FEDS FEAR GERIATRIC GANGSTER
Plea to keep Gambino killer locked up for life
Prosecutors want to keep an aging local gangster locked up for life because a law-enforcement agent is worried the goodfella will seek revenge against G-men if he gets out — but a judge wants to hear from the investigator before he decides.
Former Gambino crime-family associate Mark Reiter, 74, was sent away in 1988 for running one of the city’s biggest heroin-dealing operations and ordering three murders to protect his racket.
During his time behind bars, he was photographed posing as a singer in a mobbed-up mock rock band at California’s Lompoc federal prison, along with the late Colombo family boss Carmine “Junior” Persico, Gambino family hitman Anthony Senter and the late Joseph “J.R.” Russo, a killer for New England’s Patriarca family.
But since that pic was shot in 1990, Reiter has been beset by health problems and now suffers from obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, according to Manhattan federal court papers filed in support of his request for compassionate release.
Prosecutors, however, contend that Reiter — who’s locked up at a low-security federal prison near Allenwood, Pa. — deserves to rot there because of the “nature and circumstances” of his crimes, “which . . . clearly involved serious and extreme violence.”
In addition, Assistant US Attorney Timothy Capozzi wrote, he “was contacted by an agent who assisted with the investigation of Reiter, who expressed serious concern about the possibility of retribution against law enforcement and those who aided them in the defendant’s prosecution should the defendant be released.”
In an order last week, Manhattan federal Judge Vernon Broderick denied Reiter’s request for a hearing with testimony from the unidentified agent but said, “To be clear, I take any possibility of violence against members of law enforcement as a serious issue.”
Broderick then gave prosecutors a Thursday deadline to submit an affidavit identifying the agent and spelling out the “specific concerns about any individuals whom Defendant might harm, and how he might harm them, if Defendant were released,” including “any and all bases for the agent’s concerns.”