25 Years Ago –

Shoot-Out Marked The Beginning Of The End Of Sandy Hook’s Reputation For Trouble

By Steve Bigham

and Jeff White

It was a bright, warm Thursday, around noontime, when it happened.

A volley of gunfire, and an ensuing wave of chaos, erupted in the center of Sandy Hook. Some took cover, while others assembled along curbs to see what the confusion was about. They watched as some Sandy Hook locals with small revolvers tucked into their pants and rifles slung over their shoulders walked in front and down the side of the hotel at 111 Church Hill Road, not sure of exactly what was going on.

What happened on July 31, 1975, 25 years ago this week, was a shootout between rival motorcycle gangs that ended with two people dead and one seriously injured. When the maelstrom abated, Donald E. Krosky of Trumbull, the proprietor of the Sandy Hook Hotel, turned himself over to police. He was charged with two counts of murder.

Sergeant David Lydem was the first Newtown police officer on the scene. He was responding to reports of “trouble” at the hotel, but as his cruiser crunched up against the curb near Sandy Hook Diner, the seriousness of the event became all too obvious.

There were screams about the Hell’s Angels. There were men with shotguns still cocked.

“I didn’t want to get out of my car,” Mr Lydem, now a lieutenant on the Newtown police squad, recalls. “I wanted to wait for backup.”

The bodies were around the hotel’s back. Two of them lay in the middle of the lot, another propped up against a back door. “It was pretty much cut and dry right there,” Lt Lydem says. “I went around back, and all of the bodies were lying back there. Krosky admitted to the shootings, and was arrested on the scene.”

But the story, which splashed across newspapers and networks in the days that followed, proved more complicated, more complex. Sandy Hook’s orderliness today belies its reputation as a tough end of town back then.

Twenty-five years later, the Sandy Hook shootout still remains a story about rivalry, real estate, and revenge.

An Eviction Gone Awry 

According to police reports, the incident was a result of a dispute between Mr Krosky and Charles Framularo of Trumbull, the owner of the Village Café, which was housed inside the Sandy Hook Hotel. Mr Krosky had been leasing the bar with an option to buy for about a year. But Mr Framularo had withdrawn his support for a new liquor license, which resulted in Mr Krosky losing his bar permit three weeks earlier.

Mr Framularo, who at the time had reported ties to the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, was attempting to get Krosky to leave the premises in favor of a new tenant who offered more money. However, Mr Krosky, a member of the Huns motorcycle gang, was in no rush to leave and tension in the area began to grow.

Since the Monday before the shooting, police patrols in the area had been stepped up as reports of impending trouble came in. On the night before the shooting, Mr Krosky called Chief Louis D. Marchese at his home to say he feared for his life.

First Selectman Herb Rosenthal was in his late 20s at the time. He recalls hearing talk of a possible shootout the night before while he ate at the Yankee Drover.

On the day of the shooting Sgt David Lydem checked the place at 11:45 am and Officer Robert Wrabel patrolled again at noon. The shooting began ten minutes later.

According to reports, three Hell’s Angels members, hired by Mr Framularo to evict Mr Krosky from the café, pulled up in a car in front of the hotel and quickly went around the back of the building. There, they attempted to pick a lock in order to get inside. A window was also reportedly broken.

Seconds later, several shots were fired and three men were down. Killed in the shootout were Salvatore Saffiotti, 34, and Frank D’Amato, 24, both of Bridgeport. Critically injured in the shooting was Donald “Big Red” Meredith, 28, of Durham, North Carolina.

The shootout occurred just as The Newtown Bee was going to press. For the first time in the paper’s history, Publisher R. Scudder Smith halted the presses due to the late-breaking story. He rushed to the scene with his camera after spotting several police cruisers whiz by The Bee’s offices on Church Hill Road. He remembers the patrons of the Sandy Hook Diner, most of whom remained behind the counter after the last shots were fired.

Owen Carney, now retired from the police department, was on vacation when the shooting took place. When the smoke cleared, he was called back into work; his vacation was officially over.

Thinking back to that day, Mr Carney recalls the scene as something akin to the shootout at the OK Corral. The two bodies lay behind the hotel – called the “Hook Hilton” by locals – which housed the Village Café. 

“That was certainly something you never forget. We had a lot of long days following that,” Mr Carney recollects. “Sandy Hook was a rough place back then. The bar there was a bucket of blood. It was a biker bar.”

But that all changed in the aftermath of the shooting. Then first selectman Frank DeLucia, who was at a meeting in Danbury at the time of the shootings, arrived on the scene after order was regained. “I boarded up the place and tried to shut the hotel down,” he says. “I did this because when I learned about the incident and talked to the police chief, there were motorcycle gangs hanging out there. It worked. [The hotel] never really reopened as a bar.”

“When you’re in that kind of a position, you know how the town would want you to react. Nobody wants those things to happen. You want to do everything you can to prevent those things from happening in the future. We accomplished that,” he adds.

Mr DeLucia helped coordinate the closing of other “rough” bars in town soon after the shooting, bars that catered to a biker element.

Other known biker bars, such as Mattie’s and Sam’s Log Cabin, were also shut down soon after. Nationwide, motorcycle gangs like the Hell’s Angels were sought out by law enforcement officials looking to put an end to the violence.

Meanwhile, the Hell’s Angels exacted revenge on Mr Krosky, gunning him down at a stop sign in Trumbull about a year after the shooting. Police believe that the alleged gunman was none other than “Big Red” Meredith, the man who had been critically injured during the original shooting.

Jim Mooney, Sr remembers that tensions were high in the hours following therecalls the shooting this week. A state trooper living in Newtown, Mr Mooney also served on the Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps and responded to the incident. After transporting the injured man to the hospital, Mr Mooney returned to the scene to retrieve his car.

“The police handed me a shotgun and asked me to stand guard. I was in a tee-shirt and boots,” he recalls. “There was still the possibility of additional shooting because it involved two rival gangs.”

 

Sandy Hook:

A Different Place

The somewhat rough and tumble Sandy Hook days seem to be long gone.

Today, the center has been transformed into a peaceful, more stable area. Except for the occasional over-exuberance of patrons of a restaurant/bar there, the only noise coming from the Sandy Hook center is the never-ending burble from the Pootatuck River. And it is the river that has come to symbolize an unflagging sense of community in the Sandy Hook business district. It is the kind of close-knit character that has helped keep the area going, despite its share of ups and downs over the years.

 Thanks to a healthy economy and a group of ambitious developers, Sandy Hook continues on its steady climb. The center is currently undergoing a major face lift that, when completed, is expected give Sandy Hook a far different look from that of the past. No longer is it considered that place “on the other side of the tracks.”

But Lt Lydem, standing at the scene of the shooting on a wet Wednesday 25 years afterwards, remembers those rough days. He can point now to the location of three bars that used to service the center in those days, bars that helped contribute to the center’s reputation.

But Sandy Hook is much different now, he says, as cars run past computer and music stores. The center’s run-ins with the law, once common, are now the exception.

Twenty-five years ago, Lt Lydem seldom wore his policeman’s hat, the unmistakable sign of his authority. On the day of the Sandy Hook shootout, however, he recalls he made sure it remained firmly on his head.

The shootout’s story, Lt Lydem says, might be in part summarized as a case of misinterpretations. Had Donald E. Krosky, Sr, known that the Hell’s Angels were apparently there to evict, and not kill, him, things might have been different.

“[Krosky] overestimated what they were going to do, and [the Hell’s Angels] underestimated what he was going to do.”