http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/mob_slaying_site_has_haunted_p.html

Mob slaying site has haunted past

by Staten Island Advance

 

Authorities have made several trips to the Kreischer Mansion, above, in Charleston after discovering the mutilated body of 39-year-old Robert McKelvey in the furnace. His suspected killer, Joseph Young, goes on trial this week for the March 2005 murder.

He was agitated he wouldn't get paid for his work.

And if there was one person who should be paid on time, authorities allege, it was Joseph Young.

 

Young, an accused hitman for the Bonanno crime family, goes on trial this week for the gruesome March 2005 murder of Robert McKelvey, on the grounds of the historic, some say haunted, Kreischer Mansion in Charleston.

And federal prosecutors want the jury to hear a tape-recorded conversation where Young set a one-year deadline for getting paid, then told one of his associates that the body count would skyrocket if that deadline passed, according to a new set of documents filed in the case.

"And then after I get the gear I need, after we hit the one-year mark, I'll f--ing whack the whole world if I have to, I don't give a s---," he said. "I know, I'm, I am dead serious, I don't even f---ing care. I'll go into Fresca's, I will f--ing go anywhere.

"They, they, they're, they're acting like it's a joke. And when I mention it, things come when they come, they come when they come.... And my family goes hungry, they come when they come, OK."

The mention of "Fresca's" refers to Fresca's on the Bay, a Tottenville restaurant that federal prosecutors say was frequented by gangsters and "operated under the protection of the Bonanno family." The owner, Frank Fresca, was shot to death in July.

Young's defense attorneys are looking to prevent the jury from hearing the conversation, and several others, calling them prejudicial.

Federal prosecutors say Young was promised $8,000 for killing McKelvey in 2005 -- a task he allegedly got to with cinematic method.

As prosecutors tell it, Young lured McKelvey to the grounds, then started strangling the Bonanno crime family associate. But McKelvey broke free and tried to run off, and Young ran after him, tackled him to the ground, and repeatedly stabbed him with a knife.

Then, to make sure the deed was done, Young dragged McKelvey to a nearby pond, and drowned him. He and three other mobsters used hacksaws to chop McKelvey's body to pieces, then burned those pieces in the mansion's furnace.

Bonanno soldier Gino Galestro pleaded guilty in August to ordering the killing, allegedly over a debt.

The mansion -- which sits on a secluded hilltop, with a no-trespassing sign near its locked gates -- has its own stories to tell, even before the murder.

Balthasar Kreischer, a wealthy 19th-century brick manufacturer, built twin mansions for his sons, Edward and Charles, on the top of the hill at 4500 Arthur Kill Rd. in 1885, overlooking a neighborhood that was then called Kreischerville.

In 1886, though, the patriarch died, his large body transported on a block of ice by horse-drawn carriage to a Brooklyn cemetery. A few years later, his brick factory burned to the ground and was rebuilt.

In 1894, Edward Kreischer shot himself in the head at the factory, reportedly because of trouble with employees. His weeping, distraught wife is among the ghosts people claim to hear at the mansion, even though theirs was the one that burned down.

By 1899, the final member of the family had retired and the once-thriving business passed out of the family and eventually closed.

During World War I, when just about anything German became taboo, the name of the neighborhood was changed to Charleston, and most traces of the family disappeared, including large stone tablets at a nearby church that publicly thanked Kreischers for their work in the community.

In 1996, the mansion became a restaurant, and patrons would regularly talk of strange happenings and supernatural experiences.

Author Lynda Lee Macken wrote about the supposed hauntings in her "Haunted History of Staten Island."

"Patrons and staff observed odd goings-on. Loud banging noises were heard and an unseen force liked to slam doors. Pictures flew off walls. Cold spots and icy drafts were felt. All classic signs of a ghostly presence," she wrote.

"Some say," Ms. Macken added, "it is the son and his wife who cannot rest."

The restaurant failed and the mansion eventually fell into disrepair, until it was purchased in 2000 and restored by Ohio developer Isaac Yomtovian.

Yomtovian bought the mansion and four-acre estate for $1.4 million. He planned to create an active-adult community there, using the stick-style Victorian as a clubhouse, and he secured difficult approvals over the years from the Landmarks Preservation Commission and City Planning to build a 100-unit condominium behind the mansion.

Yomtovian, who lives in Ohio and often travels to Staten Island on business, told the Advance in 2006 that he was in the market for a custodian when he was approached by Young's father, who was working for a New Jersey contractor hired by Yomtovian to refurbish the house.

The elder Young introduced his son to Yomtovian and asked the developer if he would like the young man to live at the house.

Believing Young to be a former U.S. Marine, Yomtovian offered a deal: Young could live in the house rent-free in exchange for securing the property, mowing the lawn and handling basic maintenance. "He was not so attentive, so I asked him to leave a number of times, and I asked his father to please ask him to leave," recalled Yomtovian. "His father said he had no place to go."

--- Contributed by John Annese and the Associated Press