CHAPTER 12
DOM DIPAOLO KNEW RAY FERRITTO AND CY CIOTTI WELL. WITH Ferritto, it had begun with his memorable encounter with the mob hit man during the summer of 1965. With Ciotti, it began five years later during DiPaolo’s rookie years with the City of Erie police department.
DiPaolo remembers that day as well.
Early in 1970 he took a call from his father, Pasquale “Pat” DiPaolo, whose love of politics had elevated him to a behind-the-scenes kingmaker in local Democratic circles. The senior DiPaolo not only knew every powerful figure in the local Democratic Party, but was long-respected among Erie’s Italian-Americans, in particular in a community where so many immigrants had their start in Erie’s “Little Italy.” There, in Erie’s Third Ward, Pat DiPaolo was chairman of the county’s Democratic Party for more than a quarter of a century.
The elder DiPaolo told his son that Tony Ciotti, president of the Calabrese Club, in the heart of Little Italy, needed weekend security at the club, which was beginning to be the Erie venue for young crowds to dance and drink. Second tier, but nationally known musical acts, played there, too. There had been several fights that went along with crowds, the senior Ciotti told the senior DiPaolo, and the junior DiPaolo, now a police officer, would be welcome weekends to pick up extra cash.
Indeed, the crowds were huge there. This was the place to be in Erie in the early ’70s. Ruby Port and The Younger Brothers, with Paul Yoculan, also known as Paul Younger, the Frankie Valli of the Erie music scene, was the house band. Art Oligieri was excellent on trumpet, and Angela Arduini, the female vocalist, was without a doubt the best singer in Erie for many years. Dom DiPaolo agreed to take the part time job. What the hell, with a young family to support on a cop’s salary he could use every extra dollar he could squeeze out of legal moonlighting.
Nine months after DiPaolo began working security at what was nicknamed “The Cally Club,” Ciotti’s son, “Cy,” was released from the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. The younger Ciotti quickly made the Cally Club his number one hangout. Before long, DiPaolo recalled, almost every local wise guy and wannabe – including Ray Ferritto – were regulars there as well. DiPaolo had not seen Ferritto since that summer five years earlier, but he never forgot either the incident or the threat, especially Ferritto’s hard features and icily frigid eyes.
Upon Cy’s return, DiPaolo quickly learned that father and son did not see eye-to-eye. They disagreed about most everything. The younger Ciotti wanted to take over the club. He had illusions of grandeur about bringing national headliner, Las Vegas-type floor shows to Erie. But most of all, he wanted to install Barbute, a fast-moving Italian dice game, on the second floor. As part of the rake, the younger Ciotti would claim a share of the pot in the high stakes game. Even as a beginning cop, DiPaolo wasn’t naive. He understood this game was illegal and he wasn’t about to condone it.
“Look,” he warned the older Tony Ciotti. “I know you’re friends with my father. But that makes no difference now. Because if you allow Cy to start his illegal shit here, then I’m out of here. And if Cy does that shit in front of me, so help me I’ll lock up his ass.”
DiPaolo’s concerns, however, were short-lived. At least for the short-term. Two months after his warning to the senior Ciotti – on July 30, 1971 – Cy was arrested and then convicted on federal mail fraud charges. Cy was gone from the Cally Club. And so were most of the wise guys. DiPaolo was relieved. The money wasn’t exactly decent. At $3.25 an hour, DiPaolo’s six hours netted him a grand total of $19.50 for a night’s work. He figured he’d be further ahead and earn more if he was paid by the fight, rather than by the hour. But the work was tolerable. And it was legal.
Nearly a year passed. It was now April of 1972, a time of hippies, more intense Vietnam War protests and the presidential primaries. The national Watergate scandal was still two months off when Cy Ciotti came home from “college,” as he was so fond of calling his home away from Erie.
