Lucchese - Blog 2.0 - Gangsters Inc. - www.gangstersinc.org
2024-03-29T13:57:07Z
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Lucchese family mobster planned to escape from Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, prosecutors say
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-mobster-planned-to-escape-from-metropolitan-deten
2017-09-16T09:00:22.000Z
2017-09-16T09:00:22.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-mobster-planned-to-escape-from-metropolitan-deten" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237093860,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237093860?profile=original" width="600" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>He’s a wiseguy who took his flossing seriously. Christopher Londonio, an alleged soldier in <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family" target="_blank">New York’s Lucchese crime family</a>, was charged Wednesday with planning to escape from the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn using dental floss, sheets, blankets, and a saw blade smuggled into the facility by a priest.</p>
<p>According to prosecutors, the breakout was concocted somewhere in June, by 43-year-old Londonio and another unnamed detainee. The imprisoned mobster used dental floss as a cutting tool to tamper with a window in the center. He also planned to solicit a priest to smuggle a saw blade into the facility, and secretly stockpiled a large number of sheets and blankets, intending to use them as a rope to aid in his escape. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/profile-lucchese-crime-family-boss-vittorio-vic-amuso" target="_blank">Profile of Lucchese family boss Vittorio Amuso</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>As usual when it comes to these high-profile <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Mafia" target="_blank">Mafia</a> busts, the plan was foiled after a fellow detainee reported the escape plan to authorities.</p>
<p>“Although sounding like a script for a made-for-tv movie, the charges allege yet another serious federal crime against Londonio,” Joon H. Kim, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York told the press. “As alleged, with this latest chapter in his years-long life in the mob, Londonio adds to the string of crimes he must now face, in a criminal justice system he was desperately seeking to escape.”</p>
<p>Londonio has been detained at the MDC since February 2017 in connection with murder and racketeering charges pending in White Plains federal court. He was among nineteen members and associates of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Lucchese" target="_blank">Lucchese</a> La Cosa Nostra family <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-york-s-lucchese-mafia-family-deadly-as-ever-in-2017-prosecuto" target="_blank">charged</a> with racketeering, murder, narcotics offenses, and firearms offenses.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-york-s-lucchese-mafia-family-deadly-as-ever-in-2017-prosecuto" target="_blank">New York's Lucchese Mafia family deadly as ever in 2017</a></strong></li>
</ul>
<p>Authorities have charged Londonio with the murder of drug boss <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?tag=Meldish" target="_blank">Michael Meldish</a>, a former leader of the infamous Purple Gang in New York which had longstanding ties to New York’s five Mafia families. Many of the current mob bosses started out as members of the Purple Gang. Londonio is also charged with playing a role in the shooting of <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-bonanno-crime-family" target="_blank">Bonanno family</a> soldier Enzo “The Baker” Stagno.</p>
<p>He will be arraigned on the new charge at the next pretrial conference, which is currently scheduled for September 20, 2017. The attempted escape charge carries a maximum prison term of five years. Londonio is represented by his lawyer Charles Carnesi.</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Read: <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/prison-breaks-from-mobsters-and-hitmen-to-serial-killers-and-drug" target="_blank">Prison Breaks: From mobsters to drug lords</a></strong></li>
</ul>
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<li><strong>Back to the <a href="https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Lucchese crime family section</a> on Gangsters Inc.</strong></li>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family soldier Frank Federico
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-soldier-frank-frankie
2013-07-27T14:55:32.000Z
2013-07-27T14:55:32.000Z
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<div><p><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989455,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /><br /> By David Amoruso<br /><br /> Frank "Frankie Pearl" Federico was born on January 3, 1928. On August 10, 1989 Federico murders Long Island carters Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow at the offices of the Kubecka Carting Company at 41 Brightside Avenue, East Northport, New York because of their cooperation with law enforcement’s investigation of the carting industry on Long Island. In October 1989, two months after the slayings, Federico became a made man in the Lucchese Crime Family. The ceremony was conducted by Vic Amuso, who was a fugitive at the time, and held in a basement in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. According to testimony of turncoat, and former acting boss, Joseph DeFede Federico was placed under capo Anthony "Bowat" Baratta.<br /> <br /> In March 1993 Federico was given a subpoena to appear before a grand jury in the Eastern District of New York and provide blood and hair samples for comparison with evidence recovered at the murder scene. Rather than appear Federico fled. A warrant for his arrest was issued. In April 1994 a second warrant for his arrest was issued on charges that he, together with other members of the Lucchese family, engaged in a pattern of racketeering that included the Kubecka-Barstow murders. But Federico was nowhere to be seen. It was believed he was hiding in Europe, more specifically Italy.<br /> <br /> On January 27, 2003 at 6:50 pm authorities arrested Federico at a Twins Doughnut shop on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Federico was there for a meeting with a former associate. Later it was confirmed that it was Federico’s blood that was found at the East Northport, L.I., office murderscene. In September 2004 Federico was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 1989 murders. Attorney William Gurin said that given Federico's advanced age, the penalty was essentially a life sentence. With time off for good behavior, Federico would be eligible for release at 88. Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block said it was unfortunate Federico had even a glimmer of hope of freedom someday.<br /> <br /> <strong>For more on the Kubecka-Barstow murders read Thom L. Jones account of the story titled <em><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-evil-that-men-do-the">The Evil That Men Do</a>: The Killing of Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow</em> at Jones' <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/thom-l-jones-mob-corner">Mob Corner section</a> of Gangsters Inc.</strong></p>
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The Time I Hurt Mobster Henry Hill’s Feelings
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-time-i-hurt-mobster-henry-hill-s-feelings
2012-10-14T15:00:00.000Z
2012-10-14T15:00:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-time-i-hurt-mobster-henry-hill-s-feelings"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007056,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237007056?profile=original" width="512" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>A year before his death, mobster-turned-snitch-turned-celebrity Henry Hill almost blew off an appearance on a radio show because of a comment I made about him. The whole incident gives some nice insight into the ego of a glorified street hustler and the powerful influence of fame.</p>
<p>After becoming a celebrity when his book “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439184216/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=gangstersinc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1439184216" target="_blank">Wiseguy</a>” was turned into the movie <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-truth-behind-movie-classic-casino">Goodfellas</a> by director Martin Scorsese, Henry Hill was writing cookbooks in between getting drunk and high. He was arrested multiple times for drug abuse and his appearances on the Howard Stern Show were an embarrassment to both the crew and the show’s listeners as Hill was talking nonsense with a slur and bragging about murders he never committed.</p>
<p>When I heard that Henry Hill would be a guest on Crime Beat Radio I was very interested in hearing it. Presenters Ron Chepesiuk and Will Hryb always come well prepared and are experts on organized crime. I had no doubts that they would do a great job at interviewing Hill.</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236983461,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236983461,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236983461?profile=original" /></a>However, I wondered which Hill (right) would show up for the interview. The problem with Hill was that there were two different versions people were looking at. One was the real thing and the other the glamourized version from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002UOMGVU/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=gangstersinc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B002UOMGVU" target="_blank">Goodfellas</a>.</p>
<p>With <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/" target="_blank">Goodfellas</a> Martin Scorsese made an instant classic. Actors Robert Deniro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta did an outstanding job at portraying a violent mob crew that terrorized New York during the 1960s till 1980. Ray Liotta shined as the charismatic, handsome Henry Hill who lived the life of a king until he descended into hell. The movie made <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-truth-behind-movie-classic-casino">the real life Henry Hill</a> into a household name around the world. The story about his flashy, exciting life of crime was much sought after in the decades following the film and made sure Hill had some job security.</p>
<p>But the truth was that the movie showed the Hollywood version. The real Henry Hill was a creepy looking bald guy. A former gangster who still thought he could play the part even though no one took him seriously. To top it off Hill had a serious problem with illegal substances. In no way did he live up to the hype created by Goodfellas. And he knew it.</p>
<p>After putting up a promo blog for the upcoming Crime Beat Radio show I became involved in a discussion with a reader about Hill’s appearance. I posted the following reply:</p>
<p>“<em>I think it is worth listening to the interview for a number of reasons. First: no matter what you think of the guy, he was involved with some heavy people who were the subject of a great book and awesome movie classic and he has the inside story on that. Second: he is a great example of a lowlife criminal who could never hide his true colors. He always remained a lowlife only this time without mob backing and without that backing a lowlife is a lowlife that has to stand on his own merit and make something of himself. Henry could not do that. I'm interested in hearing him tell us about that. Even if he thinks he is being honored, he has no clue we are just enjoying the train wreck in front of us. Cause in the end all the glamour of the mob cannot hide the fact that a lot or most of those guys are lowlifes without an inkling of respect. That is my opinion at least.</em>”</p>
<p>Shortly after putting up my reply I got an e-mail from Ron Chepesiuk who said Hill had canceled his appearance due to the comment I had made. “Evidently you hurt Henry's tender feelings,” Chepesiuk wrote. I was surprised and shocked. While Hill was a guest at Howard Stern’s show callers had made far worse comments calling Hill every curse word in the book. Yet, he just sat there smiling. Add to that the fact that Ron Chepesiuk and I run our own separate thing and my comments in no way reflect Chepesiuk’s opinion. Luckily Chepesiuk and Will Hryb managed to calm Hill down and talk him back into doing the show which turned into a great interview.</p>
<p>Despite being a lowlife thug and informant, Hill still had an ego the size of Manhattan. After turning on his mob colleagues, he had to find a new way in life. He wrote a bestseller and became a celebrity after Hollywood worked its tinsel town magic with Goodfellas. Still, after all the stardust fell down and Hill was by himself once again, his ego was facing the same problems. He could not change who he was and what he had done. No matter how much booze and drugs he took, he would never like the guy looking back at him in the mirror. The low-level gangster who ratted on his mob buddies.</p>
<p>Another mob informant described that exact feeling of dread. Former Philadelphia soldier Nicholas “The Crow” Caramandi told crime reporter George Anastasia how he hated his new life as a turncoat in 2003: “It sucks. You’re not a human being no more. You become lifeless, a person without an identity. I’m this guy to these people and that guy to those people. I don’t know who I am. It’s awful. I don’t recommend it to nobody. It ain’t worth it for a couple of reasons. Mostly in your own mind… you feel a stink about yourself all the time. You feel like you’re a rat all the time.”</p>
<p>I guess my comment was a bit harsh. Though I meant every word of it, I have to ask myself whether I would have said it to Hill’s face if I ever would have met him? Probably not. Not because I was afraid of the Henry Hill we know, but simply to avoid having a senior citizen hopped up on alcohol and drugs break his hip after he fell while trying to take a swing at me.</p>
<p>I have to admit that it felt kind of good when I found out I had ‘hurt the feelings’ of the famous Henry Hill. But then I realized I wasn’t thinking of the Henry Hill whose feelings I had actually hurt. Rather I was thinking that I had hurt the feelings of the guy they based the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-truth-behind-movie-classic-casino">gangster classic Goodfellas</a> on. When I thought of the real life version, I only shook my head in disgust at how little I actually cared. And how much I let a movie get to my ego. I can only imagine how Goodfellas had fucked up Hill’s head. It inflated his ego to a breaking point and caused it to deflate every time he showed up somewhere as himself.</p>
<p>Of course, had it been the 1970s I wouldn’t have said one bad thing to Hill’s face. Mainly because his powerful and violent friends were kind of obsessed about honor and respect. They loved using sticks (preferably a baseball bat) and stones (preferably of lead) to attack those that had dared speak words that hurt their ego or disrespected them in any way. Only one thing left for me to do after telling this anecdote. I’m gonna go home and get my shine box.</p>
