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News and Features about Organized Crime, Mafia and La Cosa Nostra taken from National and Local News Sources. In an attempt to get you this type of coverage in a timely manner we can not be responsible for the content of the following material. |
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1-7-00 Night club mogul to surrender today in 1993 Island murder. Former Islander allegedly drove getaway car. January 7, 2000 Staten Island ADVANCE STAFF WRITER Miami club king and former Staten Island resident, Chris Paciello, is expected to surrender today to authorities for his role in a 1993 Richmond Valley break-in turned murder, according to published reports. Night club impresario, Paciello, 28, who partied with the likes of Madonna, Jennifer Lopez and Sean "Puffy" Combs, is expected in Brooklyn Federal Court today for a bail hearing for a life of crime he committed before he became a high flyer. Paciello, formerly of Eltingville and New Springville, whose real name is Christian Ludwigsen, allegedly drove the getaway car in a botched home-invasion that led to the killing of Judith Shemtov, a 46-year-old homemaker slain in her Richmond Valley home. Ludwigsen also has been implicated in allowing clubs he owned in South Beach, Fla., to be used for money laundering and drug dealing. Additionally, the former Islander also was named in a sweeping racketeering indictment, along with eight other suspected members of the Bonnano crime family, as well as being charged with casing the Chemical Bank inside the Staten Island Mall before it was robbed on Dec. 14, 1992. Prosecutors are expected to okay a $2 million bail deal requiring Paciello to move to New York, hire a 24-hour security staff and wear an electronic monitoring bracelet, sources told the Daily News. Mrs. Shemtov was drinking tea with her husband, Sami, when the doorbell rang at their home on Meade Loop in Richmond Valley on Feb. 13, 1993. Mrs. Shemtov and her husband of 13 months protected their expensive home with alarms and intercoms, but their guard was down the night of the murder. Authorities said the couple had their alarm and intercom turned off because their daughter, Arlyn Kidan, then 20, was waiting for her boy friend to arrive. When the doorbell rang, Mrs. Shemtov unknowingly opened the door to armed intruders plotting a heist. Less than two minutes later, she was shot once in the head with a .45 caliber automatic handgun. She died later that night in Staten Island University Hospital, Prince's Bay. Law enforcement officials do not believe the homemaker was an intended target, and they said her family did not have mob ties. Her husband, Sami Shemtov, an Israeli working in the electronic business, had just returned from a business trip to Cleveland. They believe Mrs. Shemtov was shot after several suspects invaded the home in search of a safe filled with money. Police sources said word got out that such a safe was in the house, and the robbers might have believed it contained $30,000 to $1 million. A few months ago Paciello was living the life of a South Beach celebrity. He opened his first Miami club, Risk, in Oct. 1994. It burned down months later. The insurance money allowed him to open up another club, Liquid, in 1995, on Miami Beach's Collins Avenue, bringing in Ingrid Casares as his partner. Within months, celebrities made Liquid the place to be. In 1997, he opened the Bar Room and oceanfront restaurant, Joia. In November, as he was planning the grand opening of another club, prosecutors in New York were planning his arrest. Casares has stood behind Paciello-Ludwigsen as have other members of the South Beach scene. At a hearing in November in Brooklyn federal court, his attorney, Roy Black, said his client has never been convicted of a violent felony, and portrayed him as a "man who's turned his life around."
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