Decades later, Staten Island woman learns scary secret her father kept hidden

There are occasions when you don’t know everything about your relatives.

Midland Beach resident Carol Razzano Dispensa recently found out when an old family acquaintance shared information about her father that she had never heard before.

Dispensa stated, “I came to understand that my father deliberately kept it out of our minds because it was a terrifying experience.”

Help! Help! Stickup!

When Dispensa was seventeen years old in 1960, her father, Frank Razzano, was employed by Port Richmond Taxi as a cab driver.

Razzano on Feb. 26 of that year unknowingly picked up a bad fare: a stickup man who forced the cabbie to wait for him while the robber knocked over a liquor store in New Brighton at gunpoint.

Morris Palace, who ran the package business at 285 Jersey St., was the victim of the alleged cab bandit.

Detectives were informed by Palace that the blatant daylight stickup happened just after midday.

He said a man entered the store and asked for a bottle of scotch, the Advance reported at the time.

It was declared by the criminal, “This is a stickup,” as Palace turned to retrieve it.

Then, drawing a revolver from his coat pocket, the holdup man pushed Palace in the back of the shop.

The thief threatened to kill him unless he got in back.

The gunman shut the door after pushing the storekeeper into a tiny restroom. After that, the robber opened the cash register and took the money out. He took $275 and fled.

After then, the bandit entered Razzano’s waiting taxi.

Cab driver Frank Razzano had a scary episode behind the wheel in 1960 that he kept secret from his children.Photo courtesy of Carol Razzano Dispensa

Just as Razzano started off, the driver spotted Palace running out of his store, shouting, Help! Assist! Stick up!

Drive, he said

Razzano told police it was then that his fare put something hard and pointy against the back of Razzano s head and ordered him to keep driving.

Directed by the gunman, Razzano drove up Jersey Street to Brook Street, then onto Victory Boulevard. The gunman ordered the cabbie to pull over at the intersection of Victory and Van Duzer Street in Tompkinsville.

The crook hopped out and ordered Razzano to keep driving straight ahead. Razzano said he drove slowly for another block, where an off-duty detective in a commandeered car caught up with him.

The detective, Gerard Cicero, who was assigned to the 4th Squad in Manhattan, lived across the street from the liquor store and jumped into action when he heard Palace s cries for help.

Advance front page story reports how cabbie Frank Razzano was forced to drive a gunman to and from a liquor store holdup in 1960.Advance archive photo

Cicero and Razzano toured the Tompkinsville neighborhood where the gunman got out of the car but they couldn t spot the bandit.

Roadblocks were quickly ordered at borough bridges and ferries, the Advance said, with cops assigned to watch pedestrian entrances at the ferry terminals in St. George. But no trace of the suspect was found.

Robber calls a cab

Razzano told cops that the frightening incident began when he received a call to pick up a fare at O Keefe s Restaurant, which was at 2930 Richmond Terrace in Mariners Harbor.

The passenger told Razzano to go to Jersey Street and then had him stop in front of a barber shop that was across from the liquor store.

Telling Razzano to wait, the crook walked into the liquor store and carried out the heist. When he emerged, Razzano reported, the bandit hurried only slightly.

He then menaced Razzano into being his getaway driver.

An arrest is made

The stickup man was described as about 30 years old, 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighing 135 pounds. He was reportedly wearing a tan fedora, a gray three-quarter coat and dark trousers.

Acting on a tip, police on March 6 arrested Pedro Baso, of the Bronx, as the stickup man. Palace, owner of the liquor store, identified Baso, the Advance reported.

Island detectives had received a tip from an informant that Baso, identified in the paper as a dope addict, was going to make a telephone call from booth in a drug store at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street in Manhattan.

Baso initially denied doing the robbery and told detectives that he was a drug addict and had recently done a jail stint at Rikers Island.

Cops said the suspect had a record for receiving stolen goods and was on probation on a petit larceny conviction at the time of his arrest.

Baso later admitted to the liquor store robbery in County Court. Judge James C. Crane sentenced him to to five to 10 years of hard labor at Sing Sing Prison, the Advance reported.

Crane also recommended that Baso be given medical treatment for his drug addiction.

Daughter learns truth

Dispensa, now 81, said she had never heard about the robbery incident until Andrew Licursi, a longtime friend of her brother Fred s, mentioned it in an email to her.

I said, gee, I don t remember that at all, said Dispensa, who was raised in New Brighton.

She asked her brother about the robbery and he didn t remember the incident either.

Dispensa said her father also worked for Sam s Taxi and worked on the borough docks as well.

Dispensa said she s sure that her dad told her mother about the robbery but otherwise shielded the family.

As a parent herself, Dispensa said she understood her father keeping the secret.

You don t want your dad to go off to work and be worried about him, she said. You love your parents and you want everything to be so perfect.

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