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Goodfella Henry Hill dead at 69
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/goodfella-henry-hill-dead-at-69
2012-06-14T11:00:00.000Z
2012-06-14T11:00:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/goodfella-henry-hill-dead-at-69"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007658,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237007658?profile=original" width="399" /></a>By David Amoruso</p>
<p>His death didn’t come as a surprise. Former mob associate-turned rat Henry Hill died in a hospital on June 12 at the age of 69. He leaves behind his fiancée Lisa Caserta and her son Nate. Nate told the Los Angeles Times that Hill died of complications of heart problems related to smoking. Not the cause of death many people would have expected for Hill when he was running around with the New York mafia.</p>
<p>As a mob associate with an Irish father, Hill knew he could never become an official member of the Italian mafia. His Sicilian mother earned him a little bit more trust with the mob, but the rules prohibited them from ever admitting him to their inner circle. It meant that no matter how big the scores, Hill would never become one of the big shot mobsters he saw around the neighborhood in New York he grew up in during the 1940s and 1950s.</p>
<p>In an interview with The Sun, Hill said he “was intoxicated by their lifestyle when I was young. Those guys were the role models of my neighborhood; they were the guys with the Cadillacs and diamond rings and a girl on each arm.”</p>
<p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008064,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008064,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237008064?profile=original" width="220" /></a>With that in his mind, he became a career criminal and associate of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Lucchese crime family</a>. Under capo Paul Vario and his crew, Hill was involved in a wide variety of crimes ranging from robberies, gambling, extortion, loansharking to drug dealing.</p>
<p>That last activity was frowned upon by the mafia. The drug money always found the warm hands of one of the mob bosses who outlawed the practice but was very content with the profits. Matter of fact, the biggest problem the mob had with drug dealing were the long sentences mobsters faced when they were caught. Thus, the solution for these men was simple: don’t get caught. And that’s exactly where Hill failed.</p>
<p>In 1980 his drug dealing operation was busted by law enforcement and the world around him changed dramatically. Having angered his mob family by being caught dealing dope and facing a heavy prison sentence, Hill decided to spill his guts and become a government witness. His testimony led to fifty convictions, including those of Paul Vario and <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-associate-james-jimmy">James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke</a>. Does this all sound familiar? No surprise there.</p>
<p>A big part of Henry Hill’s life story is known to millions around the world. It was the subject of a best-selling book by Nicholas Pileggi and an Academy Award winning movie directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Robert Deniro, Joe Pesci, and with Ray Liotta playing the part of Hill.</p>
<p>When Hill’s character in Goodfellas says: “Air France made me”, referring to a heist that netted him and his mob partners a lot of money, he hadn’t felt the power of Hollywood yet. After Goodfellas, Hill became a celebrity and a regular on television and radio shows. His appearances on the Howard Stern Radio Show (see video below article) were infamous as he would appear completely “shit faced” (drunk) while he discussed his past life of crime and new life after testifying against his mob cronies.</p>
<p>At that point he had divorced his wife Karen and left the witness protection program. Living off of his Goodfellas fame, Hill started a website ( <a href="http://www.goodfellahenry.com">www.goodfellahenry.com</a> ), wrote multiple books including "The Wiseguy Cookbook", "A Goodfella's Guide to New York", and "Gangsters and Goodfellas: The Mob, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run”, and told his story to various documentary makers doing a show about his life. All the while, getting lost in drugs and alcohol.</p>
<p>Through the years, various photos appeared online of a bum lying in the bushes somewhere in California. The gruff looking hobo was said to be Hill, who had become addicted to all sorts of drugs which brought him in trouble with the law. In 2003 he was arrested for disturbing the peace and in 2005 police charged him with possession of cocaine and methamphetamine.</p>
<p>Alongside the drugs, Hill kept drinking. In 2009, he told the Associated Press: “I've been on every drug humanly possible, and I can't get a handle on alcohol.”</p>
<p>When Henry Hill turned rat and informed on the mob, many people, including himself, thought he would end up dead from lead poisoning. Two bullets behind the ear and a canary stuffed in his mouth. If he was lucky.</p>
<p>As the years progressed, Hill made more and more public appearances and people started wondering why the mob didn’t make its move. The truth was that the mob had no interest in making a move that would only bring them unwanted heat from law enforcement.</p>
<p>Besides, Hill was doing a pretty good job at making a fool out of himself and being a poster boy for the “snitches are scumbags” movement. Hill was doing himself more harm alive than the mob could ever do to him. Either by way of torture or death.</p>
<p>Hill grew up idolizing the mafia. The riches and freedom. The fancy cars and pretty women. But more specifically those mobsters that were fearless. The Alpha males that ruled the neighborhood. Those gangsters that would do anything to get the job done and then, when the judge handed them a fifty year prison sentence, would smile and say “Thank you”.</p>
<p>It must have hit Hill at one point. Looking in the mirror after sobering up after a particular heavy week filled with blanks, drugs and alcohol, staring at the man eyeing back at him. In those few seconds with a clear head, he knew. He had not lived up to the image of any of his idols.</p>
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The Man Who Stole the French Connection
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-man-who-stole-the-french
2011-05-02T12:30:00.000Z
2011-05-02T12:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-man-who-stole-the-french"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237004486,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237004486?profile=original" width="450" /></a></p>
<p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> ‘<em>A sweetheart of a guy. He wasn’t a drinker and didn’t cheat on his wife the way most of these guys do. His one big fault is that once in a while, he would import 50-100 kilos of pure heroin</em>.’<br /> <strong>James Drucker</strong><br /> <strong>Assistant U.S. Attorney, Eastern District Strike Force, 1973.</strong><br /> <br /> On March 6th, 1962, NYPD detectives, Sonny Grosso and Eddie (Bullets) Egan, delivered two packages to the Office of the New York City Police Property Clerk, whose storage area was located on the second floor of 400 Broome Street, in lower Manhattan.<br /> <br /> The two men signed in a blue suitcase and a black steamer trunk that contained fifty-one bags of heroin. It was the proceeds of the largest narcotics bust ever, at that time, by a municipal law enforcement agency in America, and it became famous around the world as ‘The French Connection Case.’<br /> <br /> The drugs at the core of the mystery — popularized as ‘The French Connection’ in a 1969 book by Robin Moore and an Academy Award-winning film starring Gene Hackman that followed two years later — were secreted in compartments in an American car loaded aboard the liner <em>United States</em> sailing from Le Havre, France, to New York. The car and its 112 pounds of heroin were later claimed by a Luchese Mafia family underling, who as it happened, was being tailed by this pair of dogged New York narcotics detectives, Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso.<br /> <br /> The drug bust in January 1962 was widely hailed as a record. But the heroics proved short-lived.<br /> <br /> The seizure was to a large extent, the result of the blindest luck. Egan and Grosso had been tailing a low level associate of the Mafia, called Patsy Fuca. Through their surveillance, they linked him to a visiting French television show host, Jacques Angelvin, who was visiting New York, along with his 1960 Buick Invicta. The two officers were part of a team of NYPD and federal drug bureau detectives that determined the Frenchman was probably the courier for a drug ring operating out of Marseilles. The police ‘stole’ the car, stripped it and found it contained the heroin. In due course, the Buick returned to its owner, was driven to the Bronx home of Fuca’s uncle Joe, and unloaded. Then, the cops moved in and arrested everybody. Well everybody except the guy that was behind it all, one Angelo Tuminaro, a.k.a. Little Angie, who was a major drug importer within the Luchese Cosa Nostra crime family of New York.<br /> <br /> The mob, contrary to the myth that they didn’t touch drugs as it was ‘unmanly’ to do so, had been donkey-deep in the stuff, from its earliest days. The Lucheses were one of the more consummate peddlers. Along with Tuminaro, the family hosted such drug trafficking luminaries as John ‘Big John‘ Ormento, ‘Joe Diamond’ Evola, the di Palermo brothers, Charlie and Joe a.k.a. ‘Joe Beck’, Sally Santoro, Nicky Bonina, Frank Callace, ‘Big Sam’ Cavalieri, Sal Maneri, ‘Big Nose Nick’ Tolentino and Joe Bendenelli to name a few.<br /> <br /> The Luchese Family had been linked into Pepe and Vincenzo Cotroni, Montreal based mobsters, who supplied drugs into New York via five major contacts. Tuminaro and his partner, Anthony Di Pasqua, were one of these five. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics believed Pepe Controni to be one of the biggest drug traffickers in North America.<br /> <br /> The French Connection was a term used to describe a scheme through which heroin was smuggled from Turkey to France and then to the United States, culminating in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when it provided the vast majority of the illicit heroin used in North America.<br /> <br /> Made up of a number of syndicates, the biggest was headed by Corsican criminals Francois Spirito and Antoine Guacrini, and also involved Auguste Ricord, Paul Mondoloni and Sicilian, Salvatore Greco.<br /> <br /> Illegal heroin labs were first discovered near Marseille, France, in 1937. These labs were run by the legendary Corsican gang leader Paul Carbone. For years, the Corsican underworld was involved in the manufacturing and trafficking of illegal heroin abroad, primarily to the United States. It was this heroin network that eventually became known as the ‘French Connection.’<br /> <br /> Historically, the raw material for most of the heroin consumed in the United States came from Indochina, then Turkey. Turkish farmers were licensed to grow opium poppies for sale to legal drug companies, but many sold their excess to the underworld market, where it was manufactured into heroin and transported to the United States. The morphine paste was refined in Corsican laboratories in Marseille, one of the busiest ports in the western Mediterranean Sea. The Marseille heroin was reputed for its quality.<br /> <br /> The first significant post-World War II seizure in America was made in New York on February 5, 1947, when seven pounds (3 kg) of heroin were seized from a Corsican sailor disembarking from a vessel that had just arrived from France.<br /> <br /> It soon became clear that the French underground was increasing not only its participation in the illegal trade of opium, but also its expertise and efficiency in heroin trafficking. On March 17, 1947, 28 pounds (13 kg) of heroin were found on the French liner, St. Tropez. On January 7, 1949, more than 50 pounds (22.75 kg) of opium and heroin were seized on the French ship, Batista.<br /> <br /> The first major French Connection case occurred in 1960. In June, an informant told a drug agent in Lebanon that Mauricio Rosal, the Guatemalan Ambassador to Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, was smuggling morphine base from Beirut, Lebanon to Marseille. Narcotics agents had been seizing about 200 pounds (90 kg) of heroin in a typical year, but intelligence showed that the Corsican traffickers were smuggling in 200 pounds (90 kg) every other week. Rosal alone, in one year, had used his diplomatic status to bring in about 440 pounds (200 kg).<br /> <br /> The Federal Bureau of Narcotics's 1960 annual report estimated that from 2,600 to 5,000 pounds (1,200 to 2,300 kg) of heroin were coming into the United States annually from France. The French traffickers continued to exploit the demand for their illegal product, and by 1969, they were supplying the United States with 80 to 90 percent of its heroin.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005664,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005664,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237005664?profile=original" width="240" /></a>Angelo Tuminaro (right), a small, five foot two, wizened and ugly little man, was born in 1910. He had a rap sheet starting in 1929 when he was nineteen. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics had identified him as a major narcotics trafficker as far back as 1937. A soldier in the Luchese Mafia Family, he was married to Bella Stein, whose father, a major prohibition bootlegger, was a mover and shaker in the Jewish underworld thereby allowing Tuminaro to become a significant liaison man between the Jewish and Italian underworlds. <br /> <br /> The Jews at one time dominated the drug business in New York. ‘Smack’ the street slang for heroin, comes from ‘shmeck’ the Yiddish word for smell.<br /> <br /> Tuminaro used his nephews Patsy and Tony Fuca, sons of his sister Nellie, to handle deliveries to customers in the New York area. He controlled his business either from his home at 24 Rutgers Street, in lower Manhattan, or one of the many mob social clubs that dotted the corners in the Mulberry-Mott Street areas, and on occasions from a barber shop, called ’The Apollo’ he part owned which was at 144 Clinton Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He also ran a business called C&P Painting and had extensive real estate holdings in the city. A 1964 Senate report listed him as ‘one of the largest wholesale narcotics traffickers in New York City.’<br /> <br /> He had been arrested in the historic drug bust that landed Carmine Galante, Jone Ormento and Anthony Mirra among others, and was indicted in November 1960. He skipped bail however, and disappeared until he voluntarily surrendered to the local police in Miami, Florida, in 1962. In November 1986, Fortune magazine listed him as 49th out of the top 50 mob bosses.