Maybe that was premature.
A new investigation revealed in the Original Gangsters podcast, produced by Roberto Boschian of Macomb County and hosted by mob experts and authors James Buccellato and Scott Burnstein, makes a bold claim.
Sanderson has a special reason to find an answer: His brother Fred Sanderson and brother-in-law Gene Mancen were both slain in the attack. Coined The Time Realty Massacre and covered feverishly by the local media, it happened at the corner of 14 Mile and Hoover. Between $100,000 and $200,000 was stolen in the attack.
Mancen, Sanderson and a man named Joe Termine -- who is suspected of being an accidental victim caught in the wrong place at the wrong time -- were each killed when they were knocked unconscious by the butt of a gun and shot in the back of the head by a 22-caliber pistol, per reports.
"This is a very quiet bedroom community, not a lot of crime, not a community that has a lot of organized crime," Buccellato said, adding that from day one it had all the earmarks of a mob hit.
Police were led down the wrong road, Sanderson believes, by by the sight of a pile of cocaine left at the scene, which Sanderson believes was planted, and by witnesses who claimed the cause was a drug deal. The truth is much more complicated.
With help from someone in the Sterling Heights Police Department, Sanderson started investigating after he woke on his brother's birthday in 2018 with the remnants of an intense dream and the words "Down the Rat Hole" on his mind. After intense research, he came up with what he believes is an answer to who killed his brother and Mancen, both small-time bookmakers.
To get to that point, know that Mancen was backed by Jewish mob gambling chief, Allen "The General" Hilf and Paulie Leggio, a mob-connected felon, who reportedly provided him protection. Leggio and Hilf were members of the Detroit mafia’s Giacalone crew, Sanderson says.
Who are the Giacalones? "The Giacalone brothers, icy taskmaster Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and good-natured, back-slapping Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone were the Motor City mob’s junkyard dogs and day-to-day overlords from the 1960s into the 2000s, suspected of ordering or personally carrying out a multitude of gangland homicides in their over half-century in the underworld," gangster.com reports.
For awhile, all was good. Then Mancen allegedly borrowed $50,000 from Leggio and couldn't pay it back. The loan was upped to $200,000. He couldn't pay that either.
"Witnesses overheard two separate shouting matches between Mancen and Leggio in the weeks leading up to the triple murder. Leggio screamed into a payphone at Mr. Paul’s Chop House, a popular mob gathering spot on the eastside, “I want my $200,000….. I’ll kill your ass. You obviously don’t understand who you are messing with here. I’ve been to prison before and I don’t care if I go back.”
Leggio's favorite muscle was Robert "Bobby the Animal" LaPuma. "Not someone you want to meet in a dark alley," Burnstein said.
Knowing Leggio and LaPuma were serious threats, Mancen and Sanderson hired a bodyguard nicknamed "Bad News." Bad News took April 3, 1985, off; Death, however, did not.
The bodies of Sanderson, Mancen and Termine were found in the Time-Realty building in a triangle position on the floor.
An FBI informant said he saw Leggio give LaPuma $50,000 in cash 48 hours following the massacre. And according to sources, Hilf received Mancen’s sports book from the Giacalones after Mancen was killed.
Leggio was called in front of the grand jury, where he pleaded the Fifth Amendment.
Despite that evidence, no one has ever been charged in the killings.
"My brother solved his own murder ..." Sanderson said, breaking down momentarily when he described how Fred had grabbed a nylon off his killer. It was clenched in his hand when his body was found.
Years later, with the development of DNA testing, the nylon was connected to a member of the Giacalone crew, Sanderson said.