Original subtitles

Who said it up?

Telling you the truth about this.

Everybody else is pointing their finger at me.

Can we get a safe area?

What do you got?

Stop booking.

He just missed?

Get him, get him.

This is a case that on its face

looks fairly obvious

as to who the shooter is.

But what actually happened

was so incredibly shocking

that even detectives

and seasoned journalists

couldn't believe it.

Who was behind

this series of attacks

of a neighborhood icon?

He was punched.

He was shot multiple times.

He had a hood on?

Yes, and a mask.

He was stabbed seven times.

I thought the car was here.

The entire family was under attack.

Fire medical.

It was brutal and crazy

and unanswerable.

Somebody got shot in the parking lot.

He's dead.

We had looked at the mafia.

Now, we don't know

if they're not coming from us.

There is somebody behind the scenes

pulling the strings

and that begs the question.

No, no, no, no, no.

We're going to find

the scene.

No, no.

No.

It's probably a bit of a bomb

to go.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No, no.

You're not here.

I'm sorry.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

No.

in september 2017 officers respond to an incident the incident was recorded

the victim of the crime was sylvester zetola commonly known as sally dad he was 70 years old

he was merely standing outside when the video showed a male walk up to mr zetola

engaged him in a short conversation and basically asked him about employment sally that says no

there's no employment around here and he had turned around and started punching him several times

and then all of a sudden he just started viciously beating him right to the ground

he had some bruising and he had a broken rib it's heartless

zetola tells police that the perpetrator was an african-american male didn't really know the

age so it's a pretty basic description for a suspect so the detectives really didn't have

anything kind of go on in this case who's walking up to an elderly gentleman you know and beating him

like that zetola's backstory is interesting he was a guy who was also known in the community as

a reputable businessman and a very successful businessman at that and his business was real

estate eventually amassing more than 40 million of primarily residential buildings throughout new york

city his wife died years ago so essentially he became a single father to his three children

he had two boys and one girl deborah the daughter his eldest son salvatore and his younger son was

anthony and also a plethora of grandchildren he would tell anybody who asked that his family was the most

important thing in the world to him in fact his two sons were brought in to run portions of his business

he was a fixture of that community he had been a supporter you know of the police and helped the

precinct out a lot during his lifetime with security cameras you know outside his residence supplying

video to the police and detectives for crimes that occur in and around the area he was like the

godfather of that community it has been widely said that he was like santa claus without a beard

he was a jolly old fellow he would be the type of guy who would wave to kids on the street corner

everybody knew him so why is someone going after him a really a gem of the community

you know we had a rash of old people getting sucker punched you know throughout you know uh new york

city during that time as well so is it just someone who's following a trend it didn't look like it

was a full attempt you know of his life other than an assault or maybe a possible attempted robbery

november 2017 sally daz he comes into the precinct speaks to the desk officer telling him he was driving

on the expressway and in front of him and a perpetrator wearing a mask gets out with a firearm

and starts threatening him and tells the first officer he sees that somebody is either trying

to carjack him or kidnap him because you know what else would there be what they do an area canvas

which shows up negative for the perpetrator in the area at this time the two incidents are considered

separate even though it's our same victim because it's a description sally daz gave is very vague

really at this point both of these incidents are really like a dead end there's no other

investigative information and all leads are exhausted

so a little over a month later 911 has called for a break in at the zatola residence so when the

officers respond to mrs zatola's home they find him

he's bleeding profusely on the ground he's been stabbed multiple times and slashed across the neck

somehow miraculously he survived this brutal attack

he tells detectives the little bit that he knew that he's at home the next thing he knows there's a group

of men in there

and there wasn't small talk there wasn't a lot of threats or anything like that

they went right after

and he didn't get any great physical description with the exception of he believed

that these were predominantly african-american men

it doesn't appear that there's any fourth entry there's a code to get in how did he have that code

and number two zatola has surveillance camera in his property but guess what there was no surveillance tape