<br /> <br /> The French Connection case became something of a legend, and through the movie and book, it became the stuff that fables are made of. Following the arrests and indictments of the leading players, the heroin was removed from its storage on several occasions, for use firstly in grand jury and court proceedings. In 1963, it was taken to a state laboratory in Tennessee for analysis, to see if its source in France could be traced. In 1964, federal marshals chaperoned it to a U.S. Senate investigation on heroin trafficking, in Washington DC. Amazingly following this hearing, the heroin was shipped back to New York by railway express without escort! It had a street value at this time of $50,000,000.<br /> <br /> Returned to the Property Clerk’s Office which was approximately 100feet by 50 feet, it was secured in an area, 30 feet by 30 feet that would seem to have been impregnable: a cage, locked and secured and surrounded by three other similar cages. <br /> <br /> Here were stored the most important police property: cash, pornography and drugs. Doors were padlocked into each area, the building had walls eight feet thick, doors were constructed of cast iron, and all entrances were guarded. Everything had to be signed in or out by authorized personnel, all under the watchful gaze of the curators of the office, men who worked the RDU, officers on restrictive duties. Some may have been recovering alcoholics, others may have had problems with their social lives, or had been rendered unfit by accident or injury for frontline duties.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005687,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237005687,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237005687?profile=original" width="600" /></a>In October 1972, a New York detective named James Farley was arrested by a special Nassau Counties force as he was about to rape a woman in her house. Farley, a serial rapist had been under surveillance as the major suspect in a series of attacks on women on Long Island. When the cops searched his home, they found brown manila envelopes containing narcotics, signed out from the New York City Property Clerks Office. Farley claimed he just never had time to get the items signed back in, but a check was made on the system all the same. <br /> <br /> Everything seemed okay, and when they came to The French Connection stash, the RDU’s discovered that the last logged out entry was dated January 4th, 1972. At 12:25 p.m., a detective, Nunziato, shield no 3496, had signed out the heroin, a total of approximately 44 kilos. Although there had been a police detective called Nunziata, the signature did not match his handwriting, and no such police badge existed. The cases were pulled from bin number 14 in the cage where they were stored, and sent to the crime lab. When they were opened by assistants, it was discovered that the evidence bags were covered in thousands of red insects- soon identified as red flour beetles. The lab staff analysed the contents and found the plastic bags contained flour and cornstarch. The French Connection had disconnected. <br /> <br /> But bad was to turn to worse.<br /> <br /> Following a public announcement by the police commissioners office, and the expected media furore that created, a meeting of senior NYPD brass decided that all inventories of drugs held by the New York police department was to be made immediately. Over a three week period, 180 police officers checked every single package, envelope, box or case that contained drug evidence. They found that in a period from March 21st 1969 to January 4th 1972, Detective Nunziato, sometimes spelling the name with a final ‘a’ and using a different badge number each time, five separate numbers, and on one withdrawal no badge number at all, had made six separate withdrawals of drugs. In addition, other detectives unaffiliated with Nunziato, were bogusly drawing off and signing out drugs that were in storage, totalling almost 400 pounds of heroin and cocaine, enough to satisfy 20,000 addicts for at least a year. All had been replaced with flour and cornstarch before being returned. On the basis of the street value of the drugs, $70,000,000, it was the biggest robbery ever, in American history. Since the police had been burning some of the confiscated drugs no longer needed as evidence, perhaps even more narcotics had been snatched.<br /> <br /> Maybe it was the biggest-biggest robbery ever in American history.<br /> <br /> Amazingly back in 1968, Robin Moore had met with detectives from the Special Investigative Unit of the NYPD who were assisting him with ‘background’ for his book, and one of them, Joe Nunziata, actually suggested that Moore should write a fictional sequel about the confiscated heroin being stolen from the Property Clerk’s Office. History does not record if another of the detectives was called Frank E. King.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006463,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006463,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237006463?profile=original" width="294" /></a>There followed a blasting of the police by the media, the city council, and every Joe on the block, and as a result, the Police Commissioner set up a special squad to investigate the disappearance of the drugs. The first meeting was held on Christmas Day 1972. Their investigation would cover America, Puerto Rico, Italy and Chile, and last five years. The squad located itself in the Number Two Tower of the World Trade Centre, and was formed into four research teams. Team number two would focus on links into organized-crime. They would be the most successful in the hunt for the perpetrators. <br /> <br /> Their prime target was a man who lived in the borough of Queens. His name was Vincent Papa.<br /> <br /> Papa had been born in Astoria, in 1917, the only son of Victor and Frances. He had a sister called Josephine. And that was all that was known about him until 1938 when the cops arrested him for attempted burglary. From then, his ‘yellow sheet,’ his NYPD arrest record, recorded numerous charges, at least twenty-six: larceny, burglary, bookmaking, gambling, assault, loan sharking, and drug trafficking. Your average, well-rounded out, professional hoodlum, working hard at developing his career. In between his various arrests and convictions, he got himself married to a woman called Mildred, and they had three children: Victor and Vincent Junior, and a daughter they called Valerie. They lived in an ordinary two story house, at 21-34, 37th Street, Astoria, in Queens (right). Nothing ostentatious, just one of many row houses in this part of suburban New York.<br /> <br /> Papa’s first conviction for drug peddling was in 1959, when he got hit with a five year sentence. From then on, his name appeared regularly in court documents, confirming that he was a major supplier of drugs to other members of the underworld, many of them associates or ‘made men’ in the American Mafia. By the end of the 1960s he was a major operator in the supply and distribution of heroin into New York and Long Island. Only a very few men could move large amounts such as 50 or 100 kilos. He was one of them. <br /> <br /> Papa operated from three different business addresses.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006854,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006854,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237006854?profile=original" /></a>The first was the Astoria Colts Social Club, on Ditmar Boulevard in Astoria, Queens, where he conducted his cash and carry business. People brought him cash, and carried away drugs, or at least the addresses where they could pick them up. He ran a very successful drug operation. According to US Attorney James Drucker, between 1967 and December 1971, Vincent Papa (right) handled on average, 25 kilos of heroin each week. <br /> <br /> A mob hangout, the Astoria was a place where Papa and his friends felt safe to conduct their affairs. His other places of business was a company he owned in Queens, called Ditmar’s Private Car Service on Greenpoint Avenue. The limos were used when out of service, to pick up and drop off drug consignments. There was also the VIP Tire Company he ran, also situated on Greenpoint Avenue.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006696,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-left" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237006696,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237006696?profile=original" width="190" /></a>One of Papa’s suppliers of drugs was Louis Cirillo (left). According to The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (know today as the DEA,) Cirillo, during 1970 and 1971, was probably the biggest drug dealer in New York. A man with a fearsome reputation for violence, he once bit out a man’s Adam’s apple during a fight, and the word in the underworld was that ‘when Louis did a number on a victim, you had to leave the room.’ He was allegedly, Papa’s major heroin supplier.<br /> <br /> He was arrested in Miami in 1972 and in January 1973, after a jury trial in the Southern District of New York, he was found guilty on two counts, and sentenced to two concurrent terms of 25 years imprisonment.<br /> <br /> Cirillo was born in New York in 1924. He maintained he was a bagel baker, at Midtown Bagel Bakery in Manhattan, earning $200 a week, and lived in the Bronx, at 2907 Randall Avenue. <br /> <br /> His employer later admitted that ‘he couldn’t bake a bagel if he had to.’ Apart from his claim to fame as a drug dealer, he is also linked, in an apocryphal way, to the murder of Tommy Eboli, the alleged boss of the Genovese crime family in the early 1970s. It is quite possible that Cirillo was a soldier in the Mafia family headed by Eboli.<br /> <br /> Eboli it was claimed, raised $4 million from various mob bosses, including Carlo Gambino, to purchase drugs through Cirillo. When the drug dealer went down in 1972, agents digging up the back garden in his home in the Bronx, discovered $1,078, 100, which it was assumed was some of this mob cash. <br /> <br /> When Gambino demanded his share back, and Eboli reneged on the deal, he was shot dead, as punishment. Or so the legend goes.<br /> <br /> Vincent Papa was a man of less than medium height, a solid looking guy, with thick, salt and pepper hair, swept back. His eyes were soft and hazel coloured. He wasn’t a flashy dresser, favouring dark jackets and pants, and plain, white, unbuttoned shirts. Sometimes he wore a fedora. He was a man of property, with a relaxed, graceful air about himself. A low key kind of person, who lived by a simple creed—‘my word is my bond.’ He was known and respected by his family and associates as a ‘stand-up guy.’ His mob friends and subordinates referred to him as ’Dad’ or ‘The Old Man.’ He was a generous friend, a man with charisma, and would often lend money without seeking guarantees. But he was a man not to be crossed. Anyone did, they were history. During the police investigation of Papa, two of his associates were murdered. One was called Jack Locorriere, who ran Ditmar’s Limo Service and the other was named Louis. When Jack went missing in 1973, Papa sent a message to one of his associates.<br /> <br /> ‘Don’t send anybody to Jack. Don’t send anybody to Jack but Louis.’ Louis La Serra’s body was subsequently found, decomposing in Queens, with a bullet hole in the back of the head. Louis had been sent to Jack.<br /> <br /> A killer and man who terrorized others when it was needed, Papa was away from his workplace, a devoted father. When his children married, the ceremonies were like Hollywood movie events, attended by a cross section of men who were important in the New York underworld. Vincent Papa had some heavy contacts, and was a close associate and personal friend of Carlo Gambino and Carmine Paul Traumunti, known as ‘The Old Man’, and a major player in the Luchese Mafia crime family, two very powerful mob bosses in New York’s Cosa Nostra.<br /> <br /> On February 4th 1972, a joint task force of Federal Drug Enforcement agents, and NYPD detectives arrested Papa as he drove away with Joe Di Napoli in their 1968 green Pontiac sedan, from the home of Napoli’s comare, Genevieve Patalano, at 1908 Bronxdale Avenue in the Bronx. In the car was a green suitcase that the two men had collected from the house that contained $967,450 in new $100 bills. When federal agents question him about the money, Vince claimed that he and Di Napoli had found the money in a telephone booth, and were simply going to the police to hand it in, when they were arrested. The money in the case had obviously been converted from $10 and $20 bills to make it easier to transport. It was subsequently discovered that the money had been changed at a bank in Babylon, Long Island, using a bank-teller, who was the brother-in-law of Angelo Paradiso, one of the men who worked within the Papa organization. <br /> <br /> What the two men were really going to do with the cash of course, was buy themselves 200 pounds of heroin.<br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007889,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237007889,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237007889?profile=original" width="418" /></a>When Papa was arraigned before a magistrate he requested legal aid, claiming he couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer. In September 1972, Papa plea bargained himself a five year term on two terms each of conspiracy to import narcotics and tax evasion. He had also been indicted on a four-count tax evasion charge, with hiding undisclosed earning of $244, 00 between 1967 and 1970.<br /> <br /> He was sent to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta to serve his sentence. With remission, he could do it standing on his head. <br /> <br /> To the task force, he was a prime suspect in the theft of the police departments drug evidence. The last looting from the Property Clerk had taken place on January 4th 1972, and a month later Vince Papa had been found with almost a million dollars in his possession. The drugs stolen that day had a value of approximately $1,400,000. It had to be more than just a coincidence. Where there is cause, there is always effect. <br /> <br /> In August 1973, a year into his sentence, he was brought from the federal penitentiary at Atlanta to answer questions before a grand jury assembled to investigate the theft of the French Connection drugs. After invoking the fifth amendment and refusing to answer any questions put to him by a federal prosecutor, Pappa was excused.<br /> <br /> He was by now, using the services of a counsellor called Frank Lopez, a high-profile criminal defence lawyer, who worked in partnership with another attorney called Theodore Rosenberg, who himself was under surveillance in an investigation involving a New York State Supreme Court judge. The police team investigating Rosenberg had tapped into his office telephone system, and one day, in August 1973, a detective on duty supervising the recordings, heard a voice calling in, asking to speak to Lopez. It belonged to a man called Frank King. A note on this call was logged and eventually found its way to the desk of two of the police investigators on the special squad involved in the French Connection inquiry. They recognized King at once. A former detective in the NYPD, he had been assigned at one stage to the SIU.