The Fall-Out

After four months of tireless investigation, the law last week finally pointed its finger at the acid thrower who blinded Labor Columnist Victor Riesel (TIME. April 16). The assailant, a 22-year-old hoodlum named Abraham Telvi, who got $1,000 for the brutal job, had already come to crude, ironic justice: he was the victim of a gangland murder triggered by his own hand. But the FBI seized two accomplices linked to labor rackets in New York's garment industry and put together this outline of the crime:

When the New York Daily Mirror's syndicated labor expert left a radio broadcast in Manhattan late one April night, he and his party were trailed to Lindy's restaurant by sallow-faced Gondolfo Miranti, 37, an ex-convict and garment-industry thug with a long record of arrests. From the next table, Miranti kept an eye on the group. As they prepared to leave, he moved swiftly outside, whispered urgently to Telvi, who stood in the shadows. Seconds later, Riesel emerged, and Telvi stepped forward to do his job.

The concentrated sulphuric acid hit Riesel right across the eyes, but the fallout from the wide-mouthed bottle sent corrosive little splashes into Telvi's own face. With Miranti's help, the thug rushed for hiding to his girl friend's Manhattan apartment. There Telvi was visited by Joe Carlino, 43, a stocky ex-convict with manicured fingernails. It was Carlino. acting for an "undisclosed principal," who had made the "contract" for Telvi's job, supplied him with the acid, and collected "$180 to $200" as his fee.

With the acid eating long, telltale scars into Telvi's face, Carlino feared that he was "too hot" to stay around. One night when Telvi dared to walk in the streets, a car pulled up and an unidentified man urged him to get in and be taken to the airport so he could lie low in Florida. He got in, but managed to leap out safely when the car kept going in the wrong direction. Then the hoodlum fled to a hideout in Youngstown, Ohio. In July Telvi returned to New York, but he was still "too hot." A few days later, in a lower East Side street, police found his body, apparently dumped from a car, with a bullet wound in the back of the head.

The FBI last week arrested Finger Man Miranti and Contractor Carlino, charged them with conspiring to obstruct justice by trying to prevent Columnist Riesel's appearance before a Federal Grand Jury investigating labor rackets. Agents also locked up three material witnesses who knew enough to be "hot" too. To Columnist Riesel, Telvi and his confederates were "complete and absolute strangers." But he was sure that their trail would lead to labor racketeers. "They picked on me," he told reporters, "because they wanted to silence the papers."

At week's end the FBI was still on the trail of its real quarry -the man or men who hired Telvi and paid him off twice.

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