- 3 months ago
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Who said it up?
00:03Telling you the truth about this.
00:09Everybody else is pointing their finger at me.
00:20Can we get a safe area?
00:22What do you got?
00:23Stop booking.
00:26He just missed?
00:28Get him, get him.
00:28This is a case that on its face
00:31looks fairly obvious
00:37as to who the shooter is.
00:42But what actually happened
00:45was so incredibly shocking
00:47that even detectives
00:50and seasoned journalists
00:52couldn't believe it.
00:55Who was behind
00:57this series of attacks
00:59of a neighborhood icon?
01:02He was punched.
01:03He was shot multiple times.
01:06He had a hood on?
01:07Yes, and a mask.
01:09He was stabbed seven times.
01:10I thought the car was here.
01:12The entire family was under attack.
01:15Fire medical.
01:15It was brutal and crazy
01:18and unanswerable.
01:20Somebody got shot in the parking lot.
01:22He's dead.
01:24We had looked at the mafia.
01:27Now, we don't know
01:28if they're not coming from us.
01:28There is somebody behind the scenes
01:34pulling the strings
01:36and that begs the question.
01:38I don't know if they're texting.
02:07in september 2017 officers respond to an incident the incident was recorded
02:21the victim of the crime was sylvester zettola commonly known as sally dad
02:27he was 70 years old
02:32he was merely standing outside when the video showed a male walk up to mr zettola
02:37engaged him in a short conversation and basically asked him about employment sally that says no
02:42there's no employment around here and he had turned around and started punching him several times
02:50and then all of a sudden he just started viciously beating him right to the ground
02:59he had some bruising and he had a broken rib it's heartless
03:06zetola tells police that the perpetrator was an african-american male didn't really know the
03:15age so it's a pretty basic description for a suspect so the detectives really didn't have
03:22anything kind of go on in this case who's walking up to an elderly gentleman you know and beating him
03:28like that
03:31zetola's backstory is interesting he was a guy who was also known in the community as a reputable
03:40businessman and a very successful businessman at that and his business was real estate eventually
03:48amassing more than 40 million dollars of primarily residential buildings throughout new york city
03:57his wife died years ago so essentially he became a single father to his three children
04:04he had two boys and one girl deborah the daughter his eldest son salvatore and his younger son was anthony
04:16and also a plethora of grandchildren he would tell anybody who asked that his family was the most important
04:25thing in the world to him in fact his two sons were brought in to run portions of his business
04:34he was a fixture of that community he had been a supporter you know of the police and helped
04:39the precinct out a lot during his lifetime with security cameras you know outside his residence
04:45supplying video to the police and detectives for crimes that occur in and around the area he was like
04:51the godfather of that community it has been widely said that he was like santa claus without a beard
04:56he was a jolly old fellow he would be the type of guy who would wave to kids on the street corner
05:03everybody knew him so why is someone going after him a really a gem of the community
05:09and we had a rash of old people getting sucker punched you know throughout you know uh new york city
05:15during that time as well so is it just someone who's following a trend it didn't look like it was
05:20a full attempt you know of his life other than an assault or maybe a possible attempted robbery
05:37november 2017 sally daz he comes into the precinct speaks to the desk officer telling them
05:43he was driving on the expressway and in front of him and a perpetrator wearing a mask gets out with
05:49a firearm and starts threatening him and tells the first offer he sees that somebody is either trying
05:54to carjack him or kidnap him because you know what else would there be what they do an area canvas
06:00which shows up negative for the perpetrator in the area at this time the two incidents are considered
06:08separate even though it's our same victim because it's a description sally
06:12that's gave is very vague really at this point both of these incidents are really like a dead end
06:19there's no other investigative information and all leads are exhausted
06:28so a little over a month later 9-1-1 has called for a break-in at the zatola residence
06:33so when the officers respond to mrs zatola's home they find him
06:36he's bleeding profusely on the ground he's been stabbed multiple times and slashed across the neck
06:51somehow miraculously he survived this brutal attack
06:56he tells detectives the little bit that he knew that he's at home the next thing he knows there's a group
07:10of men in there
07:15and there wasn't small talk there wasn't a lot of threats or anything like that
