'Tony Mack put it in his pocket and they embraced,' Mary Manfredo said on the witness stand today.
By Jenna Pizzi and Alex Zdan
TRENTON — Locking the door behind them, Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni and Trenton Mayor Tony Mack came into the cramped, private kitchen area of JoJo’s Steak House on Martin Luther King Boulevard in April 2012, where amid the register and cluttered counter tops they completed a cash transaction, a witness testified today in the ongoing corruption trial of Mack and his brother Ralphiel.
Mary Manfredo, Giorgianni’s caretaker who runs the steak shop, said she was in the room with them and saw Giorgianni take out a white envelope from his black leather sport jacket, remove cash from inside the envelope and hand the folded bills to Mack.
“Tony Mack put it in his pocket and they embraced,” Manfredo said on the witness stand today.
The prosecution in the case said the money passed to Mack was a cash bribe from Lemuel Blackburn, a formerly prominent Trenton attorney and FBI informant posing as an agent for a developer looking to build an automated parking garage downtown. The project was in reality an FBI sting, and the cash bribes were meant to get Mack to OK the sale of city-owned land to the FBI’s developer.
Defense lawyers for the Macks have contended the two knew little about the parking garage project or the bribery scam.
Manfredo, who is a fixture at the steak house and present every hour the business is open, said she also had witnessed a meeting in January 2012 between Blackburn and Giorgianni. Following the meeting, she said Giorgianni came into the kitchen, where she was standing and looked through a FedEx envelope.
“He opened it up and took two envelopes out of it and put them into his leather jacket pocket,” Manfredo said.
When asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Moran what was inside the envelopes, Manfredo replied, “money.”
That same cash-filled envelope, which Manfredo saw Giorgianni tuck into the pocket of that same leather jacket, was passed off to Mack three months later, Manfredo told the jury.
“The white envelope that came out of the FedEx envelope was the same white envelope I seen him take out of his pocket to give Mr. Mack the cash,” Manfredo said.
She said it was unusual that Giorgianni asked her to be there for his back room meeting with the mayor, but he had asked her to be a witness so she obliged.
“He wanted me to be there so that when he handed the money over to the mayor, I would see it,” she said.
She said she witnessed a similar hand-off to Ralphiel Mack three months later in the main room of the steak shop.
“Ralphiel Mack had come into the steak house,” Manfredo said, vividly recalling the flip flops and tan shorts the mayor’s brother was wearing that day two years ago.
“I was sitting in one chair,” she said. “Mr. Giorgianni was sitting in another chair and Ralphiel Mack came in and sat in the middle. Mr. Giorgianni went into his pocket and he handed Ralphiel money.”
Ralphiel Mack took the cash and put it in his pocket before reaching out to shake Giorgianni’s hand, Manfredo said.
Days later, on July 18, 2012, FBI agents came knocking on the door of her Lawrence home in the early morning hours. Manfredo lied in response to their questions, she admitted in court today.
“I was in a state of shock,” she said. “I didn’t want to get anybody any trouble.”
She said she eventually pleaded guilty last December to oxycodone distribution, for a separate drug distribution ring she was involved in with Giorgianni.
“What took me so long was I had obstacles in the way,” Manfredo said. “I wanted to come forward and I was scared.”
Manfredo said Giorgianni told her not to plead guilty and that is part of what took her so long to admit her role to the government. Manfredo, whose trademark jet black beehive hairdo was cut into a bob, turned to tell the jury why she finally decided to enter a guilty plea and agree to testify.
“I just got tired, not sleeping every day,” she said. “I made up my mind I was going to tell the truth.”
By cooperating with the government, Manfredo said she is hoping to get a lighter sentence.
Giorgianni and Manfredo pleaded guilty to their crimes on the same day in consecutive court hearings in the same courtroom.
The two first met when Manfredo was 10 years old, she said. When Giorgianni began showing up to her father’s Chambersburg restaurant regularly, they became more friendly.
“He had asked me to come to the steak house and I started working there,” Manfredo said.
Giorgianni’s mother, who ran the steak shop before her, asked Manfredo to care for her son.
“‘Please,’ she said, ‘Would you please take care of him?’ And she said, ‘When I pass, you can have this business,’” Manfredo said.
