The DiPietro Case: Alleged Victim Points Finger at Prosecutors

Jeanine Pirro

 

The investigation into the wrongful conviction of Angelo DiPietro has taken a startling turn. Recent court filings and investigative documents obtained by Rising Media have revealed that state and federal officials involved in the case may ultimately be the main culprits in the fabrication of the kidnapping story that landed DiPietro in prison for the rest of his life — according to alleged victim John Perazzo.

For the past year, DiPietro’s legal team, headed by Innocence Project Investigator Bill Clutter and prominent defense attorney Joseph Bondy, has uncovered critical pieces of evidence detailing DiPietro’s innocence. As reported previously in Rising’s “Search for Justice” series, the evidence of DiPietro’s innocence includes six exculpatory witnesses, documented letters, missing surveillance tapes, affidavits and phone records.

The investigation into the case has now also revealed that the alleged victim, Perazzo, has made numerous assertions claiming that federal and state officials knowingly allowed and influenced Maurizio Sanginiti to commit perjury in order to convict DiPietro in 2005.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara

 

Sanginiti was the sole witness who testified at the trial (Perazzo, the alleged kidnapping victim, never testified), and whose testimony put DiPietro away for life for a crime that even the alleged victim admits never happened.

Similarly devastating to prosecutors, Perazzo has also recently declared that both federal prosecutors and those from former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office lied at DiPietro’s trial in order to conceal surveillance tapes that purportedly captured the events of the nights in question.

In conversation after conversation, Perazzo is caught adamantly stating that Maurizio Sanginiti’s trial testimony was false and made up. For example, when questioned whether Sanginiti told the truth that Perazzo was kidnapped in a white van on DiPietro’s orders on June 29, 2001, Perazzo stated “that is not true… that is a lie… that is a fabrication.” In addressing other aspects of Sanginiti’s testimony at DiPietro’s trial, Perazzo called it a “bunch of garbage and unbelievable.” He stated there “were no truths at all” as to what Sanginiti was saying.

The most devastating aspect to these conversations is Perazzo’s insinuation that the officials involved in the case were well aware of Sanginiti’s lies prior to DiPietro’s trial. Perazzo has been overheard stating that when he was first confronted with Sanginiti’s version of event, he told agents that it was a “bunch of bullsh*t.”

John Perazzo

 

In fact, according to Perazzo, he continued to converse with agents as late as April 26, 2010, in which he spoke to the lead FBI agent on the phone and declared that Sanginiti’s story was “untrue.” In that same conversation, Perazzo also claimed that he advised the agent of his ongoing frustration with the deceit and manipulation of former Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro.

Consistent with this trend, Perazzo was also captured on audio stating that he believed Sanginti’s trial testimony was fed to him. Specifically, one of the released recordings captures Perazzo describing Sanginiti’s testimony as “a farce of untruth” and that he was “probably fed and turned around and came out with it.”

Perazzo also alluded to the other alleged kidnappers involved in the case, and went onto explain that FBI agents were forceful in telling what version of events they wanted to hear, and who should be named as being involved.

The tactics of prosecutors described by Perazzo were corroborated by another witness, Frank Taddeo, who was also interviewed prior to DiPietro’s trial. In a recent statement, Taddeo also declared that “prosecutors did not want to hear the truth and became extremely angry when I told them that nothing happened that evening. Everyone in the room, including two United States Attorneys, continuously attempted to sway me into another story, as I was attacked by cursing and downgrading comments. They started yelling and asking questions, all implying a completely false story that they had obviously invented.”

The final blow to the prosecutor’s case from Perazzo comes when he dismantles their attempt to conceal surveillance tapes that have been sought by DiPietro’s defense team since the inception of the case. Perazzo has stated that federal prosecutors lied in claiming that the entire events of June and July 2001 were not captured and recorded on his video surveillance system. According to Perazzo, the surveillance tapes did record the summer of 2001 and were at his home when items of evidence were seized by the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office.

A Web site, www.hiddencasefiles.com, has been created to help inform the public about the DiPietro case and other wrongful conviction cases. Included on the site are Rising’s “Search for Justice” stories and the audio recordings of Perazzo mentioned in this story.

We hope the current U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is aware of this case, which was prosecuted year’s before was named to the post. Bharara is knee deep in the middle of his investigation into political corruption in Westchester and beyond, but he also needs to clean up this mess of a wrongful conviction and do the right thing.

After eight years, DiPietro is still in a Federal Prison in Pennsylvania, awaiting the outcome of his motion to vacate his conviction and life sentence. DiPietro’s defense team’s discovery motion is currently before U.S. Magistrate Henry Pittman.