Even below the most brutal situations, this is not the way a succession is supposed to play out.
Anthony Zottola Sr., of Westchester, and Himen Ross, of the Bronx, have been each sentenced in federal court to life in prison plus 112 years final week for their roles in the killing of Anthony’s father, 71-year-old Sylvester Zottola, in Anthony’s work to take more than the family’s residential genuine estate organization, according to a Division of Justice press release.
Sylvester Zottola owned a residential genuine estate portfolio consisting of two-dozen multi-loved ones rental and industrial properties — valued at tens of millions of dollars at the time of his death — which Anthony Zottola and his brother Salvatore Zottola managed with each other.
Anthony Zottola, nonetheless, wanted the multimillion-dollar small business for himself, so he hired Bushawn Shelton of Brooklyn to recruit hitmen to kill each his father and his brother.
Shelton hired Ross and various accomplices to shoot and kill 71-year-old Sylvester Zottola at a Bronx McDonald’s in October 2018.
Sylvester’s killing took spot just after various failed attempts on his and Salvatore’s lives starting in late 2017. The attempts integrated Sylvester becoming menaced at gunpoint by a masked particular person in November 2017 Sylvester becoming shot in the head, stabbed various occasions and obtaining his throat slashed by 3 males who invaded his household in December 2017 and Salvatore becoming shot in the head, chest and hand in front of his household in July 2018. Each males survived these attacks.
The hitmen eventually have been capable to track Sylvester to the Bronx McDonald’s by putting a tracking device on Sylvester’s car or truck. Ross then shot Sylvester various occasions as Sylvester waited for a cup of coffee in the drive-thru lane.
Following the killing, Shelton and Anthony Zottola exchanged texts, which includes Shelton saying, “Can we celebration nowadays or tomorrow?” Anthony replied that payment would be created later, saying “I have the circumstances of water in a day or so.”
Authorities later recovered a photo on Shelton’s telephone displaying a box of bottle water and extra than $200,000 in money.
Soon after a six-week trial, Anthony Salvatore and Ross have been convicted of murder in October 2022. Their sentencing Friday integrated an extra 112 years in prison, reflecting Salvatore’s age when he was shot, 41, and Sylvester’s age, 71, when he was killed.
“Over the course of extra than a year, the elderly victim, Sylvester Zottola, was stalked, beaten, and stabbed, under no circumstances realizing who orchestrated the attacks,” Breon Peace, the U.S. lawyer for the Eastern District of New York, mentioned in the press release. “It was his personal son, who was so determined to handle the family’s profitable genuine estate small business that he hired a gang of hitmen to murder his father.”
Shelton pleaded guilty to murder final August and is awaiting sentencing. Co-conspirators Herman Blanco, Arthur Codner, Jason Cummings, and Branden Peterson each and every pleaded guilty and have been sentenced to 240 months’ imprisonment, 228 months’ imprisonment, 204 months’ imprisonment, and 192 months’ imprisonment respectively.
“Zottola had not 1, not two, but various probabilities to rethink his deadly intent to murder his personal father. He and the other people he recruited chose to continue with their savage plot and succeeded. Now, rather of living off his father’s millions, his only payday will be federal prison,” FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Driscoll mentioned in a preceding statement.
— Ted Glanzer