<br /> <br /> The SIU-Special Investigating Unit of the NYPD Narcotics Division-was the most corrupt law enforcement agency in American history. Robbery and bribery of big-time dope dealers by agents of this unit was commonplace, as was the use of illegal wiretaps, rampant perjury, and in fact murder to achieve an objective was not unknown. It was said of its officers that they were poor in their twenties, rich in their thirties and in jail in their forties. Their unique assignment was to investigate major narcotic traffickers in New York, and their creation as an anti-crime unit stemmed directly from the French Connection case. The eighty men and women who formed the SIU roamed across New York at will, chasing leads, following suspects, arresting drug dealers and lining their pockets with huge amounts of money siphoned off the criminals they arrested. Stealing money and drugs from the narcotic traffickers they detained, became a standard procedure. At their peak, an SIU agent was known as a ‘Prince of the City,’ because of his free-wheeling attitude and his loyalty only to his brothers in crime. <br /> <br /> King had resigned from the force in 1972, and now worked as a private investigator, in partnership with another ex NYPD officer, a man called Pasquale Intrieri, a former detective-lieutenant. In May 1972, Manny Gambino, a nephew of the mob boss, Carlo Gambino had been kidnapped. For some reason, it was a concern of Vincent Papa that his organization might be suspected of being involved, and he had accordingly, hired King and his company, to act as a bodyguard for his two sons, as he feared reprisals against them.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008086,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008086,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237008086?profile=original" width="379" /></a>This was the first link between Vincent Papa and Frank King. On December 16th 1973, an article in The New York Times linked the two ex-cops to the theft of the French Connection drugs. Written by Emanuel Perlmutter, it disclosed that two retired NYPD officers, (photo right: NYPD officer, a man called Pasquale Intrieri, a former detective-lieutenant), a lieutenant and one of his detectives, along with four serving officers, were prime suspects in the $70 million theft of the French Connection narcotics. A few days later, the police crew bugging the telephone of Frank Lopez, heard him talking with Frank King. The lawyer seemed to be reassuring King that his position was secure, but their main worry revolved around whether or not investigators had determined who had forged the signature on the logging-out record of Detective Frank Nunziato.<br /> <br /> There had been a senior drug squad detective with the SIU called Nunziata. A big, gregarious guy, he looked like the movie star, Dean Martin and had died in mysterious circumstances in February 1972. His body was found in his car parked on Driggs Avenue in the Williamsburg borough of Brooklyn. It was ruled by the coroner that he had committed suicide, although he was left handed, and the gunshot wound was to his heart, an almost impossible physical accomplishment. In addition, there was no gunpowder found on his shirt, or any traces on his hand.<br /> <br /> Nunziata had been under intense investigation for corruption and drug related crimes.<br /> His widow, Anna, challenged the findings of suicide, claiming her husband would never have killed himself, and when the family lawyer, John Meglio, demanded that the detective’s clothes be handed over to the family for their own forensic examination, it turned out that the Property Clerk’s Office had lost them!<br /> <br /> Rumours in the New York underworld pointed to shooters from the Luchese crime family as having carried out the detective’s killing. <br /> <br /> Frank King lived with his wife in Chappaqua, New York, a wealthy suburban enclave about 20 miles north of Manhattan. From August 1973, he had been a major surveillance target of the French Connection squad. Wiretaps were placed on his private and business phones, and agents followed him twelve hours a day. In February, 1974, at a press conference, the chief assistant of the Special State Prosecutor in charge of the case, announced that the department was close to indicting a former NYPD detective, alleged to be the ‘kingpin’ in the ring that had arranged the theft of the drugs from the police property office.<br /> <br /> On May 10th Frank King was indicted on a conspiracy charge, along with Vincent Papa, involving the hiding of two men, associates of Papa’s who were then fugitives from the law. A few days later, the lawyer, Frank Lopez was also indicted, this time by the French Connection grand jury, on charges of criminal contempt. <br /> <br /> The Special Prosecutor leading the French Connection investigation, Maurice Nadjari, called another press conference, later in the year, at which he announced further indictments in the case, claiming his office was close to folding up the case, two years after the investigation had begun. He claimed that his office knew six NYPD detectives were involved in the theft of the French Connection drugs, which they had arranged to sell to Vincent Papa, but as of August 16th, 1973, his office did not yet have enough evidence to close out the investigation, but things would roll up soon..<br /> <br /> He was a little out in his time frame. There was still three years to go before the French Connection Case would end.<br /> <br /> Early in 1974, another figure emerged in the long, on-going investigation. A man called Tom Puccio, a prosecutor in the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, based at the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Brooklyn. He was initially involved in investigating Chilean drug dealers who had been deported to New York in December 1973, following the coup that had toppled Allende. They were to be used to gather evidence against the corrupt SIU police officers who had arrested them and shaken them down during their drug-dealing days, when they had lived and operated in New York in the late 1960s.<br /> <br /> Puccio was drawn into the French Connection Case and it became an obsession with him, driving him to work sometimes fifteen hours a day or more, trying to fit together all the available evidence. It was a complex judicial jigsaw, where the important linking pieces always seemed to be lost to sight. As he was digging, deeper and deeper into the backgrounds of the motley cast of crooked cops and seedy mobsters that made up the French Connection Case Vincent Papa was facing more troubles that were coming at him from another source.<br /> <br /> In March 1974, he and his illegitimate son, Vincent Junior were indicted on charges of conspiring to deal in narcotics. This particular case had been orchestrated by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, which covered Manhattan and the Bronx. It hinged on evidence supplied by one of Papa’s team, a man called Joe Ragusa. Frank Lopez would again defend Vincent, this time, assisted by another hotshot lawyer, an attorney called Ivan Fisher, a man who would become famous ten years down the track for his defence work in the famous ‘Pizza Connection’ trial.<br /> <br /> Both lawyers did their best, but Papa was found guilty, although his son was acquitted. The presiding judge sentenced Papa to a jail term of twenty years. Even with remission time, he would be inside at least fifteen years, a life sentence in essence for a man who was fifty-seven years old. <br /> <br /> Although he was now in deep trouble, the catalyst for his future, even more serious problems, lay in events that had occurred two years earlier when Vincent Papa had collaborated with the justice department. Visited at Atlanta, by a special prosecutor working with the federal Organized Crime Strike Force, he had supplied the names of SIU detectives who had been selling off confidential information to underworld sources. In return for his co-operation, the government dropped a drug case they had against one of his men, the same Joe Ragusa who was now testifying against him. <br /> <br /> If there is such a thing as honour among thieves, it is indeed a tenuous concept.<br /> <br /> Vincent Papa was concerned that word would get out that he had informed, even though it was against cops rather than criminals in the underworld. He had violated a special code which he and many of his peers lived by, never to help the law, never to inform, never to ‘rat.’ Not only did he feel personally uncomfortable about this, he also knew that his actions could probably kill him if word ever surfaced about his actions.<br /> <br /> Although all the documents and papers relevant to the United States v Papa were sealed and made unavailable to the public, one reply brief slipped through the security system, and a copy was obtained by someone who visited the office of the Clerk of the Court of Appeals.<br /> <br /> At the end of March 1976, Francis E. King, the former SIU narcotics detective went on trial, not for stealing the French Connection drugs from the NYPD property office, but for abuse of his power as a police officer, including associating with and receiving bribes from Vincent Papa. The trial lasted six weeks, and Tom Puccio, the lead prosecutor, spent seven hours on his final summation to the jury, possibly the longest ever recorded in a criminal case in an American courtroom. It was to no avail. King was found not guilty and acquitted.<br /> <br /> In 1977, he was not so lucky. He was back in court along with his ex-partner, Pasquale Intrieri, and another ex SIU cop, a man called Vincent Albano, charged with income tax evasion, the basis of the indictment being that essentially they had never declared, for obvious reasons, the money they had either stolen from drug dealers or had been offered as bribes, but had spent plenty of it, leaving a trail that Tom Puccio nailed down so effectively, the jury found all three men guilty. For his part, Frank King, was sentenced to prison for nine years and fined $30,000.<br /> <br /> According to Bob Leuci, the NYPD cop who became famous as the ‘Prince of the City,’ through his biography and its subsequent translation into a movie starring Treat Williams, Frank King was ‘a thoroughly corrupt cop. He was a gangster as a cop.’<br /> <br /> While Frank King was fighting off the attacks of the Federal prosecutor, Vincent Papa was serving out his consecutive sentences in the penitentiary at Atlanta. Early in the spring of 1976, he discovered that some of the inmates had found out about his cooperation back in 1972 with the law. The reply brief that had been copied that day in the office of the Clerk of Appeals, somehow surfaced in the prison. <br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008873,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9237008873,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9237008873?profile=original" width="300" /></a>One man in particular, deeply resented Papa’s cooperating with the authorities and was stirring things up. A short, pudgy, Jewish gangster called Herbie Sperling (right), who was himself serving a life sentence for drug trafficking. He had been a major narcotics dealer in New York, based on 7th Avenue in Manhattan, working with his Jewish partners and associates out of the famous Stage Delicatessen and also operating from his apartment on Spring Street and sometimes his mother‘s apartment on 8th Avenue. <br /> <br /> Arrested along with 17 others, he was indicted, tried and sentenced to life plus 30 years.<br /> <br /> Sperling had been on the wrong side of the law all his life, starting as a gopher when he was just a boy of seventeen, for infamous Mafioso, Vito Genovese. <br /> <br /> He had delivered drugs at one time for notorious mob turn-coat, Joseph Valachi and was known on the streets as a hustler with balls.<br /> <br /> Also known in the underworld as a ‘stone-lunatic,’ Sperling had a reputation for violence dating back to his youth when he terrorized Delancey Street. Although of small stature, he was known by his peers as being as mean as a snake and he was a major suspect in the brutal murder of one of his associates, a man called Louis Mileto. His headless and limbless torso had been found in the trunk of a burnt-out auto in Suffern, New York. The torso was identified by teeth, the medical examiner had found inside the stomach. Mileto had been so badly beaten, he had swallowed his teeth, smashed out of his jaws. Mileto, like Patsy Fuca before him, had been siphoning off heroin without Sperling’s knowledge. Not the smartest move with a psychopath like Herbie floating around.<br /> <br /> The little Jew mobster was renowned for his foul mouth.<br /> <br /> When Sperling was arrested at the Long Island home he shared at times with his elderly mother, the arresting agents told him they would release her if he cooperated. <br /> <br /> ‘Listen.’ Herbie snarled at them, ‘if you guys have a beef with her, that’s her problem. Don’t lay it on me. The old lady has to take her own weight.’<br /> <br /> Agents confronted Sperling with an axe they found in the hire car he was using at the time, he denied any knowledge of it, claiming:<br /> <br /> ‘That’s the last fucking time I ever hire a car from Avis.’<br /> <br /> When found guilty at his final trial for drug dealing, the presiding judge asked Sperling if he wanted to address the court<br /> <br /> ‘Yes, Your Honour‘ Sperling said. ’If you think I'm going to beg for mercy, you've got another think coming. You're all a bunch of fucking fascist cocksuckers, you can all go to hell, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you…’<br /> <br /> When Frank Lopez discovered the danger his client was in, he did his best to have Papa resettled in another jail, but all his attempts failed. Tom Puccio tried one last time to get Papa to give up more of the crooked SIU agents with the promise that he would have him moved to a safer prison, but Vincent Papa refused to go down that track again. He lived out the rest of his life at Atlanta, guarded by bodyguards, who could watch over him most of the time, but not all of the time.<br /> <br /> On Tuesday, July 26th 1977, early in the evening, he was leaving the prison mess hall and walking down a ramp towards the recreational fields, when he was set upon by three black inmates. Young, strong, muscular toughs, all armed with ‘shanks’-home made knives. They repeatedly stabbed him in the back and chest, at least eight times, as other inmates quickly walked by, eyes averted. The gray sweatshirt Vincent wore, quickly changed to black and his white running shorts turned pink, his body pumping out pints of blood, as he lay dying on the concrete walkway.<br /> <br /> Herbie Sperling was indicted by a Grand Jury for the murder of Vincent Papa, but was acquitted for lack of evidence. The leader of the trio that attacked Vincent, a man known to the inmates as ‘Tattoo,’ was however convicted, and a further life sentence was added to the years he was already serving. He and another black inmate were sentenced to life for the killing of Papa on 26th October, 1979.<br /> <br /> Frank King, the ex SIU detective, did his time and then disappeared into obscurity. Last heard of in the 1980s, he was still working as a private investigator in the New York area. He may have died at the age of 60, in July 1994.