Hard boiled Connecticut criminal is a suspect in a sensational political murder-for-hire, authorities say

George Bratsenis is still one of Connecticut’s most hard-boiled criminals, even if, at age 73, he no longer fits the picture. He is in prison, where he has spent most of his life. He is dying of cancer and suffering from COPD.

Half a century ago, he was a fixture in police files in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey, robbing banks and sticking up jewelry stores. In 1980, a mob-connected Stamford police lieutenant recruited him for a crew that murdered a drug dealer and stole a kilo of heroin.

Bratsenis’s most recent stretch in prison is the result of armed, bank robberies in Darien and Trumbull in 2014. Law enforcement officials call them vintage Bratsenis. He and a partner, Bomani Africa, hit the banks with stopwatch precision, leaping onto teller counters, pointing guns, emptying drawers, timing everything and setting a fire to cover their escape.

Bratsenis faces what amounts to a life sentence as a career criminal for the two bank robberies. But in January he learned that he has another problem.

Authorities in New Jersey allege that between his last two bank robberies in April and September of 2014, he and Africa committed a political murder-for hire there that is stunning even in a state where politics usually get the quaint descriptive “rough and tumble.”

In a sensational court appearance on January 25, well-known New Jersey political operative Sean Caddle pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder for hire and claimed he paid Bratsenis and Africa to kill Michael Galdieri, another political operator who had worked with Caddle in the past.

A day later, Africa, 61, was in federal court in New Jersey, pleading guilty to conspiring to commit murder-for-hire and admitting that he was one of the killers Caddle paid.

Bratsenis has not been charged.

He was in court in New Jersey on February 22, but the hearing was postponed without explanation. Lawyers for both Bratsenis and Africa would not discuss the case.

Bretsanis and Africa are suspected of stabbing Galdieri to death in his Jersey City apartment and setting the apartment on fire in May 2014, according to authorities. Caddle is accused of meeting Bratsenis and paying him the following day.

Federal prosecutors have not revealed a motive for the case. But filings in court show that Caddle, 44, has been cooperating with investigators since at least last fall and agreed to plead guilty months ago.

“He’s signed on as a cooperating witness,” his attorney, Edwin J. Jacobs, told U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez in Newark during the plea proceeding.

Caddle broke into politics in New Jersey’s Hudson County. Among his clients were U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, and Raymond Lesniak, a retired Democratic state senator. Caddle also worked in Colorado and Texas.

Just what led to the murder-for-hire conspiracy remains a mystery, but there are signs that an answer may lie in prison.

Caddle’s brother James Caddle and Bratsenis were confined together for more than three years in New Jersey’s in Northern State Prison in Newark, according to state corrections department records obtained by NJ Advance Media. James Caddle was locked up from 2007 to 2010 on kidnapping, burglary and robbery charges. Bretsanis was in the same prison from 2006 to 2010 for weapons and bank robbery charges in New Jersey, according to federal court records in Connecticut.

Bretsanis and Africa also met in the New Jersey prison system, according to the Connecticut records. Bratsenis is a Stamford native. Africa, formerly known a Baxter Randolf Keys, is from Philadelphia.

“Bratsenis was incarcerated for a bank robbery conviction and Africa was incarcerated for a robbery conviction,” a 2016 prosecution memo filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Haven says. “From 1999 through 2006, Bratsenis and Africa were both assigned to Block 2C, eight cells apart in cells 32 and 40.”

It was while they were together in prison that Bratsenis and Africa agreed to “rob banks together” when they got out, according to the memo.

Bretsanis is a serial bank robber who grew up playing Little League in Stamford. After graduating from high school he joined the U.S. Marine Corps, and was honorably discharged after serving in Vietnam. He was trained as a “tunnel rat” — one of the troops who did the dangerous work of infiltrating, emptying and destroying underground enemy fortifications.

In a hand written letter he once wrote from the notorious Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York, complaining about conditions to the director of the federal Bureau of Prisons, Bretsanis opens and closes with “Semper Fi”, the U.S. Marine Corps motto.

After military service in the 1960s, Bretsanis slipped into a life of drugs and crime, his lawyer wrote in a Connecticut court filing. By the 1980s, he was running with a crew of wise guys and crooked local police officers who were robbing and killing drug dealers after luring drug dealers north from Florida, according to a former federal prosecutor involved in the matters.

