EW YORK - Mayor Rudolph J. Giuliani's late father, Harold, served a year and a half in Sing Sing prison for holding up a milkman at gunpoint in the 1930s, a decade before his law-and-order son was born, the Village Voice reported yesterday.
Harold Giuliani pleaded guilty to third-degree armed robbery in May 1934, a month after milkman Harold Hall was robbed in the stairwell of an Upper East Side apartment building, the Voice reported in an excerpt from reporter Wayne Barrett's upcoming book about the mayor.
Giuliani and an accomplice stopped Hall as he entered the building to collect payments from customers, pointed a gun at him, and took $128.82 from his pocket, the Voice said.
The report was published in the midst of a difficult year for Rudolph Giuliani, who recently dropped out of the US Senate race after revealing he had prostate cancer, was separated from his wife, and had formed a close friendship with another woman.
The mayor, a former federal prosecutor, has built his career on a reputation as a crime-fighter, gaining national prominence as New York's crime rates dropped dramatically under his administration. Until recently, he rarely spoke about his personal life.
Sunny Mindel, a spokeswoman for the mayor, declined to comment on the story about Harold Giuliani.
''We haven't read it,'' she said.
A call to the state Department of Correctional Services seeking confirmation of the report was not immediately returned.
A police officer interrupted the aborted robbery, and an indictment identified Harold Giuliani, then 26, as the man who pressed a gun into Hall's abdomen, the Voice reported. But the milkman later changed his statement, saying Giuliani's accomplice wielded the pistol.
Prosecutors said Hall had been forced to change his story, according to the Voice.
''This milkman tried to change his statement after he was visited at about four o'clock that morning by several people who threatened him,'' Assistant District Attorney Louis Capozzoli reportedly said at a court hearing. ''Then he said he thought this fellow [Giuliani] ought to get a break.''
Harold Giuliani, who told a judge his name was Joseph Starrett, was charged initially with four felonies and pleaded not guilty, the Voice reported.
After Hall changed his statement, Giuliani was allowed to plead guilty to just one felony, according to the paper. He was sentenced to two to five years and released on parole after a year and a half.
The mayor recalled his father's influence on him while speaking to reporters about his cancer diagnosis in April. His father died of prostate cancer in 1981 at age 73.
''It brings up very painful memories,'' he said of the diagnosis. ''And, you know, I miss my father every day of my life. And he's a very, very important reason for why I'm standing here as the mayor of New York City.''
The Village Voice story, headlined ''Thug Life,'' depicts Harold Giuliani as a hot-tempered man who was quick to throw a punch and who rarely held a legitimate job.
In the late 1940s, it says, he began working as a bartender at a tavern owned by the brother of Rudolph Giuliani's mother, Helen.
The Voice said that owner Leo D'Avanzo ran a loan-sharking and gambling operation out of the bar, Vincent's Restaurant, and that Harold Giuliani wielded a baseball bat when he collected debts.