<br /> <br /> Tuminaro and Cirillo are almost certainly dead. Little Angie would be 111 if alive, and no doubt still looking for drug customers.<br /> <br /> Herbie Sperling, now 72, is currently housed at the Allenwood Medical FCI in White Deer, Pennslyvania. He will stay in the prison system until he dies, probably choking to death on a mouth full of expletives.<br /> <br /> Vincent Papa was buried in St. John’s Cemetery in Queens. Often referred to as The Boot Hill of the Mafia, among other luminaries laid to rest there, are Charley Luciano, Vito Genovese, Joe Profaci, Carlo Gambino and Joe Colombo. Vincent, by his own admission was not ‘made’ into the mob, but simply an associate, but he had no doubt earned his spot in this eternal garden of fame. On his last visit to see Tom Puccio, in New York on December 20th 1976, he had admitted to his involvement in the stealing of the drugs from the Police Department property office. He would never go on record with this, and early on January 4th 1977, the statute of limitations ran out for the French Connection Case.<br /> <br /> Tom Puccio had come close to nailing it. He had discovered the identity of the man who had signed out the drugs, forging Detective Nunziato’s signature, a drug dealer in Vincent Papa’s organization. But without Papa’s confirmation, Puccio had no supportable evidence to indict the man. SIU detectives, possibly including Frank King, had undoubtedly been involved in the theft of the drugs. It was also more than likely that one of the RDU’s in the Property Clerks Office was an inside man on the theft. Puccio thought he knew who this was, but again without the cooperation of Vincent Papa, there was nowhere he could take it.<br /> <br /> But at least Puccio had the satisfaction of knowing that Papa had admitted he was part of it. And that was how the New York papers remembered him in their obituaries:<br /> <br /> ‘Vincent Papa, the man who stole the French Connection.’<br /> <br /> In February 2009, over thirty years after the murder of Vincent Papa, another mobster decided he wanted to get in on the act.<br /> <br /> Anthony Casso, one-time head of the Luchese crime family, serving 455 years without parole for crimes innumerable, in the federal ‘super-max’ prison in Florence, Colorado, confirmed with 79 year old Pat Intreri, the former NYPD drug detective, and peripheral player in the theft of the drugs, that he knew who stole the property from the Broome Street office, naming one for sure as Vincent Albano, another former New York cop, who was found shot dead in an Oldsmobile in the car park of the Staten Island Hospital, in July 1985.<br /> <br /> Because of his previous unstable and unpredictable behaviour concerning evidence and intelligence on the mob underworld, authorities declined to take up Mr Casso’s offers of help. <br /> <br /> <em> He wasn’t a drinker and didn’t cheat on his wife the way most of these guy’s do…..</em><br /> <br /> James Drucker was wrong in this respect about Papa. He did have at least one comare, who bore him a son out of wedlock. For some strange reason they called him Vincent Junior, just like his legitimate step-brother, who grew up to be a successful real estate agent, operating in Whitestone, New York, and fought in Vietnam, receiving a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Junior by default, unfortunately went the way of his father, and also ended his life in prison, although he died of AIDS rather than a knife in the back.<br /> <br /> In a strange, almost doppelganger-type coincidence, Louis Cirillo begat a son, Louis junior who also joined his father in a life of crime. At the age of 26 he was indicted and convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for trying to help is old man run a drug ring out of Otisville Correction Centre. Bad just got badder for junior, and in December 1991, his body, with the customary three behind the ear, was found in the trunk of an another abandoned Oldsmobile, this time in the Bronx.<br /> <br /> He had married into Philadelphia mob royalty, his wife Maria, being the daughter of imprisoned mobster Joseph "Chickie" Ciancaglini, one time hotshot capo in the crime family of Nicky Scarfo. Maria Malone Ciancaglini had met Louis when she was visiting her father at Lewisburg and he was visiting his. They fell in love and were married in September, 1991 in a sumptuous ceremony attended by 350 guests that was estimated to have cost gazoons. The wedding photo album alone, set someone back $10,000! He was dead three months later. <br /> <br /> No doubt it was all about drugs. Somehow it seems, it always is.<br /> <br /> <em>Junk is the ultimate product, the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk is necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy…….</em><br /> <strong>William Burroughs.</strong><br /> <br /> <span style="text-decoration:underline;"><strong>Thanks to Dan and Rick M from the Real Deal Forum for their help in researching some of the background to this story.</strong></span></p>
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Lucchese Family Sold “Oxy” From Ice Cream Truck in New York
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-sold-oxy-from
2011-03-18T13:30:00.000Z
2011-03-18T13:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-family-sold-oxy-from"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990667,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236990667?profile=original" width="440" /></a><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> Don’t we all miss our friendly neighborhood milkman who used to deliver bottles of milk right up to our doorsteps? What happened to the businessman who would offer that kind of service? Well, leave it to the mob to step into that void by driving an ice cream truck into your neighborhood that not only sells ice cream but also oxycodone pills at $20 dollars apiece. <br /> <br /> Yesterday, New York City Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, New York State Health Commissioner Nirav Shah, M.D. and Richmond County District Attorney Daniel Donovan Jr. announced the indictment of 31 members of an extensive drug trafficking ring that pumped nearly 43,000 oxycodone pills worth $1 million onto the black market in New York City over the course of one year.<br /> <br /> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990900,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-right" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236990900,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236990900?profile=original" width="248" /></a>The ring was led by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Lucchese Crime Family</a> soldier Joseph Zaffuto (photo right, on the right) and associate Louis Scala (photo right, on the left) who obtained fraudulent prescriptions through Nancy Wilkins, who worked as an office manager for a Manhattan orthopedic surgeon, prosecutors say. Zaffuto was a patient of the physician’s and met Wilkins during an office visit. She stole prescription pads from the office without the physician’s knowledge and sold the sheets to Scala and Zaffuto in exchange for cash payments. <br /> <br /> According to the official press release, the two men recruited dozens of individuals to take the stolen prescriptions to pharmacies and get them filled. These recruits, nearly all Staten Island residents, were paid in either cash or oxycodone. Many of the drug runners were relatives, friends or neighbors of Scala’s and Zaffuto’s. The pair often recruited individuals who were desperate for money or already had drug abuse problems. In some cases, multiple members of a single family or multiple households on the same block were involved in filling prescriptions. A number of individuals developed a dependence on oxycodone as a direct result of their involvement with the drug distribution ring. <br /> <br /> After getting the prescriptions filled, they brought the pills back to Scala and Zaffuto. Scala worked as an ice cream truck driver and as he made his regular rounds with his Lickety Split ice cream truck, would stop on prearranged blocks where he knew his oxycodone customers would be waiting. After serving ice cream to whatever children appeared, he would invite the adult pill customers to climb inside his truck and get their “oxy” fix.<br /> <br /> Since the Italian American Mafia still fascinates so many people and has a lot of them in awe of their so-called code of honor and respect, this latest news should come as another wake up call. As we already had a Gambino crew which pleaded <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crew-pleads-guilty-to">guilty</a> to running a prostitution ring that pimped out underage girls, the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/mob-myth-busted-gambino-family">myth</a> that the movie The Godfather created should’ve already been in ruins. <br /> <br /> “<em>I also don't believe in drugs. For years I paid my people extra so they wouldn't do that kind of business. Somebody comes to them and says, "I have powders; if you put up three, four thousand dollar investment, we can make fifty thousand distributing." So they can't resist. I want to control it as a business, to keep it respectable. [slams his hand on the table and shouts] I don't want it near schools! I don't want it sold to children! That's an infamia.</em>” – Don Zaluchi in The Godfather. <br /> <br /> Yet here the Italian American Mafia is, selling drugs to friends and neighbors. Selling it from an ice cream truck after just having sold neighborhood kids some delicious ice cream. Where is the honor in that? </p>
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The Evil That Men Do: The killing of Robert Kubecka & Donald Barstow
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-evil-that-men-do-the
2010-12-02T14:29:57.000Z
2010-12-02T14:29:57.000Z
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<div><p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236993683,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p><br /> By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Salvatore Avellino recorded by electronic surveillance:</span><br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">'Do you understand me, now when you got a guy that steps out of line and this and that, now you got the whip. You got the fuckin' whip. This is what he, Tony Corallo, tells me all the time, a strong union makes money for everybody, including the wise guys. The wise guys even make more money with a strong union.'</span><br /> </p>
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<p><br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">Prologue</span><br /> <br /> Tommy Brown and Ducks were talking business over a cup of Joe. Whose heads are going to get cracked; whose legs broken and what trunk music they need to orchestrate to keep the wheels flowing smoothly. Once this was sorted, little Tommy, born in Palermo, capitol of the Mafia, who wasn’t much taller than a dwarf, pointed past Tony Corallo’s shoulder.<br /> <br /> ‘Over there’<br /> <br /> Corallo, who had started out his business life as a tile setter, and knew a thing or two about angles, getting his nickname by always ducking legal indictments, leaned back in the booth, in the Azores bar and restaurant, next to the Lido Hotel, squinting, into the street, expecting to see something hoovering down on him from Suffolk County. Maybe Concetto, Tommy Luchese’s highly-strung wife. They lived just down the road on Royale Street after all.<br /> <br /> ‘Over there, what?’<br /> <br /> ‘Long Fuckin’ Island, over there’ Tommy grunted. ‘I want it. I want it all. Get the nut on everything-trucking, construction, the street stuff and above all the garbage handling. Lot of new houses going up; lot of new factories being built. Lotta rubbish to shift. Go fuckin’ get it champ.’<br /> <br /> Tony ‘Ducks’ Corallo who had a cranium like an 8 ball and eyes that were dead from coping with too much trouble, grinned, exposing a mouth with choppers so big and white his head looked like some kind of manic trick n’ treat pumpkin.<br /> <br /> ‘Way to go Tommy. Way to go.’ <br /> <br /> And he did.<br /> </p>
<hr style="width:100%;height:2px;" />
<p><br /> In 1989 the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-crime-family">Luchese crime family</a>, one of the five Mafia clans operating in New York, killed one of their own, and against all the tenants that these groups are supposed to live by, brutally murdered two innocent civilians. Although widely disparate in their circumstances, both acts illustrates the lengths to which the heads of the Mafia families will go in order to achieve control over their fiefdoms. In May, they killed <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/a-death-in-the-family">Michael Pappadio</a>, a man long part of the Luchese family's tradition and corporate structure who stood in their way, and just three months later, arranged the murder of two other men who stood in their way. They all died in order to satisfy and protect the perverted ambitions of men obsessed by hubris and the believe that greed is good.<br /> <br /> The murder of these men by Cosa Nostra killers, is a classic example of the way that the mob resolves some of their trickier problems. Violent death has always been the ultimate arbitrator in the criminal underworld, the execrable and ultimate act that separates mob management from traditional man management in the conventional business world. It is rare however, to find examples of ruthless assassination taking place outside the tightly drawn boundaries of the Mafia's uniquely dark landscape. Mob bosses as a rule, are more than circumspect when having to deal with outsiders; they know only too well the kind of furore they can generate from the public and the media, by killing someone who is not recognized as one of their own kind.<br /> <br /> Albert Anastasia found that out to his cost when he allegedly ordered the murder of a Brooklyn clothing salesman, a young man called Arnold Schuster. Johnny Dioguardi brought down all kinds of heat and unwelcome attention, when he ordered the acid blinding of Victor Riesel, a crusading anti-mob reporter, as did the murder of another reporter, Jake Lingle in Chicago in 1930 by a killer supposedly hired by the Capone mob. When it came to exercising their ultimate deterrent, Mafia bosses would think long and carefully about who would get their final benediction. Murder could only be authorized by the head of a crime family; protocol had to be observed, no loose ends left dangling, everything ship shape and Bristol fashion.<br /> <br /> So it is interesting to speculate on the mind set of the men who made the fateful decision on that cold, December day in 1988, which set in motion a chain of events that would not only leave men dead and families destroyed, but opened a hornet's nest of deceit, treachery and mind-numbing bureaucratic musical chairs, as county, state and federal law enforcement officials, scrambled to absolve themselves of responsibility for their part in an act of evil that was unique even by the morality starved underworld of America's biggest city.<br /> <br /> The three men who came together at The Surfside Three Motel in Howard Beach, Queens, on that gray, overcast December morning, were surely under more than just the normal, every day, stress that their chosen work generated. They lived under different pressure than most people as they operated their daily schedules, controlling and managing their unique business empire, marshalling their resources to maximize their returns. Captains and kings in their own right, they had a unique way to sort out and settle disputes and problems, and as they sat, drinking coffee, looking out over the drab, saltwater harbourage called Shellbank Basin, they had come to their conclusions and made a decision. Although as always, it was about money, on this occasion there was also something more at stake: the security of their business sovereignty and their own personal safety. They decided to kill these two men who were causing them so much heartburn, and resolve their problems once and for all.<br /> </p>