from that incident

they stole the home video surveillance so this starts looking to us as

this might be an inside job someone's definitely trying to kill this guy

but wait a minute why did they want to kill him

hi my name is frank damatio and i know sally true the vending uh business

are there things that just stays amongst the family and just don't share

mob world family they're not gonna tell nobody nothing the less people know

the better it is because less people got killed

what do you know about sally that's you know

only we know about sally said he was a good guy he was affiliated with the bananos he had friends in

for protection i was with a different family but that's how we got to know him at all because he was uh

and that area was a it was a banano area so that's why uh we knew he had a friend up there

in new york city there's five major crime families

and the bananos really took a big chunk of the bronx area

many people don't walk around with a name tag that says

i'm in bed with a crime family that's just not how it works

zetola was considered an associate of the banana family

sally himself wasn't in the mafia but he had enough friends and a banana cool

so what makes you a mobster because you you you got a friend that's a monster to be able to do that

world doesn't make him a gangster not everybody i think because you know somebody you're a gangster

it doesn't work that way only in maybe on tv or something like that or or but in the real world

no if you're a moron you're a moron that knows a gangster

this guy was a legitimate businessman on real estate and then he was involved with joker poker games

that's how he got started which is a big business

so joker poker is an extremely popular video gaming machine that is sold to and placed in

social clubs and it is very very profitable because there's a lot of money in it

that's not legal no it's not legal you can bring in millions you know yearly so and it's unrecorded

it could be so lucrative i know guys got tons and tons and tons of money by doing that vending

like i said it's all under the table so

so sally dad had joker poker machines which he would run anywhere from a basement apartment building to the

the back of the bodega to numerous different commercial locations where they have secret spots in the back

the expectation of sally dad's was to bring food to the you know bring food to the family

that's kind of like how they put it is bringing money kicking money up uh to the banana crime family

to help support the banana crime family so at this point the mafia someone trying to whack him and

bump him off from his own organization from one of the other families you know to gain all his profits

and take over those joker poker machines or possibly even going into his real estate and trying to bump

him out of real estate now we don't know for not coming from us you know it could come up from

but i don't know want to take him out or some other family would try to move in on it we don't know

they don't tell us so several months go by since the third incident he's off the grid sally lay low

which is what you're supposed to do not being flashy he doesn't stay at the house anymore he has a

separate apartment he really buttoned up his inner circle and that included his kids his grandkids and a

couple of mob associates that he does most of his business with so i i know the bananas they would

reach out in the street and see if we knew anything about it or anybody could find anything about it and

they didn't that's what it threw everybody off at this point it's becoming urgent that if law

enforcement doesn't figure out who is targeting this elderly man he will end up dead

one day in june 2018 mr zetola was walking around in another section of the bronx he's been in hiding

one day atinas

some approaches with a hoodie

on this day zetola's confronted outside of this new location somebody puts a gun into his face

is going to shoot him at point blank range and kill him no doubt now luckily for sally daz

the gun jams and sally daz has his own firearm on him and fires it at the fleeing perpetrator

so when the police arrive you know the first thing they do is they see sally daz and his son

anthony zetola can he go inside is that okay i'm not right now i'm not going to go inside right now

mrs zetola is a wreck i was walking up 194th street yes i always turn around because i always

think there's a car up there you follow me so i didn't see no car i turned around and see a black

guy with a hood on he you know he walks across the street that way and he starts coming over to me

like this okay and he had a hood on yes and a mask so after this attempt you know mrs zetola's kids

deborah salvator and anthony they're all up in arms about what happened but at this point what's

going through the detective's minds is he's relocated people who are behind this how do

they know where he is right and that's what makes this attack in june that much more brutal and crazy

and unanswerable because he's in a location where nobody is supposed to know where he is

so what did you see when you saw him with a firearm what did you do

he was returning fire you know to the perpetrator so in self-defense but he has an illegal firearm on

how many shots did you find one and do you have a pistol permit no so this is interesting he ends up

getting arrested for illegal gun possession and they they should be checking all these cameras

so listen i can't i can't blame sally dance for carrying a firearm is it illegal yes is he getting

arrested for it yes do i think a grand jury will ever indict him you know no why because there's four

attempts on his life but um the law is the law

okay

he's a compensation connection

let'sерт's say

well it's true

he's turned into 10

well

oh

yeah

yeah

Yeah, so he's the one who's going to attack.