07:20that they went right after him
07:29and he didn't get any great physical description with the exception of he believed that these were
07:36predominantly african-american men
07:38and number two zetola has surveillance camera in his property but guess what
08:01there was no surveillance tape from that incident
08:07they stole the home video surveillance so this starts looking to us as
08:13this might be an inside job someone's definitely trying to kill this guy
08:18but wait a minute why did they want to kill him
08:21hi my name is frank damatio and i know sally true the vending uh business are there things that
08:32just stays amongst the family and just don't share
08:38mob world family they're not gonna tell nobody nothing the less people know the better it is because
08:43the less people got killed
08:49what do you know about sally does you know
08:53only we know about sally sally was a good guy he was affiliated with the bananas he had friends in in
08:58for protection i was with a different family but that's how we got to know him at all because he
09:05was uh in that area was a it was a banana area so that's why uh we knew he had a friend up there
09:13in new york city there's five major crime families
09:18and the bananas really took a big chunk of the bronx area many people don't walk around with a name tag
09:28that says i'm in bed with a crime family that's just not how it works zetola was considered an
09:37associate of the banana family sally himself wasn't in the mafia but he had enough friends and a banana
09:45cool so what makes you a mobster because you you you got a friend that's a monster to be able to do
09:52that world doesn't make him a gangster not everybody i think because you know somebody you're a gangster it
09:58doesn't work that way only in maybe on tv or something like that or or but in the real world
10:04no if you're a moron you're a moron that knows a gangster
10:10this guy was a legitimate businessman on real estate and then he was involved with joker poker games
10:17that's how he got started which is a big business
10:19so joker poker is an extremely popular video gaming machine that is sold to and placed in
10:35social clubs and it is very very profitable because there's a lot of money in it
10:43that's not legal no it's not legal you can bring in millions you know yearly so and it's unrecorded
10:52it could be so lucrative i know guys got tons and tons and tons of money by doing that vending
10:58like i said it's all under the table so
11:02so sally dad had joker poker machines which he would run anywhere from a basement apartment building to the
11:08back of the bodega to numerous different commercial locations where they have secret spots in the back
11:15the expectation of sally dad's was to bring food to the you know bring food to the family
11:20that's kind of like how they put it is bringing money kicking money up uh to the banana crime family
11:26to help support the banana crime family so at this point the mafia someone trying to know the whack
11:33them and bump them off from his own organization from one of the other families you know to gain
11:39all his profits and take over those joker poker machines or possibly even going into his real estate
11:45and trying to bump him out of real estate now we don't know for not coming from us
11:50you know it could come from but i don't know want to take him out or some other family would
11:55try to move in on it we don't know because they don't tell us so several months go by since the
12:07third incident he's off the grid sally lay low which is what you're supposed to do not being flashy
12:14he doesn't stay at the house anymore he has a separate apartment he really buttoned up his inner
12:19circle and that included his kids his grandkids and a couple of mob associates that he does most
12:28of his business with so i i know the bananas they would reach out in the street and see if we knew
12:34anything about it or anybody could find anything about it and they didn't that's what it threw everybody
12:39off at this point it's becoming urgent that if law enforcement doesn't figure out
12:48who is targeting this elderly man he will end up dead
13:02one day in june 2018 mr zatola was walking around in another section of the bronx he's been in hiding
13:17someone approaches with a hoodie
13:29Some approaches with a hoodie.
13:50On this day, Zatola's confronted outside of this new location.
13:57Somebody puts a gun into his face, is gonna shoot him at point-blank range and kill him, no doubt.
14:03Now, luckily for Sally Daz, the gun jams. And Sally Daz has his own firearm on him.
14:12And fires it at the fleeing perpetrator.
14:20So when the police arrive, you know, the first thing they do is they see Sally Daz and his son, Anthony Zatola.
14:27Can I, can he go inside? Is that okay?
14:29Not right now.
14:30I'm not going to go inside right now.
14:33Mr. Zatola is a wreck.
14:34I was walking up 194th Street.
