CHAPTER 43
PERHAPS DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE, BUT IT SEEMED THAT EVEN THOUGH Caesar Montevecchio knew he would be doing hard time despite his cooperation with police, he was nonetheless still enjoying his moment in the spotlight. It was as though he had found the bright lights to finally match his huge criminal ego. While in prison in Michigan 20 years earlier, Caesar had demonstrated a unique flair for the dramatic when he became the sports editor of the penitentiary’s newspaper. He proved to be a pretty fair writer at that, especially since he understood sports and the lingo of jocks from his glory days as an Erie high school star athlete, although he never reached those heights in his aborted college athletic career at Detroit.
Now in the courtroom, he repeated much of the same testimony he gave during the Robert Dorler murder trial several weeks earlier. Montevecchio, in response to prosecutor Ebert’s skilled questioning, told the members of that Anthony “Niggsy” Arnone murder trial jury that he personally contacted and contracted Dorler, of Medina, Ohio, to kill Mr. Dovishaw. Rattling off those same eye-popping, mouth-dropping details as in the previous trial, Montevecchio again claimed that it was Arnone who first hatched the scheme with the basic idea, he underscored in his testimony, to get the keys to Dovishaw’s bank safe-deposit boxes. But Caesar also said he at first had turned down the offer, rather than work on the contingency basis allegedly proposed by Arnone.
Montevecchio described his life-long pal Arnone as a “10 percenter,” just one of many in Caesar’s arsenal in a miserable criminal life. Such a person fingered potential burglary and robbery targets for Montevecchio to scope out and then later hit with all the professionalism acquired over the years. In return, the person got 10 percent of the “profits.”
Immediately following Dovishaw’s murder, Montevecchio met Dorler at Erie’s Station Restaurant on upper Peach Street, Caesar said. It was there Montevecchio received the bank safe-deposit box keys from the killer, he testified. Then he met with Arnone, handing off the keys directly to Niggsy. Just one day after the murder, Montevecchio continued, he again met with the defendant, Arnone. This time the meeting was at Niggsy’s warehouse in the heart of Erie’s Little Italy. There, Arnone returned the bank keys, which were to be placed back inside Dovishaw’s abandoned car at the Holiday Inn South hotel. Arnone also gave Montevecchio a brown paper bag containing the blood money – $20,000 in hard cash – which Montevecchio said he later delivered to Robert Dorler at the popular Interstate 90 pancake house restaurant not far from Ashtabula, Ohio.
It was during this testimony that Montevecchio acknowledged that sometime later in 1983, the murderer Robert Dorler asked Caesar to kill a man in Cleveland. Montevecchio said that after he initially declined Dorler’s offer, Dorler asked whether Caesar’s longtime partner in crime, “Fat Sam” Esper, might be interested in doing the Ohio hit. Why not keep it all in the family, the warped thinking of those involved went. Montevecchio said the two met with Esper, and on July 28, 1983 and he bragged to Esper that he had killed Dovishaw to “pump him up” for the Cleveland killing Dorler was now seeking from Esper. Montevecchio was not aware at the time that Esper was wearing a police wire. As a result of the wired conversation, Caesar Montevecchio was arrested a short time later and charged with committing a series of burglaries, and also with possession of cocaine. It was becoming obvious to all there was little Caesar Montevecchio would not do for a buck.
The witness admitted on the stand that he lied to police during his prison stint when he claimed that Joseph Scutella, now of Pal Joey’s arson fame, had actually planned and carried out the killing of Bolo Dovishaw and the would-be hit on the ruthless Raymond Ferritto of Danny Greene bomb-blast fame. It was Caesar’s futile attempt to get himself released from prison for Christmas, he testified quite earnestly, trying to explain away the reason for his many lies to authorities. He even blamed the Frantino crime family in Pittsburgh, which he later acknowledged had nothing to do with this killing. But he added that he had never actually signed the admission statements that police had requested that he autograph for them, and ultimately he was not given his Christmas holiday that year.
After DiPaolo arrested him on additional drug charges in 1986, and after he learned Robert Dorler was supposedly cooperating with police about other crimes, Montevecchio rationally assumed the Cleveland murderer would attempt to cut a deal for himself regarding the Dovishaw slaying. Such a deal would not go very well from Montevecchio’s perspective. Montevecchio said that in July 1986 he decided once-and-for-all to fully and honestly cooperate with the police investigation and come clean about the murder of Frank “Bolo” Dovishaw. DiPaolo was wearing him down, he said. He had no other way out.