<hr style="width:100%;height:2px;" />
<p><br /> Jerry Kubecka came to Long Island in the early 1950s, and started to work for his brother-in-law, who ran a dairy at Northport, a little, one horse town on State Highway 10, a few miles north-east of Huntingdon. Part of his job was to deliver milk to the dairy's four hundred or so customers. Many rural communities scattered across Long Island had not yet organized trash collection services, and people often asked Jerry to take away their garbage. He did this initially as a favour to keep in their good books, until the local health authorities discovered a milk truck was doubling as a rubbish truck as well. <br /> <br /> So to avoid problems, Jerry forked out 25 bucks and bought himself an old fertilizer wagon, left his in-laws, and started a rubbish removal round. For a dollar a week he would visit and collect the household rubbish of people who lived and operated businesses in the area. He branched out and started trucking in hay from upstate New York to supplement his income and the business grew. As he got bigger, Jerry found out that even in these early days there was an industry group in place, trying to control prices and negotiate territories. It was called the Suffolk Carter's Association, led by a man called Salvatore Spatarella, who was known for his connections to the New York Mafia. Spatarella ran his own carting business called All American Refuse Removal Corporation.<br /> <br /> Jerry was also soon in conflict with Local 813, the union that represented garbage truck workers which was headed up by a notorious mob connected figure called Bernard Adelstein, the secretary-treasurer of the union, who became one of the New York crime figures identified by the McClellan Senate sub committee investigating organized crime across America between 1957 and 1959. The committee referred to him as 'an abject tool of organized crime.' As a result of the hearings, Adelstein was indicted and tried and found guilty on three counts of extortion. His verdict was however overruled, following an appeal. He had a side racket through another union he controlled-the Teamsters Local 1034-in which he sold ‘sweetheart’ union contracts to funeral homes and companies that manufactured oil barrels.<br /> <br /> Edelstein, a short, fat, balding one-legged rabble-rouser, deaf in his right ear, who once tried to strangle Robert F. Kennedy, had joined Local 813 as secretary-treasurer in 1951 on its formation, and was for the next forty years its main negotiator. He was linked in his early days to Vincent James 'Jimmy Jerome' Squillante, who worked under his god-father Albert Anastasia when he bossed the crime group now known as the Gambino family. When Squillante was murdered in 1960, his place was taken by James Failla, who operated under the new head of the family, Carlo Gambino.<br /> <br /> Bernie Adelstein was known by law enforcement to be an associate of the Gambino Family, and a man who assisted them and other organized crime groups, including the Genovese Family and the Luchese Family, in controlling and manipulating the private sanitation industry in the New York City metropolitan area. Bernie Adelstein worked closely with Failla, who was also known as 'Jimmy Brown,' to maintain organized crime domination of the private sanitation industry.<br /> <br /> By the early 1980s Local 813 was known as 'Jimmy Brown's Union.'<br /> <br /> The McClellan Committee's 1958 Interim Report found that:<br /> <br /> “Bernard Adelstein, secretary-treasurer of teamsters local 813, the dominant union in New York carting, betrayed every principle of trade unionism by serving as an abject tool in all of [the] empire-building activities [of Vincent Squillante, a narcotics trafficker and mob figure]. With his own authority over Local 813 as absolute as Squillante's over the management side, Adelstein was able to put his union at Squillante's complete disposal in enforcing monopolies, punishing trade association critics of Squillante, and blinking at Squillante-favored nonunion firms.”<br /> <br /> Adelstein's rule at 813 ended on September 7th 1992 when he was banned for life from the IBT.<br /> <br /> In 1967, pressure was building on Jerry Kubecka to fall in line with the demands of Suffolk Carters. He spoke to a reporter called Tom Renner, bitterly complaining that rival firms were threatening his customers, and that pickets had broken his customers store windows; his drivers were being accosted and threatened, one left after a bunch of goons threatened to break his legs, and that his vehicles were being sabotaged by having their windows smashed and sugar or metal shavings dumped into their gas tanks. The Association employed many methods of intimidation.<br /> <br /> One of the most effective was 'haunting.' If an operator like Jerry refused to sign on, they were followed day and night by tight-lipped hoodlums, to their homes, to their offices and yards, every day and every night, week-ends and holidays. Gradually under the pressure, they broke down, and signed up with the union. Jerry, however didn't. He would lay formal complaints with the local police, but he would never press charges or agree to testify.<br /> <br /> In 1974 Spaterella went to prison on a three year sentence for extortion. The vacuum he left was filled by a man called Salvatore Avellino.<br /> <br /> Late in 1977, his health failing, Jerry approached his son, and asked him if he would come in and run the business. A graduate of Huntington High School, Robert Kubecka had a degree in management from the Babson College in Massachusetts and a masters in environmental engineering from SUNY, Stony Brook. He married his childhood sweetheart, Nina, and took a job as an environmentalist for Huntington Town. He loved working for the town, organizing the laying out and planting of gardens, planning new parks and helping generally to make Huntington a better place to live. But he was a loyal son, according to his mother, and did not run from what he saw as a responsibility to his father. He inherited the business and all of its headaches. He was lucky, however, to have someone to share it with. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994254,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />His sister, Cathy, had married Donald Barstow (right), who was five years younger than Robert, and in 1980, he agreed to come alongside and help run the firm. It wasn't his first choice either, he had plans to work as a marine surveyor with his father in a family business.<br /> <br /> When these two men inherited the firm, they also picked up Jerry Kubecka’s war on the Mafia.<br /> <br /> According to friends, they were more like brothers than brothers-in-law. They would meet every morning about 6am for breakfast at the Gaslight, an old fashioned ice cream parlour near their office and yard, at 41 Brightside Avenue, East Northport, backing onto the MTA Long island rail line, and plan the day over breakfast. By the early 1980s, they had plenty to talk about.<br /> <br /> At this time, the private carting industry which picked up 75% of Long Island's garbage, was formed into a trade group which called itself Private Sanitation Industry, Inc., and was based in Melville, about four miles south of Huntington, just over the Suffolk County border. It seemed to be a legitimate organization contributing to campaign funds, representing its members before boards and commissions, but in fact what it really existed for was to suppress competition, punish operators who stepped out of line, rig bids and fatten the pockets of the men who ran it. The Kubecka business was a thorn in their side, a genuine rarity, an honest company trying to operate in the cesspool that was the Long Island garbage industry. And so the men behind the scenes tried to intimidate the son out of the business, having failed abysmally with the father. Some of the Kubecka trucks were damaged, fires were started in the company's garbage skips, and customers were warned that they themselves would become victims if they continued to use Kubecka's services.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994269,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Robert (left) complained to his family that he was being followed, that his men were being accosted and threatened, their parked cars vandalized when left outside the yard as they worked their routes. He began to sleep over in the office to keep watch over the yard at nights. His father had been dealing with this problem for years, but Robert was prepared to do more than complain about the problem. He was willing to work with the authorities to try to destroy the system that was trying to destroy him and the business.<br /> <br /> As the winter of 1980 began, Robert and Donald had set their course. At a meeting held in Jerry Kubecka's house in Stony Brook, Cathy and her in-laws, Jerry and his wife Joy, and Robert's wife, Nina, sat down for coffee and home baked cookies with Dick Tennien. In his 50s, he had spent most of his life fighting the mob as a cop in the Suffolk County Police Department's Criminal Intelligence Bureau. He was now a special investigator for the Organized Crime Task Force of the state attorney general’s office. He had come visiting, to reassure the family that Robert and Donald would be looked after. They would be protected if they agreed to help the state of New York bring charges against the people who were harassing them and trying to get them to quit their operation on Long Island.<br /> <br /> The OCTF wanted the two men to carry on, and in fact to expand their business with the encouragement and help of the task force. It was an opportunity for the law to see how the mob if provoked, would react.<br /> <br /> 'Don't worry,' Tennien assured the family, 'They'll be safe. I'm a professional. No harm will come their way. We'll keep your boys in the background, there names will never be mentioned.' It was the first of many promises that would come to sound like the echo of a tin drum, beaten in despair, by a lonely drummer.<br /> <br /> Robert and Donald went out and aggressively bid for contracts with private and public utilities. Over the course of two years, Robert recorded dozens of meetings and conversations with other carters and helped produce evidence that allowed the task force to get court permission for wiretaps and electronic bugs. All the time, Tennien kept reassuring them that he had informants operating around the clock, and that Robert and Donald's names would never be disclosed.<br /> <br /> The state investigators heard among the threats and the harassing, the name of one man, cropping up, over and over again-Salvatore Avellino Jnr. He was president of Private Sanitation, ran a multi-million dollar garbage business called Salem Sanitary Carting Company and was also allegedly a capo, or crew boss in the Luchese Mafia crime family, responsible for their interests in the waste removal industry. Among his many business investments, he was a major investor in the company that contracted to operate the infamous Islip garbage barge, whose futile 1987 search up and down the Atlantic seaboard for a place to dump its cargo, made headlines across America and the world.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236994686,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Early in the summer of 1983, having tried numerous times to frighten Robert and Donald out of the industry, the mob tried a different tactic. A man called Fred Lomangino approached them with an offer to buy them out, provided they paid a 3% commission to Avellino (right). He inferred if they didn't sell, they would eventually meet with an accident.<br /> <br /> In the fall of 1983, the state prosecutors prepared their case for a grand jury hearing, and Robert realized that although his testimony would be secret, if it went to a trial he would have to appear as witness. He also discovered that the network of informants Dick Tennien had in place, was himself and Donald, and that was all he had.<br /> <br /> In September 1984, the grand jury indicted 21 people and 16 carting companies on Long Island, alleging that the Gambino and Luchese crime families were divvying up over $400,000 each year from the industry through force, extortion, restraint of trade and brute force. According to federal sources, cash skimmed from the waste haulers was divided between the Luchese family because they oversaw the division of collection routes, and the Gambino family who prevented labour problems through their alleged control over unionized garbage workers.<br /> <br /> Among the defendants indicted were Avellino and the boss of the Luchese crime family, another Long Island resident, Anthony 'Tony Ducks' Corallo along with his underboss, Salvatore Santoro.<br /> <br /> In an organization that produced more frightening men than Hitler’s Third Reich, Cosa Nostra’s Anthony Corallo was singularly unique.<br /> <br /> Born on February 12th 1913, in the teeming slums of East 100th Street, Harlem, Corallo also known as ‘The Doctor’ was a short, squat man with piercing blue eyes. He first came to prominence when he became a protégé of Johnny Dioguardi, who recruited him into the 107th Street Gang in the late 1920s. He soon worked his way up in the rackets and was involved in gambling, bookmaking, narcotics, loan-sharking and extortion. A well-rounded portfolio for any budding gangster. His money lending skills were legendary and at one time he was known as a ‘loan shark’s loan shark.’ His manipulative and corrupting skills were also without reproach as were witnessed in 1941, when although convicted on drug charges over a consignment of heroin worth $150,000, a massive amount at this time, he only served a six-month sentence on Riker’s Island, the prison on Manhattan’s East River.<br /> <br /> His primary criminal talent in influencing enterprises were linked into the trucking industry, but he was also closely locked into the Painters and Decorators Union, the Conduit Workers Union and the United Textile Workers Union. He held executive positions in all of these and through them, amassed a fortune. He was close to Jimmy Hoffa, probably as a result of ties with Johnny Dioguardi and eventually gained control of several unions, including the crucial Local 239 of the Teamsters. He was a zealous instigator in the creation of ‘no show’ employer positions within the locals he controlled, generating revenue by collecting the salaries of workers who did not exist. At one time this was reaching $70,000 per week, some of which he shared with the management of the companies that participated in the scam. <br /> <br /> A foul-mouthed and terrifying man, he was often used by Tommy Luchese to enforce recalcitrant debtors into meeting payments, and to resolve labour disputes. A really bad glare from, ‘Tony Ducks’ was often all that was necessary. Luchese had such a high regard for Coralloo that he promoted him to capo, or crew chief when he was only in his early thirties. This was a rare achievement in an organization that paid great store in creating experienced managers over a long period of time, before promoting them. One of Corallo’s legitimate fronts was the ownership of an automobile agency in Queens.