14:36Yes.
14:36I always turn around, because I always think there's a car up there. You follow me?
14:40Mm-hmm.
14:41So I didn't see no car. I turned around and see a black guy with a head on.
14:45Mm-hmm.
14:45He, you know, he walks across the street that way, and he walks across the street that way.
14:51Mm-hmm.
14:52And he starts coming over to me like this.
14:54Okay. And he had a hood on?
14:56Yes. And a mask.
14:58So after this attempt, you know, Mrs. Zatola's kids, Deborah, Salvatore, and Anthony,
15:04they're all up in arms about what happened.
15:06That was the type of car I was in.
15:10It was a four-door blue, uh, with two plates on it.
15:16But at this point, what's going through the detective's minds is he's relocated.
15:20People are behind this.
15:23How do they know where he is, right?
15:25And that's what makes this attack in June that much more brutal and crazy and unanswerable.
15:38Because he's in a location where nobody is supposed to know where he is.
15:45So what did you see when you saw him with a firearm? What did you do?
15:47He was returning fire, you know, to the perpetrator, so in self-defense.
16:04But he has an illegal firearm on him.
16:06How many shots did you fire? One? And do you have a little pistol permit?
16:09No.
16:10So this is interesting. He ends up getting arrested for illegal gun possession.
16:17They should be checking all these cameras.
16:21So listen, I can't, I can't blame Sally Dance for carrying a firearm.
16:26Is it illegal? Yes. Is he getting arrested for it? Yes.
16:30Do I think a grand jury will ever indict him? You know, no.
16:33Why? Because there's four attempts on his life, but, um, the law's the law.
16:39No, no.
17:02Yeah.
17:03So he's going to .
17:05Go, go, go.
17:10Get him, get him.
17:16Yeah, come on. He's still there?
17:18No.
17:41They're possibly on the parking lot.
17:48right here finally the custody so really what happens is after this fourth incident the
17:59perpetrator uh for that incident ends up getting arrested a little while later in manhattan for
18:04criminal possession of a weapon because he has that illegal firearm i got the gun i got the gun
18:09and where was the gun drive the gun was right he i saw him throw it over here okay yeah
18:14the problem is in the bronx we don't get that information that the arrest is made
18:21the arrest happened in manhattan and the attempted shooting was in the bronx and both shootings and
18:28gun arrests happen all the time in new york city so neither really warrants any kind of
18:33city-wide action and so both jurisdictions are left in the dark about what the other had
18:39and i don't think anybody in law enforcement thought that these were the same group of
18:46perpetrators or at the very least the same group behind the planning of this
18:52at this point in the investigation now we start pulling jail phone calls to see who's calling
19:01talking to mr zetola to see if they have any idea who it is or is it them
19:06mr zetola had very strong ties with vinnie and vinnie bassiano was the head of the banano family
19:16and not only were they really close friends they were also really close business associates
19:24vinnie he's actually in jail during this whole incident and the sons had approached him during
19:31with a phone call to see even if the mafia is involved with this
19:35vinnie they think we know who these people are unless we have no idea we don't have anybody
19:41and vinnie gorgeous basically said right off the mark the crime families have no involvement with
19:47this this is something coming from outside there's nobody there you bother they should push you through
19:51this bullshit man come on man your father's a good person your father's the salt of the earth
19:55the salt of the earth he helped out everybody you know what i mean i don't know who's got this
19:59problem against them and vinnie loved sally daz and for years contributed to the family
20:05that's not somebody who they would want to get rid of it's something that he knows there's somebody
20:10that knows his routine all right bye bye i just don't know who it is and if it was you know another
20:17mafia organization another one of those five families you know vinnie gorgeous probably would have
20:22said something but we got nothing like that
20:24one day in july zetola's family vehicle stops and parks at the zetola family compound
20:51but it wasn't sal senior who got out of the car it was his son sal jr and all of a sudden
21:03somebody was targeting what appeared to be his entire family
21:12sal jr is shot multiple times
21:25it's rolling around on the ground it's a gruesome crime again in broad daylight
21:33it was a life-threatening wound you know when he was rushed to the hospital and
21:39lucky for him it was non-fatal and he survived that
21:42it was a big news we heard about it when it happened we found it strange
21:49we found it strange because the shooter was strange
