Chelsea burglary
Burglars removed the hinges of the back door of Chelsea Ristorante Italiano, 108 Eighth Ave., sometime Sunday night Jan. 23 or Monday morning and took $200 from a cash register and then made off with a safe containing $12,000 from the basement, police said.
Gallery owner trial
Jack Wright, 50, who operates art galleries in Chelsea and the Village, is scheduled to go on trial Tues. Feb 1 on grand larceny charges in connection with the theft of paintings, mostly by the late Milton Avery.
Wright, who runs galleries at 131 Perry St. and at 529 W. 20th St. as well as in Southampton and Palm Beach, Fla., pleaded not guilty last June to grand larceny charges in connection with consignments of paintings from five people between Oct. 1998 and May 2004.
Wright, who specialized in Milton Avery, was also charged with stealing more than $115,000 worth of paintings from the Avery estate between October 1998 and May 2004.
Plea in Village scam
Frederick Forino, of Port Washington, L.I., pleaded guilty on Jan. 13 to fraud and grand larceny charges in connection with a West Village realty scam last year.
Fornio, who was sentenced to three to six years in jail, was arrested in September for taking at least $6,800 from six victims by posing as a real estate agent and fraudulently offering apartments on Christopher, Cornelia and Jones Sts. over an Internet site.
Forina and a partner, Carol Rodriguez, met their victims in the Village and showed them vacant apartments that they said rented for less than $1,000 per month. The defendants then collected $100 fees plus up to two months security for apartments that they did not represent.
Rodriquez was sentenced to 16 months in jail and three years probation after pleading guilty in October.
Arrest gadfly
Christopher Brodeur, a constant critic of government and politicians and a candidate for mayor, was arrested on Friday afternoon Jan. 21 in the building where he lives at 63 Pitt St. and charged with aggravated harassment of Mayor Bloomberg’s press representatives.
He was charged with making 1,379 telephone calls to the mayor’s press office from Sept. 2 through Jan. 12. In the calls, Brodeur accused the press representatives of breaking the law by lying to him and at one point said “you should thank the Lord that I didn’t slice your throat because I think if you lie to me I should slice your throat.”
Brodeur, who was freed without bail, is scheduled for a March 9 court appearance. He held a new conference on the steps of City Hall on Mon. Jan. 25 saying he was framed. He said his phone calls were always polite and he called to ask questions about how much the mayor’s press officials were paid.
Find bodies
Police found the body of Creighton Cole, 37, an apparent suicide, hanged in the bathroom of his fifth-floor apartment at 209 Mulberry St. at 11:45 p.m. Mon. Jan. 24. On Wednesday morning Jan. 18, police found the body of a man who died of apparently natural causes in his ninth-floor apartment at 64 Essex St. The medical examiner’s office is investigating the cause of death.
Albert Amateau
