You didn't have to shoot the kid

From a recording of a December 2007 conversation between Jason Allo and Doreen Giuliano. On October 12, 2003, Mark S. Fisher, a nineteen-year-old New Jersey resident and a student at Fairfield University, was found dead of gunshot wounds on a sidewalk in Brooklyn. The previous evening, he had been drinking at bars in Manhattan with classmates. Accompanied by Meredith Denihan, a friend of one of his classmates, and others, he went to Giuliano’s Brooklyn residence at the invitation of her then twenty-year-old son, John Giuca, who said his parents were not at home. In 2005, Giuca and his then nineteen-year-old friend Antonio Russo, members of a gang known as the Ghetto Mafia, were convicted of murdering Fisher. The pair were sentenced to twenty-five years to life in prison. Allo was a member of the jury. In 2007, Giuliano, who is forty-seven, dyed her hair, rented an apartment near Allo’s home in Brooklyn’s Bensonhurst neighborhood, and began an acquaintance with him, introducing herself as Dee Quinn and claiming to be in her early thirties. Allo, who is thirty-three, told the New York Times that he “fooled around” with Giuliano. She recorded several conversations with him, seeking to establish that he was familiar with members of her son’s gang and therefore ineligible to have served as a juror at his trial. This transcript is included in a motion, filed by Giuliano in November, to overturn Giuca’s conviction on account of juror misconduct.

jason allo: I used to hang out with these guys. I knew them since high school.

doreen giuliano: The gang members. [Laughs.] The lower guys.

allo: Ghetto Mafia.

giuliano: Ghetto Mafia, right. So you’re saying, then, when you were little?

allo: Not little but, you know, a kid, fifteen, and my brother used to get abused by the guys.

giuliano: Oh!

allo: Like the two guys John and um—

giuliano: Russo.

allo: Antonio. They used to hang with this kid that lived actually right here! They used to hang out not even four blocks from here. Even closer sometimes. The Wenzels is the name of the house. And he might be—oh, he never took the stand, but they were there, I think. No, they weren’t, but they were on the list.

giuliano: And your cousin knows them?

allo: I know them.

giuliano: And you know them!

allo: I didn’t know John and Tony, but I mean, I know them.

giuliano: The group, the whole group.

allo: Some of them. Like, um, the kid Jesse. Actually my cousin used to go out with this guy Jesse, which is—no, this guy Wayne, which is Jesse’s bother. And Jesse—

giuliano: Your cousin used to date him?

allo: She dated a guy named Wayne Wenzel.

giuliano: So now, that’s weird. [Laughs.] Now I’m putting it all together. She knows John and Russo and hung out with them.

allo: And I know them! So it’s a circle of people.

giuliano: And this was way before the trial?

allo: Right!

giuliano: You knew their reputation.

allo: I know what they do. I know this kid Billy, the son, his brother. I mean, I’ve been to his house many times. The TV is broken where they fucking got drunk and they were shooting it. I mean [laughs], their walls are like fucking destroyed. The back bedroom, it isn’t really a bedroom, it’s a fucking weed factory. They got like twenty-five plants in there. And he’s basically running his house. His parents live upstairs. The kids are out of control, and the parents can’t—

giuliano: And this is John’s friends from the gang?

allo: This is where they all live. This is where they would hang out most of the time. They would have meetings here.

giuliano: Gang meetings?

allo: Yeah, meetings.

giuliano: So because you knew them before, you knew of John, you knew his reputation. Did your cousin ever say anything good about him? Or just, I mean, did the guy do any good deeds?

allo: Ah, listen, I don’t know what he did when he was young, but, I mean, I never personally met him. I may have heard of him, and, honestly, I look at him, and he is nothing. He’s just a rich white kid who had some ghetto friends who didn’t have money, so he felt like a big shot.

giuliano: And he was bad news in the neighborhood?

allo: Right! ’Cause when you have kids who don’t have money and you have money, they’re gonna follow you. Just because of that reason. They’ll do some stupid shit. Like this asshole Tony, Antonio. He fuckin’ gunned the kid down because he had to show him what’s up. Well, you could’ve showed him what’s up a lot of ways. You didn’t have to shoot the kid. Even if you throw him a beatin’, you know? At least the kid can walk away. And learn a lesson. You are pretty stupid for ending up here when you should have left with your friends, you know? And they should have never left him.

giuliano: Yeah, but still, just because they left him doesn’t mean—

allo: No, I’m not saying they’re wrong. They’re not wrong, but me personally, if I go out, I make sure I go home with who I went out with. Especially this kid coming to Brooklyn. I mean, his friends didn’t know that until after the fact. And he met that girl. He was having a good time with this girl and said, Yo, let’s go party. And there’s a party in Brooklyn. There’s more drugs. ’Cause he actually knew the girl before, and I think he liked her, and they just ended up meeting up that night. And they ended up in Brooklyn, and he ended up dead.

giuliano: I knew something about that. I don’t remember all the details, but that sounds awful familiar to me. Did Linda ever date John?

allo: No, my cousin doesn’t really know John much.

giuliano: Through the Wenzels?

allo: This is early before the Wenzels got into all that, you know, this is when they were still in school. Now these guys are men, not kids.

giuliano: Right. They’re men. Exactly. They’re in their twenties.

allo: And they got kids. They came from, I don’t know, all different places. They all hang out together. They know him as Slim. That’s what they call John.

giuliano: Yeah, you told me that last time. But that tells you how Linda knew him as Slim.

allo: Right.

giuliano: Right.

allo: Slim Shady.

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