21:54this guy's half running looking for him trying to shoot him i said that's how you do it
22:01as somebody who covered this case the mob gets it done on the first try
22:08and this was a case where it was almost like a bunch of bumbling idiots trying to kill somebody
22:18but always failing it was so just unprofessional you know the whole thing you know i'll take you
22:24three times go kill somebody takes you two minutes you get up close and kill the guy you know
22:31what's it mistaken identity i think it was yeah 100 percent do you think
22:38it's the real time you hear that day yeah yes definitely
22:43so when i look at this incident you know a lot of people say maybe it's mistaken identity right
22:52he gets out and the perpetrator comes up and starts shooting at him
22:56maybe he mistakes it that it's his dad i never really looked at it that way the way i looked at
23:01it as is hey listen they're going after sally dads they can't get him right what's the next thing
23:07likely to do let's go after a family you know like they want his business they go after the kid too
23:12what this attack showed law enforcement was that it wasn't just the elder zetola
23:24the entire family was under attack and that begs the question who wants this entire family dead
23:36there are no leads cops aren't close to a suspect
23:42and everybody is waiting for the next shoe to drop
23:48i was a stringer a freelance reporter for the new york daily news
24:02the guy that goes to the scene to cover a story in person
24:07if it's a crime scene talk to people go to court talk to the cops things of that nature
24:15so that day the editor says well you might regret this but i have an assignment for you
24:23i'm working on a normal shift salvatore was done recovering and we get the call
24:31that there's a homicide over at the mcdonald's on webster avenue
24:35it's a kind of busy corridor in west bronx not a nice place to be honest with you
24:42fire medical
24:43hi can you send me down the ambulance right now somebody got shot in the parking lot
24:48somebody got shot
24:49yes
24:50anybody know who shot him
24:51no
24:52no
24:53the crime scene at mcdonald's and it was a an acura suv maroon colored car just next
24:59to the mcdonald's takeout window
25:02first breathing
25:03well to be honest with you i'm inside i'm one of the managers of mcdonald's and i was
25:09taking a hold of when i see you that you'll come and shot the guy
25:12okay
25:12i don't know this man i was about to give him the food when everything happened
25:18anybody got a description of the person you know where he shot at
25:21all we know is somebody we're just taking care of customers somebody just ran to the car
25:26and shot at him
25:27while we're en route they tell us right away that it's sally daz
25:32and someone had shot and killed him in the drive-thru at the mcdonald's
25:37so he's in the in the car
25:38yes he's dead
25:40as a department we have the duty to protect our citizens
25:48so when you turn around and you fail at it
25:51yeah you get emotional about it and you want to go out and find out who the murderer is
25:55when we get there i'm brought to the rear of the mcdonald's it appeared that the the vehicle
26:03is pressed up against the building where the call box is mr zatola is slumped on the steering wheel
26:10there's a fence around the mcdonald's perimeter and there's a big hole in the fence
26:17and as i learned the suspected killer at the time snuck into that hole
26:24the victim zatola is in his car and he's driving up to the drive-in window and he orders a coffee
26:33and he's boxed in there has a car in front of him and there's a car behind him so i can't move
26:40that's kind of like a funnel right there we're always taught as police officers
26:43don't drive through drive-throughs don't go through why because the bottlenecks
26:47and now all of a sudden you're a target
26:49and so the killer when he gets close
26:52he just fires the shots
26:55and he hits him in the back and in the chest
26:59and we're shocked at that
27:03you know we're shocked at why
27:05why i always thought they were gonna rob him
27:08that's all we could shake him down and rob him you know and it just escalated to him getting killed
27:14got killed
27:15first thing i noticed walking around the vehicle was the cluster of bullet holes in the side window
27:24there was a very tight cluster
27:28so the person who turned around and fired this weapon had a very tight grouping
27:33which means he didn't just fire a weapon haphazardly into the vehicle hoping to strike
27:38he fired that weapon and those bullets through that vehicle and struck him with precision
27:44so that tells me you know that the shooter has used the firearm before
27:49that he's proficient with it
27:51and that he can stay on target even during a stressful situation like that
27:56so i started asking myself
28:00out of all these other attempts
