The following is an excerpt from South End Syndicate: How I Took Over the Genovese Springfield Crew, by Anthony Arillotta with Joe Bradley. Copyright © 2019 Anthony Arillotta and Joe Bradley.
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PROLOGUE: KILLING GARY
The first time I met Gary Westerman was in 1995 at Antonio’s Grinders in the South End. I noticed Freddy Geas with another guy who was a fairly good-sized decent looking character. He wore a brown leather coat and dress pants.
“Freddy, what’s going on?” I gave him a quick hug.
“Nothin’, just getting a bite. Bingy, this is Gary.”
“How ya doing?” I shook his hand.
“Good to meet you,” he said. “You’re a legend in the prison system. I figured you to be around six-foot-five and two-hundred-and-fifty pounds. The stories on the inside made me think you were a much bigger guy.”
“Well as you can see, I’m not. But don’t let my size fool you.”
I was flattered that I had such a reputation in the system, and I took a liking to Westerman. Ty Geas had connected with Westerman while doing time, and he eventually introduced him to Freddy.
Westerman had moved to the Springfield area in his late teens. He was first arrested when he was nineteen years old for robbing stores at the Eastfield Mall in Springfield. He and two other guys gained access to the roof and slithered through air conditioning vents to get into the mall. They had stolen more than twenty-eight thousand dollars in jewelry, furs, leather coats, and pharmaceuticals. He was sentenced to prison in 1973 for robbery, and this would be the first of many trips to state penitentiaries throughout his life.
In 1986, Westerman was arrested for transporting cocaine from Florida to Springfield. He was arrested along with Frankie Campiti, a suspect in several gangland murders, and he was sentenced to do his time in Norfolk Prison in Dedham, Massachusetts.
When he got out in the early Nineties, he hooked up with Freddy, and they began robbing drug dealers, committing robberies, and selling large quantities of narcotics. Their crime spree ended when they were arrested in 1996 for stealing a trailer truck filled with computers. Freddy was concerned that Westerman was going to talk to get a reduced sentence and told me he wanted to kill him. “Two can keep a secret if one is dead,” he said.
A week later, our associate Louie Santos went to Westerman’s apartment to ask him to come along for a robbery while we waited in a van with a gun. His girlfriend answered the door and said he had gone out and she didn’t know where he went, so Louie left.
Freddy, Louie, and I had planned on picking him up to ask him if he wanted to help us rob a drug dealer. We figured he would jump at the chance for a quick score, and we knew he liked the thrill of the action. Once we got him into the van, Freddy would shoot him in the head, and we would dump his body.
Anyway, that was our plan; but at that point, we knew we couldn’t whack Westerman after his girlfriend saw Louie’s face. We had no way of knowing she would be at his place when Louie went to the door. If he ended up murdered, his girlfriend could identify Louie in a photo array and line-up.
Less than a year later, Freddy was sentenced to three years in prison, and Westerman got four. The hit didn’t happen at that point.
My wife’s younger sister Sandra was a wild nineteen-year-old who enjoyed doing drugs and having sex with many partners. She was into ecstasy, cocaine, and penis. While I was separated from Irene, I banged her several times.
After Westerman got out of prison in 2002, he ended up going steady with her, and her parents weren’t happy about it. Freddy had gotten out a year earlier, and he and Westerman were back together, committing crimes on the street. It was all about making money. Westerman was one of those guys who was always up to making moves on the street and he was pretty good at pulling off capers.
Freddy didn’t like or trust Westerman—none of us did. He was a snake in the grass, and we knew eventually we would have to cut his head off.
My in-laws owned Zonin’s deli on Main Street, and it was a popular place to get Italian sausage, meat, and cheese. I stopped in to grab some food, and my father-in-law started on me. He was complaining that my sister-in-law was only nineteen years old, and she was seeing Westerman, who was forty-nine. He said Westerman had her doing drugs and that they were disrespectful to him and his wife, and he wanted me to talk to Westerman and get him to stop seeing her. This went on for weeks. Every time I saw him, he was riding me about Westerman. Finally, I approached Westerman and asked him to find another girl. I told him my in-laws were driving me crazy, and they didn’t want him dating their daughter. The next time I saw my father-in-law, he began harassing me again.
“I thought you were a big shot and had street cred. This guy doesn’t listen to you or fear you. He still refuses to break off the relationship. He’s disrespecting you, me, and my wife.”