It was then, Caesar Montevecchio said, that he finally named Anthony “Niggsy” Arnone as the man who ordered the killing of the Erie bookie Dovishaw. Also during the direct examination from the prosecutor, Montevecchio revealed for the first time that he had accepted groceries from the defendant, Arnone, as partial payment for Montevecchio’s part in arranging to hire Dorler, Bolo Dovishaw’s killer. Arnone, as president of Arnone and Son Food Importers, had vast access to specialty foods. That would prove helpful to Montevecchio and his family. According to Montevecchio’s testimony, he permitted Arnone to owe him $9,000 of the ten grand Caesar was supposed to have collected for being the middle man in the murder. He said he often received groceries from Arnone, who did not charge him for the food, but deducted the cost of the groceries from the total amount he owed Montevecchio for arranging the Dovishaw hit.
“I was in jail. What was I to do? Nobody else gave my family food or money.”
During the relentless cross-examination, defense Attorney Joseph Santaguida was incredulous with the prosecutorial star’s thus far damaging testimony against his client, Arnone.
“You killed somebody for some salami and capocollo? Is that what you’re telling me?” Santaguida harshly, loudly demanded while some of those in the courtroom fought to hold back chuckles.
“That is partially true, yes,” the straight-faced Montevecchio managed to answer.
“Getting paid off for a murder with $50 worth of groceries?” the blustering attorney continued.
“That is correct,” Montevecchio said. “That was part of it.”
Then Montevecchio explained that he wouldn’t exactly characterize the exchange of groceries and reduction of the amount of blood money owed as the killing of someone for a salami. He tried to explain that Niggsy Arnone simply deducted the cost of the groceries from what Arnone owed Caesar.
“You, the burglar, the robber, the dope dealer, and you do a murder and get paid for it in groceries?” Santaguida seemed to chide the infamous criminal Caesar Montevecchio. “Just answer yes or no. Is that true?”
“That’s partially true, yes sir,” Montevecchio again responded with that typical chilling calmness that used to drive DiPaolo crazy, but was now actually becoming amusing to the police officer.
This back-and-forth courtroom banter between Santaguida and the witness was particularly contentious throughout the defense counsel’s deliberate, often sarcasm-laced cross-examination of Montevecchio. But Montevecchio just didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to be enjoying it all.
Like the rapid-fire staccato of a submachine gun, Santaguida blasted and peppered Montevecchio with a barrage of questions for more than three grueling hours. At times, the lawyer’s courtroom theatrics provoked the anger of the normally patient Judge Fred Anthony. But through it all, Caesar Montevecchio stayed cool, his courtroom demeanor and composure seemingly unshakeable. He did have plenty of previous life-experience nonchalantly brushing off cops’ and lawyers’ questioning. Indeed, for Caesar, a lifetime avocation.
Santaguida became frustrated, it seemed, at times lashing out in diatribes laden with his personal opinions of Caesar’s unseemly character, unholy reputation and prior lack of truthfulness. DiPaolo, smiled to himself, knowing full well that this lawyer, frustrated as he might seem, was right-on in his presumptions.
As reported in the Morning News, at one point during the heated exchange, as Ebert leaped to his feet at the prosecution table to again object to the questioning, Judge Anthony finally had had enough. With a sharp rebuke and scathing criticism of the defense attorney, Judge Anthony said, “It’s improper and you know that, Mr. Santaguida, and I expect you not to do that again.”
Santaguida calmed down just a little, but his questions to Montevecchio were delivered just as hard, and with the same vitriolic sarcasm. When Arnone’s counsel asked about inconsistency between Montevecchio’s preliminary hearing testimony and what he was now telling the jury members during the murder trial, Erie’s professional hood again refused to become rattled.
“My answer to that question during the preliminary hearing was not correct. I was confused.”
“What’s the difference between a lie and confusion?”
“A lie is intentional. Confusion is not intentional,” Montevecchio convincingly explained, and obviously apparently with some authority on the subject.
