HACKENSACK -- A grand jury has indicted an Edgewater man for trying to hire a
hit man to kill the man who murdered his brother 24 years earlier.
The indictment, returned Friday, charges John "Archie" Mitchell, 54, with
attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and three weapons offenses.
Mitchell is accused of offering $5,000 to Christopher Bartsch, a stranger he
met in a Hackensack bar in January. In return, he wanted Bartsch to kill Michael
Costello.
Mitchell is part of a long-established Eastern European Gypsy family in New
Jersey, police said. His father, Stephen, has proclaimed himself "King of the
Gypsies," they said.
Police said Mitchell wanted Costello dead to avenge the 1977 murder of
Mitchell's brother, Larry. Costello -- who belongs to a prominent New York Gypsy
clan -- served 2 1/2 years in prison for the slaying. He was freed after winning
an appeal.
Mitchell allegedly gave a .25-caliber semiautomatic pistol to Bartsch and
showed him where Costello lived. But Bartsch reported the plot to police, who
tape-recorded several subsequent meetings between him and Mitchell -- and even
staged a phony killing.
On June 6, investigators placed yellow crime-scene tape around a car in
Moonachie, covered a bulge in the driver's seat with a white sheet, and had
Bartsch call Mitchell to report that he had completed his assignment.
When Mitchell later met Bartsch at the Riverside Square mall to pay him for the
killing, police said, they arrested him.
In a bizarre twist, Bartsch was arrested after allegedly trying to extort
$1,200 from Mitchell by promising to go into hiding so he wouldn't have to testify
against him. That case is pending.
