An elderly Brooklyn bookie was arrested yesterday for shooting to death his friend of 20 years at an Off-Track Betting parlor, police and acquaintances said.
Frank Guccione, 71, was charged with murder and weapons possession in the Wednesday attack on Daniel McCurdy, 50, outside the OTB branch on Fifth Avenue at 86th Street in Bay Ridge.
People who knew Guccione and McCurdy, who was a hulking 6-foot-2, 230 pounds, said the men had been friends for two decades and always hung out together at OTBs and neighborhood bars.
Guccione even bailed McCurdy out of jail on several occasions after he was arrested for domestic violence.
The two got into an argument at around 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, and Guccione, a retired longshoreman, drew a .25-caliber gun and shot McCurdy in the chest, police said.
“They were like father and son,” said Guccione friend John Monahan, 64. “Danny was a bastard. He owed everyone money.”
Police are trying to determine whether Guccione was one of the debtors.
Friends defended Guccione.
“He had to have been provoked,” said one pal.
McCurdy’s landlady, Dimitria Vittezakis, said the victim once tried to get out of paying rent by claiming his wife had died.
When she bumped into McCurdy’s son, she tried to console him – only to discover that she had been lied to. “He told me, ‘Mom is not dead,’ ” Vittezakis said.
She said McCurdy had lived in her Gelston Avenue building in Bay Ridge for the past three years and a steady stream of people came looking to collect money from him.
“They came all the way from Jersey for $10,000,” Vittezakis said.
Monahan said he isn’t surprised McCurdy wound up getting shot.
“There’s got to be a thousand people who wanted him dead,” he said.