Slain Mobster’s Son Gets Life For Murder-For-Hire Plot

NEW YORK CITY — A man who had his New York City mobster father killed will spend the rest of his life behind bars, authorities said.

Anthony Zottola, 45, was sentenced Friday to mandatory life imprisonment plus 112 years, federal prosecutors said.

Zottola hatched a murder-for-hire plot to kill his father, Sylvester Zottola, and brother in a bid to take over their real estate empire, said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace. The plot ended with Sylvester Zottola’s 2018 shooting death at a Bronx McDonald’s drive-through.

“Over the course of more than a year, the elderly victim, Sylvester Zottola, was stalked, beaten, and stabbed, never knowing who orchestrated the attacks,” Peace said in a statement. “It was his own son, who was so determined to control the family’s lucrative real estate business, that he hired a gangof hit men to murder his father.”

The elder Zottola, a Bronx mafia associate, held rental properties worth tens of millions of dollars, authorities said.

But Anthony Zottola wanted it for himself, so he hired a Bloods gang member named Bushawn Shelton, 38, to help with a murder-for-hire plot in 2017, prosecutors said.

Over the next year, hitmen made several attempts on Sylvester Zottola’s life, including one incident in which three men broke into his home, stabbed him and slashed his throat, authorities said.

Sylvester Zottola survived that attempt, as did his son Salvatore Zottola, then 41, when a gunman shot him in the head, chest and hand, prosecutors said.

But the plots came to a deadly end Oct. 4, 2018, when a hitman known as “A Boggie” — Himen Ross, 37 — shot and killed Sylvester Zottola while he waited for a cup of coffee at a Bronx McDonald’s, authorities said.

Investigators eventually narrowed their focus on Anthony Zottola, Shelton and Ross, as well as several defendants who ended up pleading guilty, prosecutors said.

Jurors found Zottola and Ross guilty in October. They both were sentenced Friday.

Shelton pleaded guilty in August and awaits sentencing.