In 1984, he was charged in a conspiracy with then Stamford police Lt. Lawrence Hogan and two others to murder drug dealer David “the Turk” Avnayim. The same year, Bretsanis was sentenced to 30 years in prison for a variety of offenses and, after completing that sentence, was transferred to New Jersey to serve time for crimes there.

The first bank Bretsanis and Africa are accused of hitting after release by New Jersey was a People’s United branch on Old Kings Highway in Darien. Bretsanis is accused of waiting outside in a getaway car while Africa walked in at 2:14 p.m. wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, gloves and a mask and carrying an umbrella.

“Upon entering the bank, Africa dropped the umbrella, pulled out a gun and jumped over the teller station counter,” according to a court filing, “Africa told the teller to open the first and second drawer, and said ‘I will shoot you if you don’t give me all your money!’ Africa took a substantial amount of cash and placed it in a ‘leopard’ colored pillow case. Africa then jumped the counter and left the bank. Africa was last seen running to the back of the bank next to the railroad tracks. Bratsenis picked Africa up on the other side of the railroad tracks from the bank and they both left the scene.”

The following month, May 2014, Galdieri was found stabbed to death in his burning Jersey City apartment.

In September 2014, Bretsanis and Africa decided to hit People’s branch on Madison Avenue in Trumbull. Early on September 25, they stole a car at gun point outside a professional building on Hawley Lane. The following day, Africa drove to the bank in the stolen car. Bratsenis drove his sister’s white pickup truck.

Prosecutors said Africa again jumped over the teller counter, demanded money while pointing a long-barreled pistol at one of the tellers. Bratsenis. wearing a cut-off sweatshirt arm with eye holes as his mask, was also armed and took money from the cash drawers. After a minute, one of the two yelled “Time.” Both men fled, Bratsenis carrying money in a bag and Africa spilling some of what he was trying to carry away in his hands. They made off with $29,937.

Outside, prosecutors said, they lit the stolen car on fire as a distraction and drove off in the white pickup truck.

Three days after the robbery, the Trumbull police identified Bratsenis’s sister as owner of the pickup. She is identified in court filings by the initials K.M.

“K.M. acknowledged that she owned a 1995 white Chevy S-10 pick-up truck, but reported to the officer that her brother George Bratsenis drove the pick-up,” federal prosecutors said. “K.M. explained that Bratsenis, who lived on Jewett Avenue in Bridgeport, had recently been released from prison after serving 27 years for bank robberies.”

Police spotted Bratsenis driving the pick-up later in the day, Sept. 29,and pulled him over.

A search of the truck turned up, among other things, a long-blade butcher’s knife, 13 surgical gloves, five black work gloves and a cut-off sleeve of a sweatshirt with eye holes. Bank surveillance cameras show the cut-off sleeve matched Bratsenis’s mask.

Federal authorities in both Connecticut and New Jersey are saying nothing about the butcher’s knife, which has become a topic of speculation as a result of Galdieri’s stabbing death.

Adding to the speculation is plea from the family of Joyce and John Sheridan, a politically active couple who also were stabbed to death. . Sheridan was a confidant to New Jersey governors, an influential Republican and former state transportation commissioner. On Sept. 28, 2014, he and is wife were stabbed to death in their Princeton, N.J. home, which was then set on fire. One of the Sheridan’’ sons has asked that his parent’s death be reexamined and that the knife found in Bratsenis’s truck be subjected to forensic testing.

Africa was arrested in 2015. Both he and Bratsenis have been held in pretrial detention since their arrests - an extraordinarily long period of time in a federal criminal case. Federal authorities will not give a reason for the delay in resolving the cases against them.

After Bratsenis’s capture and return to prison, Africa was at large for several months. He pulled off a final bank job on Dec. 13, 2014. Federal investigators believe the two cased the banks and planned robberies in advance — including the third one, a Niagara Bank branch in Trumbull. Intercepted jail house conversations between Bratsenis and his girlfriend suggest he believed Africa should have been more aggressive about stealing money and sharing it with the girlfriend.

“But like he, he, he knows, you, what you are going through and everything,” Bretsanis told his girlfriend, the conversations show. “He, he should be right up there and step to the plate. I mean like see that’s the difference of between him and me. I’m, I’m gonna go. You know I got…I’m gonna go do what I gotta do. You know, you know that. You know me well enough to know that.”

“That’s why I (expletive) love you so (expletive) much,” his girlfriend replied.