While Dom DiPaolo was working “security” at the Cally Club about the time Cy was released from prison, Cy’s old pal, John Paradise, also known as “Blackie,” was hired to work at the club. Everyone in that element knew Blackie. He was a funny, but simple guy, sort of like the Paulie Walnuts character on The Sopranos. DiPaolo recalls that Blackie wanted to make everyone think he was one of the tough guys, but actually had many hang ups. Apparently, because of a stroke Blackie suffered as a young man, his mouth was twisted, distorting it to the extent that he told his many stories out of one side of his mouth. Meanwhile, Tony Ciotti, Sr., who couldn’t stomach any of his son’s wise guy wannabe friends, told DiPaolo that Blackie “talked like that” because he once got his hands caught in a cash register drawer while trying to steal money and when he screamed out in agony, “his mouth just stayed that way.”
It was while DiPaolo was still a kid, however, that an event occurred with Blackie that was widely known, repeated and laughed about throughout Erie’s “Little Italy.”
In August 1957, Cy Ciotti, Ray Ferritto, Victor Minedeo, Blackie and John Lupu of Warren, Ohio, were involved in a burglary at Gus & Gene’s Auto Garage, owned by Gus Angelo, on Peach Street. They pulled a safe from the popular auto repair shop, but all were quickly apprehended by authorities. Minedeo, who owned “The Letto” night spot next to the garage and set up the job, quickly caved on his pals, forcing all to plead guilty.
Just prior to sentencing, Minedeo suffered a fatal heart attack. The others, no longer confronted with the Minedeo snitch to testify against them, tried to withdraw their guilty pleas, but old Judge Elmer Evans wouldn’t hear of it. January 12, 1958, Ciotti, 29, Ferritto, 29, Lupu, 31, and Blackie Paradise, 47, stood before Evans in his stately courtroom for their day of reckoning. Blackie, having twice before been convicted of felonies, was now a three-time loser, while the others were “only” going down for the second time. Evans sentenced Ciotti, Ferritto and Lupu to serve three-to-six in a state prison. Then, he turned to Paradise and ordered him to serve four-to-eight. Immediately, Ciotti began sobbing.
Blackie, standing next to Cy, said, “Hey, whatsa matter? What are you crying for when it’s only three-to-six and four-to-eight months? We can fuckin’ do that standing on our heads!” Ciotti glared at Blackie through his tears and said, “You dumb fuck – those are years, not months!” Blackie, fully grasping what Ciotti was saying, promptly fainted, hitting his head on the wooden railing in front of the judge’s bench. An ambulance was called to take the passed out tough guy to the hospital. The foursome served their time and were ultimately released.
Just several years after that, Blackie Paradise was walking along West 18th Street, the heart of Little Italy, on his way to purchase a loaf of Italian bread to go with the macaroni his wife was preparing for dinner that night. Suddenly, a car pulled up alongside Paradise. Inside, were two out-of-town cons who had been with Blackie in the joint. After a few moments, Blackie entered the car and drove with them to Florida. He returned three years later.
“The story goes that when he finally returned home,” DiPaolo explained, “his wife, Alice, hit him in the head with the dish of macaroni that was in a box that she had saved for three years. When Blackie told the story, he said, ‘I probably had it coming.’”
But now, with Cy home from “college,” life was not so funny and the battle for control of the Cally Club resumed in overdrive. Tony Ciotti, aging and frail, finally gave in to his younger and stronger son. Cy got his way. He began bringing in headline acts, including Frank Sinatra, Jr. On any given night, the club resembled the famous Appalachian meeting of the top Mafia families of a decade earlier. Within several days of Cy’s takeover, security officer Dom DiPaolo quit.
There had been talk of an illegal Barbute game that was going to be started upstairs. Not only did DiPaolo know when to call it quits, but he advised all of those who worked for him – all moonlighting Erie cops – that it was in their own best interests to leave as well. Chuck Erickson, Bob “Goodie” Goodwill, Billy Leamy, Greg Orlando, Don Gunter and David Bagnoni, all departed the club with DiPaolo. Only one chose to stay. “If the illegal game goes upstairs,” DiPaolo warned the cop, “you’re on your own.”