“You were confused?” the defense lawyer asked with dripping sarcasm.
“You had successfully confused me.”
“So let’s admit you’re a liar! Then I’ll be successful and we’ll all go home!”
Yet as they continued, Montevecchio, responding to the lawyer’s questions, acknowledged he lied to his wife, to police, to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and even to his one-time criminal crony and partner in crime, “Fat Sam” Esper, while the two were actually on their way to committing a house burglary.
Santaguida emphasized Montevecchio’s habit of hiding his longtime criminal activities, including many first degree felonies, from his wife, Bonnie. The lawyer also pointed to the many different accounts Caesar had given to the police, including implicating Joseph Scutella in the Bolo Dovishaw killing. “He was your partner. You lied to him?”
“Yes.”
“You lied to your wife?” Santaguida pressed.
“Yes.”
“You lied to the authorities before, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And, we have to believe you’re not lying now?”
There was a pause for effect. And then there were still more questions.
Santaguida asked how Robert Dorler could have been expected to single-handedly move Dovishaw’s heavy body from the home. Montevecchio replied that Dorler insisted that moving the body alone could be done.
The lawyer also wanted to know how Dorler was expected to find the elusive safe-deposit box keys, which had to happen before anyone could have a pay day. Montevecchio said that Dovishaw had shown others the keys following a previous robbery to demonstrate he didn’t keep much cash on hand in his home.
Santaguida asked how and why Billy Bourjaily considered becoming part of this murder scheme after the fact. Montevecchio acknowledged it was his own mistake.
And why, Santaguida continued, was Joe Scutella told about the plan? Wasn’t Caesar worried Scutella would tip off Dovishaw that his life was in danger? But Montevecchio, as he always did, had an answer for every query. He said he implicitly trusted his pal Joey because of the two Erie criminals’ long-standing friendship and relationship in mutually beneficial criminal activities. Caesar had pulled his first burglary with Joey and his father, Giuseppe, way back in the 1950s.
While Dorler was promptly paid the twenty grand for the evening’s “work,” why was Montevecchio satisfied to receive only $1,000 as a down payment? Santaguida continued. Caesar said it wasn’t odd that he would allow Niggsy Arnone to owe him the remainder of the $10,000 he was supposed to receive for arranging the murder.
Santaguida questioned why “a smart guy” like Caesar could plan a hit such as Bolo Dovishaw’s, but not want to learn how the hired killer would perform his end of the murder contract.
“My deal with him (Dorler) was to kill Bolo, get rid of the body and get the safe deposit box keys,” Montevecchio replied. “How he did it was up to him.”
The defense lawyer asked why Dovishaw was not murdered prior to January; why not perhaps in the previous fall, after the scheme was first hatched? Montevecchio shrugged it off, saying he didn’t know.
“Weren’t you the big planner, the big genius in this whole thing?” Santaguida hammered away.
“I don’t think there was anything genius about this, but I had a hand in the planning.” To deny anyone involved was a genius was perhaps the smartest and most ironic trial testimony to date. Although it had taken the better part of seven years, Dovishaw’s killer and those associated with the actual crime had still gone down, one by one. Still, DiPaolo was becoming concerned that this trial jury was not in the mood to accept as gospel all that Montevecchio was saying, as the Dorler trial jury had done. Maybe it was time for the cop to worry a bit.
As if he understood that the cold-blooded Caesar Montevecchio needed somehow to be humanized before the Niggsy Arnone murder trial jury, Prosecutor Ebert now called upon a familiar witness, Dennis Pfannenschmidt, the former deputy Pennsylvania attorney general who had initially okayed the deal allowing Dom DiPaolo to bring Caesar down.
Pfannenschmidt told the jury that Caesar had broken down in tears in 1987 as he implicated his lifelong buddy Niggsy Arnone in the Dovishaw murder. The former prosecutor said he had been in another room when Montevecchio finally agreed to come clean, be truthful and cooperate with DiPaolo, the lead Dovishaw murder investigator.
“I began to hear these noises,” Pfannenschmidt told the jury. “I was in one office and Mr. Montevecchio was in another.” The courtroom strategy seemed to be working. The jury appeared hooked on Pfannenschmidt’s compelling trial testimony, its members leaning forward in their seats so as not to miss a word.