Go, go, go!

Get him, get him!

Yeah, come on. You're still there?

We're here.

We're here.

Finally, the custody.

So really what happens is after this fourth incident,

the perpetrator for that incident ends up getting arrested

getting arrested a little while later in manhattan for criminal possession of a weapon because he

has that illegal firearm i got the gun i got the gun you got the gun and where was the gun drive

the gun was right he i saw him saw it over here okay yeah the problem is in the bronx we don't

get that information that the arrest is made the arrest happened in manhattan and the attempted

shooting was in the bronx and both shootings and gun arrests happen all the time in new york

cities so neither really warrants any kind of city-wide action and so both jurisdictions are

left in the dark about what the other had and i don't think anybody in law enforcement thought

that these were the same group of perpetrators or at the very least the same group behind the planning

of this at this point in the investigation now we start pulling jail phone calls to see who's

calling talking to mr zetola to see if they have any idea who it is or is it them mr zetola had

very strong ties with vinnie and vinnie bassiano was the head of the banana family and not only were

they really close friends they were also really close business associates vinnie he's actually in jail

during this whole incident and the sons had approached him during with a phone call see even if

the mafia is involved with this vinnie they think we know who these people are unless we have no idea

and vinnie gorgeous basically said right off the mark the crime families have no involvement with

this this is something coming from outside there's nobody there you bother they should push you through

this bullshit man come on man your father's a good person your father's the salt of the earth

the salt of the earth he helped out everybody you know what i mean i don't know who's got this

problem against them and vinnie loved sally daz and for years contributed to the family that's not

somebody who they would want to get rid of it's something that he knows there's somebody that knows

his routine all right bye bye i just don't know who it is and if it was you know another mafia

organization another one of those five families you know vinnie gorgeous probably would have said

something but we got nothing like that

one day in july zetola's family vehicle stops and parks at the zetola family compound

but it wasn't sal senior who got out of the car it was his son sal jr and all of a sudden

somebody was targeting what appeared to be his entire family

sal jr is shot multiple times

it's rolling around on the ground it's a gruesome crime again in broad daylight

it was a life-threatening wound you know when he was rushed to the hospital and lucky for him it was

non-fatal and he survived it it was a big news we heard about it when it happened we found it strange

it felt strange because the shooter was strange

this guy's half running looking for him trying to shoot him i said that's how you do it

as somebody who covered this case the mob gets it done on the first try and this was a case where

it was almost like a bunch of bumbling idiots trying to kill somebody but always failing

it was so just unprofessional you know the whole thing you know i'll take you three times go kill

somebody takes you two minutes you get up close and kill the guy you know

was it mistaken identity i think it was yeah 100 percent do you think

this is the real target here that day yeah yes definitely

so when i look at this incident you know a lot of people say maybe it's mistaken identity right

he gets out and the perpetrator comes up and starts shooting at him maybe he mistakes it that

it's his dad i never really looked at it that way the way i looked at it as is hey listen they're

going after sally dads they can't get him right what's the next thing likely to do let's go after

their family you know like they want his business they go after the kid too

what this attack showed law enforcement was that it wasn't just the elder zatola

the entire family was under attack and that begs the question who wants this entire family dead

there are no leads cops aren't close to a suspect

and everybody is waiting for the next shoe to drop

i was a stringer a freelance reporter for the new york daily news the guy that goes to the scene to

cover a story in person if it's a crime scene talk to people go to court talk to the cops things of that

nature so that day the editor says well you might regret this but i have an assignment for you

i'm working on a normal shift salvatore was done recovering and we get the call

that there's a homicide over at the mcdonald's on webster avenue

it's a kind of busy corridor in west bronx not a nice place to be honest with you fire medical

hi can you send me down the ambulance right now somebody got shot in the parking lot somebody got

shot yeah anybody know who shot him no the crime scene at mcdonald's and it was a an acura

suv maroon collared car just next to the mcdonald's takeout window first breathing

oh well to be honest with you i'm inside i'm one of the managers of mcdonald's and i was taking a

hold of when i see the two probably shot the guy okay i don't know this man i was about to give him

the food when everything happened anybody got a description of the person you know what he shot at

