Rats…Pitera hated them with such fervor that he wouldn’t allow anyone in his crew to wear a mustache, for mustaches resembled whiskers and rats had whiskers. Richie Leone was a member of Pitera’s crew; Sol Stern was on the fringes of the Bonanno family. Through sources he found reliable, Pitera came to believe, with his obsessive paranoia about rats, that Stern and Leone were informers—talking to the FBI. He also believed that Richie Leone had stolen bearer bonds, some of which should have gone to Pitera but did not. For them, this was a death sentence, immediate and without appeal. Pitera devised a plan to kidnap both Leone and Stern. Initially, he was going to use Gangi as part of the kidnapping team, but he was still angry with him over the jewelry robbery. He had come to believe that Gangi was irresponsible because of drug and alcohol abuse. During the sit-down with Joe Butch, Ross Gangi, Frank’s cousin, had even told Pitera that Frank was “irresponsible, out of control…unreliable.”
Pitera sent word to Leone and Stern that he had a sweet score he wanted to involve them in. It involved ripping off a large amount of marijuana from a couple of hippies. Unaware and unsuspecting, Leone and Stern showed up at Pitera’s club Overstreets at the prescribed time on the morning of March 15, 1989. Billy Bright and Richie David were already there as well as Pitera. Unwittingly, Leone and Stern were suddenly in shark-infested water.
For Pitera, this was not about questioning them, an inquisition, finding the truth. This was about retribution. Revenge. Pain. Suffering. Murder. On the left as you came into the club was a long bar. In front of the bar was a wood dance floor. On the far wall, there was a balcony with movie theater seats. Club-goers could sit there, smoke pot, and discreetly take a snort of coke without being bothered. In that it was a mob-controlled club, people who went there felt safe. There were few fights. Known troublemakers were kept out. The bouncers were like attack-trained Doberman pinschers. Pitera had an office there and next to the office was a bathroom where there was a Jacuzzi bathtub. Soon the Jacuzzi tub would be used in a most unspeakable way.
Pitera was in a particularly bad mood that night. Since the loss of Celeste, he had changed. He had become quiet, more introspective, and, in a word, meaner. He had little patience for anyone. He very rarely laughed. Both Stern and Leone were handcuffed. It was three o’clock in the morning. There was little traffic on the streets outside. In that the club’s windows were tinted, people could not see in, though you could see out. Pitera had Stern and Leone handcuffed to pipes bolted to the ceiling. Pitera first uncuffed Leone, shot him in the leg, and demanded he dance across the floor. Leone had no choice. He danced the best he could, blood seeping through the dime-size hole in his leg. Pitera shot him again and again and again. Bright uncuffed him. Leone lay on the floor, a heap of tortured muscle, bone, and flesh. Blood pooled around him.
“Please,” Leone begged. “Please, just kill me. Just fucking kill me!”
Bright did not want to see him suffer like this. Though Bright was a killer, he did not have the black heart, the lack of conscience, the lack of feelings, Pitera had. Bright moved closer to Leone and shot him in the head, killing him. Sol Stern was so horrified, so beside himself, that he shit in his pants, stinking the club up.
Next Pitera turned his attention to a very distraught Sol Stern. He proceeded to shoot him numerous times. The man howled and screamed as though he’d been pierced with red-hot pokers.
When Pitera was finished with this sadistic game, he had the bodies taken down and brought to the tub. He undressed, grabbed his dismembering kit, got into the tub, and cut them each—one after the other—into six pieces. He, with Bright’s help, then wrapped them in black plastic and stuffed them in large cheap suitcases. Sol’s valuable wedding ring was stuck on his sausage-thick finger. Pitera wanted it. He couldn’t get it off. He used a knife and cut the finger off at the joint and stole the ring. This ring would later come back to haunt Pitera. Again, clearly, Pitera was taking totems from his victims—a textbook serial killer phenomenon.
Pitera then made sure the dance floor and club were cleaned thoroughly. Stern was very heavy and they had difficulty fitting him into the suitcases. They had to wrap the two heads separately. After showering thoroughly, Pitera slowly got dressed and Bright and David grabbed the suitcases and they headed toward Pitera’s car, put the four suitcases and the heads in the trunk, and made their way to Staten Island, made their way over the two-mile stretch of the Verrazano Bridge, Brooklyn on their left, the city on their right. They could see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island from the middle of the bridge. The water in the Narrows was calm. After going through the tollbooth, they made their way to the bird sanctuary, driving slowly, making certain to abide by all traffic laws. They reached the street, which abutted the bird sanctuary, parked the car, retrieved the suitcases and heads, and quickly made their way into the forest. They went about thirty steps, found a clearing, and put down the bodies. In that it was March, the soil was somewhat firm. Digging was harder. They took turns trying to make a hole large enough to accommodate both suitcases. It was arduous work. When the hole was deep enough, they dumped the two suitcases in. Pitera wanted the heads buried separately, so he had a second hole dug some ten feet away and dumped the two heads there. They covered the holes up and left, a shy dawn slowly growing on the eastern sky, a chill wind blowing off the nearby Atlantic. Pitera felt good about what he had done. He felt justice had been served…street justice.
Billy Bright showed up at the pot stash house in Gravesend that he, Gangi, and Pitera kept. Gangi had slept there that night, with a girl he was seeing named Sophia. When Billy Bright arrived, he was covered in dirt and his face was long and sad. Gangi took one look at him and knew exactly what was wrong; the dirt told the story.
“Would you like to talk?” Gangi offered.
Bright immediately told him everything that had occurred. Gangi listened sympathetically. He was glad Pitera had not chosen him to be a part of this.
“He’s fucking out of control,” Gangi said, wanting to distance himself from Pitera, wanting to distance himself from it all. He was still plagued by what had happened to Phyllis Burdi. He couldn’t get it out of his mind. He would later relate that this trauma caused him to drink and use drugs—he was now consuming a full bottle of whiskey every day, plus several grams of cocaine. If he hadn’t been such a naturally strong, robust individual, no doubt he would have passed out one night and not woken up.
Trouble, he felt in his bones, loomed large and foreboding. His answer was to snort a long line of glistening cocaine.