“Fuck it,” the cop replied. “Cy’s giving me a raise.”
“I’ve got a wife and kids and a mortgage, too,” DiPaolo said. “But this shit isn’t worth it.”
The cop failed to heed DiPaolo’s advice. Many years later, DiPaolo’s warning would come back to haunt him. For DiPaolo, however, his brief employment encounter with Erie’s underbelly was over. Still a uniformed street cop, there would be no more Cy, Ray, Bolo or wise guys. Or so he thought. In the ensuing years, Ferritto would make a name for himself far, far from Erie’s infamous Cally Club and northwestern Pennsylvania, and especially with a cop named Dominick DiPaolo.
And as for DiPaolo, even a crack homicide detective in Erie, Pennsylvania needed to complement his income from time to time with moonlighting jobs – but jobs that wouldn’t raise eyebrows or questions about the cop’s integrity.
Take the now famous, or infamous, Mickey Mantle encounter, for example! Instead of the Cally Club, DiPaolo took gigs, “clean” jobs that did not jeopardize his reputation or tax his ethics. One was head of security for local media wizard Art Arkelian during Arkelian’s annual extravaganza, the Erie County Sports Banquet. Each winter for decades, radio station owner Arkelian, brought to town the very top names in virtually every professional sport. His charity banquets continue to this day. These events attracted “SRO” crowds to see the best of the best. Arkelian put DiPaolo in charge of security for the dinner, and DiPaolo hand-picked five trusted officers to help him watch over the sports legends.
The banquet of February 10, 1981 at the old Erie Shrine Club in downtown Erie will long be remembered. That winter, Erie got wacked every day with not inches but feet of snow. On banquet night, the weather was just as horrific, but like mostly everything else in Erie, this event would not be cancelled. Snow or no – Arkelian’s banquet would go on. It was destined to be a banner year for the headliner of all headliners: the New York Yankees incomparable Mickey Mantle. DiPaolo – no star-struck kid – knew his baseball better than most, and like so many others who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, Mickey Mantle was idolized by most as the greatest of his generation. For DiPaolo, who played organized sports his entire life, this was to be a dream come true. Not only was he going to meet his idol – DiPaolo had managed to wear Mantle’s Number 7 on all his uniforms – but he was getting paid for it!
The big night arrived with even more snow. But the weather could not prevent the Shrine Club from becoming a sea of dark blue pinstripes on white, banners, photographs and signs paying tribute to the Yankee Great. Men in the audience who grew up idolizing the Yankees and their home run star brought sons and daughters or grandkids. Despite the snow storm, it was the largest crowd in the sports banquet’s history. They waited in breathless anticipation for their hero – Mickey Mantle – to arrive. The electric excitement in the air could not have been greater for a rock star or the president. It was Mantle they all wanted to see. Fathers told their children to remember they would come face-to-face with an American sports icon.
Now, because of the snow, the Greater Pittsburgh Airport – where Mantle and several other stars were to catch the short flight to Erie – closed for the afternoon and evening. Instead, they boarded a stretch limo Arkelian sent earlier in the afternoon to bring them north to the even snowier Erie.
Meanwhile, at the Shrine Club on East 8th Street in downtown Erie, security chief Dom DiPaolo was advised by Arkelian that he just then received word the limo – with its precious cargo – was now in the small city of Meadville, Pennsylvania, about 35 miles south of Erie. When the limo hit Meadville, Mantle informed the driver that he needed to make a pit stop. The limo had pulled into Sandalini’s Supper Club about 4 p.m. It was now 6:30.
Mickey, the star of the evening, was having a wonderful time at Sandalini’s entertaining the bar patrons, regaling them with jokes and inside baseball stories.
The patrons, in return, were generous with their hero, too, buying Mantle drink after drink for several hours before the group again hit the road and short drive straight north to Erie.
