WISEGUY TO GOOD GUY
Guilty of racketeering, he helped nail crime big & earns judge’s gratitude
Reformed wiseguy Duane “Goldie” Leisenheimer — whose testimony helped push Bonanno crime boss Joseph Massino to become one of the biggest mob snitches in history — was sentenced Tuesday to time served on racketeering and other charges at a hearing that also got him a warm handshake and a friendly chat from a federal judge.
Leisenheimer, 67, cut a dapper figure in Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis’ courtroom, his signature strawberry-blond locks darkened by age.
It was a sentencing more than two decades in the making.
Garaufis, who presided over Massino’s 2004 racketeering trial, described how he took former Bonanno associate Leisenheimer’s guilty plea at a meeting in the Brooklyn Marriott.
“I was 20 years younger at the time and so were you,” Garaufis said.
Leisenheimer’s plea was to charges of harboring a fugitive and racketeering, possessing stolen frozen shrimp, and to being present for the 1984 murder of Sicilian-born capo Cesare Bonventre in Maspeth, Queens.
The reasons for the 20-year delay in Leisenheimer’s sentencing were not articulated in the courtroom.
But it’s common for sentences to be delayed in cases where criminals plead guilty and later provide evidence in other court cases.
Leisenheimer, along with several other cooperators, flipped on Massino, leading to the boss’ conviction in 2004 on 11 racketeering counts for seven murders.
Forty years ago — in 1984 — Leisenheimer was sent to prison for 18 months because when he was brought before a grand jury, he refused to answer the question: “Do you know Joe Massino?”
“I was a standup guy back then,” Leisenheimer told the jury about his time in the 1980s, when he spent 29 months on the run with Massino. At one point, the mob boss hid at Leisenheimer’s parents’ home in Milford, Pa.
By 2003, his priorities had changed. He’d put his criminal past behind him and lived in Middle Village, Queens, making a living delivering newspapers.
Then the feds knocked on his door. “They handed me a subpoena and said, ‘You went to jail once for this guy; you don’t need to go to jail again,’ “Leisenheimer said in court at the time.
So Leisenheimer became one of eight turncoats at Massino’s 2004 trial.
“I have a vivid recollection of what happened in those days,” said Garaufis, 75, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2000.
“You were a very important part of that trial,” Garaufis said. “Irrespective of what you did before you cooperated. Your cooperation in that case was critical.”
After the jury rendered its verdict in the Massino case in July 2004, the U.S. marshal in charge of the detail handling the trial stepped into Garaufis’ chambers and said that Massino wanted to speak with him.
“I was sort of speechless,” Garaufis said. “I said, ‘He’s just been convicted. Why would he want to see me?’ “
The marshal responded, “He has something important to tell you.”
So the judge saw him and asked what he had to say, and Massino responded, “Yes, Your Honor. I’d like to discuss cooperating with the government.”
Garaufis added, “This was minutes after he was convicted.”
Massino asked for a different lawyer, so Garaufis assigned him a shadow counsel.
“He apparently had planned that if he was convicted, he would immediately begin to cooperate with the government. And so he did,” Garaufis said.
Massino, who was once called the “Last Don,” testified in only two trials, but the information he provided led to multiple indictments of mobsters and drug traffickers, and unearthed details about a possible plot to kill the assistant U.S. attorney leading the effort to dismantle the Bonanno family.
Massino spent 10½ years in federal prison, and was released to witness protection in 2013. He died last September.
Leisenheimer turned down an offer to be placed in witness protection and went back to his home in Queens, his lawyer Gary Farrell said.
“He said, ‘No thanks, gentlemen. I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me, but I’m ready to go home to my family,’ “Farrell said. “Mr. Leisenheimer never went back to the ‘life,’ the so-called ‘life.’ “
“What you did was, in a sense, selfless and heroic, and helped rid our community of people who were committing criminal acts,” Garaufis told Leisenheimer.
By all accounts, Leisenheimer lived an exemplary life over the two decades he awaited sentencing. He worked as a driver and driving instructor for a New Jersey-based energy company, and has devoted his life to being a father, grandfather and family man, Farrell said.
“In the present, he is a genuinely changed man. He’s as good as it gets, Judge,” Farrell said.
Leisenheimer stood up and offered a string of apologies, to his victims’ families, to his wife and to his children and grandchildren. “These situations happened way before some of them were even born. I can only say I apologize. I’m sorry.”
He also thanked the prosecutors in the Massino trial, and the FBI agents involved in the case.
“So are you ready to be sentenced?” Garaufis asked, then told Leisenheimer to stand up.
“Time served, no supervision. ... There’s a $100 special assessment that you must pay,” the judge said. “That’s it.”