“And you did?” Moran asked.
“Yes, I did,” she said.
Manfredo’s days, which center around her devotion to Giorgianni, can start as early as 8:30 a.m., and used to end as late as 4 a.m. before the steak shop scaled back its closing hours to 11 each night. Her caretaker duties for him include making his breakfast, laying out his clothes, and cooking him Sunday dinner, she testified.
“Any bill that has to be paid, I take care of,” Manfredo said.
Manfredo has access to his bank account and can sign checks from it, she said. That’s what she did in the fall of 2010, when she took $5,000 of Giorgianni’s money and bought tickets to Mack’s inaugural ball.
Testifying about another sum of money — the $2,500 seized by FBI agents in a raid on Ralphiel Mack’s home — Manfredo said it was impossible for that money to have been a loan, as the defense has asserted.
“To your knowledge, did Mr. Giorgianni ever lend money to Tony Mack?” Moran asked.
“No,” Manfredo said.
“To your knowledge, did Mr. Giorgianni ever lend any money to Ralphiel Mack?” Moran asked.
“No,” Manfredo said.
As Blackburn and then-North Jersey developer Harry Seymour met with Giorgianni through 2012 to put the parking garage deal together, Manfredo saw many of the steak shop meetings from her vantage point from behind the counter. Manfredo never participated in any of the meetings, but demonstrated she knew what was going on.
Moran played a wiretapped phone call from Jan. 25, 2012, where Manfredo asked Giorgianni if he was meeting “that guy” again.
“You think he’s got some more moola?” Manfredo asked.
“I hope so,” Giorgianni said.
Manfredo’s knowledge of a connection between Seymour and Blackburn came up during cross-examination by Ralphiel Mack’s attorney, Robert Haney.
Haney asked several questions about whether everything Manfredo knew was filtered through Giorgianni, asked her if Giorgianni mentioned the connection between Blackburn and Seymour. Haney asked if she learned from Charles Hall III or the Mack brothers, but she said no each time a name came up.
“How’d you learn it?” Haney asked finally, exasperated.
“From myself,” she said. “Things that I seen.”
“You don’t suffer from any mental issues do you?” Haney asked.
That question brought a furious Moran to his feet with the loudest and quickest objection of the trial thus far. With Shipp looking down at him for an explanation, Haney withdrew his question and apologized.
“So it took you more than 14 months to come clean?” Haney asked.
“Yes,” Manfredo said. “May I explain?”
“No,” Haney said. “You’ll have your opportunity.”
Manfredo was able to correct Haney several times on facts such as her arrest taking place on the same day as Giorgianni’s.
It was in direct contrast to Hall, whose poor recollection and confusion on the stand Thursday continued today. Hall, a former city water meter reader who was elevated to supervising city park projects by Tony Mack said frequently on Thursday he could not recall important details of the case. Today, the mayor’s attorney, Mark Davis, was able to expose even more discrepancies between Hall’s testimony and the reports of FBI agents who interviewed Hall in 2012.
Despite being what the government has called an “active member of the conspiracy” since the beginning of 2012, Hall said he knew nothing of the alleged structure of taking bribe money for the mayor before Giorgianni explained the “ground rules” in late June 2012.
“I didn’t know what he was saying about Tony’s ground rules,” Hall said.
“These are ground rules you never discussed with Tony Mack, that has to be correct, right?” Davis asked.
“Correct,” Hall said.
In later questioning, Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Skahill sought to show that Hall’s memory problems extended to the mundane — showing Hall a copy of his phone records from two years ago.
“Did you keep a log or ledger of people you talked with two years ago?” Skahill asked Hall, who answered in the negative.
“Did you keep a ledger of all the people you met with two years ago?” Skahill asked.
Skahill also asked Hall why he did not keep a ledger of bribe money he received for his part in the project.
“It’s illegal,” Hall said. “I wouldn’t write it down.”
Manfredo is expected to continue under cross-examination by Haney and then Davis starting Monday. The government has said it will call at least one more witness — former acting housing director Carmen Melendez — to the stand before resting.
Contact Jenna Pizzi at jpizzi@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5717.
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com (609) 989-5705.
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