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The unsuccessful attempt to use a credit card to slip through a lock and the subsequent smashing of a glass door panel. The failure to buy the sledgehammer needed to smash open a safe. The inadvertent rupture of a bag of cocaine that sent a plume of the drug through the air.

The heist might have been just a chucklesome story in the annals of Western New York crime – if not for whose house McDonald burglarized and whose ring was inside the safe.

The home belonged to a suspected cocaine and marijuana dealer whom prosecutors have described as one of former Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Joseph Bongiovanni’s unindicted co-conspirators and among those Bongiovanni allegedly broke his oath to protect. An indictment accuses Bongiovanni of accepting at least $250,000 in bribes from 2008 to 2017 to shield from arrest members of a drug-trafficking organization whom he thought were associated with Italian organized crime, as well as provide them with information about investigations and cooperating sources.

A piece of jewelry among the cash and cocaine that McDonald stole from the safe did not go unnoticed by authorities: a ring that once belonged to Stefano “The Undertaker� Magaddino. The reputed upstate New York crime boss was considered one of the last of the original national “commission members� who had ruled the American Mafia before his death in 1974.

McDonald didn’t know much about the ring.

“He used to be the mob boss in Buffalo, Stefano Magaddino, that’s whose ring it was,� McDonald said. “I don’t know his name, I mess it up every time.�

It was not the only thing McDonald messed up, which helps explain why he ended up testifying at Bongiovanni’s bribery and corruption trial in March and the retrial now underway.

The crime

McDonald knew where to find the safe in the home he targeted, but as burglars go, he was not especially smooth.

McDonald, nicknamed Noodle, could not get a credit card to slip through the front door lock, so he smashed the door’s glass panel with a piece of wood he found on the driveway and reached in to unlock the dead bolt.

Because he had slept all day, he ran out of time to buy a sledgehammer he would need to smash open the safe. So he carried the safe from the bedroom in the Town of Tonawanda home and threw it in back of his SUV with no way to open it. McDonald and his accomplice drove to the home of someone the accomplice knew could help.

“Some guy’s house with a bunch of tools,� McDonald, 38, testified in federal court. “I can’t remember his name or anything.�

When they arrived, McDonald used a grinder in the garage to weaken the safe’s hinges and then swung a sledgehammer at it four times.

On the final swing, the safe’s door caved in. But as he pulled back the sledgehammer, a shard of metal ripped open a bag of cocaine inside the safe.

“The cocaine went flying through the air,� McDonald said, recalling how he stood in a cloud of cocaine. “It was a mess of money and cocaine.�

McDonald stuffed the envelopes of cash he pulled out of the safe into a Styrofoam cooler he spotted in the garage. The loot totaled anywhere from $180,000 to $260,000 – McDonald gave a different amount the two times he has testified. He and his accomplice split the money, after handing over a cash-stuffed envelope to the man who opened his garage to them.

McDonald said he spent the next few days using cocaine, “and I grabbed $20,000 and went out to strip clubs� with two carloads of guys.

“They went on a party like you wouldn’t believe,� Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Tripi said in court earlier this year.

McDonald said he was aware people were looking for him – not just the police, “but a couple of biker clubs and the mob.�

Before he returned home, McDonald also bought a 2010 Cadillac CTS using the money he stole.

When McDonald finally returned to his Lewiston home on Jan. 3, he took “a bunch of Xanax� to get some sleep, he said. But his accomplice called and told him to get out of the house fast, that federal agents were about to raid it.

“I said, ‘You’re paranoid.’ And then I looked out the window, and watched the feds pull in the driveway,� McDonald said.

Wearing only underwear, he grabbed some clothes and the money and ran out the back door. He ran in 2 feet of snow through the nearby Niagara Falls Country Club golf course.

“I ran for a little bit. I stopped. I dressed, and called a cab and went to a motel,� he said.

“The chick I was in bed with, she followed me,� McDonald said, and she got into the cab with him.

McDonald said he was “messed up for days on Xanax� but eventually went back to his house, packed his clothes and fled the area in the Cadillac he bought.

Federal agents wouldn’t see him again until they arrested him on a cruise ship after he moved to Florida.

The target

McDonald had also partied and went to bars with the man whose home he burglarized.

McDonald said that’s how he knew he was burglarizing a drug dealer’s home – a ripe target because of all the cash he expected to find. The drug dealer was also in the landscaping business and had done work at Bongiovanni’s home.

McDonald’s roommate at the time had previously been the landscaper’s roommate, so McDonald had been inside the home many times. They had met up at bars and socialized.

“He had his little clique, and I had my little clique,� McDonald said. “But we all hung out at the same places, and we had mutual friends that kind of brought us together.�

But McDonald didn’t care much for him.

The man boasted too much about his money, McDonald said.

