TOMS RIVER - A hearing about altered dental records that destroyed a reputed Lucchese crime family soldier's alibi in a 1984 murder case got underway Wednesday, producing no clear answers as to who may have doctored the potentially exculpatory documents.
Witnesses at the hearing about Martin Taccetta's altered dental records included Morris County Prosecutor Robert J. Carroll, the former deputy attorney general who prosecuted Taccetta and four other mob associates in a case involving the 1984 golf-club beating death of a Toms River car dealer, and noted veteran criminal defense attorney Maria Noto, who represented one of Taccetta's codefendants at that trial.
Neither could say who altered the records that said Taccetta was at his dentist's office in West Orange around the time Vincent "Jimmy Sinatra'' Craparotta, 56, was fatally beaten with golf clubs at his Route 9 car dealership in Toms River on June 12, 1984.
But Carroll and Noto had dueling opinions about who could not have doctored the records.
Carroll testified no one from the state altered the dental records.
"Absolutely, there was no tampering by the state whatsoever,'' he said.
"We had a very hardworking, high-integrity team, and there would be no way whatsoever there'd be any tampering with evidence - period,'' Carroll said, responding to a question from Marco Laracca, one of Taccetta's attorneys.
"None of the defendants had a motive to do that,'' Noto testified, explaining that an FBI analysis of Taccetta's dental records suggested they were tampered with to mask the date of the murder from them.
"I would opine that the only people who could benefit from that - I don't know who did that, obviously - but I know that the benefit of hiding the fact that Martin Taccetta had an appointment at his dentist on that day - the effect of that was to destroy Martin Taccetta's alibi evidence,'' Noto testified, responding to questions from Deputy Attorney General Daniel I. Bornstein.
The hearing, before Superior Court Judge Dina Vicari, is to determine if Taccetta, 72, of Florham Park, will get a new trial in the case.
Taccetta stood trial with four associates in 1993. He was acquitted of Craparotta's murder, but convicted of extortion, racketeering and conspiracy, for which he is serving a sentence of life plus 10 yers in prison with no chance for release on parole before 30 years.
Carroll argued at the trial that Craparotta was killed because he resisted attempts by the Lucchese crime family to extort payments from his nephews from profits derived from their Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk video poker machines.
Taccetta's motion for a new trial was filed after his attorneys made a Freedom of Information Act request and obtained an FBI report that concluded Taccetta's dental records were altered to mask notations that he was at his dentist's office about 11:30 a.m. on the date of Craparotta's fatal beating.
Carroll, at Wednesday's hearing, testified that he sent Taccetta's dental records to the FBI to be analyzed after he received the original records from Taccetta's attorney during the 1993 trial, after having made what he said were "numerous requests'' for them.
When he finally got them, he noticed erasures, cross-outs and write-overs that he considered "questionable,'' so he sent them to the FBI to be analyzed, Carroll testified.
"I wanted to make sure these records were all authentic and had not been tampered with,'' Carroll said.
The FBI analysis removed what had been written over the original records, revealing that the date of Taccetta's dental appointment was the date of the murder, Noto said.
Carroll testified he wasn't concerned about the FBI's report because the state had other evidence that included statements from Taccetta's dentist and the office manager that cast doubt on the defendant's alibi.
"I felt the documents that we had, coupled with the interviews that we did, pretty much neutralized any notion of any alibi defense,'' Carroll testified. "I was pretty confident of that.''
He said that Taccetta never presented the alibi defense at trial.
"I was confident the alibi defense was not sustainable,'' Carroll said
Noto said she never received the FBI report about Taccetta's altered dental records from the state.
Carroll said he would have had one of his staff deliver that report to Taccetta's attorney, but not necessarily to the attorneys for the codefendants.
Noto, whose client Michael Ryan was acquitted at the 1993 trial, said all of the defense attorneys should have been provided with the FBI report. If the attorneys for Taccetta's codefendants had it, they could have used it to attack the credibility of the state's cooperating codefendants who testified that Taccetta bragged about committing the golf-club assault on Craparotta, she said.
"They were important for defense counsel to show that somebody with a motive to change those records changed them, and certainly, the defense had no reason and no desire to change the original records because the original records supported Martin Taccetta's alibi,'' Noto testified.
She said any defense attorney who had information that the records were tampered with would have conducted an investigation and requested a hearing to determine if there was prosecutorial misconduct.
"That kind of evidence at a trial can result in the total dismissal of a case based on prosecutorial misconduct, based on the abridgment of essentially the constitutional rights of anyone in the United States who is charged with a criminal offense,'' Noto said. "It is outrageous. Whoever did it did an outrageous thing and a criminal thing because it's tampering with evidence.''
The hearing is expected to continue at an undetermined date later this month.
Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com .
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Who tampered with reputed mobster's alibi for 1984 Toms River murder? Hearing underway
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