Yudzevich Reportedly Boasted of Role in 1987 Shooting

In the days before his gangland-style slaying last weekend in Irvine, mob informant George Peter Yudzevich boasted to two associates about his role in last year’s shooting of an investor in a Santa Ana topless club, a source familiar with the case said Wednesday.

The 6-foot, 7-inch, 383-pound Yudzevich, 46, had been a bouncer at the Mustang, the topless club destroyed in a suspicious fire on Christmas Day, 1987. The source, recalling a conversation with one of Yudzevich’s former associates, said the slain mob informant told the associates two weeks ago that he had disposed of the gun and silencer used to shoot the investor.

Mustang investor William C. Carroll, shot three times in the head in a Costa Mesa parking garage May 1, was left blinded but has refused to cooperate with Costa Mesa police officers investigating the shooting.

Yudzevich, also known as “Big George,” told the associates that he also disposed of the assailant’s bloody clothing following the attack, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Big George was flapping his mouth off,” the source said.

Carroll, whose whereabouts are unknown, could not be reached for comment, and authorities investigating the Yudzevich and Carroll shootings on Wednesday disclaimed any knowledge of Yudzevich’s reported boasts. But the disclosure focused renewed attention on the Mustang club and a number of violent incidents connected with it over the past 14 months.

On Jan. 1, 1987, the club’s owner, Jimmy Lee Casino, 48, was fatally shot three times in the head by intruders who broke into his Buena Park condominium. The intruders left his 22-year-old girlfriend tied up.

Last Christmas Day, an arsonist torched the club at 605 S. Harbor Blvd., causing an estimated $700,000 in damage. On Jan. 16, arsonists struck again, causing another $100,000 in damage to the fire-gutted bar. The club has not been reopened.

On Wednesday, Irvine police said they were looking into similarities between Yudzevich’s slaying and the gun attacks on Carroll and Casino. All three men were shot in the head. All three cases remain unsolved.

“We are obviously looking into ties with the Mustang club,” Irvine Police Lt. Michael White said.

White said Irvine investigators have consulted with other agencies investigating the crimes relating to the Mustang club. The agencies include the Costa Mesa and Buena Park police departments, as well as the arson division of the Santa Ana Fire Department, which is prosecuting a suspect in the second arson blaze at the club.

“We figure there’s some connection” between the Yudzevich case and the slaying of Casino,” Buena Park Police Sgt. Charles Russell said Wednesday. He said his department, working in conjunction with the Orange County district attorney’s office, had exhausted all leads in the Casino case before Yudzevich was killed.

The Carroll and Yudzevich shootings bear striking similarities. In the case of Carroll, he was shot while apparently meeting with someone he knew in the parking garage, said Costa Mesa Police Detective Sam Zorski. Yudzevich, too, was shot after driving to an apparent rendezvous, White said.

Carroll was sitting inside his car when he was shot at close range, apparently by someone he knew who also was seated in his car, Zorski said. Yudzevich, too, was seated in a black Lincoln in the parking lot of a high-technology firm when he was shot at close range Saturday, possibly by someone he knew, White said.

“The way he was killed, it looked like somebody had to either walk up or drive up,” White said Wednesday as he released some new details about the shooting.

The mortally wounded Yudzevich, shot “at least” three times in the head from a .22-caliber handgun, was able to get out of his vehicle and stagger to the rear of the car, where he collapsed and died, White said.

Zorski said he and an Irvine police investigator on the Yudzevich case compared notes while attending an unrelated police seminar Wednesday. Zorski noted that many of the names associated with the Yudzevich case are the same names associated with the Carroll case.

And, Zorski added, “it all keeps coming back to the Mustang club.”

Carroll and his friend, Yvonne Hines, had loaned about $200,000 to help start up the Mustang in 1983, according to court records. Carroll and Hines filed suit to get the money back and were repaid in a court settlement.

Yudzevich was a bouncer who provided “protection” from other mobsters at the Mustang club, said the source who related Yudzevich’s boasts.

“He wasn’t a biggie in the club,” the source said. “He was just Big George.”

Yudzevich also earned a living collecting debts owed casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, police have said. And he played a bit mobster role in the 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.

In recent months, Yudzevich testified in organized crime investigations on both coasts. In Orange County, he played what prosecutors described as a minor role in the county grand jury investigation last fall of alleged underworld figure Robert G. (Fat Bobby) Paduano of Newport Beach, who was indicted last month on extortion, assault and robbery charges.

In October, Yudzevich was a key witness in the racketeering trial of members of the New York City-based Gambino organized crime family. Yudzevich’s four days of testimony in a Brooklyn courtroom helped convict the mob figures on 10-year prison terms. Yudzevich, who had been a federal informant since 1980 and had been given protection by federal authorities at times before and during the trial, had rejected placement in the federal witness protection program, federal officials have said.

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

Yudzevich was arrested in 1986 along with Joe Grosso, 44, and Gregory Moeller, 38, by Newport Beach police, who have alleged that they told investors they would make handsome profits on a scheme to launder 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.