all we know all we know is somebody we're just taking care of customers somebody just ran to the

car and shot at him while we're en route they tell us right away that it's sally daz and someone

had shot and killed him in the drive-through at the mcdonald's so he's in the in the car yes he's done

as a department we have the duty to protect our citizens so when you turn around and you fail at it

yeah you get emotional about it and you want to go out and find out who the murderer is

when we get there i'm brought to the rear of the mcdonald's it appeared that the the vehicle is

pressed up against the building where the call box is mr zatola is slumped on the steering wheel

there's a fence around the mcdonald's perimeter and there's a big hole in the fence

and as i learned the suspected killer at the time snuck into that hole

the victim zatola is in his car and he's driving up to the drive-in window and he orders a coffee

and he's boxed in there has a car in front of him and there's a car behind him so i can't move

that's kind of like a funnel right there we're always taught as police officers don't drive

through drive-throughs don't go through why it's the bottlenecks and now all of a sudden you're a

target and so the killer when he gets close he just fires the shots and he hits him in the back and in

the chest and we're shocked at that you know we're shocked at why why i always thought they were gonna

rob him that's all we could shake him down and rob him you know and it just escalated to him getting

killed got killed first thing i noticed walking around the vehicle was the cluster of bullet holes in

the side window there was a very tight cluster so the person who turned around and fired this weapon

had a very tight grouping which means he didn't just fire a weapon haphazardly into the vehicle hoping to

strike he fired that weapon and those bullets through that vehicle and struck him with precision

so that tells me you know that the shooter has used the firearm before

that he's proficient with it and that he can stay on target even during a stressful situation like that

so i started asking myself out of all these other attempts i can see a level of professionalism

has increased and i kind of felt that this could be a different person from the last couple of attempts

one of the other detectives interviewed the 911 caller he looks young he looks like a black kid

but she took cover and wasn't able to see his face but he had retreated back up the hill

a few days later i covered the the funeral the church was packed there were like maybe at least 300

people in there packed and there was this beautiful photo of azotola and i'm just looking at him look

at him it's like it's like my grandpa you know it could be my grandpa deborah and sal jr and anthony

all gave touching eulogies about what this man meant to them and to this community they were devastated at

the news that they had lost the man that they were closest to in their lives debbie the daughter

i remember her in tears anthony too had some very nice words about his father he was like you were a

wise man you were strong and he was saying you taught me everything in life i need to make you proud

like i will do all i can not to disappoint the family you know my brother my sister especially

you it was very touching

there's something so mundane about all this right you're just ordering a coffee you're just like an

average joe ordering a coffee and he loved to get his coffee there and that was his last coffee

i don't believe in coincidences so i started asking myself okay how do they know where he is

are they following him the vehicle ends up getting removed to really get processed

we go over the entire vehicle they go from top to bottom you know from the from the front to the

back when one of the things that we end up coming up with is a tracker on the vehicle

a gps device that is in the wheel well it answers some questions like wow right that's how they've been

tracking them and that's how they got them here so at this point this is like the real big solid

piece of evidence that we had that could possibly bring us you know to a perpetrator i know how these

things work and i know that this thing is talking to something so it's going to be talking to a cell

phone or to some other device that's going to be able to be tracked we'd sent it to the lab and to

get it broken down so once we start receiving that information back what do i do just like i have kids

every time they get a new toy they want to play with it

usually the first thing that they'll do is they'll activate this device near their home

so i look at the first thing that's on that line of where it is and that leads me to topping avenue in

the bronx is less than a half a mile from the crime scene at the mcdonald's so then i turn around

and i start my video campus i go up and down topping avenue and i walk into this one building and i go

and i start downloading video and reviewing video and i see the gps device being used looks like being

tested by two males out in front of the address and all my other attempts they're master hooded but

these guys are standing right out in plain view and i can see exactly who they are

these aren't your mafia type

at the same time a bloods member named ron kaby who was arrested in manhattan a few months earlier for

discarding that firearm came forward and said to the police

i've been seeing all these headlines i've been hearing all of this about the zatola murder

i have information that you're going to want to know he feels that he's going to be wrapped up in

