Real Estate Mogul Jailed for Hit Attempt

Kicking, struggling and screaming “Go to hell!” handcuffed real estate mogul Abe Hirschfeld went off to prison Tuesday to serve a one- to three-year sentence for trying to hire a hit man to kill his former business partner.

“You can all go to hell,” Hirschfeld, 80, shouted at court officers who tried to restrain him as he tried to kiss his wife, Zipora, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.

Hirschfeld, who made his fortune building parking garages and has made several unsuccessful runs for political office, was found guilty in June of criminal solicitation for trying to arrange the murder of his longtime partner, Stanley Stahl. The two, in business together for 40 years, were entangled in legal battles for years to dissolve their partnership.

Stahl died of a stroke in August 1999.

“There is no doubt he’s guilty,” Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Ira Beal said in sentencing Hirschfeld, who could have been ordered to serve seven years in prison.

“It was a mean-spirited crime by a very wealthy man . . . out of greed. The community has a right to see some form of punishment,” the judge said.

Before his outburst, Hirschfeld told the judge he “was never interested in any way of killing Mr. Stahl. He may be a wealthy man, but no one benefits from dying.”

Trial testimony revealed that Hirschfeld had asked an employee to deliver $75,000 in cash to an unidentified hit man. The employee instead contacted Stahl, who alerted authorities.

Hirschfeld was also heard on tape saying, “Yeah, I wanted him murdered, so what?”

Stahl’s widow, Charisse, addressed the court before Hirschfeld was sentenced and blamed him for her husband’s death, calling him “a ruthless, evil, deceitful man” who was “as responsible as if he shot the gun himself.”

Hirschfeld, who is set to be retried shortly on a tax evasion case, made national headlines when he offered Paula Corbin Jones $1 million to drop her sexual harassment case against President Clinton during the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal.

In March, he was sentenced to 90 days and fined $8,000 for defying a gag order at his first criminal solicitation trial.