Luchese underboss’ son: Look at my polygraph
Hanafin, during his 24-year FBI career, performed more than 2,500 polygraph exams for the feds. A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney had no comment on the polygraph test.
The Lucheses are best known as the crime family featured in the Martin Scorsese mob classic “Goodfellas,” with infamous informant Henry Hill played by Ray Liotta. But a May 2017 federal indictment accused 19 members of the family’s current incarnation with racketeering, murder, assault, witness intimidation, robbery and extortion.
The younger Crea awaits his court date while out on bail, an unlikely circumstance for an alleged mob racketeer accused in a high-profile hit and a second murder plot.
After 14 months behind bars, the married father of three — who had no prior criminal charges — was released on Aug. 10 and placed under house arrest in his suburban home after the defense argued the evidence against him was lacking.
His 71-yearold father remains locked up in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center pending his court date.
Court documents portray “Stevie Junior” as a man caught up to some degree in his father’s wor , muc e late Gambino family boss John J. Gotti and his son John A. (Junior) Gotti. Even Crea’s promotion to capo was described as done for “political reasons,” with the son immediately busted back to the rank of soldier.
“There are complex dynami- ics in these cases, these racketeering cases, involving fathers and sons,” said previous Crea lawyer Mark Fernich. There’s a diffent set of expectations these families. . . . And look, there’s a stigma that comes with that name. It happened with (Junior) Gotti." . White Plains Federal Judge Cathy Siebel approved the August release agreement after pointedly telling prosecutors their evidence against the mob scion was not as solid as promised. “It would be an understatement to say that I am disappointed on how this has played out on the government’s part,” she said. “Their case for detention is certainly weaker than I was led to believe.”
Siebel disparaged cooperating government witness Frank Pasqua as “tarnished” and truth-challenged, noting that he had previously blamed the Meldish murder on his own father. And she had previously suggested that prosecutors needed to link Crea to the crimes rather than just to the crime family.
The defendant didn’t rise to the rank of Mafia capo “without understanding what mobsters do,” Siebel said at a January 2018 hearing. “But your status as a mobster is not enough to detain you on grounds of dangerousness.”
Her words were reason for optimism in the younger Crea’s camp. “In our view, the court’s comments reflect the inescapable conclusion that the government’s case against Mr. Crea is weak,” the two lawyers said.