Rizzitello’s Case May Go to Jury Today : Trial: Both sides hammer away in closing arguments, with the defense contending that a murdered Mustang Bar bouncer, George Yudzevich, shot William Carroll.

William Carroll, the major investor in the now-defunct Mustang topless bar, had no reason to lie when he accused Michael Anthony Rizzitello of shooting him three times in the head, leaving him permanently blind, a prosecutor told jurors Monday.

In closing arguments at Rizzitello’s trial on attempted murder charges, Deputy Dist. Atty. Christopher J. Evans contended that Carroll kept quiet for 18 months after the shooting “because he was scared.”

“He’s afraid from the get-go,” Evans said. “You gotta presume that they are going to come finish you off.”

Carroll, 57, was found in a pool of blood shortly after midnight on May 1, 1987, in an empty parking garage near the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa. He refused to tell investigators who shot him until Oct. 6, 1988, when bank-fraud charges against him were reduced to a misdemeanor with no jail time, fine or probation.

Carroll said that the gunman had been Rizzitello, a reputed Los Angeles racketeer with a long record of arrests and convictions, and that Joey Grosso had held him down while the shots were fired. Grosso was convicted last year in the shooting.

Carroll told investigators that he had initially kept silent because he feared that if he had been incarcerated in the bank-fraud case, Rizzitello would have had him killed in Orange County Jail.

But in his arguments to the jury, Rizzitello’s attorney contended that Carroll kept quiet about the shooting until he could make a deal with prosecutors--naming Rizzitello in return for leniency in the fraud case.

“Was there a deal made?” defense attorney Anthony P. Brooklier asked the jurors. He said the proximity between the time Carroll’s case was decided and his meeting with investigators suggests that there was a deal.

The jurors are unaware that Rizzitello, 62, is a reputed underboss in the Milano crime family in Los Angeles and has been arrested eight times in the last 13 years. Though he has been acquitted in his last three trials, Rizzitello was one of five Milano members to be convicted in a major racketeering case in 1980.

The jurors are scheduled to begin deliberations today after receiving instructions from Superior Court Judge John L. Flynn Jr.

Prosecutors contend that Rizzitello wanted to eliminate Carroll so that he could pressure bar manager Gene Lesher for a share of the bar’s profits. To support that, Lesher testified that after Carroll was shot, Rizzitello used threats of violence to muscle in on Mustang profits. Lesher said he paid $5,000 a week in cash to George Yudzevich, a bouncer at the club, who would pass the money to Rizzitello.

The defense contends, however, that it was Yudzevich--who has since been murdered--who shot Carroll, and that it was Lesher and Yudzevich who cooked up the scheme to skim money from the club.

Lesher testified that after the Carroll shooting, he was called to Las Vegas by Grosso and Yudzevich. He said they told him that Rizzitello was behind it. A few days later, Lesher said, Rizzitello ordered him to a meeting at the Balboa Bay Club, where he announced that he was going to cut in on the profits.

Brooklier argued that it’s fair to look at who had fled after the shooting.

“It wasn’t Mr. Rizzitello who flew to Las Vegas immediately afterwards,” Brooklier said. “It was Grosso, Lesher and Yudzevich.”

The defense’s key witness was a dancer at the topless bar, who said Yudzevich told her that he had shot Carroll.

But prosecutor Evans brought in receipts to show that Yudzevich was still in Las Vegas at the time that the dancer, Marie McAfee, said she had talked with him at John Wayne Airport about the shooting.