On September 8th I sent a 14 page letter with 26 attachments to Judge Susan C. Bucklew at the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, after an investigation I'd conducted revealed probative evidence that convicted killer and one time Gambino associate John Alite, aka "Johnny Aletto," had repeatedly violated the terms of his Supervised Release.
Judge Bucklew had sentenced Alite on April 26th, 2011 t0 100 months in prison and five years probation. Under the terms of her Amended Order Alite was required to get permission from the U.S. Probation Office each time he left his New Jersey district and he was forbidden from associating with members or associates of organized crime -- a boilerplate provision in mob sentences.
But as I detailed in the letter below Alite repeatedly traveled outside the state of New Jersey to New York and made additional trips to Ohio, Florida, Pennsylania and Delaware, while in a letter to me on September 8th his attorney Doug Anton admitted "we gotta stay in Jersey."
More disturbing were pictures found on Alite's own Facebook account showing him associating with former wiseguys like James "Jimmy Gap" Calandra, an ex-Bonnanno associate who pled guilty to the felony murder of a 46 year-old Staten Island woman in 1993 and Pasquale "Patsy" Andriano, a former member of Alite's crew who confessed his role in the Alite-inspired killing of rival drug dealer John Gebert in 1996.
THE U.S. PROBATION OFFICE INVESTIGATES
On September 14th, less than a week after I'd sent the package to Judge Bucklew, I was contacted by Paul Brennan, The National WITSEC Coordinator in Washington, who confirmed that the Newark headquarters of the U.S. Probation Office had mounted an investigation into my findings.
On October 6th Mr. Brennan sent word to me by email that a report with the probe's findings would be forthcoming in 48 hours and two days later he let me know that it had been sent to Tampa for examination by Judge Bucklew and Probation officials there.
Last week, informed sources reported that Mr. Alite had been summoned to a meeting in Tampa with Jay G. Trezevant, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who used him as the so-called "star witness" in the fourth federal prosecution of John A. "Junior" Gotti which ended in a mistrial in 2009.
At that time the AP (via the HuffPost) reported that the jury was unanimous that Mr. Alite was the "least credible" witness and after that defeat, in throwing in the towel on any further Gotti Jr. prosecution, the Feds never again put John Alite on the stand.
Prior to publishing this piece I reached out to Mr. Alite and his lawyer Mr. Anton. I sent them a fully annotated copy of this post, asking them for their comments. At the time of publication they have yet to get back to me.
AWAITING JUDGE BUCKLEW'S CALL
It's now up to Judge Bucklew, known as a no-nonsense magistrate, to decide whether Alite, an Albanian-American associate who was never "made" as a Gambino soldier, did, in fact, violate the terms of her order.
On October 20th I sent her a follow-up letter after I discovered that in 2002 New Jersey Federal Judge Joseph H. Rodriquez "violated" Mr. Alite; sending him back to prison for three months after the ex-Gambino associate broke the terms of his Supervised Release in a New Jersey gun case.
Whatever her disposition I've asked her for a copy of the U.S. Probation Office's report so that the public can get some sense of why Federal officials in New Jersey kept the convicted murderer and home invader on such a long leash.