this whole thing and he wants to get ahead of it and he wants to cut a deal and give up who everybody is

he tells them that he was offered ten thousand dollars from a bloods associate to kill an older man

he was given intimate details about the person that he was going after from security codes to where

surveillance cameras were located in the residences to routines times of day that the victim might be home

and when he went to shoot and kill an elderly man his gun jam

now the light bulbs are going off okay now it's a murder for hire case and the people who are outside

using that gps device they're just hired hitmen who's going out and employing them that's what i

want to find out but ron kb does not know who the handler is he doesn't know who the mastermind

behind this whole thing is he just knows that they were hired to kill sylvester zistola but ron

kb tells us the names of the people using the gps that was used to murder sally daz

that's that's person shelton and that's hyman ross

i'm giving an opportunity to kind of explain what what happened that day

test brain what why don't you tell us i don't have enough attention

we established probable cause and now we're turning around we're arresting person

shelton at his residence in brooklyn we tend to imagine killers of mobsters as just looking the

way the mobster look but bushon shelton is just a regular guy from brooklyn went to college in the

bronx i remember looking at shelton's linkedin page and i was thinking oh this is just like an average guy

when we do the search of his residence we find a firearm which is not part of our crime but we also

find cell phones sean shelton's cell phone revealed text messages between he and somebody else speaking in

movie terms and movie vernacular for example shelton was referring to himself as the director

and shortly after the murder was done he texted something to the effect of the movie is shot or the

movie is over these are cold words about the murder and we start seeing all the messages that were going

back and forth to an unknown number so that phone number is now submitted now they're going to find

out in the subscriber information on who owns that phone and when i get that phone call it was probably

one of the best phone calls i've ever gotten in my life it was the wow moment of this entire case

and probably in my career as well to find out that his own son anthony azotolo organized the murder of

his father i was like wait anthony the guy son was at the grieving at the funeral and just thought like

who knew i think anybody covering this case knew that there was a part of this that was an inside job of

some sort can he go inside is that okay everything started making sense i mean he knew where his father

was all the time he knew that there was video cameras inside the residence he knew the code to get

into the back of his house and through his kitchen he knew all that it's very very rare that organized

crime will bring in somebody from the outside somebody from a street gang to do their dirty work

but anthony had to go outside of their circle bushan shelton he's the guy or the subcontractor where

you go to and you say i need this this and this and then he finds the people to do the job and who knew

how to pull off violent attacks one thing i can say is i had a feeling you were coming when i don't know

but i can thank you that it was after father's day and it was after all my kids breakfast anthony was arrested

the day after father's day for his own father's murder he doesn't have remorse and that was the shocking

throughout this entire ordeal anthony played the loving son while he was pulling all the strings

i don't know for certain but i'm not sure that anthony has a soul

so detectives are thinking what's the motive here once we make the arrest we look into anthony zotolo

sally dad had multiple businesses from real estate to also joker poker machines anthony was running the

real estate arm of this business but the eldest son salvatore was running the joker poker portion of

this business and worked more closely with the mob associates and the folks within social clubs

i think this was a case of anthony wiping out his brother and his father wanting dad's money wanting

the brothers money as the only way to ascend in the family and become the god the only motive that is

clear as day is the motive of greed sally just good just good guy man we would take it back our world

usually doesn't happen over money to respect your father you're gonna kill him or your brother but you

you got to be out of your mind to do something like that

sean shelton tells the u.s attorney hyman ross is the guy that was a shooter

prosecutors said hyman ross was a violent member of the blood street gang with a felony record

i mean he was definitely someone capable of pulling off a targeted killing in a drive-through

it took them over a year really to succeed because of the different players that they had involved

and that's also what kind of threw us off during the days you went from guys who really had no experience

trying to carry this out to at the end more experienced guys that were able to get the job done

i think the most bothersome part about this case is that the elder zatola did everything for his children

and yet it wasn't enough for anthony anthony anthony was still interacting with his father at birthdays at

family events making money off of his father meantime secretly plotting his demise

the house looked like something that a mad scientist would live in and he said who set it up the mastermind

to me he was arrogant a fraudster sociopath for 40 000 gotten didn't lost his life