Frank Abbandando was convicted in Kings County, New York, of the 1937 murder of George Rudnick. He was tried with Harry Maione, and the two men were found guilty of murder in the first degree. The Court of Appeals of New York set that first verdict aside on December 31, 1940 and ordered new trials. At the retrial in 1941 both men were again found guilty, the Court of Appeals affirmed the judgments of conviction without an opinion, and Abbandando was executed at Ossining on February 19, 1942.
He is remembered as one of the Brooklyn men prosecuted by the Kings County District Attorney's office in 1940 and 1941, in cases that turned on the cooperation of former members of the same group. The Rudnick conviction is the only verdict against him on record. Other killings have been attributed to him, but none led to a charge or a conviction on record.
By the summer of 1940 the Kings County District Attorney, William O'Dwyer, had Abbandando and Maione in custody, along with Martin Goldstein and Harry Strauss. Police booked Abbandando, Maione and Strauss on March 7, 1940. They were expected to face charges over the 1937 death of George Rudnick, and the prosecution later separated Strauss from that charge.
Assistant District Attorney Burton Turkus led the case. His main witness was Abe Reles, a former member of the same group who had begun to cooperate with the District Attorney's office, and the prosecutors tried defendants in pairs or small groups. David Price appeared for the defense. Abbandando and Maione were convicted of the murder of Rudnick.
Both men appealed. In People v. Maione, decided on December 31, 1940 (284 N.Y. 423), a majority of the Court of Appeals reversed the convictions and ordered new trials. Judge Loughran wrote for the majority, with Chief Judge Lehman and Judges Rippey and Sears. The court held that the trial judge had erred in his instruction on corroboration. Reles was an accomplice, and under section 399 of the Code of Criminal Procedure a conviction could not rest on an accomplice's testimony unless other evidence tended to connect the defendants with the crime. The trial judge had listed undisputed facts about the crime itself as corroboration. Those facts did not link the defendants to it, and the court found that the instruction in effect told the jury that no corroboration was needed. Judge Conway dissented, with Judges Finch and Lewis, and would have affirmed, reading the charge as substantially correct.
Abbandando and Maione were tried a second time in Kings County in 1941, and the jury again returned verdicts of guilty. The Court of Appeals then affirmed the judgments of conviction in a decision issued without an opinion. Chief Judge Lehman and Judges Loughran, Finch, Rippey, Lewis, Conway and Desmond took part. The sentences of both men stood.
Abbandando and Maione were executed together at Ossining on February 19, 1942. Harry Strauss and Martin Goldstein, tried separately in other cases, had been executed in June 1941.
Section 399 of the New York Code of Criminal Procedure is the rule on which the first Rudnick verdict fell. It barred conviction on the testimony of an accomplice alone and required other evidence that tended to connect the defendant with the commission of the crime. The Court of Appeals treated the point as one of how the jury was instructed: the corroboration offered at trial showed that a crime had taken place, but did not show who had committed it. The court divided four to three on the wording of a single instruction.
Abbandando has been linked in later writing to a hired-killer team accused of other deaths in Brooklyn in 1939, but no charge or conviction against him for any of them is on record. His date and place of birth, his age at execution and the exact date of Rudnick's death are not on record. The date of the second Court of Appeals decision is not on record.
1937: George Rudnick dies in Brooklyn; Abbandando and Maione are later convicted of his murder.
March 7, 1940: Abbandando, Maione and Strauss are booked by police in Brooklyn.
1940: first trial in Kings County; Abbandando and Maione convicted of murder in the first degree.
December 31, 1940: the Court of Appeals reverses the convictions and orders new trials (People v. Maione, 284 N.Y. 423).
1941: retrial in Kings County; both men again convicted; the Court of Appeals affirms the judgments without opinion.
June 1941: Strauss and Goldstein are executed in other cases.
February 19, 1942: Abbandando and Maione are executed at Ossining.