In Erie, as the stormy night wore on with the program already underway, a roar that could be heard for blocks went up from the audience as the Mighty Mick finally strolled into Erie’s Shrine Club. The legendary New York Yankee, it was obvious to all, was quite loaded. Still, Dominick DiPaolo, felt honored to escort his idol Mantle to the dais. It was a moment he would never forget – at least that’s how he felt until another equally unforgettable moment quickly arrived.
As the program progressed, Mantle became increasingly obnoxious, loudly laughing and rudely chatting and cracking jokes while those on the dais were addressing the crowd. Even some audience members were getting concerned over Mantle’s disgusting behavior in his highly intoxicated state. But it was about to get even worse. Without warning, Mantle rose from his chair and approached the two emergency exit doors situated immediately behind the dais while one of the sports stars was speaking. Opening the doors, the slugger walked outside into the cold, howling, biting wind and blizzard conditions. All eyes were on him.
Artie Arkelian signaled DiPaolo to follow Mantle outside, if for no other reason to keep watch over him. DiPaolo first grabbed a cloth napkin from the head table, positioning it in the door jamb so that the door could be closed, keeping the blizzard outside from blowing in, while at the same time allowing re-entry to the downtown Erie Shrine Club.
Now outside, the cop found himself in the club’s parking lot. Peering around, squinty-eyed in the raging white out, DiPaolo spied Mantle straddling a snow pile between two parked cars.
“Mickey? Are you okay?” asked DiPaolo, who was also in his full Erie Police uniform.
Mantle looked up, then grabbed his groin and said, “I’ll be better when you come over here and hold it.” He was urinating in the snow between the two cars.
So much for baseball idols. At least a little respect for law enforcement, the cop thought while retorting to his idol, “Fuck you.” The cop turned and re-entered the Shrine Club, smiling as he made sure he took the napkin away from the door jamb so that the door not only easily closed, but locked. None of this drama went unnoticed by most in the audience. First they saw Mantle abruptly leave. Next, a uniformed cop followed him out, making sure the door did not lock behind them. Then, the cop returned alone, making sure the door was locked behind him.
Several minutes later, there arose such a banging on the emergency doors that startled not only the audience, but also anyone who might have been outside and within shouting range on that blustery evening. Eventually, one of the athletic stars arose from his dais seat to open the door. As Mantle stumbled, returning to his seat covered in snow, the audience went into wild hysterics. But then, the real tragedy of the evening began.
As Mantle was being introduced, he walked to the podium wearing a brown denim jacket, jeans and western-style boots.
“I have never seen so much fuckin’ snow in all my life,” he began. “How do you people live here? You gotta be fuckin’ crazy!”
Silence from the audience, most spectators with mouths agape.
Launching into an often rambling and incomprehensible tirade, his expletive-laden talk lasted perhaps 10 minutes, DiPaolo swears Mantle dropped the F-bomb at least 100 times. The cop remembers men getting up from their tables and pulling their kids from the room in disgust. Only half returned when Mantle finished doing his worst.
“It looked like the room had emptied during a fire drill,” DiPaolo later recalled. “It was embarrassing for everyone there. Poor Artie. He never imagined a public figure would stoop so low.”
After the crowd cleared out, Arkelian noticed a muscular, well-dressed young man alone a table, head in his hands. The man was sobbing as Artie and DiPaolo approached. “What’s wrong?” Arkelian asked.
“I have a knot in my stomach. Wish I never saw him like that. For all he did for baseball, I’ll always remember him for this night.” It was Joe Charboneau, sensational Cleveland Indians rookie.
The annual sports banquet – featuring the late Mickey Mantle – is now a part of Erie history and lore, undoubtedly the worst event for Artie Arkelian. Finally, when it was over, DiPaolo related to Arkelian what had earlier transpired in the parking lot.
“I should have locked him up then,” DiPaolo said with a smile. “It would have saved you all this embarrassment.”
