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PROVIDENCE, R.I.- from www.boston.com -— A strip club bouncer accused of taking part in a mob extortion scheme was ordered held without bail Wednesday after a detective described conversations in which he threatened to kill a man and bragged of shooting someone else.
Richard Bonafiglia, who has a long criminal record — including violent crimes and bail violations — poses a danger to the community and to potential witnesses against him, Magistrate Judge David Martin said after hearing the evidence.
“Conditions of release are meaningless to Mr. Bonafiglia,” Martin said. “What really tips the scales is Mr. Bonafiglia’s past conduct.”
Bonafiglia, 57, has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and extortion conspiracy charges.
He is named in an indictment that alleges he helped Luigi “Baby Shacks” Manocchio — the suspected former boss of New England’s Patriarca crime family — keep tabs on his employer, the Cadillac Lounge strip club.
Manocchio, who was arrested in a major mob sweep in January, has pleaded not guilty to charges he and his associates extorted protection payments, totaling at least several thousand dollars a month, from Rhode Island strip clubs and adult bookstores.
To bolster the government’s case for pre-trial detention, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Ferland called on state police Detective Matthew Moynihan, who worked on the case, to review transcripts of conversations intercepted in 2008 by police surveillance of a Cadillac Lounge office.
In quotes Moynihan attributed to Bonafiglia, the bouncer brags about acts of violence on several occasions, including what Moynihan said was a deadly shooting that took place in a Rhode Island liquor store in the late 1980s.
“I shot him twice in the joint. And then he got in the car, and I threw one through the window and the horn went beep,” Bonafiglia said, according to the transcript.
Moynihan said the victim of that shooting died but that Bonafiglia was never charged with the slaying. He said the bouncer also was questioned in 2008 in connection with two other cold case murders.
Ferland also played a recording of an intercepted conversation from the Cadillac Lounge. In the recording, a voice identified by Moynihan as belonging to Bonafiglia screams at an unknown man over the telephone, telling him to be quiet “or I will come there and cut your throat” and threatening violence if the man calls the police.
Bonafiglia, who had family members present in the courtroom, frowned as the recording was played.
His public defender, Robert Mann, argued that he should be released.
Prosecutors “rely on primarily unproven allegations that are over two decades old” to demonstrate Bonafiglia’s propensity for violence, Mann said.
He said his client requires medical treatment for a painkiller addiction beyond what he could receive in detention and that his deep ties to Rhode Island do not make him a flight risk.
Two other former employees of the Cadillac Lounge charged in the indictment have also pleaded not guilty.