April 4 (UPI) — New York mob hitman Dominic Taddeo was apprehended after escaping from federal custody, the U.S. Marshal Service announced Monday.
Taddeo, 64, was arrested without incident in Hialeah, Fla., near Miami at 11 a.m. on Monday after escaping from a halfway house near Orlando last week, the Marshal Service said in a statement.
“The tenacious work of the involved deputy marshals and the cooperation between our offices resulted in the quick capture of Mr. Taddeo,” U.S. Marshal Bill Berger of the Middle District of Florida said.
The Bureau of Prisons said Taddeo was placed on escape status after he failed to return from a previously authorized medical appointment last Monday. He was scheduled to be released from the halfway house in February 2023.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Taddeo had asked for a compassionate release, citing health issues such as hypertension, but a judge refused.
Taddeo pleaded guilty to racketeering crimes in 1992, including three homicides in the 1980s on behalf of the mafia in Rochester, N.Y.
He had been transferred in mid-February from a medium-security correctional facility in Sumterville, Fla., about 50 miles northwest of Orlando, to the halfway house to help him prepare for his release.
In 1987 he evaded authorities for two years after being released on bail while facing weapons charges and during his early years in prison he faced disciplinary issues including “setting a fire,” conducting a “gambling pool” and “possessing intoxicants.”
But since the late 1990s he had a clean record except for a 2010 citation for “possessing an unauthorized item.”