In the days and weeks that followed, the Erie media – newspaper and television sports reporters – tore into Mantle with a flurry. Men wrote letters to the editor and sports writers to proclaim they had discarded banners, photos and clippings that they had long collected that were associated with Mantle. Most were simply devastated.
A few years later, Mantle would die following complications from liver transplant surgery – his liver destroyed by his heavy drinking. In most regions of the country, the Triple Crown winner whose number was retired, who appeared in 12 World Series, who was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame during his first year of eligibility, was mourned and honored after his death. But not in Erie.
Now, several years later at Erie Police Headquarters, DiPaolo would soon follow up on the Ferritto interview by taking statements from Ciotti, Torrelli, Joan Dovishaw and the questionable cop Rotunda. Still, he didn’t expect much difference in their stories. As anxious as he was to move on in the investigation, he couldn’t help but ponder over how Erie’s Raymond Ferritto managed to gain national notoriety.
It probably started much earlier for Ferritto, but the actual national notoriety began in the mid-1970s. By 1977, Danny Greene, an Irish mobster in Cleveland, had finally decided to make his move on Cleveland’s mob-related Licavoli Family. The move failed before it even began. Greene ended up dead, the victim of a car-bombing as he left his dentist’s office in Cleveland’s east suburbs. It was then when DiPaolo finally believed Frankie Thomas’s earlier ominous warning about his uncle Ray Ferritto a dozen years earlier: “I’m serious, Dom. Don’t fuck with him.”
But it was Frankie Thomas who eventually failed to heed his own words. Ray Ferritto, Frankie Thomas and Bolo Dovishaw were all arrested in connection with the made-for-media sensationalist hit on Danny Greene. It was Erie, Pennsylvania’s own Ferritto who detonated the bomb in the car parked next to Greene’s in the parking lot along Brainard and Cedar Roads in the affluent section of East Cleveland adjacent to highly-traveled Interstate 271. When Greene departed from his dentist’s office and climbed into his vehicle that fateful day, Ray Ferritto, by his own admission in open court, was carefully watching Danny from the nearby Interstate 271 Exit Ramp.
DiPaolo could imagine the cool and calm Ferritto calmly pressing down upon the remote control button, eyes as cold as ice, instantly ending the life of Cleveland’s Irish mobster. And, for the immediate moment at least, the Licavoli Family’s problems with the Irish mob, thanks to Erie’s homegrown killing machine, were over. The “button man” had succeeded.
Frankie Thomas, Ray’s nephew, was now in the big time with Uncle Ray, his idol. Ray had Frankie handle the cars used in the bombing. The “Joe Blow” car, for example, the vehicle where the bomb was actually placed, had been stolen elsewhere in Ohio, as was the getaway car. Through a mechanic pal in Erie, Frankie had both vehicles titled in Pennsylvania, and both received Commonwealth plates and state inspections. Frankie drove the “Joe Blow” car to Cleveland, while Bolo Dovishaw drove the getaway vehicle there on Ferritto’s orders.
Ferritto and Ronnie “The Crab” Carabbia took off in the getaway car when the “Joe Blow” car exploded, killing Greene. As their bad luck would have it, a bystander wrote down the plate number and helped a sketch artist come up with a composite drawing of the driver – Ferritto. He was easily made by the Cleveland cops, who traveled to Ray’s Erie home several days later. Over the visor on the passenger side of Ferritto’s personal car, Cleveland’s finest discovered the getaway car’s state registration. The not very astute Frankie Thomas had kept the registration. In addition, the getaway and Joe Blow cars bore sequential registration stickers and the same hand-writing of a certain Erie garage mechanic.
Ah, once again The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight all over again, DiPaolo mused.
But, surprise of surprises, in a stunning plea arrangement to save his younger sister’s son, Ferritto agreed to become a state government witness. Another motivation was probably that Ferritto believed he was double-crossed by the Licavolis, who weren’t coming up with cash for Ferritto’s defense. Ferritto’s take for the Greene hit was supposed to be 25 percent of the Warren-Youngstown, Ohio gambling profits, and full-fledged membership in the mob. But when he was arrested, the organization not only didn’t arrange for an attorney for Ferritto, but instead put out a contracted hit on him. That was enough for Ferritto. And that’s when he flipped on the Cleveland mob.
