LANDLORD ADMITS PLOTTING TO HAVE TENANTS KILLED

NEW YORK -- (AP) -- A New York landlord has pleaded guilty to hiring a hit
man to kill two of his tenants who had complained about conditions in their
apartments. Alvin Weiss also admitted planning to set fire to one of their
apartments.

In two other separate cases, Weiss also pleaded guilty Wednesday to forging
a will that made him the beneficiary of his insurance broker's $400,000
estate and to tax fraud.

Weiss' tenants were not harmed after the hit man revealed the plot to
police.

Prosecutors portrayed Weiss, 46, as the ultimate slumlord, living in a $2
million home in Brooklyn while denying basic services to tenants in the
nearly 30 buildings that he owns on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Some of
Weiss' tenants, however, defended him after his arrest.

Weiss faces as long as 14 years in prison when he is sentenced Feb. 18 on
the murder plot charges.

He admitted bailing Eduardo Almestica out of jail in the summer of 1997 and
paying him $4,000 to kill Brigette Marx and Burnell Crawford, who lived in
two of his rent-controlled apartments, by giving them fatal doses of heroin.

When a tenant leaves a rent-controlled apartment, the landlord is allowed by
law to raise the rent charged to the next tenant.

The murder plots went awry when Almestica was nailed by police with the
heroin. He revealed the plot and agreed to record a damning conversation
with Weiss after police faked Marx's death.

When Weiss was arrested, police found passports, bank books, securities
statements, tax returns, driver's licenses and credit cards with different
aliases. They also found several guns, boxes of ammunition and $14,000 in
cash.

In a second, separate case before another judge, Weiss admitted that he
perjured himself to cover up a bogus will scam.

Weiss said he and two others were witnesses to the 1994 signing of the will
of Abraham Thau, his insurance broker. Thau actually died in 1995 without
leaving a will, prosecutors said, and the three men created one and filed it
after his death. Weiss' passport and other documents show that he was in
Hungary on the date of the supposed will-signing.

Weiss will be sentenced to one year in that case.

In a third case before a third judge, Weiss pleaded guilty to tax fraud and
agreed to pay almost $700,000 in back taxes, fines and other penalties.