FEDS: MURDER VIC HAD TIES TO CARTEL
One of the men killed by a former Westchester police officer in a drug deal gone bad had ties to a Mexican drug cartel, prosecutors said in papers made public Friday.
The revelation about victim Martin Luna adds a new twist to the quadruple murder case against Nicholas Tartaglione, who faces the death penalty.
Tartaglione, a musclebound ex-Briarcliff Manor cop is charged with killing Luna, 41, Hector Santiago, 32, Miguel Luna, 25, and Hector Gutierrez, 43, in April 2016, as well as conspiring to distribute over five kilos of cocaine.
The four men’s bodies were found buried on Tartaglione’s sprawling animal rescue farm in Otisville, Orange County.
Tartaglione entered national headlines last week after he claimed he might have saved the life of his cellmate, Jeffrey Epstein, after a suicide attempt. Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey, who is former FBI Director James Comey’s daughter, is working both cases.
Prosecutors say that In April 2016 Tartaglione lured Luna to the Likquid Lounge bar in the Orange County town of Chester, under false pretenses. Tartaglione allegedly killed Luna, 41, and took the body to be buried in Otisville. Comey wrote that surveillance video from outside the bar showed Tartaglione, 51, backing his SUV to the entrance of the lounge and throwing an “unidentified, large heavy object” into his trunk. The bar was owned by Tartaglione’s brother.
Prosecutors have not said how Luna died, but initially said the three other victims were held against their will in the bar and fatally shot. A new indictment alleges they were taken to the farm and murdered there. Tartaglione is charged with all of the killings.
A beefy Westchester school security guard, Joseph Biggs, who was initially charged in the case, is not named in the latest indictment. A source said he is cooperating with the feds. A former NYPD officer, George Benderoth, killed himself in front of FBI agents investigating the quadruple killing.
A June 2016 request by Comey for information from Tartaglione’s cellphone and others linked to the crime adds new details to the murky murder case and reveals authorities believed Luna and the former cop were involved in major drug deals. The document was made public Friday in a filing by Tartaglione’s attorney Bruce Barket, who argued cellphone data should not be admitted at trial.
Prior to his death, Luna became increasingly desperate about lost drug money, according to prosecutors. He told a friend he paid money to a member of a Mexican cartel who vanished without providing drugs in return, Comey wrote. Luna’s ex-wife told investigators he lost $500,000 intended for the purchase of cocaine.
Only three months before his murder, Luna’s daughter overheard him tell someone on the phone he was “being held responsible for something that went wrong and would take everyone down with him,” Comey wrote.
Luna flew to Mexico in late March from Kennedy Airport, telling a friend he was going to track down the missing money, prosecutors said. He returned on April 9 - two days before he was last seen alive.
Authorities suspect Luna engaged in drug trafficking for years.
He and Santiago were busted in Louisiana in 2011, driving a Chevy Suburban with $123,500 bundled in cellophane and hidden in a rear passenger door, court records show. A drug-sniffing dog smelled a “narcotic odor” on the stacks of cash, according to an affidavit by a Homeland Security investigator. Luna told authorities he planned to cross the border into Mexico without declaring the cash and claimed he was going to give the money to his mother to raise pigs on her farm. Luna was sentenced to two years in prison for cash smuggling. Santiago was sentenced to 15 months.
Tartaglione, meanwhile, was allegedly under investigation for drug trafficking for months prior to the killings. State Police learned that he’d received “multiple steroid deliveries” increasing in quantity starting in 2013, according to court papers. He owned “multiple luxury vehicles” and spent tens of thousands of dollars at Connecticut casinos while on disability and running a pet grooming store.
An informant for state cops made two steroid buys from Tartaglione in 2015, worth more than $1,000 in the parking lot of a Gold’s Gym in Fishkill, Dutchess County, Comey wrote.
A call to one of Luna’s relatives was not returned.