New York mob hitman Dominic Taddeo caught after escaping federal custody
By Amir Vera, Amanda Musa and Christina Maxouris, CNN
US Marshals in South Florida captured Dominic Taddeo on Monday, one week after the Rochester, New York, mob hitman escaped federal custody.
Taddeo, 64, was apprehended without incident in Hialeah in Miami-Dade County around 11 a.m., according to a news release from the agency.
In February, officials say, Taddeo was transferred from a medium-security prison in Sumter County, Florida, to a halfway house near Orlando. He was scheduled to be there until February 2023.
On March 28, Taddeo failed to “return from a previously authorized medical appointment” and was placed on escape status by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to bureau spokesperson Scott Taylor.
Taddeo pleaded guilty in January 1992 to the shooting deaths of three people in 1982 and 1983, and also for twice attempting to fatally shoot a mob leader and plotting to kill another mob figure, according to the Rochester newspaper Democrat and Chronicle.
He had been nearing the end of several prison sentences for a string of convictions, including illegal weapons possession and racketeering and conspiracy in connection to the killings and attempted homicides, according to 1992 archives of the Democrat and Chronicle.
Taddeo admitted in court that a crime organization known as “La Cosa Nostra” that existed in Rochester paid him to kill certain people, according to news reports. La Cosa Nostra — or the Mafia — has been operating in New York since roughly the 1920s, according to the FBI.
In April 1992, the late US District Judge Michael A. Telesca sentenced Taddeo to 24 years in prison, which he was to serve consecutively to the 30 years he was already serving for drug conspiracy, bail jumping and illegal weapons possession, according to the newspaper archive.
Taddeo filed a motion for compassionate release in December 2020, citing the dangers that the Covid-19 pandemic posed to his health. A judge denied the request and refused to cut Taddeo’s sentence short, citing the “seriousness of his offenses and his extremely lengthy criminal record.”
Taddeo’s latest escape was not the first time he’s been on the run, according to the Democrat and Chronicle. In 1987, facing federal weapons charges, he disappeared while out on bail and was found two years later after a national manhunt, the newspaper reported.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Liam Reilly contributed to this report.