“He’s still seeing her?” I said in a hollering whisper.
“Yes, he was just here to pick her up yesterday and she never made it back home last night,” he said as if he’d just sunk his teeth into a rotten egg.
An intense heated feeling hit the back of my neck. I made it clear to him he was to stop seeing her, and he completely defied my command. At that point, I was getting pumped up and at the end of my rope with Westerman. I had to kill him.
“Alright, I’ll take care of it.”
***
I went to Dicky Jovelet’s house to get the guns—he was holding my arsenal of weapons. Then I called my friend Michael DeCaro and asked him to give me a ride to have a hard talk with Westerman.
The plan was in motion. Freddy was going to go out to dinner with Westerman at the Federal Hill Club in Agawam. Ten minutes before they were going to leave, Freddy would beep me, and we would be waiting outside in a car with guns and wearing masks. After they exited the restaurant, DeCaro would pull the car up, and I would jump out and shoot Westerman—leaving him to die in the street. It was a simple plan. We had put a stolen plate on the car in case someone saw up leaving the scene.
My beeper sounded, and I told DeCaro to pull up to the side of the building because they would have to walk right past us to get to the parking lot. We masked up, and I told DeCaro to drive up to them real slow as they walked out, and I’d jump out and start shooting at point-blank range. DeCaro began to pull up as they came out, but they turned in the other direction, away from us. Westerman had a Porsche and he had parked it in a spot by the street, not in the back parking lot where we thought he would be parked. I told DeCaro to hurry up and drive up to them so that I could get him, but it was too late. They both got into the car, and I knew it was too dangerous for Freddy while he sat next to him in such a small car. We had to abort the hit. Westerman had no clue how close he came to meeting his maker that night.
As time went on, Westerman began to earn favor with my in-laws. He was taking my mother-in-law out to fancy dinners and buying her gifts, so I backed off because they were getting along. And my father-in-law wasn’t busting my balls anymore.
A few months later, my sister-in-law, who agreed to be the Godmother of my daughter, blew off the Christening and ran off and got married to Westerman. I was really pissed off because she left us at the altar without a Godmother. Soon after, I found out that Westerman was an informant for the State Police. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
My office was in West Springfield at my cigar shop, and I asked Freddy and Ty to meet me there. Inside, I told them I was going to kill Westerman, and I asked for their help, and they agreed.
On November 4, 2003, I drove to an East Longmeadow restaurant where Emilio Fusco was eating lunch with a girl. I told him about the hit and asked if he wanted to come along. He said yes. We left the restaurant and had Tony Vitrano drive us to my stash house in Agawam, where I hid my drugs and kept some guns.
Freddy had told Westerman that he and Ty were going to hit a drug house and rob them of cash and weed. He asked Westerman if he wanted to come along, and he agreed.
Tony dropped me and Fusco up the street from my stash house, and we walked over and waited in the garage for Freddy, Ty, and Westerman to show up.
It was around 7:30 p.m. when we heard the truck pulling down the driveway. As they entered the house, we stood in the garage with two shovels that we would use to fill in the hole after dumping Westerman into it. We could hear the three of them walking around the house, and we listened as the footsteps got louder and were moving faster. We could hear Westerman making grunting sounds as Ty shot him with a .22 caliber handgun, but we could barely hear the shots because he had a silencer on the gun. Ty emptied an entire clip into Westerman until he ran out of bullets.
We ran into the house to find Freddy and Ty wrestling with Westerman, who was trying to get away. Even though he was shot several times, Westerman was a big guy, and he was fighting for his life. They were having a hard time controlling him. Blood was spattered all over the walls and on the floor. The three of them were also covered in blood. It looked like a scene in a slasher film. At that point, I knew we had to stop Westerman, and I hit him over the head with my shovel, and Fusco did the same. We began whacking him in the face and head with our shovels until he was out cold. We literally beat his brains in. Now, we had to get him to the gravesite, so we started to drag his body across the yard, and he was heavy. A minute later, he woke up, so we beat him over the head again—much worse than the first time.
Finally, we dragged him to the hole and pushed him in. I was concerned that he might not be dead, and I didn’t want to bury him alive, so I told Freddy to shoot him in the head to make sure. After a brief hesitation, Freddy took out a .38 caliber revolver and he shot him. We filled in the hole and left Westerman in the resting place he would occupy for the next seven years.