Bloody mob chop shop could become school bus depot

[Trainspotter]

The Brooklyn junkyard where prosecutors say gangland murder victims were dissolved in acid could soon be home to a fleet of yellow school buses.

 

Owners of the notorious Carneglia brothers' junkyard in East New York have applied for a waiver to convert the site to a storage and maintenance depot for 125 buses, the Daily News has learned.

 

For three decades, Gambino soldiers John and Charles Carneglia ran the 77,000-square-foot site as Fountain Auto Mall on Fountain Ave. According to federal prosecutors, it was a crime hub where thugs trafficked drugs and chopped up stolen cars and retagged them. It was also a mob graveyard where bodies - including John Gotti's neighbor - were melted in acid, according to court testimony.

 

The trapezoid-shaped lot is zoned for residential use only.

 

To run the junkyard, the Carneglias locked in two variances, dating to 1976, to operate a business on the site.

 

The latest request for a variance made to the city Board of Standards and Appeals has run up against stiff community opposition.

 

Ronald Dillon, president of the Concerned Homeowners Association, has been against the junkyard for years. His position has nothing to do with the Carneglias' ties to the mob, Dillon said.

 

"We're not going after the name 'Carneglia.' Our issue is land use," said Dillon.

 

"It's residential property. The industrial use should be in an industrial area. They probably got away with it earlier when there was not a lot of development there."

 

The feds say Charles Carneglia got away with plenty until he was indicted last year for five murders and a litany of other racketeering crimes. Court papers depict the junkyard as the scene of hellish crimes straight out of Dante's "Inferno."

 

Charles Carneglia used the basement of an abandoned house on the lot as "his body shop," according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Roger Burlingame.

 

It was here he allegedly used acid to dispose of mob victims - including the body of John Favara, whose death was ordered after he fatally struck Gotti's son Frankie in a 1980 traffic accident.

 

Carneglia would remove jewelry from corpses prior to dissolving them and then hang the baubles as trophies from the basement rafters, according to a mob turncoat who testified last week in Brooklyn Federal Court.

 

John Carneglia is serving a 50-year sentence for heroin trafficking. HJC Holding Corp. - a company that lists John Carneglia's wife as its chief executive officer - has requested the latest variance, records show.

 

Anthony Salvati, the architect handling the request, did not return a call.

 

Walter Campbell, district manager for Community Planning Board 5, said the request is under review. "We don't believe they meet the conditions for a variance," Dillon said.

 

BY John Marzulli

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

February 9th 2009