4 mobsters guilty of whacking a wiseguy

Four Lucchese mobsters were found guilty Friday of the brutal Bronx hit of a notorious gangster who’d refused to make good on a gambling debt.

Matthew Madonna, Steven “Wonder Boy” Crea, Christopher Londonio and Terrence Caldwell (inset from top) were convicted in White Plains federal court of carrying out the 2013 murder of Michael Meldish, 63, the leader of the ruthless Purple Gang.

Meldish’s crew once did dirty work for the Lucchese, Genovese and Bonanno crime families. But the trial revealed that Meldish made the fatal mistake of refusing to pay a gambling debt owed to Madonna, who was then the acting boss of the Lucchese family.

Madonna, 84, ordered Meldish be taken out. Crea, the underboss, helped Madonna make the decision and relayed the order. Londonio, a made member of the family, helped set up Meldish, who was his friend. Caldwell, a mob associate, fired the fatal shot and fled the scene in a car driven by Londonio.

Meldish was found on Nov. 15, 2013, dead from a bullet fired to his head in a car parked in Throgs Neck.

“The violent and disturbing acts of these four organized crime figures included the brutal murder of associate Michael Meldish. Fittingly, all four defendants have been found guilty of their heinous acts of fraud, extortion, and murder on the six-year anniversary of Meldish’s death,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said.

Meldish’s Purple Gang once controlled the drug trade in the Bronx and Harlem. Authorities suspected his brother and longtime partner in crime, Joseph Meldish, was responsible for as many as 70 contract killings.

Joseph Meldish, 56, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in 2011 for a 1999 murder.

Fifteen other people have pleaded guilty in connection with the case.

Londonio, 45, was acquitted of attempting to escape the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn after he was arrested.

That bizarre caper in 2017 allegedly involved a plan to use dental floss to weaken a window — the implausible idea was to poke a hole in the window, and use the floss like a string saw to gradually wear it down.

The caper also involved a stash of bedsheets that an inmate would have used to climb out of an eighth-floor cell.