“He said he had a hundred thousand to buy as much weed as I had,� said McDonald, who sold drugs to support himself when not working as a roofer during the summer.

“Every time we were together, that’s all he did was brag,� McDonald said. “That’s why I didn’t like him.�

McDonald saw the marijuana-grow operation in the basement.

“It was full of marijuana plants. He was growing marijuana,� McDonald testified, estimating he saw about 30 plants.

And he also saw where the safe was.

“When you walk in his house, his bedroom is right off the kitchen,� McDonald said. “And if his closet door is open, you can see the safe from the kitchen.�

When the burglarized resident called police to report the crime, he reported only the stolen money, Tripi said.

The midnight shift patrol commander who was dispatched to the burglarized home said he went down to the basement and saw fluorescent lights, empty pots, and foil on the walls and doors – but no plants.

“It obviously had been used as a grow room,� said Daniel Murphy, who has since retired from the Town of Tonawanda Police Department.

The landscaper said that he had grown marijuana at one time for personal consumption, Murphy said.

“It was a lot of equipment down there,� Murphy said.

The burglary made Bongiovanni nervous, Tripi said, because Bongiovanni’s phone number was in the landscaper’s phone.

Tom Oswald, a retired Tonawanda police detective who had worked with Bongiovanni on drug cases, did not investigate the burglary. But Bongiovanni brought it up later, volunteering to Oswald that his name was in the homeowner’s phone because he had done landscaping work for Bongiovanni, according to Oswald’s testimony.

The arrest

By February, McDonald was living in Florida and decided to take a vacation.

He went on a cruise to Mexico, Cozumel, Belize and Honduras.

On the last night of the cruise, “I was a drunken mess,� McDonald said.

“I had been up all week, you know what I mean, partying, cocaine or whatever. You know, I was like smacking pizza on the side of the walls, throwing beer bottles down the hallways, smoking blunts.�

Passengers were supposed to disembark by 7 a.m. the next morning.

“I remember looking at the clock, when I laid down it said, like, 5:30 or 6:30 in the morning, and I knew I had to be off the ship by like 7,� he said.

He woke up to a dog barking in his face and the room filled with customs agents.

“I thought I was getting arrested for just being a dumb ass on the cruise,� he said.

The officers put him in a room and took off his handcuffs.

“I’m sitting there, and in come this chick and this guy, and they’re, like, we’re Special Agent So-and-So from Homeland Security, and they start talking.

“But I’m drunk. And I don’t know how much time went by, 30, 45 seconds, before it clicked in my head, like, how are you talking to Homeland Security?

So he asked them.

Marilyn Halliday, a Homeland Security Investigations special agent based in Western New York, replied.

“Marilyn looked me in the eyes, and she said, ‘well, Noodle, guns and drugs don’t mix.’ And as soon as she used my nickname, I knew I was screwed.�

McDonald pleaded guilty in February 2020 to possession with intent to distribute cocaine, and federal sentencing guidelines indicate he faces anywhere from four to six years in prison, although he hopes his cooperation in the government’s Bongiovanni case will reduce his sentence.

The Toronto trip

Making false statements to federal investigators is also one of the charges Bongiovanni faces. The landscaper whose home McDonald burglarized had socialized with Bongiovanni and a half-dozen other men and their spouses and girlfriends during a weekend outing in Toronto, prosecutors say.

Bongiovanni told federal investigators he had not socialized with him, Tripi said at Bongiovanni’s first trial.

Prosecutors, however, showed jurors a photo of the two men and others from that 2016 trip.

That party in Toronto “included one DEA agent, a number of females, and several drug traffickers, cocaine dealers and marijuana dealers,� Tripi said. “It gets to the point where there are as many drug users and dealers on the trip as not,� said. “And he’s a trained DEA agent on that trip. So he knew a truthful answer would tend to incriminate him.�

Bongiovanni’s attorneys discount the importance of McDonald burglarizing the landscaper’s home and the trip.

“How much money was in that safe? The government found none of that in this case,� attorney Robert Singer said at Bongiovanni’s first trial, in which the jury deadlocked on most of the charges, resulting in the retrial.

“The burglary was another part that we kind of heard about,� he added. “But, you know, at the end of the day, Joseph Bongiovanni wasn’t involved in that.�

As for Bongiovanni’s relationship with the landscaper, whom prosecutors consider an unindicted co-conspirator, there wasn’t much jurors learned, he said.

“He communicated about how he never socialized with him or went on a trip with him,� Singer said. “And the evidence in this case was what? One time in Toronto where Joe Bongiovanni goes up to a birthday party arranged by his brother-in-law for his sister-in-law, doesn’t have any control over the guest list, and (the landscaper) shows up.

So is that a false statement to the government?

“Or is that just forgetfulness, because he only saw him one time several years ago?� Singer asked.