“I went over near the door and looked in and saw Mr. Montevecchio at the table. His head was in his hands and it appeared to me that he was sobbing.”
Compelling for the jury, perhaps, yet defense lawyer Santaguida wasn’t buying any warm and fuzzy sympathy stuff for Caesar Montevecchio. The attorney made fun of Pfannenschmidt’s description, again employing his own dripping sarcasm.
“You said you saw him crying, is that right?” Santaguida asked the former state prosecutor. Again, there were a few muffled courtroom snickers.
“That’s right,” Pfannenschmidt said with sincerity, managing to keep his face straight and emotionless.
Judge Anthony’s courtroom wasn’t the only place where legal action – at least the tongue-wagging kind – was taking place during the sensational Niggsy Arnone murder trial. Away from the bright lights and somber courtroom, there were plenty of words being exchanged.
According to a report in the Erie Morning News on December 6, 1989, a day after Caesar Montevecchio’s testimony, an Erie lawyer and an Erie police lieutenant were claiming Montevecchio lied at least once during his lengthy testimony. The criminal lawyer was Attorney Leonard Ambrose, the cop, Lt. Donald Levis.
The day before, during Ebert’s direct examination of Montevecchio, Caesar testified that he was told by his former lawyer, Attorney Ambrose, that police officers were watching him. According to Montevecchio, Ambrose had learned of the claimed police surveillance from Erie Police Lieutenant Levis. When asked by Ebert whether he knew he was still under police surveillance when he was released from prison early in 1985, Montevecchio testified that he was told he was being watched by the cops.
“I had a call from my attorney, Lenny Ambrose. He had information from Donald Levis that I was to be under surveillance,” Montevecchio said.
When interviewed by the Erie Morning News later that day, Ambrose unequivocally said, “That’s ridiculous. I never talked to Donald Levis about this case. In the first place, Levis was never involved in Caesar’s case.” Ambrose did say he had many conversations about the case with DiPaolo, the investigating officer.
Lieutenant Levis, in an interview with the newspaper separate from Ambrose’s, also flatly denied Caesar Montevecchio’s allegation. “I don’t ever remember talking to Len Ambrose about Montevecchio,” Levis told the newspaper. “I had nothing to do with Montevecchio’s case. I’d have no reason to talk to Mr. Ambrose.”
Levis did say, however, that he recalled having information about a police surveillance on Montevecchio on one occasion, but indicated that was at least several years prior to the Dovishaw slaying. But Levis said that even then he didn’t remember talking to Ambrose about it.
Since the counter allegations and denials of Ambrose and Levis would have tainted the jury by implicating Montevecchio in what might have been a major lie, none of the reported interviews got to the jury panel considering Niggsy Arnone’s fate in Judge Anthony’s courtroom.
As the top cop in the case, Dominick DiPaolo was steaming at what he considered behind the scenes, out-of-court maneuvering. Any information that an attorney would have about surveillance on any suspect would have to have come directly from within the Erie Police Bureau, DiPaolo believed.
There were a number of officers aware of the surveillance. DiPaolo knew Lt. Levis and Police Chief Paul DeDionisio were in Police Director Art Berardi’s office when DiPaolo requested a detail of Erie officers for the Montevecchio surveillance. He also knew there were others within the Erie Police Department who had known about the Montevecchio surveillance request from the very beginning.
The surveillance team had been hand-picked by DiPaolo – the same officers he chose to work on “Fat Sam” the entire time they protected him. DiPaolo believes he knows exactly where the leak came from: While the surveillance went on, one officer, Vinnie Lewandowski, advised DiPaolo several times, “Dom, something is up! I know that he didn’t make us because of what we’re doing, but yet his actions are very strange – like he knows.”
DiPaolo thought at the time it was strange for the entire two-week surveillance that Montevecchio went to church every morning, and never even once went to Niggsy Arnone’s place, a Barbute game, or hooked up with any of his cronies. It was like Caesar Montevecchio was again the altar boy of his Erie youth. Montevecchio, DiPaolo had long suspected, actually had known he was being tailed all along. His testimony in court indicated an awareness of the police tail – and DiPaolo believed Montevecchio was telling the truth, at least in this instance.
