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George Bratsenis, 73, of Monroe, CT said he and his partner were paid to whack Michael Galdieri, the son of former State Sen. James Galdieri (D-Jersey City) and a prominent figure in local Hudson County politics.
Bratsenis and the other killer, Bomani Africa, 61, were hired by onetime political operative Sean Caddle, who’d been an aide to former State Sen. Ray Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) and previously worked with Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez.
All three took plea deals rather than face trial -- which likely would have involved one or more testifying against another. Bratsenis was the last of the trio to enter his plea, doing so via videoconference with a federal judge in Newark on Thursday, March 24.
The killing publicly lingered as a cold case until Caddle abruptly entered his plea this past January. Africa quickly followed.
No motive has ever been mentioned, but that didn’t matter in the end.
“These guilty pleas bring a measure of justice to the victim’s memory and for his family,” U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip Sellinger said Thursday. “I commend the efforts of the FBI, the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, and my office for their determination over many years to bring this matter to resolution.”
Bratsenis, a Stamford, CT native who’s reportedly dying of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer, had the proverbial “long as your arm” criminal record when he was hired for the hit.
The U.S. Marine Corps Vietnam War vet had served prison time for his role in a 1980 crew recruited by a mob-connected Stamford police lieutenant to kill a drug dealer and steal a kilo of heroin.
He was part of a crew that went on a jewelry store holdup spree in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut that netted more than $1 million worth of bling, records show. In each one, the robbers set fires elsewhere to distract police.
Bratsenis infamously hatched an escape plan while he was being held in the Passaic County Jail in connection with the jewelry store heists. (Story continues below.)
The scheme had his sister smuggling in a balloon filled with a drug that would make him sick. Bratsenis planned to keep it hidden in his rectum for two weeks, ingest it to get sick and then make a break for it at the hospital, where armed henchmen would be lying in wait.
Jailhouse snitch Anthony Sheppard – known as “The Rat” -- blew that up, however.
Bratsenis was doing time in Northern State Prison in Newark after being sentenced in the holdups when he met Caddle’s brother, James, who’d been sent there on kidnapping, robbery and burglary raps.
Bratsenis also met Africa -- – the former Baxter Randolph Keys -- in prison. They agreed to work together once they were released, investigators said.
Their opportunity came in April 2014, when the ex-cons robbed a People’s United branch on Old Kings Highway in Darien, CT.
It was right around that time – spring of 2014 -- that Caddle also offered Bratsenis thousands of dollars to rub out Galdieri, Sellinger said.
Bratsenis immediately recruited Africa, whom the U.S. attorney described as “a longtime accomplice from Philadelphia.”
Once both men expressed interest in the job, Caddle described the target as “a longtime associate who had worked for him on various political campaigns,” Sellinger said.
The partners stabbed Galdieri to death and torched his apartment at 158 Mallory Street in Jersey City on May 22, 2014, Sellinger said. Firefighters found the body after dousing the flames.
Once the deed was done, Caddle met Bratsenis in the parking lot of an Elizabeth diner and paid him thousands of dollars, which Sellinger said he then shared with Africa.
In September of that same year, Bratsenis and Africa robbed a bank in Trumbull, CT of $29,937. As in the previous holdup, they leaped onto bank counters, pointed guns at the tellers and had them empty the cash drawers. They then torched their stolen getaway car for cover, authorities said at the time.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee M. Cortes Jr., chief of Sellinger's Health Care Fraud Unit, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Farrell, chief of his Cybercrime Unit, secured the pleas in the murder-for-hire plot.
U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez scheduled Bratsenis’s sentencing for April 2. Like the others, Bratsenis could face life in federal prison given the severity of the crime and his extensive criminal record.
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