He was famously quoted as saying, “All my life I’ve been one way. I always did what I was supposed to do and now all of a sudden I did them the biggest favor that they wanted done and they were talking about killing me and here I am in jail awaiting trial . . .” Ferritto felt the only avenue left was to make a deal.
“It wasn’t because I saw God or read a Bible,” he was later quoted. “It was just that I thought at that time that I had to look out for me . . . And I thought that would be my best move.”
He cooperated fully with the Cleveland Police Department. So much so that 12 members of the Licavoli crime family – all from the mob’s elite upper echelon – were implicated by Ferritto’s very detailed testimony. In addition to pleading guilty to killing Danny Greene, he also admitted to the Julius Petro hit at LAX (but only because Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno talked on him). But there were many, many more Ray Ferritto murders.
Those men in the Cleveland crime family Ferritto gave up included James “Jack White” Licavoli, a reputed Mafia boss; Angelo “Big Ange” Lonardo, a Mafia underboss; Ronald “The Crab” Carabbia, a Mafia hit man; Pasquale “Butchie” Cisternino, another mob murderer; “The Weasel” Fratianno, Tommy Sinito and John Calandra.
After a 79-day trial, Cisternino and Carabbia were convicted, while the others went home. Ferritto and Fratianno had pleaded guilty. A “back-up” team had been led by Tony Liberatore, who also pled. But to save Ferritto, Thomas and Dovishaw from retribution at the hands of the Licavolis, they were all enrolled in the Federal witness protection/relocation program. Ferritto became Ray Marciano. Thomas was Frank Romeo, and Bolo became Frank Fabian, taking his mother’s maiden name, all sponsored by Carmen Marino, the state prosecutor. Yet, within two years, they became bored with their new lifestyle. To a man, they were anxious to return to their storied wise guy status and the three came back to Erie.
Were they worried about the Licavolis? No, not much. That’s because fate, through all its tricky and weird twists and turns, intervened favorably for them. Since none of the Licavolis were jailed, Ray Ferritto was, if not entirely in their good graces, at least officially off their radar screen and hit list. Although he had admitted to a premeditated, cold-blooded murder, the cops, in their haste to get to the Licavolis, had too quickly granted him immunity from prosecution.
What a sweet deal, DiPaolo thought. Or perhaps, DiPaolo had to ask during those early hours of the Bolo Dovishaw murder probe, was hapless Bolo’s professional, execution-style killing just the beginning of a mob payback? And if it was, would there be more paybacks to come?
It was obvious that if Ray Ferritto was worried about that, he wasn’t showing it, at least not to Dom DiPaolo. Ferritto was just finishing buttoning up his black top coat. But DiPaolo stopped him before he could leave the interview room.
“What do you think?” DiPaolo questioned. “A payback from Cleveland? C’mon, Ray, time to really talk to me.”
Ferritto seemed to freeze for just a slight moment.
“I don’t know. Fuck, man, I would like to know. Maybe I’m on the list? Who the fuck knows?”
He turned and walked out.
Ferritto is the only one left, DiPaolo thought. Of all the locals involved in the Danny Greene hit, only Ferritto had survived. Frankie Thomas, at the tender age of 31, died five years earlier of a cerebral hemorrhage. And now Bolo had been murdered, executed in his own home. Maybe Ferritto was right. Maybe he was on the list. Wouldn’t that be something? DiPaolo smiled.
A clear illustration of DiPaolo’s tenaciousness to stay with cases until ultimate resolution was launched the same year as the Greene hit in Cleveland. In Erie in April 1977, the partially clothed corpse of Janet Needham, 32, was discovered by a woman walking her dog between two houses. Human bite marks were on the victim’s face, and she had been raped after death (necrophilia). Within hours, Detectives DiPaolo and David Bagnoni arrested 20-year-old Bruce Ward. Ward told officers he couldn’t remember what had taken place, but wanted to help them.
