Posted: Friday, 20 February 2009 10:44AM
Keep Connecting The Dots
Steve Corbett Reporting
Friday, February 20, 2009
Big and bad, Billy D’Elia stood in the hallway of the government building in Harrisburg and flashed that wiseguy grin that he wore like a shiny double-breasted suit.
After being introduced by his lawyer, the late great Luzerne County Democrat Charlie Gelso, I shook D’Elia’s hand and made quick small talk. He said little before heading into the hearing room where he took the witness stand and swore to tell the truth.
But D’Elia didn’t tell the Pennsylvania Crime Commission squat.
He refused to answer questions on the grounds that it might incriminate him. That was many years ago and my memory of that day is cloudy. The worry for many people nowadays, though, is that D’Elia’s mind remains sharp
The reputed head of the Bufalino Mafia family is singing like the canary in the coal mine, warning us about the evil that walks among us.
After pleading guilty to money laundering and witness tampering charges, D’Elia remains in federal custody. A judge slapped him with a nine year prison sentence but he can have time reduced if his co-operation pays off. And D’Elia will likely do whatever it takes to turn that high stakes gamble golden.
Now there’s talk about a link between D’Elia and the two gangster judges who last week pleaded guilty to public corruption charges and are headed to prison. Former Luzerne County president judges Mark Ciavarella and Mike Conahan admitted that they stole millions in kickbacks in connection with a juvenile justice scam.
Now published reports allege that D’Elia had some serious connections and that the judges might have fixed at least one case linked to D’Elia. Conahan’s first cousin, William Sharkey, is also implicated in the alleged case rigging.
Sharkey pleaded guilty to his own public corruption this week and is headed to prison.
As hard as it might be to believe, this caper could get uglier.
D’Elia’s connections not only ran deep throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania but throughout the Northeastern United States as well.
I sat in a federal courtroom in Philadelphia some years ago and listened to a former Philly mob-boss-turned-rat detail D’Elia’s importance to crime families in New York. Wiseguy “Skinny Joey” Merlino sat in the court that day as a defendant and later went to prison .
Merlino was no stranger to Northeastern Pennsylvania either, having attended at least one meeting with D’Elia at a local hotel.
When Merlino went to jail, D’Elia went back to leaning on the Pittston parking meters in the hot summer sun while he hustled deals and continued to make connections. Those connections now shape cases against several people.
D’Elia has co-operated with state and federal prosecutors.
He appeared before a Dauphin County grand jury looking into whether Dunmore money man Louis DeNaples lied when he told state gaming officials that he had no links to organized crime when he was applying for the state’s first gambling casino license – a license he received.
DeNaples is now banned from setting foot on his own property while awaiting the outcome of perjury charges.
D’Elia also cooperated in the case against DeNaples buddy and Roman Catholic priest Joseph Sica who also faces a perjury rap for alleged lying about his own organized crime relationships.
Sica appeared on “Corbett” last year and made statements that seem different enough from those he offered the grand jury that state prosecutors have included the interview in the case against him.
And D’Elia has also reportedly co-operated against Bob Kulick, who is in federal custody after pleading guilty to threatening an employee with a gun – a weapon he was banned from possessing because he had previously served federal time in a long ago case.
I ran into Kulick last year in a Scranton Chinese restaurant and we talked briefly about how well his life had been going. We also touched on D’Elia, whom Kulick described as a lifelong friend, DeNaples and other players in this crime drama.
Kulick even explained a plan the feds could use to connect D’Elia and DeNaples.
Then he got busted.
Prosecutors must continue to connect all the players and purge the depth of their relationships with each other.
D’Elia didn’t look too tough when I last saw him in federal court. He dabbed at his eyes with a hankie and blew a kiss to his family – his real family – before disappearing behind a heavy courtroom door.
He had a lot more to say than the last time I saw him in court.
Let’s hope he bares his soul and keeps talking. Like the canary in the coal mine that breathes the poison gas and croaks alerting the miners to a death threat, D’Elia might alert us to an equally toxic menace – the peril of public corruption, a plague that kills the public trust.
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Corbett
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