Jurors began deliberating Friday on the fate of a reputed Bronx mobster whose lawyer said frequent texts between his client and an alleged contract killer are not enough to prove he had his own father murdered.
But prosecutors said the text messages between defendant Anthony Zottola and a gang member who pleaded guilty in the murder-for-hire plot constituted a “conspiracy in action” to rub out suspected mob boss Sylvester “Sally Daz” Zottola.
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Anthony Zottola (BWissel/Eastern District of New York)
Texts between Zottola and alleged gang member Bushawn Shelton discussed “actors,” a “film” and a “dressing room,” which were said by the prosecution to be code for family members Zottola wanted killed.
“These are Anthony Zottola’s statements over the course of the entire year,” Assistant US Attorney Kayla Bensing told jurors in closing arguments of the trial at Brooklyn Federal Court. “The texts are the conspiracy in action.”
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But Zottola’s lawyer, Henry Mazurek, called Shelton “a criminal tidal wave” who acted on his own.
“Take off those dirty lenses the government wants you to wear,” Mazurek said. “If Shelton really was hired by Anthony Zottola to do this job, it would have been different.”
The jury was dismissed for the weekend without reaching a verdict.
Sylvester Zottola, 71, was executed while sitting behind the wheel of his car waiting for coffee at a McDonald’s drive-thru in the Bronx on Oct. 4, 2018.
Reputed mob boss Sylvester Zottola was shot and killed in the drive-through lane at a McDonald’s on Webster Ave. in the Bronx on Oct. 4, 2018. (Nina Cochran/New York Daily News)
Prosecutors said that after the shooting, a conspirator texted Shelton a one-word message: “Done.”
Shelton then passed the word to Zottola with what prosecutors called a coded message also meant to ask for his payment: “Can we party today or tomorrow?”
Prosecutors accuse Anthony Zottola of paying the Bloods gang leader to wage a yearlong murder-for-hire plot so he could take over his father’s $45 million real estate business.
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Sylvester Zottola was the object of several botched murder attempts in the year before he was finally killed.
Anthony Zottola Jr, the son of slain mob associate Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola (pictured) was arrested in connection with murder-for-hire plots to whack his father and his brother. (Obtained by New York Daily News)
Prosecutors said “Sally Daz” survived five separate attacks.
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Initially, Shelton tried to kill Sally Daz himself, prosecutors said.
On Nov. 26, 2017, Shelton put on a ski mask, pulled up behind the mobster’s car in Edgewater Park near the Throgs Neck Expressway, got out, and started running at him with a gun, prosecutors allege.
Sally Daz was too quick, though, spinning his car in reverse and making a desperate U-turn to get away.
Shelton then sent a wave of hired flunkies to carry out the deed, prosecutors said. Officials alleged the hired hands behind the attacks were members of the notorious Bloods street gang.
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The mobster’s fate was sealed when he was murdered Oct. 4, 2018, while waiting for coffee at the drive-thru window of a McDonald’s in the Bronx.
Authorities said a photo showing $200,000 in cash was taken one day after the slaying and found on a cell phone belonging to Shelton.
Zottola could face the death penalty if convicted.