Witness says Gioeli tied to 4 mob killings

A one-time neighbor and member of the crew of alleged Colombo family leader Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli of Farmingdale on Monday tied his ex-boss to four murders and testified that he was intimately involved in the details of the slayings, from body disposal to advice on the best way to put a target down.

"Tommy always told us to shoot in the body first and then move up," informant Dino Calabro, 45, formerly of Farmingdale and Wantagh, told jurors in Gioeli's Brooklyn federal court murder and racketeering trial.

Gioeli, 59, an alleged former capo and acting boss, is accused of involvement in six murders during the 1990s -- including the killing of a cop -- while running a hit squad that also committed a string of stickups, burglaries, trailer heists and other crimes on Long Island and Brooklyn. He and co-defendant Dino Saracino face life in prison.

Calabro, a former family friend who toasted Gioeli on a wedding video shown to jurors and said the two once shared vacations and late-night coffees at home, said he joined Gioeli's crew in the late 1980s and hoped to become a made man.

"He had the power to get me in," said Calabro, who admitted to eight murders himself.

In 1991, he said, Gioeli okayed the killing of Frank "Chestnut" Marasa, a mobster tied to the Bonanno family who was suspected of killing a Colombo associate. "Tommy said it's an eye for an eye," Calabro said, and Gioeli worked out the details of an ambush.

"We talked to him about how to commit the murder, how it was to be done and who was going to be the shooter," Calabro testified. "He said to see if [the slain Colombo associate's] brother wanted to participate. He told us you have to have two shooters, a driver, a getaway car and a backup car, a crash car."

The 1992 killings near a social club in North Massapequa of alleged Colombo soldier John Minerva and bystander Michael Imbergamo, Calabro testified, resulted from an internal family war in which Gioeli sent his crew out on the streets of Long Island to hunt down members of a rival faction.

"Tommy said we were at war," Calabro testified. "We were needed to drive around with guns. Our orders were shoot to kill on sight if we saw any members of the opposing faction."

In 1995, Calabro said, Gioeli turned his attention to Richard Greaves, a member of his own crew accused of being an informant.

Greaves was lured to a Brooklyn basement and shot in the head while Gioeli watched, then driven out to Long Island and -- while Gioeli waited at an Amityville bowling alley -- buried at an industrial site in Farmingdale under a layer of lime.

"That was to keep it from smelling," Calabro said.