“Fine,” DiPaolo said. “We’ll help you remember.” At 1 a.m., the cops took Ward to the home-office of Bill Vorsheck, a local certified hypnotist. Vorsheck applied his talents to cases for all Erie County law enforcement agencies; such findings at the time were admissible in court. Vorsheck put Ward into a chair, explaining he was going to help him regress to the time of the killing. Ward, however, quickly told Vorsheck, “I don’t think this is necessary. I did it. I will tell them.” Apparently Ward was too frightened of being put under, and gave a full statement on his involvement in the heinous crime. On September 17, 1977, he pleaded guilty to a general charge of murder and was sentenced to life by Erie County President Judge Edward Carney. After that, DiPaolo told Vorsheck the detective would bring all his suspects to the hypnotist.
On appeal, however, Ward got a new trial, was convicted of manslaughter, sentenced to five-to-ten years, and after more brushes with the law was paroled in 1989. Soon after, he was charged in Arkansas with killing an 18-year-old convenience store clerk, who had also been raped. DiPaolo twice testified against Ward in Arkansas, leading to a conviction and death sentence. DiPaolo was to be a witness at Ward’s August 2011 execution, but a last minute stay stopped the penalty from being carried out. No new date has been scheduled. DiPaolo’s tenacity was again underscored by his sticking with the Ward cases for so many years.
But now in 1983, as expected, Cy Ciotti, Phil Torrelli and Joan Dovishaw all provided similar stories. The dirty cop Rotunda, dumb shit that DiPaolo knew he was, still hadn’t figured how he had been set up.
While DiPaolo still knew he couldn’t trust any of them, in this case all seemed to be giving the same basic, truthful facts about finding Bolo’s body. And all seemed rattled with the discovery.
But DiPaolo also knew he couldn’t rule out any of them. They were all still to be classified as “persons of interest,” as cops like to say. No suspects, not yet, just tons of “persons of interest.”
Every cop who goes through Detective Training 101 knows they must uncover three factors in solving murder cases: First, motive: a reason to stimulate a person into taking the life of another human being. Next, opportunity: the right circumstances must exist to pull off the murder with reasonable expectations of escaping detection. Finally, means: the weapon or weapons of choice and wherewithal to snuff out a life.
DiPaolo knew Bolo Dovishaw’s killer had all three elements in place and working in his/her favor. DiPaolo already had identified two of the elements: opportunity and means. But he now needed to figure out motive. When that happened, he was certain, he would identify the killer. But that didn’t mean it was going to be easy. DiPaolo instinctively knew from previous experience there was a ton of grunt work to accomplish: calls to be made, alibis to check, shoe leather to be worn off. What he needed first at this juncture was determining the actual time of the killing.
The Erie police detective was reasonably certain Raymond Ferritto was the last person, other than the killer, to see Bolo Dovishaw alive. The task at hand, he calculated, was to now determine events that transpired after Dovishaw arrived home that Monday evening with his cherished meatball sub. Dovishaw died sometime between Monday evening when he was last seen and Tuesday night. Likely, given Ferritto’s statement, it was shortly before the start of the nationally-televised football game. But how to be sure about the time of death? The coroner’s report would narrow the timeline, the cop knew, but DiPaolo wanted more.
His answers, as it turned out, would be from an unlikely source: A 13-year-old girl and her father. Shortly after the interviews with Ferritto, the wise guys, Mrs. Dovishaw and Frankie Rotunda, Detective Captain McCurdy approached DiPaolo.
“A supervisor in the circulation department at the Erie Times called to say one of their newspaper carriers might have some information about your murder investigation,” McCurdy told DiPaolo.
It was a good break. What transpired next would fix in DiPaolo’s mind the time frame for Dovishaw’s death to within two hours.