28:02i can see a level of professionalism has increased
28:06and i kind of felt that this could be a different person from the last couple of attempts
28:12one of the other detectives interviewed the 911 caller
28:20he had a black hoodie he looks young he looks like a black kid
28:23but she took cover and wasn't able to see his face but he had retreated back up the hill
28:28a few days later i covered the the funeral the church was packed
28:38there were like maybe at least 300 people in there packed
28:43and there was this beautiful photo of azotola and i'm just looking at him look at him it's like
28:51it's like my grandpa you know it could be my grandpa
28:54deborah and sal jr and anthony all gave touching eulogies about what this man meant to them
29:05and to this community they were devastated at the news that they had lost the man
29:12that they were closest to in their lives
29:14debbie the daughter i remember her in tears anthony too had some very nice words about
29:22his father he was like you were a wise man you were strong and he was saying you taught me
29:28everything in life i need to make you proud like i will do all i can not to disappoint
29:35the family you know my brother my sister especially you it was very touching
29:40there's something so mundane about all of this right you're just ordering a coffee
29:47you're just like an average joe ordering a coffee and he loved to get his coffee there
29:51and that was his last coffee
29:53i don't believe in coincidences so i started asking myself
29:58okay how do they know where he is are they following him
30:02the vehicle ends up getting removed to really get processed
30:07we go over the entire vehicle they go from top to bottom you know from the front to the back
30:15and one of the things that we end up coming up with is a tracker on the vehicle
30:20a gps device that is in the wheel well it answers some questions like wow right that's how they've
30:29been tracking them and that's how they got them here so at this point this is like the real big
30:34solid piece of evidence that we had that could possibly bring us you know to a perpetrator i know
30:40how these things work and i know that this thing is talking to something so it's going to be talking
30:45to a cell phone or to some other device that's going to be able to be tracked
30:50we'd send it to the lab and to get it broken down
30:55so once we start receiving that information back
30:59what do i do just like i have kids every time they get a new toy
31:04they want to play with it
31:06usually the first thing that they'll do is they'll activate this device near their home
31:13so i look at the first thing that's on that line of where it is
31:17and that leads me to topping avenue in the bronx
31:20is less than a half a mile from the crime scene at the mcdonald's
31:25so then i turn around and i start my video campus i go up and down topping avenue and i walk into this
31:32one building and i go and i start downloading video and reviewing video and i see the gps device
31:39being used looks like being tested by two males out in front of the address and all my other attempts
31:47their masks are hooded but these guys are standing right out in plain view and i can see exactly who they are
31:53these aren't your mafia type
31:59at the same time a bloods member named ron kaby who was arrested in manhattan a few months earlier
32:09for discarding that firearm came forward and said to the police
32:13i've been seeing all these headlines i've been hearing all of this about the zatola murder
32:20i have information that you're going to want to know
32:23he feels that he's going to be wrapped up in this whole thing and he wants to get ahead of it
32:28and he wants to cut a deal and give up who everybody is
32:32he tells them that he was offered ten thousand dollars from a bloods associate to kill an older man
32:42he was given intimate details about the person that he was going after from security codes
32:53to where surveillance cameras were located in the residences
32:58to routines times of day that the victim might be home
33:04and when he went to shoot and kill an elderly man his gun jam
33:11now the light bulbs are going off okay now it's a murder for hire case
33:18and the people who are outside using that gps device they're just hired hitmen
33:24who's going out and employing them that's what i want to find out
33:28but ra kb does not know who the handler is he doesn't know who the mastermind behind this whole
33:35thing is he just knows that they were hired to kill sylvester zettola but ra kb tells us
33:42the names of the people using the gps that was used to murder sally das
33:48that's person shelton and that's hyman ross
33:53we're giving an opportunity to kind of explain what happened that day
34:02explain what why don't you tell us
34:04i don't have enough attention
34:06we established probable cause and now we're turning around we're arresting person shelton at
