After almost a week of excavation, the FBI has found some bones in a vacant Queens lot. An FBI informant alleges that the bones are those of Gambino crime family victims from the 1970s and 1980s. The victims are expected to include John Favara, who accidentally killed John Gotti's young son in a car accident, two captains of the Bonanno crime family, and "aspiring" mobster Thomas Desimone (the basis of the Joe Pesci character in Goodfellas, who helped pull off the Luthansa Airlines heist). The Daily News reports the FBI's findings: "The four bones appear to be a human tibia and fibula, which are bones of the lower leg, as well as what appears to be a pelvic bone and either a hand or foot bone." The NY Times adds that a wristwatch and pair of glasses were found, and has these facts for forensics junkies:
- A forensic anthropologist would examine the bones today.
[M]embers of the F.B.I.'s Evidence Recovery Team, many wearing lavender-colored latex gloves, used large screens set up atop sawhorses to sift through buckets of earth and mud scooped out of the hole.At the same time, because the searchers had dug down to the water table, two large blue and white tanker trucks from a Queens business called Cesspool Man Inc. were used to pump water out of the hole and haul it away.
Yesterday, the Daily News ran a story about the dig,
"Fed's big dig hasn't run its corpse"; apparently a cadaver dog is also on the scene!
Other cold cases: A Missing Persons' Cold Case network, a book by Philip Gourevitch about a Hell's Kitchen cold case, and the show on CBS.
Photo by Mary Altaffer for the Associated Press