When the newspaper reporter covering the case telephoned DiPaolo for a comment after Levis and Ambrose alleged that Montevecchio lied about each of them, DiPaolo told the newsman to ask Chief DeDionisio about he and Levis being present in Berardi’s office when the request for surveillance was made. When the reporter did contact the chief of police, DeDionisio said he could not comment as the case was still current and in court.
It wasn’t the first time DiPaolo found himself at odds with Levis. Four years earlier, while DiPaolo was the chief investigating officer in a gun theft case against former Erie Police Chief Sam Gemelli. Levis, a longtime friend of the criminally-charged police chief, had been a star witness for the defense during Gemelli’s trial.
According to the newspaper account the morning of October 5, 1985, “Erie Police Lt. Donald Levis testified Friday that former Erie Police Chief Samuel Gemelli once ordered him to investigate Detectives Dominick DiPaolo and David Bagnoni on allegations they gave heroin to police sources.”
Levis testified it was before DiPaolo began his investigation of Gemelli that the chief had ordered the probe of the two drug squad detectives. At the time it was a defense attempt to discredit the chief investigator by somehow tarnishing DiPaolo’s well-known image as a tough-talking, crime-fighting cop. The implication brought by Levis’ testimony at the time was that DiPaolo had had an ax to grind with the police chief and launched the stolen weapon probe against Gemelli. Levis’ testimony in the Gemelli case had come nine full years after that 1976 heroin investigation which resulted in a determination of no merit in the allegations and no charges being filed against the two Erie officers. The two had been exonerated by an independent police investigation headed by respected Detective Captain Thomas Stanton, who determined Bagnoni, on the night heroin was to have been given to the source, was on vacation in Florida, while DiPaolo was conducting a raid in another part of town with Captain Charles Erickson and Detective Sergeant Patrick Shanahan. The source, Stanton determined, was not even arrested on the night in question.
There was also another incident in which DiPaolo and Levis were at odds. It was in 1981 after DiPaolo’s and Don Gunter’s six month probe into the late-1980 death of Erie Police Corporal Robert Owen determined the killing to be a homicide. It was Levis’ opinion that Owen had committed suicide, a theory supported by the FBI.
It had long been DiPaolo’s belief that Mayor Louis Tullio wanted the cause of death to be suicide to take the heat off the Erie Police Bureau. There was much rumor, innuendo and speculation that a cop killed Owen – and a suicide ruling would stop payment of the insurance money to Owen’s widow. Levis was permitted to travel to Quantico, Virginia, headquarters of the FBI Academy, where he met with and supplied information about the case to a behavioral specialist. Once the information was provided, the Feds came up a psychological profile, which DiPaolo believed was more akin to a Ouija Board than science.
After the FBI’s lengthy study of the information by Levis, the feds determined the death was probably a suicide, but could not be 100 percent sure. The FBI also commented on the ruling of a world-renown blood spatter expert, Dr. Herbert MacDonell, who ruled the death a homicide, saying the expert’s tests were inconclusive. Levis’ public request for a Coroner’s Inquest and ruling of suicide was denied by Erie County Coroner Merle Wood, who said that the evidence presented made him certain the death was a homicide and no new evidence existed that would cause a change in his ruling.
A month after two Erie councilmen, Mario Bagnoni and Bernard “Babe” Harkins, criticized Mayor Tullio for holding up the insurance payment to Jane Owen, the money was finally paid. To this day, the Owen case is still an open and unsolved homicide. Over the years, cold-case investigators from different law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania studied the thousands of documents and reports to try to determine whether new information could be developed. At least four different investigative teams studied the case in the more than three decades since the police officer’s death. Not one concluded the death was a suicide, including the latest investigation in 2013.
Once again, DiPaolo surmised, the public split had pitted police officer against police officer, helping the credibility of neither and doing little in the way of resolving the Owen investigation.
Back at the Bolo Dovishaw murder trial, where Anthony “Niggsy” Arnone was accused of master-minding the January 1983 hit on one of Erie’s best-known bookies, DiPaolo believed Caesar Montevecchio was now telling the truth when he testified he knew all about the police surveillance on him.
Ironic, DiPaolo thought. Twenty years earlier, even DiPaolo wouldn’t have imagined that he would one day take the word of this John Dillinger wannabe over fellow Erie police officers.