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Mustang’s Mayhem a Wild Ride for Police : Investigation: Now that Michael Anthony Rizzitello ‘is out of the way,’ authorities say they can concentrate on two still unsolved murders and the arson fire that brought the club down.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The cavernous Mustang Club on Harbor Boulevard was once a bar owner’s dream.

Every night, a mix of coat-and-tie yuppies, beer-bellied bikers and off-duty soldiers crowded around a horseshoe-shaped bar, attracted by the loud rock music and the topless dancers.

“The money was just pouring in,” said one law enforcement official.

But with success came violence. The club’s profits may have been the catalyst for a 15-month period in which the Mustang’s first manager and one of its bouncers were murdered, its major investor blinded and left for dead, and the club itself torched and burned to the ground.

But despite the sentencing of a major Los Angeles organized crime figure two weeks ago for his role in the violence, still unsolved are the two murders and the arson, and law enforcement officials are still searching for answers.

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Los Angeles racketeer Michael Anthony Rizzitello, 62, considered by organized crime experts the most violent member of the Milano crime family, was sentenced to 33 years in prison for the near-fatal shooting of C. William Carroll, the Mustang’s chief financial backer. Rizzitello “gopher” Joseph Angelo Grosso, 46, is serving a 26-year-to-life prison term for helping him in the Carroll hit.

Prosecutors contended that Rizzitello wanted to muscle in on the Mustang’s profits and tried to remove Carroll, who he believed would resist those plans. But still unsolved are:

* The murder of Jimmy Lee Casino, 48, the club’s originator and first manager, shot three times in the head at his Buena Park home on New Year’s Day, 1987.

* Two arson fires, the last one demolishing the club on Jan. 16, 1988. One man has been convicted in the arson cases. But investigators believe he was a hired hand, and while they have an unnamed suspect as the mastermind, no other arrests have been made.

* The murder of George (Big George) Yudzevich, 46, the club’s liaison with organized crime, found shot to death March 3, 1988, in an Irvine industrial park.

“Now that Rizzitello is out of the way, we can concentrate our manpower on these other cases,” one law enforcement official said. “We’re going to take a harder look than ever at what was going on at that club.”

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The Mustang began when Casino convinced investors that a topless bar in Orange County would be a moneymaker, according to testimony and evidence presented at the Rizzitello and Grosso trials.

Carroll, a real estate investor and financier who once served a prison term for fraud, became Casino’s major benefactor, eventually providing about $200,000, court records show.

Casino was as flamboyant as he was quick to make enemies. But he knew how to run a nightclub.

The Mustang thrived, even as Casino outmaneuvered the Santa Ana officials who tried repeatedly to shut the club. The club officially became a theater after Casino persuaded a judge that it was more than just a topless bar.

But despite the profits, Casino was beset by money troubles. He somehow could not pay off all of his loans. And his troubles mounted when federal officials claimed in 1986 that he owed unpaid taxes.

He secured a five-figure loan from Carroll, who demanded that should Casino default, Carroll would essentially gain control of the club’s operation. And Casino defaulted.

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He returned to his Buena Park home with his girlfriend after a New Year’s Eve party in 1987 to find two gunmen waiting. They escorted the couple into the house. The woman was raped. Casino was shot three times in the head, and died.

Soon after the shooting, Rizzitello sought out Carroll, who had assumed a more active role at the club. Rizzitello proposed several business ventures, which Carroll resisted, according to testimony at both the Rizzitello and Grosso trials. Carroll said he did eventually loan Rizzitello $10,000.

At the time, Carroll was not happy about the club’s operation. Grosso and Yudzevich, who both had ties to Rizzitello and were regular visitors to the club, upset him the most. Carroll testified that he learned they were selling cocaine at the club to some of the dancers, and he tried to get the new manager, Gene Lesher, to throw them out. Yudzevich, at 6 feet, 7 inches and more than 350 pounds, eventually became a club bouncer, and Grosso an occasional driver for Carroll. Grosso also sold lingerie to the dancers in the $10,000 business arrangement between Carroll and Rizzitello.

In April of 1987, someone took a shot at Carroll on Harbor Boulevard after he left the club. Several weeks later, on April 30, Carroll and Rizzitello met at Emilia’s restaurant in Santa Ana. Carroll wanted to talk about the lack of return on his $10,000 loan, and Rizzitello had said he would help find out who had shot at Carroll. Grosso was present.

Carroll testified that the two used a ruse to persuade him to accompany them to a vacant parking garage near the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, where Rizzitello shot him three times in the head while Grosso held him down.

“We never discussed anything at the dinner that would lead me to believe I was heading for trouble,” Carroll said in an interview last week. “It was strictly an ambush.”

