schemes in Las Vegas. After Spilotro was murdered, Blitzstein was put in charge of insurance fraud and loan-sharking scams, authorities have said.

Members of the Los Angeles and Buffalo groups wanted to take over Blitzstein's territory and arranged to have him killed in his Las Vegas home, authorities have said.

The man charged with pulling the trigger, Richard Friedman, is expected to go on trial later this summer.

The man who gave Friedman the gun, Antone Davi, pleaded guilty to the charges against him last week. He may have avoided a life prison term in exchange for his testimony against Friedman.

On Monday, less than an hour before jury selection started, Louis Caruso and Anthony DeLulio, who were scheduled to stand trial before Pro, pleaded guilty to participating in insurance fraud and burglarizing Blitzstein's home.

Both face up to 20 years in federal prison when sentenced Aug. 6.

Among the witnesses Johnson expects to call during this trial is Peter Wacks, a former FBI agent in Chicago who worked on the racketeering investigation of murdered Teamsters pension fund figure Allen Dorfman. Wacks is an expert on the inner-workings of the nation's 26 organized crime families.

The trial is expected to last about four weeks.