In federal court, a son was sentenced to life in prison plus 112 years for ordering a hitman to kill his father in order to take over the family’s real estate enterprise.
On Friday, April 14, Anthony Zottola Jr. was condemned for the murder of Sylvester Zottola, 71.
According to a press release from the Department of Justice, Zottola, 45, hired 37-year-old hitman Himen Ross, who was also sentenced to life in prison, to kill both his father and brother in order to keep the family’s two dozen Bronx multi-family rental and commercial properties worth $45 million.
On Oct. 4, 2018, a renowned New York City mobster named Sylvester was murdered down in a mafia-style assassination in a Bronx McDonald’s drive-thru while ordering a cup of coffee.
Sylvester, a reputed associate of New York’s Bonanno criminal family, was waiting in his vehicle to pick up his order at the window when he was shot four times in the abdomen. He was declared dead at the site.
Salvatore Zottola, Sylvester Zottola’s youngest son, narrowly averted death three months earlier when he was shot many times outside his Throgs Neck property in The Bronx. The 42-year-old was saved.
Anthony Zottola Sr. intended to gain control of approximately 90 homes across the borough.
During the trial, Salvatore testified that the real estate business generated more than $1 million in rental income per year, worth tens of millions of dollars.
Meanwhile, Assistant US Attorney Devon Lash told jurors that the murder was the culmination of a series of six failed assassination attempts in which would-be assassins stabbed and battered the elder Zottola — but the mafia associate, who paid dues to both the Lucchese and Bonanno families, survived each attempt.
In November 2017, Sylvester was threatened at gunpoint by a masked individual as part of one of the attempts. A month later, three men broke into his house and shot him in the head, stabbed him numerous times, and slit his neck.
Sylvester’s life was ultimately taken by his own son.
Zottola had been managing all of the estates with his brother Salvatore until his father’s murder.
“Why? Why, Anthony, my brother? What exactly did you do? “Dad gave you everything,” Salvatore stated in court during a victim impact statement. “What you did to my dad and me is unimaginable.”
“Zottola had not one, not two, but several chances to reconsider his lethal intention to murder his own father.” He and the others he recruited chose to carry on with their heinous plot and were successful. Instead of living off his father’s millions, his only source of income will be federal prison, according to FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Michael Driscoll in a prior statement.
