Blitzstein case closes with final guilty plea

Friday, May 28, 1999 | 11:57 a.m.

Federal prosecutors closed the book Thursday on the murder of Chicago underworld figure Herbie Blitzstein, as the last suspect in the slaying pleaded guilty on the eve of his trial.

Richard Friedman, one of two shooters in the Jan. 6, 1997, killing, pleaded guilty to a murder for hire charge just as his trial was to get under way next Wednesday.

The other shooter, Antone Davi, entered a guilty plea at the end of April before his trial.

"We're very satisfied with what we believe was a successful investigation and prosecution of the Blitzstein murder," Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Johnson, of the Organized Crime Strike Force, said today.

Friedman faces a 25-year prison term at his sentencing Aug. 27 as part of his deal with the government. He could have gotten life in prison had he gone to trial and been convicted.

According to a copy of the government's plea memorandum, Friedman did not admit to shooting Blitzstein, but rather that he was "hired to kill" him and that he "knowingly and willfully aided and abetted in causing Blitzstein's murder."

The government was prepared to prove that Friedman and Davi received $3,000 for their role in the murder conspiracy, the memorandum said.

Friedman's plea came a couple of days after prosecutors filed a superseding indictment that removed previous language linking the Los Angeles and Buffalo mob families to the racketeering enterprise that carried out the killing.

That language was said to have confused a 12-member jury when it deliberated the fate last week of two reputed Mafia soldiers the government alleged participated in the murder conspiracy. The panel, courthouse sources said, had trouble believing the Los Angeles and Buffalo crime families were involved in the slaying.

Last week, Robert Panaro, a reputed member of the Buffalo mob, and Stephen Cino, an alleged member of the Los Angeles mob, both were acquitted of all charges related to Blitzstein's murder. But they were convicted of conspiring to extort Blitzstein in a scheme to take over his loan-sharking and insurance fraud operations.

The scheme was uncovered during a two-year undercover FBI investigation of an attempt by the two crime families to muscle in on Las Vegas street rackets.

Blitzstein's murder occurred in the middle of the FBI investigation. He was shot three times in the head as he entered his Las Vegas home. Earlier that day, his home was burglarized by the late Peter Caruso, the Los Angeles mob associate who hatched the murder plot.

Caruso was charged in the killing, but he died of heart failure in January before he could stand trial.

Two other members of the murder conspiracy, Los Angeles mob associate Alfred Mauriello, who hired Friedman and Davi, and Joe DeLuca, who helped the hitmen enter Blitzstein's home, previously have pleaded guilty.

DeLuca, now under federal protection, testified at length during the trial of Panaro and Cino.

The FBI, though it had an informer, John Branco, in the middle of the plot to move in on Blitzstein's operations, contended during the trial that it was kept in the dark about the murder.

Blitzstein once was a top lieutenant of slain Mafia kingpin Anthony Spilotro, who controlled street rackets here for the Chicago mob in the 1970s and early 1980s.