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Accidental Hit Man

Sure, Paul Brandreth talks like a wiseguy. But is he a cold-blooded killer?

By Tamara Lush 

Tom Lehmann and a few buddies had been partying for nearly a week without sleep. They had started the binge long before the new year — a lot of meth, a bit of coke, some hits of X, a couple of snorts of ketamine, and, of course, a steady supply of joints and strippers. It included a December 31 bash at Opium Garden in South Beach, then an afterparty downtown at Club Space.

Now, on January 4, 2002, it was time to get to work.

A guy named Steve Citranglo owed Leh­mann money — $80,000, to be exact — for a shipment of ketamine, the PCP-like horse tranquilizer that makes people hallucinate and trip for hours. Citranglo had accepted the drugs long ago. His payment was way overdue.

The man needed an incentive, Leh­mann thought. His meth-addled plan: Invite Citranglo to his Coral Gables condo and beat him. This would serve a dual purpose. Citranglo would also be discouraged from taking over the $10,000-per-week ketamine-dealing business.

Although he was a tan, six-foot, 228-pound guy pumped up on steroids and human growth hormone, Lehmann alone might not be able to pound Citranglo. So he invited along two others: Ahed Hbaiu, a 21-year-old Columbia University student and drug dealer who was trying to collect $60,000 from Citranglo, and a Michigan kid named Kevin Keneuker.

Lehmann also asked his buddy Paul Brandreth to come over. Brandreth was one of Leh­mann's foot soldiers in the drug trade, a big lug who liked to brag about his bar-fighting and New York Mafia connections. He stood six feet tall, weighed 240 pounds, and sported a tattoo that read "Death Before Dishonor" on his back. Between his size and his steely blue-eyed gaze, he'd be helpful in the beatdown, Lehmann thought.

Shortly before noon, everything and everyone was in place at Lehmann's two-bedroom condo on Majorca Avenue in Coral Gables.

But seconds after the first punch was thrown, something went wrong. One of the guys had brought a gun, and Citranglo ended up wrapped in a tarp with a bullet hole — maybe several — in his body.

Once everyone realized Citranglo was dead, they rolled his body under a coffee table and covered it with a red Christmas tablecloth. "We shit our pants for a half an hour waiting to see if the police showed up or if anyone came knocking on our door," Lehmann would later say.

Someone did knock. It was a guy named Brandon who wanted to buy two eight balls of coke. While the buyer waited, Lehmann tidily readjusted the red tablecloth so the corpse was invisible. "You couldn't really see it, in my opinion," Lehmann recalls. "And then again, I'm using crystal meth, so what works in a normal mind is not working in my mind at that point."

After Brandon left, they all agreed to dump Citranglo in the Everglades. As they loaded the body into the back of a black Mercedes SUV, Lehmann was angry and scared. He remembers standing in the parking lot and saying out loud: "You fuckin' killed him."

Eventually, Lehmann, Brandreth, Hbaiu, and Keneuker would be charged with first-degree murder. Their testimony in court papers reveals clues to South Florida's biggest Mob murder, the background of a bust that crippled South Beach's club-drug world, and teases of information about the persistent wise-guy culture that many people think disappeared from these parts long ago.

Paul Brandreth was born May 29, 1968, in Parkchester, a hardscrabble neighborhood in the eastern Bronx. The area is best-known for its sprawling baseball fields and giant, fortress-like, red brick high-rises that once housed some 42,000 people. His family was a typical blue-collar Bronx pastiche: Dad was a New York City cop, mom a nurse. Brandreth's brother, Keith, was born in 1973, and the two were inseparable. Both boys were handsome. They looked and talked alike. Paul was more hyper; he was a blond, blue-eyed bruiser who loved rough sports.

Addiction and anger ran deep in the family. Brandreth's father beat everyone in the house, and both parents were drunks. When Paul reached tenth grade, he excelled at football and lacrosse and also took on some of his parents' habits. He began drinking, fighting, and doing drugs. He remembers visiting his friend Brian's house one day; the boy's mom sold coke. She offered him a line. "That was it," Brandreth recalls. "From there, downhill."

These days, Brandreth is 39 years old and a prisoner in the Miami-Dade County lockup. He often speaks about his life as a descent — like when he describes his first arrest, a burglary, two weeks before his senior prom and graduation: "From there, downhill." Or when, at 18, he tried his first crack rock: "From there, downhill."

According to Brandreth, his life has moved in only one direction. He was arrested in 1990 for selling coke in New York City, which led to a six-month stint in an NYC jail. Sometimes, he had sex with men in exchange for drugs or money.

Three years and several parole violations later, he was again arrested for peddling cocaine. This time, he was sent to the state lockup in Elmira. Man, you're going with the big boys now, Brandreth recalls thinking. "I had always hoped to do better, y'know."

In 1995, Brandreth was released after serving two and a half years. He recalls that his brother Keith, who was 22 at the time, picked him up in a Lexus. "Bro, forget about cocaine," Keith said. "There's this new shit; it's called X, Ecstasy." That night, Keith gave Paul his first hit of X and took him to the China Club, an A-list joint on West 47th Street with an awesome view of Times Square. There, Paul spotted a hot girl with curly blond hair. She was wearing a tight denim minidress and Timberland boots. Her name was Effie Katanakis. She was Greek and knew Keith. She sat on Paul's lap and later took him home. "It was a love/hate relationship," he says.

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