Paduano Associates Paint Vivid Picture of Crimes in Transcript

Some of Robert Paduano’s closest associates, including two former girlfriends, alleged before the Orange County Grand Jury that Paduano engaged in a life style involving drug-dealing, extortion and intimidation, leading to the mammoth indictment against him, according to transcripts made public Tuesday.

The testimony, which includes more than 40 witnesses and covers about 1,500 pages, paints a picture of a drug operation in which dealers carried beepers for quick response to their customers, and contains a boast by one Paduano associate that his people had been given permission by “the California godfather” to take over drug operations in Orange County.

Paduano, 44, who was under intense investigation by the Orange County district attorney’s office as late as last summer, is scheduled to go on trial next month on 71 counts of robbery, burglary and extortion.

While much of the case against him was made public during a two-week preliminary hearing, which ended Monday, the grand jury transcripts provide a detailed account of the life styles of many of Paduano’s associates, who have since turned on him in cooperation with prosecutors.

The transcripts were scheduled to be sealed until next week. But Superior Court Judge Myron S. Brown granted a request by The Times to make them public Tuesday after a dispute over the amount of time the public must wait to view transcripts of grand jury proceedings.

The transcripts showed that several witnesses appeared before the grand jury a second time, after boldly lying to the jurors their first time around.

For example, Marilyn DeFalco, an admitted drug dealer, told the jurors that she lied to them the first time because “I was scared of Bob,” meaning Paduano.

James Milsap, who admitted being heavily involved with cocaine, told the grand jury in his second appearance in January that Paduano had told him to start buying his drugs from DeFalco. But in his first appearance last October, Milsap told the grand jury that he never talked with Paduano about drugs, that Paduano only wanted him to provide counseling for his son, Anthony Paduano.

Milsap said he was changing his testimony because his discussion with investigators after his arrest on a drug-related charge “led me to believe I was protecting the wrong people.”

Milsap said that he had tried to get out of the cocaine subculture but felt he had been “sucked back in” after a series of robberies involving people he knew.

Prosecutors allege that Paduano would mastermind robberies of independent drug dealers in an effort to either extort money from them for protection, or to get them to deal drugs for him.

A key grand jury witness who was not called by prosecutors at Paduano’s preliminary hearing was one of his former girlfriends, Dierdre O’Shea.

Three of Paduano’s four children, who were in Municipal Court in Westminster every day of his preliminary hearing, claim that O’Shea’s vindictiveness against their father is a key to the district attorney’s investigation of his activities.

Prosecutors have said that O’Shea is only one of several important witnesses. But the grand jury transcripts show that O’Shea makes numerous damning statements about Paduano.

For example, when drug dealer Eric Mendel’s Newport Beach house was robbed, Milsap, his close friend, said he should contact O’Shea to see if she knew anything about it.

O’Shea told the grand jury that Paduano not only showed her the jewelry taken from the Mendel robbery, he told her to tell Mendel that “they were either going to purchase it (cocaine) from Mr. Paduano’s source, or if they got it from another source, they were going to pay (Paduano) 10% of the gross per week.”

O’Shea this week told The Times that she is in fear for her life because of her cooperation with law enforcement authorities.

One of the more controversial figures to testify before the grand jury was George Yudzevich, a New York mob informant slain in Irvine two weeks ago. Yudzevich, known as Big George, was important to Orange County prosecutors, primarily to show a connection between Paduano and a group known by both law enforcement officials and Paduano associates as “the Samoans.”

The grand jury transcripts show, however, that Yudzevich claimed to know nothing about what the Samoans did for Paduano.

Three of them, Johnny Mattua, Matthew Tia, and his brother, Rodney Tia, are all in state prison on robbery convictions. The Tias testified before the grand jury and at the preliminary hearing that they had pulled off several robberies of reputed drug dealers on Paduano’s orders.

The fourth in the group, Rod Leota, testified that he would make collections for Paduano, and on his boss’s orders would intimidate clients who owed Paduano money.

“He (Paduano) told me, when I have a conversation with one of these clients, make sure that I let them know that I’m there for business, and I don’t want to come back . . . that there would be a little hostility the next time that I do visit them,” Leota testified.

At one point, Leota said Paduano told him that he might have to “rough him up a little,” referring to a Palm Springs man.

Rodney Tia, who admitted participating in the DeFalco robbery and a robbery of two brothers, Kiki and Vinnie St. John, was asked by Deputy Dist. Atty. Wallace J. Wade if Paduano told him why he wanted them robbed.

“Because Bob said that they think they’re too smart and ‘nobody ain’t going to deal in my neighborhood. If they’re going to deal, they’re going to deal with us.’ ”

One of the more colorful witnesses to appear either before the grand jury or at Paduano’s preliminary hearing was Dino Sogluizzo, a close friend who is very loyal to Paduano.

Sogluizzo said outside the courtroom at the preliminary hearing that prosecutors were trying to turn “chicken manure into chicken soup.”

Sogluizzo denied that Paduano was involved in any criminal activity, and also directly contradicted statements by the Tia brothers about conversations that they had with Paduano when Sogluizzo was present.

But Debra Joe Kelleher, who said she met Sogluizzo at a Newport Beach nightclub, told the grand jury that Sogluizzo boasted to her about criminal activities he was involved in with a friend named “Bob” and that he even told her that the “California godfather,” who wasn’t named, had given them authorization to take over not only drugs, but prostitution and gambling in Orange County.

Kelleher testified that Sogluizzo also showed her a gun he was carrying inside his pant leg, and that he told her he was actually carrying three guns.

Sogluizzo denied making such statements to Kelleher. He was asked by prosecutor Wade if he had any idea why he had been called before the grand jury. Sogluizzo’s answer: “That’s part of being Italian--you expect this kind of thing.”