By Jerry Capeci

A Manhattan jury acquitted Simon (left) and Victor Dedaj Saturday of some charges in the 1996 slayings of two employees of Scores, the Upper East Side strip joint, but is still weighing murder charges that could send them to jail for life.

After three days of deliberations, the jury tossed specious burglary counts that were piled on the brothers as well as a charge that Victor killed club bouncer Michael Greco, 22, on June 21, 1996.

The prosecution charged the men with burglary because they were in the bar after it closed. Under that theory, Greco's death was a felony murder  committed during a burglary.

Still remaining are charges that Victor, 39, (right) took part in the slaying of waiter Jonathan Segal and that Simon, 35, shot and killed both men, execution style, after an early morning dispute.

Three witnesses, including Willie Marshall, a former strong arm associate of accused Gambino family acting boss John A. (Junior) Gotti, testified that the Dedaj brothers killed the men after 4 a.m.

But the key evidence is an account of the killings that Marshall gave his brother Joe later that day in a telephone conversation tape recorded by the state Organized Crime Task Force.

"Simon. He was there and .... there was a waiter there he had a little confrontation with, and then he was choking (Segal). I was there by myself. It was near the end, there was nobody in there," said Willie.

"I told him, 'Let him go,' and then - you know, his brother was there - his brother said something, you know, and I went crazy. There was three of 'em. I called all three of them out, I grabbed Simon by the face, I pushed him, I said, 'I'll break every one of your fucking blah, blah blah, (I was) going off and they were like, 'No, Willie, wait, wait, wait....'

"And then (the waiter) came back. 'Just get out of here,' I told the guy, you know, he went out to the front and there was just like another bouncer there, this guy Mike, nice kid, like who's just watching my back, you know, and he had words. I said, 'No, he's with me.' So then I was standing by the bar and the waiter and the other kid were in the front. So when they were leaving, he fucking just shot them."

"Oh my God," said Joe.

"Killed both of them," said Willie, (left) adding that he had heard that detectives think he may have killed them because "a couple of strippers" had heard him arguing with the brothers and "no one actually seen the shooting. They heard it. I heard it, I ran out front and they were both laying there."

Prosecutors charge that Simon Dedaj killed Greco with a single shot to the head, and shot Segal three times. A bullet in the neck killed him, they said,  after Victor had stabbed him.

Defense lawyers contended that Marshall attacked Victor Dedaj, and that during a struggle, a gun fell from Marshall's waistband. Victor picked it up, fired at Greco who had pulled another gun and was about to fire at him, and as Victor ran away he fired at Segal who was beating his brother.

The jury resumes deliberations today.

Russo, 65, was found guilty of jury tampering and obstruction of justice last week after the prosecution presented a soap opera-like case that featured his willowy lawyer-mistress Dorothy Fiorenza.

Assistant U.S. attorney Daniel Dorsky, in addition to Fiorenza, used testimony by turncoat Colombo associate Mario Parlegreco, a onetime Russo cellmate, to win convictions on all counts.

"We believe that he's a significant player in the Genovese crime family in North Jersey, and that this will have a significant impact on the family's operations," said assistant U.S. Attorney Leslie Schwartz.

The contest had three sections with a total of 13 questions and was basically three individual matching quizzes.

While we pore over the entries to determine first and second prize winners -- who get respectively,  "Gotti: Rise & Fall," and  "Murder Machine: A True Story of Murder, Madness and The Mafia," autographed of course by yours truly and co-author Gene Mustain -- here are the correct answers.

During the 1963 Senate Hearings, which featured the testimony of  celebrated turncoat Joe Valachi, several mobsters who were, or would eventually become Mafia bosses, were associated with the wrong crime families.

          Match the boss with the incorrect family in which he was placed.

This week we set the record straight about a  subject that has been raised by several Gang Land readers in the last few weeks: Murder Incorporated.

Murder Incorporated, the legendary gang of so-called hired killers from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn that supposedly served as an enforcement arm of La Cosa Nostra during the 1930's and 40's, is a myth.

There was never a stable of salaried killers who sat around waiting for murder assignments. The myth began in the 1940's, was reinforced by a 1951 best seller, "MURDER INC," by Burton Turkus and Sid Feder. The myth still  survives to this day for several interrelated reasons:
1. The general lack of knowledge about La Cosa Nostra half a century ago.
2. Certain law enforcement officials with political ambitions who wanted to appear as cutthroat gangsters.
3. Good old-fashioned media sensationalism.

Many murders were committed by a motley group of mainly Jewish gangsters based in Brownsville, but most had to do with battles over garment industry rackets in Manhattan and had nothing to do with La Cosa Nostra. Lepke Buchalter (right) became a major target of the law, he lost his cool, and like many mob bosses of the 1980's and 1990's, began rubbing out anyone who he thought might testify against him.

The Cosa Nostra connection to some of these so-called MURDER INC. hoods  came from their close associations with Albert Anastasia, (left) then-underboss of the crime family known today as the Gambino family. If Jewish hoods wanted to whack someone, they would check with Anastasia and make sure the murder wouldn't screw up any of his schemes. It was a smart political move because of  the power Anastasia wielded.

MURDER INC. was co-authored by Turkus, an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn who prosecuted many of the killers. There were no turncoat mobsters then and Turkus simply got some things wrong. He knew there was some kind of national syndicate but he overestimated its organizational structure. Turkus tried to paint a picture of a well-organized nationwide  company with clearly defined roles, goals, and job descriptions. 

There is an excellent analysis of MURDER INC. in "East Side-West Side," a book by Alan Block, a Penn State University professor. A key player in Block's research was Abe Reles, a well known informer who helped Turkus win many convictions.

Reles was part of a gang battling for control of rackets in Brownsville that killed off their main rivals to consolidate their control. Reles was associated with Louis Capone, who was in the Anastasia orbit. When the gang wanted  to knock off someone interfering in their rackets, they would, as a courtesy, tell Anastasia. They did not want to inadvertently kill someone who was a friend or associate of a powerful Cosa Nostra leader. They were not hired killers. No one paid them to wipe out their rivals.

Reles, through Capone, sometimes did some favors for Anastasia as a way to curry favor, probably a handful of hits. But there was no payment; Reles was not a hired killer.

He, like all all racketeers, was out to make money through scams and schemes. Murder was simply a means of getting things done.

The affairs of the notorious Buchalter also played a big role in the legend of Murder Inc. He was a big man in the garment district and used muscle to get what he wanted. After prosecutor Thomas Dewey's main target, Dutch Schultz, was wiped out, Dewey turned his sights on Buchalter. As legal pressure mounted, Buchalter went into hiding and tried to cover his tracks by killing anyone he thought might become an informer. Many of these killings have been attributed to Murder Inc., but were really the unraveling of the Buchalter organization.

The prosecutors, the police, and the newspapers at that time, had no idea of the true nature and structure of La Cosa Nostra. The media lumped the disparate group of murders into one major conspiracy and labeled it Murder Inc. In the 1960's, when Joe Valachi broke his vow of omerta and opened a window on mob doings, he put the lie to Murder Inc. But Hollywood and the mob groupies refused to let go of the myth they helped create.

The American public loves a boogie man --be it the Communist threat  exaggerated by Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950's or Saddem Hussein in the 1990's. For a time, Murder Inc. was the great American boogie man. It's time to lay this lame myth to rest.