Melodrama Behind O.C. Murder Attempt Will Unfold in Court

The shooting of financier C. William Carroll, blinded and left for dead in a Costa Mesa parking garage two years ago, might seem like something out of a Hollywood movie.

But the story will soon be played out in a Santa Ana courtroom when Michael Anthony Rizzitello, 62, and Joseph Angeleno Grosso, 46, go on trial for attempted murder. A judge is scheduled to select a courtroom for the case on Thursday.

There will eventually be testimony about racketeers, topless bars and the use of mob muscle. Who would ever think these would turn up as elements of a trial in suburban Orange County? quipped one person involved in it all.

“We’re going to concentrate on the facts about who shot Mr. Carroll and why,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans. “If the M-word ( mob ) comes up much, it will come from the defense.”

But Evans admits that the Carroll shooting is part of a larger melodrama.

And Rizzitello--Mike Rizzi to his friends--is the central figure.

Identified as a captain in the Milano organized-crime family in Los Angeles, according to court papers quoting the state attorney general’s office, Rizzitello has been a frequent subject of racketeering investigations. Though he has a long history of convictions for robbery, kidnaping and racketeering, he has been acquitted in Los Angeles twice in recent years on charges stemming from investigations by organized-crime prosecutors.

In May, 1977, Time magazine had reported that Rizzitello was “rising quickly in influence and power” in the Milano family.

And in the 1981 best-seller “The Last Mafioso,” ex-mobster Jimmy Fratianno claimed that Rizzitello was a gunman for the Joey Gallo crime family in Brooklyn but later joined the Milano family. Fratianno claims that the two became close soon after Rizzitello told him he had “clipped”--killed--someone for $50,000.

Prosecutors say Rizzitello tried to kill Carroll on April 1, 1987--as the victim sat in his car with the two defendants--because he wanted to take over control of the Mustang bar in Santa Ana. Carroll, the bar’s major investor, was just “an obstacle” to be eliminated, prosecutors claim in their court papers opposing the two defendants’ bail.

In the same documents, prosecu tors state that Rizzitello saw the Mustang “as a high-stakes skimming operation, which would provide him a high level of illegally obtained income.”

Carroll, 57, who also has a criminal record, was shot three times in the head, one bullet destroying his optic nerve. For 18 months, he refused to say who had shot him. He finally talked to authorities a few days after bank fraud charges against him resulted in a misdemeanor conviction with no jail time.

Carroll testified at subsequent preliminary hearings that he had delayed naming his assailants because of threats against him and his family. Also, he said, if he testified against Rizzitello and then went to jail on the bank fraud case, “I could certainly envision myself not coming out of the County Jail alive.”

Carroll testified that Rizzitello had threatened him through emissaries with the message: “It ends here; live or die.”

Carroll has testified that Rizzitello shot him, while Grosso, who had driven the car, grabbed his leg to hold him down.

But Rizzitello attorney Anthony P. Brooklier of Anaheim, who has represented Rizzitello in other cases, says law enforcement agencies may be using the Carroll case simply because they’ve been after his client a long time.

To prove his client’s innocence, Brooklier has indicated in his court papers that he might need to show a jury the wider history of the trouble-plagued Mustang bar, which has since closed after being damaged in a fire attributed to arson.

The Mustang’s opening on Harbor Boulevard in 1982 was controversial because topless female dancers had been taboo in Orange County. Santa Ana city officials lost in a bid to shut the Mustang’s doors when the bar’s owners convinced the courts that it was “theater.”

But the club’s operation came under intense police investigation after the shooting death of its manager and part-owner, Jimmy Lee Casino, at his Buena Park home on New Year’s Day, 1987.

Brooklier has produced police records that identify Carroll as a suspect in the Casino shooting. Carroll had loaned Casino nearly $250,000 to get the club going. One report even called Carroll a “primary” suspect. Another stated that Carroll was basically a loan shark “who uses heavy muscle to back up his loans.”

Brooklier has speculated in court papers that prosecutors “gave Carroll a pass” on the Casino murder if he would help them nail Rizzitello, a much bigger catch. Prosecutor Evans says that theory is so “utterly ridiculous” he believes that Brooklier will not even bring it up at the trial.

“Does anybody believe that we would trade in a murder for an attempted murder?” Evans scoffed. The prosecutor says Carroll was never a serious suspect in the Casino shooting.

After Casino’s death, Carroll took control of the Mustang until the other owners could pay off the loans Carroll had made to Casino. Carroll says that’s when Rizzitello entered the picture.

Carroll had known Rizzitello in prison at Chino in 1970. Carroll was serving time for grand theft; Rizzitello for robbery and kidnaping.

Ironically, their meeting 17 years later was arranged in part by Robert (Fat Bobby) Paduano, who is now in Orange County Jail awaiting trial on charges that he used muscle tactics in an attempt to take over drug trafficking in Newport Beach.

Carroll has testified that Rizzitello wanted him to buy an interest in some Levi blue jeans he had stockpiled. Carroll turned him down, he claimed, but reluctantly agreed to loan Rizzitello $10,000 to help him supply lingerie for a clothing business in the San Fernando Valley.

Carroll said he paid the money, in cash, under these arrangements: The lingerie would be sold to dancers at the Mustang, and Carroll would receive his money back through the sales.

Grosso, a Costa Mesa limousine service owner who hung out at the Mustang, would control the sales. But in March, 1987, Carroll got upset with Grosso and Big George Yudzevich, a Mustang bouncer with his own ties to organized crime in New York. Carroll said he was upset not only because he was not getting repaid, but also because Grosso and Yudzevich were dealing cocaine out of the club.