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According to Carroll’s testimony, Rizzitello told him before firing the .38-caliber handgun: “This is for not letting us eat.”

Carroll was shot three times in the head. He was saved after emergency surgery, but was left permanently blind. For 18 months, he refused to say who fired the shots.

During those 18 months, Carroll has since testified, he was repeatedly threatened by Rizzitello, through other agents who told him he would be killed if he told who had shot him.

One of the calls came from Yudzevich, who admitted to Carroll that he had gotten rid of the gun and the bloody clothes for Rizzitello and Grosso. Carroll said Yudzevich apologized for having anything to do with the attack.

But to others, Yudzevich boasted about his role.

“Big George wanted people to know he was a stand-up guy; look what he had done for Rizzitello,” one law enforcement official said.

With Carroll out of the picture, Mustang manager Lesher became an easy target for Rizzitello, according to prosecutors. Lesher, fearful for his life, testified that he caved in to the veiled threats of Rizzitello, who he said wanted to take over the club. Yudzevich was the man Rizzitello put there to collect his share--$5,000 a week in money skimmed from profits which was never accounted for to the government for tax purposes, prosecutors said.

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Yudzevich continued to act as collector, despite the fact that he had testified against former organized crime associates in a New York investigation. Yudzevich had spent time in the federal witness protection program.

Fires closed the Mustang at the end of 1987. Three months later, on March 12, 1988, Yudzevich’s huge frame was found sprawled on the pavement near the trunk of his Cadillac in the parking lot of a linen factory on Mitchell Street in Irvine. Late at night, he had been shot three times in the head while sitting in the driver’s seat of his car, but managed to get out before dying.

In October, 1988, Carroll finally agreed to cooperate with authorities. He had waited, he said, until a bank fraud case pending against him was resolved as a misdemeanor with no jail sentence. Carroll said he feared Rizzitello would have had him killed in the Orange County Jail.

Casino, Yudzevich and Carroll were all shot in a similar fashion.

But were they all shot by the same person? The police aren’t so sure.

Police say there is only one primary suspect in the Yudzevich shooting--Rizzitello.

At the time of his death, Yudzevich was hiding from the former organized crime associates he had testified against. He lived in a motel but stayed primarily in his car, where he kept most of his clothes.

Meir J. Westreich, Carroll’s attorney, said at a news conference last week that what most law enforcement officials involved are privately convinced of is true.

“There is only one man who could have convinced Big George to drive down to a place like that at night,” Westreich said.

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That was his former roommate and his best friend, Joey Grosso, law enforcement officials believe. And Grosso, authorities theorize, only did what Rizzitello directed.

After the Yudzevich shooting, Grosso was interviewed by The Times about his friend’s death.

“When you testify in court against known killers, it’s crazy, mind-boggling that he did not stay in that protection program,” Grosso said.

But Grosso’s logic has not impressed authorities.

“Big George and Joey were just like those two characters (Lennie and George) in ‘Of Mice and Men,’ ” one official said. “Nobody, but nobody, could have set up Big George except Joey.”

Authorities are convinced that Rizzitello was upset that Yudzevich was telling too many people about the Carroll shooting.

Before Grosso’s sentencing last December for his role in the Carroll shooting, Grosso tried to negotiate a deal. News reports speculated then that prosecutors wanted Grosso to testify against Rizzitello. But prosecutors wanted Grosso to talk about the Yudzevich murder. He refused, and the Yudzevich case is still under investigation.

As sure as some of the authorities are about who killed Yudzevich, that’s how unsure they are who killed Casino.

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“Right now there is no one single suspect in the Casino killing,” one law enforcement official said. “Rizzitello may have decided to use Casino to make his mark, to say, ‘I’m here; you have to deal with me.’ But there are others too who could have done it. You have to untangle that whole thing about the Mustang’s operation.”

One police report early in the Casino murder investigation named Carroll as a “prime suspect,” evidence stressed by the Rizzitello defense.

But prosecutors have pointed out that everyone involved with Casino at that time was considered a suspect.

Carroll has steadfastly denied any involvement in the Casino killing. And prosecutors have publicly stated Carroll is not a suspect in that case.

Carroll acknowledged during his testimony that the Mustang was a success. But in a news conference after the Rizzitello sentencing, Carroll said he regrets the day he heard the club’s name. He lost about $90,000 in the Mustang, and nearly lost his life.

The hardest part, Carroll said, was coping with his blindness.

“For a long time I kept saying: ‘Why me? Why me?’ Then finally I woke up one morning and said to myself, ‘It is you. And that’s the way it’s always going to be.’ ”

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