George Bratsenis, hitman in NJ murder-for-hire case, sentenced in Connecticut robbery
George Bratsenis, the career criminal and aging hitman who admitted last month to murdering a Jersey City political operative, has been sentenced to eight years in federal prison for his role in a 2014 bank robbery in Connecticut.
During a Tuesday hearing in New Haven federal court, Bratsenis, 73, told U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Meyer that he wasn't the same man he was when police arrested him for the robbery more than seven years ago.
He suffers from a variety of maladies, he said, including cancer. And that's made him change his ways.
“I turned my life around because I had a rude awakening with this cancer and the fact that I’m getting older and my body is deteriorating in a couple different ways," Bratsenis told the court. "I had to, like, put my life on the firing line, indirectly, with the things that I have done."
Meyer responded by saying that he wished Bratsenis had done that years ago.
“You’ve had a life that’s been marred by many criminal convictions,” the judge said.
Bratsenis has been detained for nearly eight years as the case against him progressed, which means he's served most of his sentence. But he has yet to be sentenced in Newark federal court for murdering the operative, Michael Galdieri, on the orders of Galdieri's friend and former business partner, Sean Caddle.
Caddle has confessed to paying "thousands of dollars" for the hit, according to federal authorities. Both Caddle and Bomani Africa, who assisted Bratsenis in the murder plot, pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to commit murder.
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But Bratsenis had not even been charged until late March, when he admitted his role in Galdieri's killing to a federal judge in Newark.
During the plea hearing, Bratsenis affirmed that he met Caddle a month earlier to plot the May 22, 2014 murder. And that the day after he and Africa stabbed Galdieri to death and burned his apartment down, Bratsenis met with Caddle at an Elizabeth diner to get paid.
But even though federal prosecutors have secured three guilty pleas, they've remained tight-lipped about details such as why Caddle would want his ex-partner dead or who introduced Caddle and Bratsenis.
Bratsenis will be sentenced Aug. 2. Until then, he will be lodged in a federal detention center in New York City.
The murder sentence will likely be a capstone on Bratsenis' life of crime.
A onetime U.S. Marine who served during Vietnam, Bratsenis was convicted of murder and armed robbery in Connecticut in the 1980s. Later, he was found guilty of a string of jewelry store heists in New Jersey that netted more than $1 million and sent him away for decades.
In 2010, he was freed after 24 years in prison. But he was back in handcuffs four years later when police charged him with robbing a bank in Trumbull, Connecticut with Africa, a 61-year-old Philadelphia man he met in prison.
Despite this, Bratsenis' attorney, Charles L. Kurmay, argued in court filings that Bratsenis should be released again because he has cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Bratsenis is old and sick, Kurmay wrote. And he had paid for his mistakes.
"He would like to be able to not die in prison," Kurmay wrote.
Bratsenis pleaded guilty to murder four weeks after the filing.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Steve Janoski covers law enforcement for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news about those who safeguard your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
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This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: George Bratsenis sentenced for Connecticut bank robbery