Carroll fired Yudzevich and ordered Grosso out of the club. A few days later, Carroll testified, someone shot at his car as he drove on Harbor Boulevard.

On March 30, 1987, Carroll has testified, he met with Grosso and Rizzitello at Emilia’s, an Italian restaurant in Santa Ana, at Rizzitello’s request. Prosecutors have indicated that the dinner could have been a ruse, that Rizzitello had already decided that he could not control the Mustang with Carroll around.

Carroll’s testimony is that after the dinner, the three drove to a parking garage in Costa Mesa, where Carroll thought he was dropping them off. But Carroll said Rizzitello--seated behind him--grabbed him around the neck and pointed a gun with a silencer at his head.

“This is for not letting us eat,” Carroll claims Rizzitello told him.

Other events followed the Carroll shooting:

* Ashort time afterward, Rizzitello was sent to Terminal Island for a parole violation.

* Carroll says he received a telephone call a few months after the shooting from Yudzevich, who apologetically admitted that he had helped Rizzitello and Grosso by burying their bloody clothes and getting rid of the gun and silencer.

* On March 12, 1988, Yudzevich was found fatally shot in an industrial parking lot in Irvine. At the time, he had been testifying against organized-crime figures in the East. Rizzitello has not been charged with his murder.

But in court papers, prosecutors say that his death fit the same pattern as the Carroll shooting and that it came just 10 days after Rizzitello’s release from Terminal Island.

Casino, Yudzevich and Carroll were all shot three times in the head.

But at one of the preliminary hearings in the case, prosecutor Evans chillingly suggested that the records be made clear in case Carroll “becomes unavailable, the same as Casino and Yudzevich.”

Lawyers for the two defendants in the Carroll case contend that Carroll must have gotten a deal in his bank fraud case in exchange for turning in their clients. Evans and Carroll both call that assertion absurd. The only connection, Carroll said, was that once he was certain he would not go to jail--where he thought he would be killed--he was more willing to risk threats against his life.

The case against Rizzitello and Grosso could boil down to whether jurors believe Carroll’s testimony. But prosecutors have hinted in court papers that they have other evidence to show Rizzitello’s obsession with controlling the Mustang. Evans has declined to discuss what that might be.

Also important to the case could be Grosso’s own statements.

After the shooting, Grosso blamed everything on Yudzevich in interviews with The Times and police authorities. Grosso said his pager went off, and when he went to a pay phone, Yudzevich shot Carroll when the two were left alone in the car.

Grosso’s attorney, Michael T. Kenney, was so upset about Grosso’s statements he abruptly left the case earlier this year, citing Grosso’s refusal to cooperate with him.

He was replaced by William Yacobozzi Jr. of Newport Beach, who has already produced in court papers an interesting theory for his client’s behavior in the car that night: that Grosso was so shocked when Rizzitello opened fire he may have grabbed Carroll’s leg in a mad scramble to get out of the car himself.

But Yacobozzi’s problem is he is stuck with Grosso’s story that Yudzevich did it.

While the courts have already refused to grant the two separate trials, Yacobozzi claims a separate trial could be his client’s only chance.

Rizzitello’s links to organized crime will somehow have to be a factor in the case, Yacobozzi claims, adding that presents for his client “clearly the great potential for conviction due to guilt by association.”

Some involved in the case believe that Rizzitello wants a joint trial because his best hope is for Grosso to clear him of any involvement.

Brooklier on Monday declined to discuss the case, except to say, “Just say Mr. Rizzitello is an innocent man.”

Yacobozzi said Monday that it appears almost certain now there will be no more trial delays.

“It’s clearly going to be an interesting trial,” Yacobozzi said. “It’s not going to be your everyday Orange County trial.”

KEY FIGURES IN TRIAL

Michael Anthony Rizzitello, 62, of Los Angeles owns a wholesale clothing business.

He has served time in state and federal prison for a variety of crimes since 1947, most recently racketeering. He is featured prominently in the book “The Last Mafioso” by Jimmy (The Weasel) Fratianno. Rizzitello is considered by some organized-crime experts to be the heir-apparent to Los Angeles’ organized-crime family. Rizzitello is charged with shooting William Carroll in the head three times shortly after midnight on May 1, 1978, because Carroll wouldn’t relinquish control of the now-defunct Mustang bar in Santa Ana.

Joseph Angelo Grosso, 46, of Costa Mesa owns Diplomat Limousine Service in Newport Beach and New York.

Grosso is awaiting trial on charges that he and George Yudzevich bilked investors and Las Vegas and Atlantic City gamblers in a casino money-laundering scheme. That case hurt the limousine business, and Grosso became William Carroll’s driver. He is charged with attempting to murder Carroll by preventing Carroll from squirming as he was shot by Rizzitello.

C. William Carroll, 57, formerly of Buena Park, is a protected witness and his whereabouts are undisclosed.

Carroll held a substantial financial interest in the Mustang bar, where some considered him the “controller.” Carroll is said by prosecutors to support himself off high-interest loans he grants. Carroll was sentenced in 1970 to the state prison at Chino for fraud involving rental equipment. He was charged in 1984 with 10 felony counts for allegedly conspiring with the then-branch manager to bilk $500,000 in fraudulent loans from the American State Bank in Orange. The major charges against him were dismissed a few days before he blamed Rizzitello and Grosso for shooting him. He remains blinded by that attack.