Man Accused of Luring Boys to Theft Ring Called Gutless : Courts: The 23-year-old is cited as the central figure in a cadre of young thieves who roamed the Valley. A 13-year-old died in one store break-in.

To the teen-age boys who did the bidding of Julio Grassano, charged with the death of one of his young followers, the 23-year-old ringleader was a coward who urged them to commit crimes while he always waited behind as a lookout.

“Julio is too scared to break into cars so he drives us around and we do it,” a 16-year-old Reseda boy named Tommy told police investigators.

“Julio couldn’t do anything without us,” Jesse, also 16, told police. “He had no guts.” Such was the portrait of Grassano that emerged Friday in Van Nuys Municipal Court where a preliminary hearing on the charges against him began.

After his arrest in the April 10 death of 13-year-old Donald Saravia, who was fatally slashed by falling glass during a business burglary, Grassano was likened by police to Fagin, the character in Charles Dickens’ novel “Oliver Twist,” who recruited young boys for a theft ring.

But the reality, as described in court Friday, was not so romantic.

Witnesses said Grassano was the central figure in a cadre of at least four boys who roamed the San Fernando Valley in his 1983 Toyota pilfering and scamming--part of a months-long cycle of stealing to get rock cocaine.

Grassano and the boys were all from the Reseda-Tarzana area, according to investigators. They were often truants and used drugs. At least one was a former runaway, and each came from homes where the adults worked full time, leaving the youths unsupervised during the day.

Investigators said the boys gravitated toward Grassano because he was older, had a car and had expressed an interest in them. Although Donald’s mother often tried to discourage the association between her son and Grassano, she told police that Grassano often was seen outside their apartment in the morning, waiting for her son when he left for school.

The group’s targets were primarily car stereos, the boys told police. One boy would smash the window and another would remove the stereo. Grassano would stay behind the wheel of his car, watching for police.

The stereos were traded for cocaine. Often Grassano smoked the drug as he drove away from the dope house, police said. And the pursuit of more merchandise to trade for drugs would immediately begin again.

“They wandered aimlessly around the city,” Deputy Dist. Atty. David Campbell said.

Police said that on April 9 it was Grassano’s idea to elevate the level of crimes to a business break-in.

“I know a great place to get a VCR,” Grassano had said that day, Jesse told police. “All you have to do is break the window and reach in and grab it.”

Donald decided to take him up on the suggestion. While Grassano waited in his car, the boy smashed the front window of Tip Top TV in Reseda, police said. While reaching through the window, a jagged piece of glass fell and sliced open a major artery in his neck.

Grassano immediately drove him to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, but Donald died minutes later from the severe loss of blood.

Grassano--small and boyish-appearing himself--is charged with second-degree murder under legal theories that he was responsible for Donald’s actions on the night of his death, and that Grassano’s months-long pattern of encouraging the boy to commit crimes was a form of child abuse that ultimately ended in the boy’s death.

“There was a pattern of putting the child into harmful circumstances likely to cause great bodily harm or death,” Campbell argued during Friday’s hearing. “What we had here was an inevitability. Something like this would eventually happen.”

But Grassano’s attorney, Irwin Pransky, said the death was an accident brought about by Donald’s own actions. He said Grassano showed no intent of harming the boy, and tried to save him by rushing him to the hospital. “I see this as a terrible injustice for the prosecution to go after this young man” for murder, Pransky said.

Judge Robert Swasey said he would rule June 10 on whether there is sufficient evidence to order a trial of Grassano on the murder charge.

Detective Mary Holguin testified Friday that one of the boys in the group, Jesse, told her that April 9 began similarly to many other days. Grassano picked Jesse and Donald up at their homes and they spent the day stealing jeans from stores in the West Valley, and then trading them for cocaine at a Reseda drug house.

During the day, Donald frequently discussed the need to get a videocassette recorder to replace the one he had stolen from his mother, Holguin said Jesse told her. When Grassano suggested a break-in at Tip Top TV, Jesse asked to be dropped off, but Donald said, “I’ll do it.”

Early the next morning, when Donald attempted the crime, the 13-year-old was fatally injured, police testified. He ran back to Grassano’s car bleeding heavily and was taken to the hospital.

When the owner checked his property after the break-in, the only missing item was the outer casing of a VCR. He had placed it in the window as a display piece. But it was a just a shell; he had removed the interior electronic equipment in case of a break-in.