Tony Burns
Gina Trapano (Brigitte Stelzer)
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She boarded his bus with purpose, approaching the man behind the wheel, and slipped the note with her name and number into his hand.
MTA bus driver Tony Burns thought it was a transit ticket. He unfolded the white paper and saw the handwritten message — and didn’t know what to think.
“She gave me a note telling me all about wanting to get together, [to] give her a call,” he told The Post.
In his six years driving a city bus, the 51-year-old Burns says he’s made it a point to be friendly with customers. A “hello” here, a “have a good day” there — but nothing more.
So when Astoria resident Gina Trapano got on the Q69 one day looking for more than a lift, Burns was floored.
“She used to get on my bus several times a week, her and her sister,” he told The Post. “I don’t know the lady personally.”
He ignored her entreaty, in which she said she liked the way he treated his customers. A few days later he pulled the Q69 up to a stop, and there was Trapano, staring him down, asking why he hadn’t called.
Burns put her off, telling her he would call when his shift ended. But that’s when the married father of two sons tried to permanently apply the brakes.
“I called the lady, and I told her, I said: ‘Look, I read your letter. I appreciate your interest but I’m married and I don’t get involved with my passengers like that.’ ”
But Burns made one mistake.
“I didn’t block my number,” he recalled ruefully.
Little did Burns know that the April 2011 conversation was just the beginning of what he now calls “the bizarrest thing to ever happen to me” — a New York City nightmare in which a casual encounter degenerates into a twisted attraction.
Burns could never have predicted the spurned straphanger was about to take her fixation public, posting angry rants labeling “Tony Q69” as a two-timing, womanizing bastard all along his route — and that this behavior would continue for months, making him the laughingstock of the bus line.
It started with voicemails. Lots of them. Unable to take a hint, Trapano, 48, began calling him.
“It’s Gina again,” she sighs in one message. “I’m sorry, sorry, sorry if I got you mad all this time, but I’ll make it up to you. And I’d still like to meet you someday, so I’ll keep calling until I meet you.”
Trapano dialed his cellphone 45 times in a single day, he claims, calling so much he was left to simply delete the increasingly erratic messages.
“Let’s face it, I’m the one who gave you the note, so I really, really wanted to meet you,” she said in one message. In another: “Try to call me and let me know, because if you’re not answering these messages, I’m not going to know your answer, and then I have to keep calling.”
Trapano even asked Burns to find a guy for her.
“If you know somebody who wants a nice girlfriend or that really wants somebody who’s going to really be there for them, then my God, why don’t you recommend them? You must know somebody. That’s a way you could help me,” she said in another voicemail.
After a month, Burns says, he reported the harassment to the NYPD. Trapano was never arrested and the NYPD has been unable to confirm Burns’ complaint. But he said Trapano’s calls stopped after he contacted police.
Then things got weird. They appeared one day last summer, as if by magic: dozens of handwritten pages, plastered on lampposts and in bus shelters, written in colorful marker, boldly addressed to “Tony Q69.”
“You Tony are the one who should feel sorry for what happened!!! You are the married man who was only looking to get sex from me with no strings attached!”
The unsigned missives from a self-proclaimed single woman who “deserves a sincere/trusting” man slammed the bus driver for flirting with the women riding his Queens route and captured the imagination of riders and pedestrians alike.
Pictures of the spiteful, accusatory letters made their way to blogs, where people pondered Tony Q69’s identity and wondered what he could have done to inspire such wrath.
As curious passers-by contemplated the woman’s wrath, the notes kept coming.
One suggested: “NO ONE WANTS YOU TONY, WHY DON’T YOU GET OFF YOUR PEDESTAL!!!!!!!!!!!”
Burns says he has witnessed Trapano out on the Q69 route, putting up the fliers.
“I’ve seen her do it a couple of times,” he said. “Unless you know who Tony Q69 is, you’d think it’s somebody who had an affair with this woman.
“You ever seen that movie ‘Misery’? That’s what she reminds me of.”
Fearful for his safety, Burns reported Trapano’s behavior to the MTA, but says the agency sent investigators after him instead of taking steps to stop Trapano.
“They sent a special investigator to ride my bus, because she was telling them [I] had girls riding up and down the line with [me],” he said.
The MTA has said it believes that Trapano’s complaints are unfounded.
“I am not going to do anything to jeopardize my job,” the bus operator said. “I never said anything out of line to this lady. She’s blown this way out of proportion.”
It has been nearly a year, and the fliers are still going up around the neighborhood. Trapano left more messages for him the week of Valentine’s Day.
“She was a lot more aggressive and angry” in the latest messages, said Burns, who fears someone could come after him or his family.
“There’s no metal detector on the door” of the bus, Burns said. “We as bus drivers, we’re exposed. The MTA victimized me more than that lady. They had me investigated after I complained about her.”
Operators get different pay, depending on the bus line they work on. Burns has resisted changing bus routes, he said, because he didn’t do anything wrong.
“We pick by seniority. Why should I leave my line? Why should I let this lady dictate what kind of money I make?” he said.
“I just want the truth to be told so everyone knows: Tony Q69 didn’t flirt with anybody. I am not trying to get involved with any ‘Fatal Attraction.’ ”
Trapano refused repeated requests for comment.
Additional reporting by Gary Buiso, J.C. Rice and Sabrina Ford.