After decades in prison, and less than a year before his likely release, Dominic Taddeo apparently decided he couldn’t wait to get out.
Mr. Taddeo, a convicted hit man for the mafia in upstate New York, has seemingly restarted his criminal career after escaping custody in Florida, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Mr. Taddeo, 64, had been, until recently, an inmate at a medium-security correctional facility in Sumterville, Fla., about 50 miles northwest of downtown Orlando. But in mid-February, he was transferred to a residential halfway house nearby. And after a recent “authorized appointment,” he did not return, according to the prison bureau, and was officially declared as having escaped on Monday.
Jerry Capeci, a former New York Daily News reporter who writes a weekly mafia column at GanglandNews.com, said Mr. Taddeo’s actions were bewildering.
“It’s the dumbest thing he could have done: He was already out of prison,” Mr. Capeci said, referencing Mr. Taddeo living at the halfway house. “Either there’s something wrong upstairs, or something bad happened to him.” Escape from a halfway house can result in substantial additional prison time or fines.
Court documents show that Mr. Taddeo was projected to be released from prison next February. His last attempt to leave was of a much more legal nature: In late 2020, Mr. Taddeo had applied for compassionate release, because of concerns about contracting Covid.
That request, however, was denied by a federal judge, Frank P. Geraci Jr., who outlined, in his decision, the runaway hit man’s past crimes, noting convictions for assault, conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, and, befitting his illegal profession, “possession of machine guns.”
Mr. Taddeo, federal officials say, began his criminal career in mid-70s, at the age of 16. But it was his activities in the 1980s on behalf of the mafia in Rochester, N.Y., that brought Mr. Taddeo true infamy, including the murders of three men — Nicholas Mastrodonato, Gerald Pelusio, and Dino Tortatice — in 1982 and 1983.
It was not until 1992 that he admitted to those crimes, according to The Buffalo News, which said all three victims were “reputedly insurgent mob members.” Intriguingly, Mr. Taddeo also confessed to the attempted murder of a Rochester mob leader, Thomas Marotta, trying and failing to kill him twice — yes, twice — by shooting him. Those murders and attempts resulted in racketeering convictions, and a lengthy prison sentence.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, even as Rochester was starting to shrink, the mob in that Lake Ontario city was thriving, populated by characters — and, sometimes, bodies — with names and nicknames like John “Johnny Flowers” Fiorino, Vincent “Jimmy the Hammer” Massaro and Rene “the Painter” Piccarreto.
Gary Jenkins, a former police mafia investigator in Kansas City, Mo., and the host of “Gangland Wire,” a mob-oriented podcast, which recently featured a segment on Mr. Taddeo, says that smaller cities like Rochester were often subservient to bigger operations in bigger cities.
In Western New York, that meant Buffalo, where the federal and local authorities battled the Magaddino crime familyfor decades. Mr. Taddeo’s arrest was featured in an online history of the F.B.I. office in Buffalo.
And while Mr. Jenkins said Mr. Taddeo was a relatively small figure in the scope of the national mafia, he still described him as “one of the most vicious hit men of the Rochester family,” and one who may be difficult to find.
“If you look back, he thinks big,” said Mr. Jenkins, recalling that Mr. Taddeo’s arrest on gun charges in the late 1980s was related to what federal prosecutors thought was a plot to break a Colombian drug lord out of an Illinois prison. “I may be wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was gone for a long time.”
This week’s escape was not even Mr. Taddeo’s first such unauthorized outing: After being freed on bail for other crimes in 1987, Mr. Taddeo went on the lam for two years, before once again being hauled in.
On Friday, the bureau of prisons had little additional detail about the circumstances of Mr. Taddeo’s escape, which was reported by The Democrat & Chronicle on Friday morning, other than the fact that the United States Marshals Service had been notified.
File photos of a younger Mr. Taddeo in police custody show a smirking, cigarette-smoking character — a butt hanging from his lips — dressed down in a white T-shirt. But a more recent portrait of Mr. Taddeo is less wiseguy and more old-man: He is overweight and suffering from high blood pressure, according to court documents.
Why exactly Mr. Taddeo decided to wander off is still unclear. In the rejection of his request for compassionate release, the court noted Mr. Taddeo had “a relatively clean disciplinary record,” and had claimed to have “a place to stay and work upon his release.”
Mr. Taddeo had also seemingly expressed contrition.
“Defendant claims that he has learned his lesson,” the court wrote, “And wants to play a positive role in his community.”
Susan Beachy contributed research.
