Yudzevich Labeled a Street-Wise Thug as Story Unfolds

Slain mob informant and one-time movie extra George Peter Yudzevich, a key witness last fall against members of the New York City-based Gambino organized crime family, rejected placement in the federal witness-protection program, federal authorities said Tuesday.

Yudzevich spent more than four days telling a Brooklyn jury in October how he and two Gambino family members extorted thousands of dollars from a Manhattan businessman. His testimony led to convictions and 10-year prison terms for the mob figures.

But prosecutors and defense lawyers said they doubted that Yudzevich’s execution-style slaying in Irvine on Saturday was connected to the New York case, although he did refuse the federal witness-protection program, in which he participated at times while he testified in the mob trial.

“We sponsored him for the program, and even went so far as to prepare the necessary paper work, but for his own reasons he chose not to enter the program,” Edward McDonald, head of the Brooklyn-based Organized Crime Strike Force, told the Associated Press in New York.

Meanwhile, Irvine police remained tight-lipped about the Yudzevich murder investigation Tuesday, declining even to release information from the autopsy. So far, police have said only that he was shot “at least three times” in the head and that his body was dumped in a parking lot for the corporate offices of Three D Departments Inc. in a high-technology office and light industrial complex. A late-model black Lincoln was found in the parking lot.

At 46, Yudzevich, also known as “Big George,” was described as a thug who knew nothing but the streets. He once worked at the now defunct Mustang Theatre in Santa Ana, whose owner, Jimmy Lee Casino, was slain 14 months ago. He also played what prosecutors described as a minor role in the Orange County Grand Jury investigation of alleged underworld figure Robert G. (Fat Bobby) Paduano of Newport Beach, who was indicted last month on extortion, assault and robbery charges in Orange County.

In October, Yudzevich surprised people in a Brooklyn courtroom during the racketeering trial by disclosing that he had appeared in director John Cassavetes’ highly acclaimed 1980 film, “Gloria,” a movie about a mob moll who takes a Puerto Rican youth under her wing after his family is massacred by gangsters. Yudzevich said Cassavetes hired him to play a mobster, and his name appears in the credits in the role of “Heavy-Set Man.”

More recently, Yudzevich was awaiting an Orange County Municipal Court ruling on whether he and two co-defendants would stand trial on charges that they bilked Orange County investors out of $350,000 in a fraudulent money-laundering scam, then allegedly threatened disgruntled investors.

But his testimony in the New York trials was praised Tuesday by federal prosecutors.

“He appeared candid and was an excellent witness,” said Douglas E. Grover, a senior special attorney with the federal Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn.

In a series of four trials beginning two years ago, 16 organized crime figures were convicted. Yudzevich testified in the last trial, which ended Dec. 22 in the convictions of Joseph Armone, 70, reputed under-boss of the Gambino family; Joseph N. Gallo, 76, a longtime counselor; Anthony Vitta, a captain in the crime organization, and Salvatore Migliorisi, an associate.

According to a law enforcement source close to the case, Yudzevich was in and out of federal witness-protection programs during the seven years he actively cooperated with federal authorities. The fact that he lived in Orange County was disclosed at the trial.

“We tried during the trial to keep his location a secret. He was not in the (witness protection and relocation) program because he refused,” according to an informed federal source.

“He was a street guy; he lived and died by the street. Even though we told him not to get involved in anything (in California), that was the only thing he knew,” the

source said.

Yudzevich’s testimony was primarily against Migliorisi and Vitta, and did not incriminate the two alleged organized crime chieftains. Grover said he doubted any connection between Yudzevich’s testimony and his slaying but declined to elaborate. Vitta’s defense lawyer, Richard A. Rehbock, said that four civilian witnesses also testified against his client, and that each lives in the New York area without receiving any threats or the need to hide.

In the New York case, Yudzevich testified how he and two partners extorted money from a Manhattan businessman who ran a color photo-processing laboratory.

Vitta threatened the owner with physical harm or union trouble unless he and Migliorisi were put on the payroll. Yudzevich, standing 6 feet, 7 inches and weighing 360 pounds, said little but was an imposing and intimidating presence during the meeting, according to court testimony.

At one point, Vitta picked up an ashtray at the restaurant where the meeting took place and threatened to “shove it down” the throat of the business owner unless he complied.

Vitta’s appeal, following his sentence of 10 years in prison last month, will focus on Yudzevich’s role in the case, according to Rehbock.

Federal prosecutors did not disclose the state charges pending against Yudzevich in Orange County, Rehbock said. They were discovered in a search of newspaper articles, according to the lawyer.

Yudzevich, Joe Grosso, 44, and Gregory Moeller, 38, were arrested by Newport Beach police in 1986. Police alleged that the three had bilked Orange County investors out of about $350,000 in a scam that was to have involved laundering mob money through casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. A preliminary hearing in the case concluded last week and the judge’s ruling is pending on whether there is sufficient evidence to try the remaining two defendants.

“The government is required under federal law to provide us with all information which they have which would go to this man’s credibility. Yet the government did everything in its power to cover it up,” Rehbock said.

In 1985, officials said Yudzevich and Grosso were the subjects of an investigation by the U. S. Labor Department’s racketeering-operations section.

“We had an interest in the two at one time,” said David Coffman, former special agent in charge of western operations for the Labor Department. Coffman declined further comment.

The extent and timing of Yudzevich’s involvement in federal programs to protect witnesses endangered by their cooperation with authorities in criminal cases was unclear Tuesday.

Yudzevich’s co-defendant, Grosso, told The Times Monday that Yudzevich scorned protection. Grosso said he found it “mind-boggling” that his associate wouldn’t seek permanent protection after testifying against “known killers.”

Grover, the New York strike-force attorney, said he was “not in a position to discuss where or how, or whether he was maintained” as an protected informant.

Yudzevich testified in New York last fall that after his involvement with the Gambino investigation became known in late 1985, he was moved to California for protection by the FBI, Rehbock said. But relocation did not involve a new identity.

“He said he was living under his own name, that he didn’t go through the name change and all that,” Rehbock said.

Yudzevich was paid as a federal informant, but he declined to join the formal witness-protection program that would have provided him with a new identity, and presumably a start in a new life, according to a federal source familiar with the case.

And the man who first began to cooperate with authorities because he felt he had been shortchanged by the Gambino organization eventually declined protection because “he thought he was smarter than them,” according to the source.

“I think George was involved in a lot more stuff in California than anybody knew,” the source added.

Yudzevich was married and had two children.

Times staff writer Lonn Johnston contributed to this story.