It could make for a heartwarming Disney film — if only its protagonist weren’t a violent Mafioso convicted of extortion.
As Gambino crime-family soldier Anthony “Nighthawk” Licata awaits sentencing for beating a man during a mob shakedown, his young niece has written to the judge pleading for leniency, noting that Licata once undertook a weeklong odyssey in search of her beloved missing dog, Tarzan.
When Licata had asked the junior-high-schooler what she was hoping for on her birthday earlier this year, the girl said, she replied, “All I want is my dog back.
“I had a dog named Tarzan who was very special to me. One day, Tarzan was stolen from my back yard,” the girl wrote to the federal judge. “I was so sad.”
That’s when her wiseguy uncle with a soft spot began pounding the pavement in search of her favorite pet, looking high and low “for days,” the girl wrote.
“He searched the neighborhood and found someone that saw the dog and tracked him to a building,” the girl explained.
“But by the time my uncle got there, the ASPCA took the dog to the city. My uncle called the ASPCA, and my dad went to get him,” she recalled. “What my uncle did for me is the best gift anyone could give me.”
The saga was detailed in a letter to the judge who soon will sentence Licata on extortion charges involving a construction firm.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors paint a starkly different picture of the child’s uncle.
In a previous letter to the judge, they wrote, “Anthony Licata is a Gambino family soldier with prior felony convictions for committing crimes of violence.”