Brooklyn ex-con busted for threatening Gov. Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa
By Bernadette Hogan, Tina Moore, Rebecca Rosenberg and Kate Sheehy
New York Post
November 17, 2020
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide turned the tables on a failed-journalist ex-con from Brooklyn who became obsessed and started threatening her, The Post has learned.
Melissa DeRosa — the governor’s right-hand staffer and a fixture at his famous COVID-19 updates — had been getting increasingly aggressive Twitter comments from an account for months before things escalated this past weekend, sources said.
That’s when DeRosa, 38, started getting phone calls from a man on her personal cell — culminating with him calling her a “cunt” and saying, “I’m gonna slice your pussy, you murderer,” sources said.
“It’s a little bit unnerving,” the usually unflappable DeRosa admitted, according to a source familiar with the situation.
The suspect was later identified as brawny Gary Goldstein — whose website claims he did production work on everything from the “CBS Morning News” with Diane Sawyer to “The NBC Today” with Brent Musburger in the 1990s before being sent up the river for nearly six years for robbery. He also lists a gig as an editorial assistant at The Post for a few months in 1994 on his LinkedIn profile.
It’s unclear what exactly Goldstein’s beef was with DeRosa, although a neighbor told The Post on Tuesday that the iron-pumping suspect lived with his mom in Brighton Beach — until she went into a nursing home about 10 years ago.
The suspect told authorities during a videotaped interrogation that his mom recently died of COVID-19, Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Wilfredo Cotto said at Goldstein’s arraignment Tuesday afternoon.
Cuomo has been ripped by critics for his handling of nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic.
In the spring, during the height of the outbreak in New York, the governor’s Health Commissioner Howard Zucker ordered nursing homes to accept infected patients, which relatives of the elderly and infirm say led to unnecessary deaths.
Less than a week ago, Goldstein spat at Cuomo on his LinkedIn page, “Just about EVERYONE knows what a piece of garbage this corrupt murderer, #KillerCuomo is now!”
Goldstein also wrote, “I’m thrilled to announce that Janice Dean, and many others in the media who aren’t intimidated by you, will never stop holding you under the fire for murdering over 12,000 innocent, elderly nursing home residents, until you, and Dr. Howard Zucker, finally admit what you did, and are held accountable,” referring to the TV meteorologist Dean, who lost in-laws in nursing homes to COVID-19.
Goldstein — who the ADA said was once arrested for punching his 81-year-old mother in the face while visiting her at a nursing home — was ordered held for a hospital psych exam at his hearing.
His lawyer, Mariam Gentile, argued against the move, saying Goldstein posed no danger to anyone, was mentally sound and that the aggravated-harassment charges against him don’t even require him to post any bail to be freed.
She said prosecutors were only seeking to keep him held in the hospital because of a “high-profile … complainant witness who happens to work for Gov. Cuomo.”
During the hearing, at which Goldstein appeared by video, he responded at one point to Brooklyn Criminal Court Judge Archana Rao, “Yes, I understand everything completely.”
In the end, Rao sided with the ADA, who claimed Goldstein “has a documented history of attempting to inflict injury on himself,” and ordered the suspect held.
The judge also issued a restraining order against Goldstein in terms of DeRosa.
Goldstein was arrested at his home over the weekend. He later claimed to cops that the day he was accused of harassing DeRosa on the phone, he was “watching college football all day and messaging with a girl named Kate on Facebook.”
DeRosa first grew concerned about the allegedly menacing man in August when she and even some of her Twitter followers noticed that Goldstein was getting increasingly angry in his tweets to her, sources said.
“The tone … was absolutely harassing and aggressive, more so than the usual Twitternoids,” a source said. “It was menacing, and it was this person clearly intending to scare and be aggressive, and it was elevating.”
DeRosa blocked Goldstein and thought nothing more of it — until Saturday afternoon, sources said.
That’s when the aide got a call from an unknown number while in the car with her family headed to dinner. DeRosa at first thought it could be the governor, sources said.
She picked up the phone, and the male caller asked, “Is this Melissa DeRosa?”
The Cuomo aide replied, “Yes.”
The guy said, “This is Dan Rather calling.”
He then “started saying some crazy things, like, ‘your tweets are inappropriate’” and hung up the phone, a source said.
But the man soon called back, repeating, “Melissa, Melissa, Melissa” in a menacing way, the source said.
The fourth time, DeRosa put the call on speaker and said, “Hello?”
The man spewed, “Melissa DeRosa, you cunt! I’m gonna slice your pussy, you murderer, do you hear me?” the source said.
DeRosa immediately called the state police, sources said.
The cops were able to trace the calls to Goldstein.
Goldstein says in online postings that addictions got the better of him in explaining his prior robbery bust.
When he got out of prison in 2004, the suspect — whose Facebook page includes cheesy shots of him posing like a bodybuilder — wrote a self-published book called “Jew in Jail.”
The self-published paperback, which sells for $28 on Amazon, “seeks to relive the author’s life peaks and pitfalls into alcohol, drugs and gambling and his time spent in prison in order to teach readers a tough lesson: that addiction doesn’t discriminate,” according to Goldstein’s web page.
He says he is now an “addiction and recovery expert” as well as a “motivational and inspirational speaker.”
He has been arrested at least eight previous times, including in 1993 for drugs, then escalating to robbery, domestic harassment and violation of an order of protection in 2006 and domestic violence in 2018, NYPD sources said.
“He was nice. But you could tell something was wrong,” a neighbor told The Post on Tuesday.
The resident and two sources familiar with the situation involving DeRosa identified Goldstein as the man linked to the online accounts. Law enforcement confirmed his address and robbery-conviction details
1 comment:
Lots of class there.
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