Over the objections of a former mob prosecutor, a federal judge has given a “slap-on-the wrist” one-year sentence to a mob turncoat who took part in the bizarre, mistaken-identity murder of the prosecutor’s 78-year-old father, Gang Land has learned. 

To add insult to the leniency, Brooklyn Federal Judge I. Leo Glasser ordered Frank Smith (right) to serve his “prison” term for the execution slaying of George Aronwald in the confines of his new home under the auspices of the federal Witness Protection Program. 

During the sealed proceeding, the judge gave Smith a huge break even though the judge said he was still haunted by the memory of another break he once gave. Without ever mentioning his name or the specific sentence, Glasser recalled that turncoat gangster Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano had betrayed him and reverted to his criminal ways. After Sammy Bull helped the feds win a life sentence for the late John Gotti, the judge gave Gravano a lenient five year term for crimes that included 19 murders.  

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think about that,” said Glasser, according to the best recollection of two spectators at the session, including Aronwald’s son William, the former prosecutor who was the intended target of a murder plot gone awry. 

The sentence, which includes five years of probation, also covers at least three other killings by Smith, a onetime Luchese associate who never testified at trial  

but whose cooperation enabled the feds to convict former Colombo acting boss Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace for the murder of George Aronwald. 

William Aronwald, a former chief of the federal Organized Crime Strike Force in Manhattan, told Gang Land that he was appalled and angry at how the final chapter in his father’s 18-year-old case was written.  

The elder Aronwald, a retired civil attorney then working as a Parking Violations Bureau hearing examiner, was stalked by Smith and two cohorts, and shot to death across the street from his Queens home in March 1987. Authorities say Cacace chose the inept, but murderous threesome for the hit after family boss Carmine (Junior) Persico (left) sent word from his prison cell that he wanted the former prosecutor killed. 

“One year of house arrest that enables him to go to work is wholly unacceptable to me. It is a slap on the wrist that is perverse and obscene,” said Aronwald, one of two relatives of victims who told the judge of their loss and the devastating effects the killings had on their families. 

According to court records, Smith also killed two mob associates in 1987. But since Glasser sealed the proceeding – on his own, according to the feds – it’s  

unclear if any additional murders are covered by Smith’s cooperation agreement and sentence.

A Brooklyn woman addressed the court first, said Aronwald. She told the judge that during the 1980s, Smith had a dispute with her brother in a bar and savagely attacked him with a baseball bat. The victim remained comatose for 12 years before he died.

Before Aronwald spoke to Glasser, (right) he introduced himself to Smith. “I was the person that Frank Smith agreed to kill,” he told Gang Land. “I wanted the judge to know that we had never met; that unlike the other poor guy he killed, I had never had any words with him and never done anything that had impacted him in any way, and yet he agreed to kill me.” 

In meting out his sentence, Glasser echoed assertions by assistant U.S. attorney Patricia Notopoulos that if not for Smith’s cooperation, the murder of George Aronwald would never have been solved and Cacace, who was sentenced to 20 years, would still be free. 

As he had done during Gravano’s sentencing 11 years ago, Glasser noted that prosecutors had assured him that Smith, who was released from prison two years ago after serving 15 years for a wrongful 1988 drug conviction, had turned his

life around. In determining his sentence, Glasser gave Smith credit for the time he served for the drug crime he didn't commit.

William Aronwald, who has represented turncoats and understands their usefulness in prosecuting gangsters, told Glasser that if he felt “compelled” to reward Smith, 39, he should give him “one day less” than the 20 years that Cacace, 64, (left) received. “It’s certainly better than what he deserves – life,” said Aronwald. 

“The government says he has cooperated, done the right thing,” added Aronwald, “but Frank Smith has never apologized to me or my family for what he did. He never manifested to us that he is remorseful.”

Before he was sentenced, Smith turned and apologized to the relatives of his murder victims present, saying he would have done so earlier but couldn’t because of constraints placed on him by the Witness Protection Program, an excuse that belies reality. 

The apology, Aronwald said yesterday, was “more for the court’s benefit than ours and not sincere anyway. He’s a low-life thug who suddenly found religion.”

Aronwald, who graduated Brooklyn Law School in 1965, remembers the judge as a “good professor” when he took two “Real Property” courses Glasser taught

at the Downtown Brooklyn law school, a few blocks from the courthouse where he has sat since 1982.

“He didn’t teach criminal law, or evidence,” Aronwald added with a trace of sarcasm. 

Aronwald is much more explicit when it comes to critiquing his former professor’s capability in his current station in life.

“I find it offensive that as a judge he values human life as little as he obviously does,” said Aronwald, noting that Smith was a seasoned killer by age 21 and that one obvious reason why he stopped killing people in 1988 was that he began a 15-year prison term. 

“Given Smith’s age today, a 20-year sentence would be lenient. I don’t care that Smith served 15 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Is that like a deposit in a bank? How many more murders would he have had to have committed before the credit ran out? And if he wanted to give him credit, he could have given him 20 years, for a grand total of five years. Leniency doesn’t mean a complete pass, and that’s what he got.” 

Frank Smith, a son of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, may have crossed paths with NYPD Detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa during the mid 1980s, but whether or not he did, Smith unwittingly played a major role in the “Mafia Cops” saga of murder and mayhem. 

On September 3, 1987, a few months after his 21^st birthday, Smith shot and killed mob associate Frank Santora (right) – a cousin of Eppolito – when the 51-year-old ex-con just happened to be walking alongside another gangster whom Smith had in his sights. 

For Smith, it merely doubled his body count from one to two for the day, but for Eppolito and Caracappa it meant a $400,000 windfall, according to assistant U.S. attorney Robert Henoch, the lead prosecutor in the Mafia Cops case.

Up until then, Santora had been the middleman between the Mafia Cops and the Luchese family. But at a meeting between the ex-detectives and mob associate Burton Kaplan after the murder, Henoch said in court last month, Eppolito (right) and Caracappa (left) were placed on the Luchese payroll, earning a $4000-per-month retainer to provide “sensitive law enforcement information” to family underboss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso.

Ironically, Casso dispatched Smith on the murder mission that ultimately brought the detectives nearly $300,000 from their monthly fees and $100,000 more for “special assignment” murders during their six years on the Luchese payroll, according to court records.