<br /> <br /> In 1958, U.S. Senator John McClellan leading a Senate Committee investigating crime in the labour movement, stated:<br /> <br /> ‘Our study into the New York situation reveals an alarming picture of the extent to which gangsters like Anthony Corallo have infiltrated the labour movement, using their union positions for the purposes of extortion, bribery and shakedowns. Tony Corallo is one of the scariest and worst gangsters we have ever dealt with.’ <br /> <br /> Tony Ducks had a favourite saying: ‘I like to be by myself. Misery loves company.’<br /> <br /> This was the man who led the men who faced off against the two carters on Long island.<br /> <br /> It came as a shock to Robert and Donald to find out how much money organized crime was making off the garbage industry, and just how high up the totem pole the chain of extortion and graft extended. The state attorney general's office followed up the criminal charges with a civil anti-trust case and by this time, the new year had dawned.<br /> <br /> In April 1985, Ronald Goldstock, director of the states Organized Crime Task Force announced to the media one of their biggest coups in the fight against the mob. They had placed a bug in the black Jaguar saloon that Avellino used to chauffeur around his boss, Anthony Corallo, and over months, had recorded many hours of conversation, implicating the men in numerous criminal activities and establishing once and for all, the existence of the mob's board of directors, always referred to as 'The Commission,' since it was first established in 1931. Among the hundreds of hours of recorded conversations, the Kubecka family featured among the foul mouth rhetoric that spewed in a never ending stream from the mouth of 'Tony Ducks.' But no one at the task force thought to warn Robert and Donald about the potential dangers these conversations must have indicated. Another example of promises given, but never fulfilled by the law.<br /> <br /> In the spring of 1985, Robert was getting so concerned for his and his family's safety that he wrote into the task force, demanding some assurances. A lawyer, George Bradleau, who replied on their behalf, stated, '....I can assure you that this office is most sensitive to such considerations and will continue, as it has in the past, to provide Mr. Kubecka with any appropriate protection, when and if the need arises.'<br /> <br /> On October 6th., Robert called in the office, speaking to Tennien's partner, Alvin Jones, reporting that someone had rung him at the depot and said, 'watch out for your family and friends this weekend.'<br /> <br /> Over the next two years, the state's case wandered through the legal system, and Robert and Donald carried on with their lives, trying to run the business, watching their backs all the time. In January 1987, Corallo was sent to prison for 100 years, and in the same month, nine of the people under indictment by the state for coercion against the Kubeka business pleaded guilty. But the sentences were a farce, Avellino getting off with a slap on the wrist, having to do 840 hours of community service, picking up garbage from the poor for free, but being able to nominate someone to perform the actual work itself!<br /> <br /> Towards the end of 1988, Robert Kubecka had been approached by the FBI who wanted his assistance in their investigation on carting and organized crime on Long Island. The mob were still smashing his containers, damaging his vehicles, trying to get him either out of the industry or agreeing to join their union. But they were not getting anywhere, and so the meeting was called in December by the three men most involved, Avellino, and the two who were now running the Luchese family, Vittorio Amuso who had taken over as the boss from Tony Corallo and Anthony 'Gaspipe' Casso his underboss.<br /> <br /> They gathered at the motel in Howard Beach to try to determine what their next move was going to be in their continuing war with the Kubecka family. It seems that not only did Avellino have access to two NYPD detectives on the Luchese family payroll who had kept him updated on the moves the OCTF was planning, but Casso had access to an FBI agent who was able to confirm that Robert and Donald were now going to work for the federal government in their fight to bring the mob to its knees. The two ‘dirty’ cops turned out to be Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa , who have since been convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The identity of FBI agent has never surfaced.<br /> <br /> The three men decided to get approval from the Gambino family, their partners in the garbage industry, to have Robert and his father killed. <br /> <br /> As Casso said later in his debriefing with law enforcement when he had decided to offer his services, '....but he was helping the FBI. So you know in the life we were in, there was no other way, but to kill the guy.'<br /> <br /> Early in 1989, Anthony Casso called a further meeting attended by Amuso and Avellino, this time at a mob social club in Canarsie, Brooklyn, on Flatlands Avenue. He also called in another capo in the family, a man called Anthony 'Bowat' Baratta, who lived in Manhattan. He ran a crew for the family in the Bronx, and by using him, it was felt it would shield Avellino from any direct link to the killings. <br /> </p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995066,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" /></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">(1) Amuso & (2) Casso</span></p>
<p><br /> <br /> The family boss and his second in command, spelled out the problem to this man who they had chosen to organize the killing of Robert and his father. The next day, Avellino and his brother Carmine, picked up Baratta and drove him out to Long Island to show him the critical path that would lead to the hit: the Kubecka and Barstow houses, their office and yard, the routes they used to and from work; everything had to be checked off in order to put the killings together the right way. The hit site had to be determined; they checked and rejected the men's homes, as there was not enough cover. The office was the perfect place, set in a quiet industrial street, bordering onto a park. The killers knew there would be no problem from the police-Avellino's pet detectives had told him that the Kubeckas were never guarded or protected by law enforcement officers. As Casso said later, 'if these guys had the proper surveillance on them, believe me they would have been hard to get to. Between me and you, they might even be alive today.'<br /> <br /> Promises made, promises failed yet again, by the authorities.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236995278,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />By early June, Baratta (left) had chosen his hit team: Rocco Vitulli, in his thirties from Yonkers, a man who walked with a bad limp, and Frank 'Frankie Pearl' Federico, based in Brooklyn, in his early sixties. He escorted them across the proposed killing fields of Long Island, spending considerable time with them, as they scoped out the actual place chosen for the murders in East Northport.<br /> <br /> Throughout the summer, the harassment on the Kubeckas continued. Someone drove by the office and tossed a firebomb into one of the garbage trucks. Robert kept getting menacing telephone calls. A mysterious car tailed members of the family. By now, both Robert and Donald were under severe stress, and more and more, their breakfast meetings at the Gaslight revolved around their thoughts of selling the business. Robert loved to cook gourmet food, and dreamed of becoming a chef with his own place, and they also talked about perhaps opening a boat or car dealership. A close friend of Robert's later recalled, 'He was looking to get out, this wasn't supposed to be a lifetime commitment; it wasn't worth it.'<br /> <br /> On August 9th, Robert received another threatening phone call, and a man's thick, coarse voice told him that he was a dead man. Robert as he had done countless times, called the OCTF office in White Plains, miles away in Westchester County. He spoke to Tennien's partner, Alvin Jones, who told him to dial 911 and get a local police officer over to his house. The policeman arrived about 6 p.m. and wrote up a report.<br /> <br /> That evening, Cathy remembered that when Donald came home from work he looked happy. 'He was such a handsome man,' she recalled. <br /> <br /> They spoke about the threatening message Robert had received (Donald had been there at the office when the call came in,) and Donald reassured his wife, all was well. He told her that Robert had called the task force, and said that everything would be fine. When they had put their daughter to bed they sat and talked, and Cathy begged him not to go to work the next day. Donald told her not to worry, it would be okay. It was the last night they would ever spend together.<br /> <br /> August 10th, 1989, was sunny and warm even before the sun rose. Robert and Donald were at their office in the red brick building early as usual, and their ten trucks were out on the road by 5:15 a.m. The friends were working in the office when two vehicles drove up and parked quietly in the empty street. By then, it was about 6 a.m. Carmine Avellino was in one car, and Anthony Baratta in the other with the two killers, who checked their guns, and walked quickly into the building.<br /> <br /> They caught Donald Barstow in the hallway and blasted him to death. In the small cramped office it didn't go down so easily. Although he had a pistol, it was locked away in the office safe, but Robert wrestled with the two men and there was a massive struggle. Shots were fired wildly, bullets gouging into the office walls and ricocheting off the refrigerator standing in the corner. Furniture was overturned and files and papers knocked to the floor. They left Robert slumped over his desk, but in their haste to leave, left a black duffel bag containing two guns on the floor, in the corner of the office. They also left a pool of blood that was theirs, not Robert's. The mob had tried to intimidate him for twelve years without success, and even when they sent their hired guns to eliminate him, he went down fighting.<br /> <br /> The two men rushed out of the building and Baratta followed Carmine Avellino who took them to a safe house, where they waited until it was cleared for them to return respectively to Manhattan and Brooklyn. The man who had been injured in that last, cataclysmic struggle, had been Federico who went into hiding.<br /> <br /> Although grievously injured, Robert was able to dial 911, telling the operator, 'I've been shot. Two people have been shot. Send help.' When the police arrived, they found him still slumped across the desk. Rushed to Huntington Hospital, he was able to tell investigators that that his attacker was a white man in his 40s, before he died later that morning of gunshot wounds. The killers had not realized that the other man was not Jerry Kubecka: he and his son had been the targets. Still, as Casso later recalled, '.....if three of them were there, they would have shot all three.'<br /> <br /> The day after the killings, the dead men's families read a newspaper report that indicated that the authorities had urged the men to enter the Witness Protection Program and change their identities. The source claimed that Donald had been offered every kind of aid in starting over again, but had refused. Another source close to the state task force claimed that somewhere, some time, they were sure somebody in the mob would deal with the Kubeckas. Donald's wife Cathy, and Nina were outraged. They claimed their husbands had been committed to the project, had trusted the OCTF, had never ever, been offered a refuge in the WPP and had been abandoned by the authorities. They took their grievances to court and the law agreed with them and found the two men had been cast adrift by the law.<br /> <br /> ‘These were two honest citizens who were given assurances that they were going to be protected, and they absolutely weren't,’ said Robert Folks, a lawyer for the men's families. ‘They were killed by the same people they testified against.’<br /> <br /> In July 1998, Judge Leonard Silverman awarded the widows $10.8 million in damages. <br /> <br /> In his ruling, Silverman rejected the state's defence that both men had been offered help from the federal witness protection program. <br /> <br /> ‘If the Organized Crime Task Force was unable to provide meaningful protection to the Kubecka family, it should not have given them these explicit assurances,’ he said. ‘Having given these assurances, the state may not repudiate them now that its beneficiaries have been murdered.’ <br /> <br /> They didn't stop there. In the spring of 2000 they filed claim against the $6.5 million that was forfeited by Salvatore Avellino in a conviction brought down by the federal government. They claimed that the money was rightfully theirs, as the government was only able to secure it through the efforts and deaths of their husbands.<br /> <br /> From the very beginning of the murder hunt, the authorities were convinced that the killings were the work of the Luchese family, but had no evidence. The case stalled for over three years. Then, in January 1993, the FBI found Casso hiding with a girlfriend in New Jersey. He had been on the run for eighteen months, skipping as he was about to be arrested on a case involving a massive fraud involving the New York Housing Authority. <br /> <br /> In May, the federal agents arrested Avellino at his palatial home, in Nissequogue. Casso, seeking a break on what he knew would be a life term prison sentence for the crimes he had committed, including 34 admitted murders, began to cooperate with the authorities, disclosing details about numerous mob killings, including the murder of Robert and Donald. In February 1994, Salvatore Avellino pleaded guilty to racketeering charges that included conspiracy to murder Kubecka and Barstow. He was sentenced to ten and a half years in prison.