Marked down for murder

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33739, 11 January 1975, Page 10

Marked down for murder

(By

ROSS MADDEN)

NEW YORK. When Sylvia Schaeffer parks her grey Pontiac at 4 p.m. every schoolday and joins the other mums at the gates of the high school outside Fort Wayne, Indiana, another car slips in behind her. It will be there, a discreet 100 yards behind, as she drives home with her daughters Diana and Ruth, At night it will be parked a few feet away from the driveway of the Schaeffer split-level house.

Schaeffer is not the family’s real name. In the same way, 43-year-old Bernard Schaeffer’s blond hair was once brown, and his small straight nose once large and hawk-like.

His children have grown used to changing schools, friends and identities as the family continues its never-ending flight from the ruthless and reckless men who have vowed to kill them,

For the past two years, the Schaeffers have, been on the Mafia death- list, subjects of a $200,000 bounty payable on their deaths to any gunman who can get close enough to aim a silenced automatic. Night and day But the F.B.L is pledged to see that no-one gets the money. The families of between 900 and 1000 people who have recently given evidence againt Mafia bosses are now guarded night and day by agents of the United States Marshals’ Service.

They live an elaborate lie, their identities, and often their faces, changed whenever there’s danger of their pursuers catching up. The Schaeffers, for instance, moved to Fort Wayne from Dayton, Ohio, six months ago. Soon they will be on the move again. There will probably be another . change of name, a new set of documents, credit cards, banker’s references and hire-purchase

There will be a new job for Bernard and new schools for the kids. Had enough Up to two years ago the Schaeffers, known by their real Italian name, lived in New York’s North Brooklyn, Bernard was a captain in the Mafia family run by Carmine (Mr Gribbs) Tramunti, Then suddenly he got sick of the voilence, the graft and the killings, And after the police crackdown in October, 1972, which ended in more than 100 arrests of key figures in the five “families,Bernard decided to quit. One Sunday morning, while his family were at Mass, he went along to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office and told them all he knew. His evidence helped to convict more than 40 people including Tramunti gang boss, Paul Vario, and the notorious financier, Meyer Lansky. His information, when

put with that of other Mafia defectors, led F. 8.1. men to a shabby caravan in a Brooklyn car-breaker’s yard which was found to be an operations centre controlling at least- 1000 men. Tough job Finally, after two months of helping the police with their inquiries, Bernard Schaeffer and his family disappeared as suddenly and completely as if they had fallen off the planet. Which was just as well. For the rest of their lives they would be marked down for murder. It’s not unusual for the Marshals’ Service to spend generously to safeguard the men whose testimonies have put them in fear of their lives. When Billy Catani, a long-time aide of the Mafia gambling boss, Carlo Gambino, chose to sing his heart out to the F. 8.1. last summer, the Marshals’ Service knew they’d have a tough job keeping him safe — there was a slm execution contract on his head. After his testimony, he disappeard for ing.” It took six months.