55 years later, Surfside kidnapping solved: It involved mob ties, grand jury testimony
More than five decades after the sensational kidnapping of a Surfside teenager made headlines around the country and terrorized a community, police and five men who have spent the better part of the past decade researching the disappearance of the high school senior, say they have solved the crime.
Danny Goldman, police say, was killed by a mobster associated with a notorious Tampa crime family after his father detailed to federal investigators how a local bank controlled by a union pension fund associated with Jimmy Hoffa gave out unsecured loans.
His father testified before a grand jury just four days before Goldman’s abduction. The grand jury testimony led to 19 indictments, though none to the main characters believed involved in Goldman’s abduction.
Goldman, five days shy of his 18th birthday and about to register for the draft, was kidnapped from his home in front of his parents by an intruder who demanded $50,000 for his return. The teen’s body — believed to have been dismembered on a boat in the Gulf Stream — was never found.
“We believe Danny’s abduction was retaliation for Aaron’s [Goldman] cooperation with federal authorities regarding illegal banking practices,” Miami-Dade Cold Case Homicide Detective Jonathan Grossman said in a video released earlier this week.
Grossman also thanked former Surfside Mayor Paul Novack and residents Anthony Blate, David and Joe Graubart and Harvey Lisker for providing information critical to the case. Three of them knew Goldman from his days at Miami Beach Senior High School. The Graubarts spent time with him at his home, often reconfiguring electronic devices.
“Officially, for several decades, there have been no arrests, no prosecutions, no convictions, and essentially, no clue about what happened to Danny Goldman,” Novack wrote in an online site that for the past nine years has detailed information on the Goldman case. “That is all different now. Finally, now we all know what happened and why, to Danny Goldman. Rest in Peace.”
In their findings, the Surfside sleuths and police detail a kidnapping tied to nationally known notorious mobsters that went awry and which could have been hatched from a Martin Scorsese blockbuster film.
According to police, Novack and friends, it was just a few hours past midnight on March 28, 1966, when a man named George Defeis, who had ties to the Trafficante crime family, pulled up to the Goldmans’ Surfside home in a taxi. The family was awakened when Defeis entered the home through a sliding glass door. He tied up Danny’s parents, Aaron and Sally Goldman, and demanded $50,000 for the return of their son.
Then he left. The Goldmans managed to untie themselves and call police. But they would never hear from Defeis again. Local media outlets ran bold headlines.
“Teenager Kidnapped by Gunwaving Bandit,” said a big, above-the-fold headline in the Miami Beach Daily Sun. “FBI No. 1 Mystery: The Goldman Case,” wrote the Miami News. “Kidnapper Fails to Call; Manhunt Stepped Up,” read the front-page headline of the Miami Herald.
Despite the media attention, clues to solving the kidnapping proved hard to come by. It was made even more difficult with the 1980 death of Defeis in North Miami. The trail went cold.
About a decade ago when Aaron and Sally Goldman died within two years of each other, Novack and four friends went to work, convinced the case involving their missing friend could be solved.
Through an exhaustive search of documents — at both the state and federal levels — the Surfside Five determined Defeis was the kidnapper and that he had worked in unison with Joe Cacciatore, a first cousin of mobster Santo Trafficante.
They also discovered that Goldman had been taken after his father was interviewed by the feds and sat before a grand jury discussing mob ties to Miami National Bank, where he once served on the board of directors.
The bank was taken over in 1958 by a union pension fund controlled by Hoffa, the infamous union president who has been missing since 1975. Novack said their research discovered that Cacciatore had been going around town complaining that he did his part in the kidnapping and never got paid. Goldman’s missing car was discovered abandoned only two blocks from Cacciatore’s home.
Novack and his cohorts also believe that Goldman’s body was placed aboard a boat at Maule Lake Marina in North Miami Beach before it set out through Haulover Inlet and out to the Gulf Stream. There, the body was cut up and dumped into the ocean. Defeis, Novack said, was implicated in three other murders, but never convicted.
A key to their findings, said the former Surfside mayor, came seven months after Goldman’s abduction, when Defeis was picked up for another crime and fingerprinted. It matched a print found on the sliding glass door of the Goldman home. They also uncovered testimony from the Goldmans that the kidnapper walked with a limp. Defeis, who had diabetes, limped badly.
“This is a culmination of a decade of work,” Novack said. “We were able to establish who and why it happened. Nobody really had any idea, though there were lots of theories. That fingerprint was a big element of it.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2021 at 2:11 PM.
