4 Seized in Bookmaking Crackdown Plead Guilty

Four of 20 suspects arrested last October in what authorities termed a crackdown on Mafia efforts to muscle in on bookmaking operations in Southern California each pleaded guilty or no contest Tuesday to bookmaking charges.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert P. O’Neill said he was satisfied with the plea bargains--in which additional bookmaking counts were dropped--because the defendants were among “the ones the takeover was aimed at,” rather than the Mafia targets of the crackdown.

Defendants Eugene Holden, 58, of Pacific Palisades and Morton Goodman, 48, of Calabasas, will be sentenced May 7 in Los Angeles Superior Court. Holden pleaded no contest to one of three felony counts of bookmaking and Goodman pleaded no contest to two of seven counts, according to the court clerk.

Fined $250 each on one count of misdemeanor bookmaking by Los Angeles Municipal Judge Xenophon Lang were Arnold Wesley, 54, of Los Angeles and Manuel Gould, 68, of Sherman Oaks, who both pleaded guilty. San Fernando Valley resident Barbara Mitnick, 45, who was arrested when Goodman was arrested a second time last November, pleaded no contest to one count of misdemeanor bookmaking and was fined $250.

None of the five defendants had extensive criminal records, O’Neill said.

At the time of the October raids at 22 locations in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside and Ventura counties, Police Chief Daryl F. Gates called the mob operation part of the largest attempt in his memory to create an organized crime base in Southern California.

The arrests, he said, had put a significant dent in the efforts of organized crime associates from Chicago and East Coast families to become established in the Southland.

Only 12 Charged

Since then, however, only 12 of the suspects have been charged because enough evidence was not found to prosecute the eight others, O’Neill said. Those not charged included Peter John Milano, 59, of Thousand Oaks, who has been identified by police as the chief of organized crime in the Southland, and Chris Petti, 57, of San Diego, an alleged associate of Anthony (Tony the Ant) Spilotro, the suspected overseer of the Chicago crime syndicate’s interests in Las Vegas.

Five other defendants, including John Demattio, 47, of Encino, who is believed to have run bookmaking operations for Milano, and Robert Benjamin, 53, of Anaheim, whom detectives identified as a go-between for Demattio in Los Angeles and Petti in San Diego, face preliminary hearings next week.

Defendant John Anzalone, 52, of Burbank, is scheduled for sentencing May 6 on one count of bookmaking, O’Neill said.

According to O’Neill, the defendants who entered pleas Tuesday are not expected to testify at any forthcoming trials. O’Neill added, however, that the plea bargains were endorsed by Los Angeles police authorities, who had staged the raids.

Although several suspects were not charged, O’Neill said, the arrests had resulted in “the attempted takeover of bookmakers down here (being) squashed.”