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| January 13, 2000 | |
| By Jerry Capeci | |
| Bosko's Back | |
  Bosko Radonjich wasn't too concerned that he had to stop
over in Miami International Airport on New Year's Day for a connecting flight to the
Bahamas. In fact, the Serbian freedom fighter, former CIA operative, and former head of
the Westies wanted for allegedly fixing the jury in John Gotti's first federal
racketeering case, was apparently so oblivious to his surroundings he left the safety of a
waiting area reserved for in-transit international passengers and had to pass through a
U.S. Customs check point.This misstep caused a giant 180-degree detour in
Radonjich's itinerary.
Instead of warm beaches and tropical breezes, Radonjich can now look forward to wintering
in New York. An alert and persistent customs inspector located a 1992 arrest warrant, and
Radonjich spent the first night of the new year in federal custody, ending eight eventful
years on the lam.
Gotti's sensational
acquittal in the 1987 racketeering and murder case turned the Dapper
Don into the Teflon Don.
Former U.S. Attorney Andrew Maloney, whose office lost the tainted Gotti trial but convicted him in a second-go-round five years later, was ecstatic about the arrest, and is looking forward to Radonjich spending a few years in prison. He faces five years if convicted.  "As
imperfect as it is, we consider the jury system sacred and when someone tampers with it,
he deserves the maximum possible penalty under the law," said Maloney. "The
irony is that if John hadn't put the fix in, he probably would have gotten 15 years and be
out by now instead of serving life without parole."
Radonjich, 56, and a squat bear of a man, appeared twice before Miami U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Dube and is currently in federal custody enroute to Brooklyn. He will have a detention hearing when he arrives. No one seems to know exactly where he is, or when he will arrive. Gang Land was unable to contact Radonjich's lawyer about the case last night. William Shockley, a federal prosecutor in Miami, and Bridget Rohde and Paul Schoeman, assistant U.S. attorneys in Brooklyn, where Radonjich will face trial for jury tampering, refused to discuss the circumstances of the arrest or say much about the case. Gang Land has learned, however, that Radonjich was traveling with a companion who was having trouble clearing Customs because his name appeared on a list of suspected troublemakers. Radonjich, who was |
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traveling under his own name with a valid passport, had already passed through the check
stop. But his companion's difficulties did in Radonjich. The Customs inspector called Radonjich back, eventually dug up a 1992 arrest warrant for jury tampering, and Radonjich was arrested about 10:30 p.m., sources said. Ironically, his companion cleared Customs. "Bosko did not expect to go through Customs; he did not expect to be stopped in the U.S.," said one source. During the 1990's, Radonjich was a close advisor to Radovan Karadzic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb leader charged with genocide, whom Radonjich described in a 1997 Esquire article as: "My angel, my saint." His recorded odyssey in the U.S. began in 1970, when he emigrated from the former Yugoslavia and moved into the West Side of Manhattan where he worked as a parking lot attendant and became an explosives expert for the Serbian underground. In 1975, Radonjich took part in a bombing at the Yugoslav mission to the U.N. in which no one was hurt. In 1978, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in the 1975 bombing of a Yugoslavian consul's home in Chicago and for plotting to bomb a Yugoslav social club in the Windy City.
"If you're a freedom fighter, you have to love the Irish,"Radonjich told Esquire. When Gotti went to trial in 1986, Radonjich told Gotti's underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano that he had a strong-willed "very very good friend" who was on the jury and could fix the case, according to court testimony.
There was no question Radonjich gave the money to Pape, said Gravano, explaining that if he had lied about having a friend on the jury, or giving him the cash: "We would have killed him." In the Esquire article, Radonjich basically
admitted that he and his friend Pape, who was convicted Radonjich is probably not overjoyed about the circumstances of his return, but the FBI, which obtained an arrest warrant for him eight years ago, will take him any way they can. "We're gratified that this person who has been a fugitive for so many years has been apprehended," said New York FBI spokesman Jim Margolin. |
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After
getting out of federal prison in 1982, Radonjich moved back to New York and ran with the
Westies, eventually becoming the leader of the primarily Irish American gang of thugs who
worked for the Gambino family, first under Paul Castellano (left) and later for Gotti. 
Gravano testified he gave Radonjich $60,000 in three installments
which he funneled to George Pape, (left) who had been an usher at Radonjich's wedding and
was a juror at Gotti's trial. 
and sentenced to three years, had conspired to fix Gotti's trial.
"There were people in high places who knew that he was my best friend," said
Radonjich. In the same article, Radonjich professed his love for America, said he had
worked for the CIA, and said that he hoped to someday return.
