Anthony Senter, a former mafia hitman who participated in at least 11 murders as part of a Gambino Family hit squad responsible for at least 25 murders and the dismemberment of its some of its victims, may be released from prison in 2024, according to a weekend article in the New York Post.
“Former Gambino crime family button man Anthony Senter, 68, behind bars in Canaan, PA, was recently given the green light for release by the U.S. Parole Commission,” reported the Post.
Although he was sentenced to prison in 1989 for his role in the mafia murders, Senter also joined the Teamsters Local 813 in 1980 and was “immediately appointed the local’s shop steward” for the Canarsie Recycling Company, the New York Times reported in 1994.
Along with being a mob hitman, Senter was part of the Teamsters during the time when the union and its national union leadership were controlled by organized crime, and was spoken about in a CNN documentary on the Teamsters and organized crime in the early 1990s.
In New York, since the 1950s, Local 813 had had the City’s sanitation industry and was under the thumb of Bernard Adelstein and Vincent Squillante for years.
However, by the mid 1980s, the U.S. Justice Department began turning up the heat on the Teamsters’ mob ties, finally putting federal oversight of the union into place in 1989.
Over the three decades of federal oversight, though the mafia is not completely out of unions, as a national union, the Teamsters has largely rid itself of organized crime while Senter was in prison.
And, although Senter was sentenced to “life plus 20 years,” according to the Post, if he is released from prison, it is unlikely he will see the union pension he was hoping to receive.