LA COSA NO, SIR!
I am NOT my mafioso dad — and lie detector proves it — says son fighting his mob roots and rubout rap
There’s one FBI agent convinced by Steven D. Crea’s denials of any role in a brutal Bronx mob hit and a second Mafia murder plot.
The son of reputed Luchese family underboss Steven L. Crea passed a polygraph exam administered last month by retired FBI veteran Jeremiah Hanafin, best known recently for conducting an August test on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, court documents show.
It was the latest bit of good news for Crea, 46, who was released on $1 million bond in August after a White Plains federal judge rebuked prosecutors in a mob trial due to start this coming March.
Crea “has always maintained his innocence, and the polygraph was administered at the client’s urging,” said defense attorneys Joseph DiBenedetto and Seth Ginsberg in a statement to the Daily News.
The lawyers additionally hope to leverage the test findings into severing his trial from that of his four co-defendants — including his namesake dad, a mob veteran known on the street as “Wonder Boy.” The defense hopes to keep the sins of the father (and his associates) from tainting the son.
“In a multidefendant trial, the government can throw dirt in the air and hope that some of it sticks to everyone,” said the defense lawyers. “We want to ensure that any case against Mr. Crea is based solely on evidence that pertains directly to him.”
Both Creas were charged in the November 2013 execution of Michael Meldish, 62, onetime co-leader of a homicidal crew dubbed the Purple Gang. Meldish was discovered with a bullet to the head inside a parked Lincoln, its driver’s door left open on a Bronx street.
A federal indictment also accused the pair in a plot to whack Bonanno family associate Carl Ulzheimer, allegedly targeted in 2012 for dissing the elder Crea during a Bronx social club encounter. “I’ll remember your face,” the father allegedly warned Ulzheimer.
But according to court papers filed last week, the younger Crea’s polygraph responses were “not indicative of deception” to questions about his involvement in either case.