34:16his residence in brooklyn
34:19we tend to imagine killers of mobsters as just looking the way the mobster look but
34:25bushon shelton is just a regular guy from brooklyn went to college in the bronx
34:34i remember looking at shelton's linkedin page and i was thinking oh this is just like an average guy
34:41when we do the search of his residence we find a firearm which is not part of our crime but we also
34:47find cell phones sean shelton's cell phone revealed text messages between he and somebody else
34:59speaking in movie terms and movie vernacular for example shelton was referring to himself
35:07as the director and shortly after the murder was done
35:14he texted something to the effect of the movie is shot or the movie is over
35:20these are cold words about the murder
35:23and we start seeing all the messages that were going back and forth to an unknown number
35:30so that phone number is now submitted now they're going to find out in the subscriber information
35:36on who owns that phone and when i get that phone call it's probably one of the best phone calls
35:43i've ever gotten in my life
35:44it was the wow moment of this entire case and probably in my career as well
35:52to find out that his own son anthony zotolo organized the murder of his father
35:58i was like wait anthony the guy son was at the grieving at the funeral and just thought like
36:09who knew i think anybody covering this case knew that there was a part of this that was an inside job
36:18of some sort can he go inside is that okay
36:22everything started making sense
36:29i mean he knew where his father was all the time
36:33he knew that there was video cameras inside the residence
36:36he knew the code to get into the back of his house and through his kitchen
36:41he knew all that
36:42it's very very rare that organized crime will bring in somebody from the outside
36:50somebody from a street gang to do their dirty work
36:55but anthony had to go outside of their circle
37:02bushon shelton he's the guy or the subcontractor where you go to and you say i need this this and this
37:09and then he finds the people to do the job and who knew how to pull off violent attacks
37:14one thing i can say is i had a feeling you were coming when i don't know but i can thank you that
37:23it was after father's day and it was after all my kids breakfast
37:27anthony was arrested the day after father's day for his own father's murder
37:35he doesn't have remorse and that was the shocking throughout this entire ordeal
37:43anthony played the loving son while he was pulling all the strings
37:51i don't know for certain but i'm not sure that anthony has a soul
37:57so detectives are thinking what's the motive here
38:02once we make the arrest we look into anthony zotolo
38:07sally dad had multiple businesses from real estate to also joker poker machines
38:14anthony was running the real estate arm of this business
38:19but the eldest son salvatore was running the joker poker portion of this business
38:26and worked more closely with the mob associates and the folks within social clubs
38:33i think this was a case of anthony wiping out his brother and his father
38:41wanting dad's money wanting the brother's money
38:45as the only way to ascend in the family
38:49and become the god
38:51the only motive that is clear as day
38:56is the motive of greed
38:58sally
39:00he's just a good guy man
39:03we would take it back
39:05our world usually doesn't happen over money
39:07you respect your father you're gonna kill him
39:09or your brother
39:10but you gotta be out of your mind to do something like that
39:13and sean shelton tells the u.s attorney hyman ross is the guy that was a shooter
39:32prosecutors said hyman ross was a violent member of the blood street gang with a felony record
39:38i mean he was definitely someone capable of pulling off a targeted killing in a drive-through
39:45it took them over a year really to succeed because of the different players that they had in
40:15involved and that's also what kind of threw us off during the days
40:20you went from guys who really had no experience trying to carry this out to at the end more
40:26experienced guys that were able to get the job done
40:30i think the most bothersome part about this case is
40:34that the elder zetola did everything for his children
40:39and yet it wasn't enough for anthony
40:44anthony was still interacting with his father
40:49at birthdays at family events
40:52making money off of his father
40:55meantime secretly plotting his demise
40:59unfortunately i think it's the definition of psychopath
41:04a house looked like something that a mad scientist would live in
41:10and he said who said it up
41:13the mastermind to me he was arrogant
41:16a fraudster sociopath
41:18for forty thousand dollars
41:23he's lost his life
41:27you
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