<br /> <br /> In January 1995, based almost entirely on the evidence of Anthony Casso, the FBI indicted Carmine Avellino, Anthony Baratta, Vitulli and Federico on murder and racketeering charges. But in July, 1996, Carmine Avellino, Baratta and Vitulli were allowed to plead on lesser charges, and all mention of the killings was dropped. Federico was still missing. Some sources said he had fled to Sicily where he was living undercover; other information indicated that he was murdered to remove the one physical link into the killing that connected the Luchese family. The only other evidence to the killings, was the testimony of Casso, which for some reason, bothered the prosecutors, and they decided to drop it. <br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236989455,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236989455?profile=original" />On January 27th., 2003 at 6:50 pm authorities arrested <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/lucchese-soldier-frank-frankie">Federico</a> (right) at a the little Twins Doughnut shop, huddling under the ‘El’ on East Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. Federico was there for a meeting with a mob associate. Later it was confirmed by the authorities that it was Federico’s blood that was found at the East Northport, Long Island murder scene. In September 2004 Federico was convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for the 1989 murders. Attorney William Gurin said that given Federico's advanced age, the penalty was essentially a life sentence. With time off for good behaviour, Federico would be eligible for release at the age of eighty-eight. Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block said it was unfortunate Federico had even a glimmer of hope of freedom someday.<br /> <br /> He is serving time at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, and will be released in February, 2016.<br /> <br /> He always claimed he was not involved in the shooting, and in fact was at work at Pandick Press, America's largest financial printer, on Broadway in Manhattan. According to Joe De Fede a member of the Luchese family administration, 'Frankie Pearls' was made into the Mafia in October 1989 as a reward for his good work in East Northport that August morning.<br /> <br /> The tragic deaths of Robert and Donald, two men fighting the system on Long Island, had strange, deja vu overtones. In 1977, two other men trying to form a competing local to the powerful 813, in an attempt to overcome the same sort of problems, were brutally murdered, their bodies being stuffed into the trunk of car, left parked at Kennedy Airport. Their deaths however, were never solved, or any evidence produced to even suggest who the killers might have been.<br /> <br /> Carmine Avellino pled guilty to extortion and like his brother, got ten and a half years. Baratta, by now was in prison on other charges and received a further four years. Vitulli, one of the alleged killers, for some reason pled on a gambling charge and was sentenced to four years in jail. The prosecutors felt they did not have a strong enough case against him for the murders. It didn't seem like a lot of time for career criminals who had organized the brutal murders of two innocent men. <br /> <br /> Salvatore Avellino was originally scheduled for release from prison in 2006 when he would have been about seventy. He would get the chance to get back on the golf course, which was his first love, outside his life in the 'life,' and his palatial mansion in Nissequoge. Amuso and Casso are gone forever into the wastelands of the federal penitentiary system, Casso, now 70, is destined to spend his days for all time in the sterile confines of America's most stringent maximum prison in Florence, Colorado, locked down twenty three hours a day in a 12 x 7 cell.<br /> <br /> Rocco Vitulli limped out of prison on September 7th 2000 and was last heard of living in Brooklyn. Maybe his reward for his involvement in the killing was to get his 'button,' to be made into the Luchese crime family. He was named on a mob list (it is customary in New York, because of the number of Mafia families, for the names of proposed new members to be circulated among the families so that objections can be raised before those nominated are elected) as a replacement for Salvatore 'Sally Shields' Shillitani, a long time made guy in the family, who had died in 1988 in Florida. <br /> <br /> It has been suggested he was inducted into the Luchese family in 1991 at the home of Peter Vario, son of Paul Vario an old time family capo, deceased. He was apparently sponsored by Baratta, his team leader on the day of the killings.<br /> <br /> Carmine Avellino was released from prison February 25th 2004, and Anthony Baratta is currently serving time for a variety of offences. He has a projected release-date of September 25, 2012 from the FCI Loretto <br /> <br /> Dick Tennien, the OCTF supervisor who promised Robert and Donald all the protection in the world, died in April 2001. He was eulogized at the funeral as a pioneer in the investigation of organized crime. His partner Alvin Jones, the man Robert spoke to the day before he was murdered, retired to Queens. When asked about the case, he simply said, ' The deaths touched me very deeply, I've put it behind me.'<br /> <br /> On September 26th., 1989, the town board of Huntigton, passed a resolution authorizing a name change for the Huntington Organic Gardens, a 15 acre, 3000 square foot plot situated at the junction of Dunlop and Greenlawn Roads, From 1973 until 1976, Robert had worked as an environmentalist for the town, and through his efforts, the garden had been established to provide residents with plots for individual gardens. What in Britain are called allotments.<br /> <br /> It was the first of its kind in America-a place where fruit and vegetables could be grown without the use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides. The council's minutes confirm Robert's contribution to the town as immeasurable:<br /> <br /> ‘In recognition of his tragic death resulting from his efforts to remove the influence of organized crime from the carting industry, the council unanimously agreed, in his honour, to rename the garden The Robert M. Kubecka Memorial Organic Garden.'<br /> <br /> Cathy, Robert's sister who had married Donald, left Long Island to start life again, and her sister-in-law, Nina, eventually re-married.<br /> <br /> Jerry Kubecka also died in 2001, in the spring, twelve years after his son was shot dead in cold blood, protecting his business. In an interview not long before he died, he said about his son, ' He was a jewel, a good person. I wish I was half the person he was.'<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.</span><br style="font-style:italic;" /><span style="font-style:italic;">William Shakespeare.’</span><br /> <br style="font-weight:bold;" /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Mark Anthony Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 2.</span> <br /> <br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;">I would like to acknowledge an article by Steve Wick in Newsday, 2001, as a source of reference for some of this story.</span><br /> </p>
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Profile of Lucchese crime family boss Steven Crea
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-steven
2010-11-26T11:02:42.000Z
2010-11-26T11:02:42.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> <br /> Steven "Stevie Wonder" Crea is one of the leading members of the troubled Lucchese Crime Family. Crea is a powerhouse in labor racketeering. Using the reputation of the Lucchese Family and, when needed to prove that reputation, its muscle, he had gained a position in which he could put in place a mob tax of five percent on every job. By paying that mob tax the contractors did not run into any labor problems. The Luccheses used Local 608 for this racket. Its president Michael Forde (who's father, who had already been convicted of Taft-Hartley crimes in the 1980s, was the previous president of Local 608) was under total control of Crea.<br /> <br /> When Lucchese bosses Vic Amuso and "Gaspipe" Casso went on the lam Crea was put on a panel of Lucchese mobsters who would run the family in their absence. This newfound power did not mean Crea was safe. Crea's crew was located in The Bronx and several mobsters started worrying when two other ruling panel mobsters were imprisoned. Capos George Zappola and Frank Papagni and soldier Frank Gioia Jr. were concerned that the power in the family would shift from Brooklyn to The Bronx as Crea was the last member of the ruling panel who was not in prison. The three men discussed killing Crea. The hit had to be a "sneak job" they said, meaning the bosses could not know, this was because they knew the bosses would not OK the hit. In the end the plan never came to fruition because the Lucchese Family had a lot bigger problems than where their boss was located when several of its members became witnesses for the government.<br /> <br /> On August 24, 2006 Crea was released from prison after doing time on a labor racketeering conviction. He had plead guilty to price fixing, bid rigging, and constraint of trade in connection with three large construction projects. And also to "enterprise corruption." Back on the streets Crea can not associate with any known mobsters for a year due to parole restrictions. Will he manage to stay out of trouble and seize control of the Lucchese Crime Family? Or will he violate his parole and go back to prison? Or will a Lucchese rat implicate him in some old murder? We will wait and see. One thing is for sure, the Lucchese Crime Family desperately needs the expertise and leadership of a good boss. Is Steven Crea that boss?<br /> </p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family boss Louis Daidone
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-louis
2010-11-26T11:01:30.000Z
2010-11-26T11:01:30.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /><br /> Louis "Louis Bagels" Daidone was born on February 23, 1946. In the early 1980s the FBI listed him as a soldier in the Lucchese Crime Family. In 1989 Daidone received orders that he had to kill small time car thief Thomas Gilmore. The mob suspected that Gilmore was a rat. Daidone and two associates tailed Gilmore to his home in Queens. There they ran up behind him and shot him in the head and neck. A year later Daidone was called upon again to kill a suspected rat. This time the target was mobster Bruno Facciola. Daidone lured Facciola to a brooklyn garage. Once there Facciola was certain it was a set up and ran away. Daidone caught up with him, tackled him and then dragged him back into the garage. There Facciola was held down while he was stabbed and shot in both eyes. As a finishing touch Daidone stuffed a canary in Facciola’s mouth as a sign that: you sing to the feds, you're going to get your head blown off. Days later Facciola’s body was found in Brooklyn in the trunk of his own car.<br /> <br /> In 1992 Daidone was arrested and charged with an 1988 armored truck heist that netted $1.2 million. Daidone was eventually acquitted of robbery and weapons charges but was convicted of robbery conspiracy and sentenced to five years. In 1996 he was released from prison. In 2000 Lucchese Acting Boss Steven Crea was arrested and Daidone became Acting Boss. In 2003 Daidone’s reign was over when he was arrested and charged with the murders of Gilmore and Facciola and two counts of extortion. In January 2004 Daidone was found guilty and was later sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.</p>
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The Lucchese New Jersey Faction
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/the-lucchese-new-jersey
2010-11-26T11:00:00.000Z
2010-11-26T11:00:00.000Z
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<div><p>By David Amoruso<br /><br /> The Lucchese Crime Family's New Jersey faction was once among the most powerful in the state. They operated from Bergen County through Essex County, Morris County, Passaic County and Union County, to Sussex County. Their criminal business included illegal gambling, loansharking, drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling, fraud, extortion, and anything else that made a fast buck. In the 1980s the faction was headed by Lucchese capo Anthony "Tumac" Accetturo, and his second in command Michael Taccetta.<br /> <br /> Accetturo led a charming mob life until Vittorio Amuso and Anthony Casso became the new leaders of the Luccheses. Amuso and Casso demanded 50% of the New Jersey faction's earnings. Accetturo refused this "proposition." As a result Amuso and Casso labeled Accetturo a rat, stripped him of his capo rank, and put out a murder contract on him and his son Anthony Jr. By now Amuso and Casso had made a name for themselves as crazy killers, so when they summoned the entire Jersey faction to come to New York, only half the crew's members showed up. Once there they decided it was smarter to leave immediately. When they also refused to attend several other meetings Casso and Amuso put out a contract on the entire faction.<br /> <br /> Lucchese troops went hunting for the outlawed mobsters. The Jersey crew went into hiding, Accetturo spent most of this time in jail on a contempt charge. One Accetturo soldier was shot, but survived. No other Jersey members were killed or even wounded during the one sided war.<br /> <br /> In 1993 Anthony Accetturo was convicted on racketeering charges. After he found out a trusted underling had given photos of his wife to rival mobsters he decided to cooperate with the government. Of course the fact that he could spend the next thirty years in prison was a huge motivation as well. With the flipping of Accetturo, several other crew members did the same, others were convicted. The times of the powerful Lucchese Jersey crew were history.</p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family boss Joseph Defede
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-joseph
2010-11-26T10:59:27.000Z
2010-11-26T10:59:27.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /><br /> Joseph "Little Joe" Defede was born in 1934 in New York. In his early days as a mobster Defede used to operate a hot dog truck in Brooklyn that doubled as a numbers bank. As a close personal friend of Lucchese Boss Vittorio Amuso Defede started climbing the ranks and by 1994, not long after Amuso's conviction and life sentence were upheld by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Amuso made Defede acting boss of the Lucchese Crime Family.<br /> <br /> After 4 years Defede was taken out of the picture. In March of 1998 he was arrested and indicted on racketeering charges. He was held without bail as a danger to the community. In December of 1998 Defede pleaded guilty to extorting $100.000s of dollars from garment center businessmen and was sentenced to prison. With Defede in prison Amuso apointed a new acting boss, this time it was Steven Crea's turn. After serving almost 5 years Defede was released early and was back on the streets but things weren't all good. Word got to Defede that Amuso suspected that Defede had been skimming money from the crime families profits. Under the leadership of Steven Crea the profits went up and Amuso seriously thought Defede had fucked him over. And so it was that Amuso wanted Defede whacked. Upon hearing this Defede contacted the F.B.I. and in February 2002 entered the witness protection program.<br /> </p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family boss Gaetano Lucchese
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-boss-gaetano-lucchese
2010-11-26T10:52:07.000Z
2010-11-26T10:52:07.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted in 2001<br /> <br /> Thomas Lucchese was Boss of the Mafia Family that still bears his name. A ruthless guy with a ruthless reputation but he somehow managed to have friends who were law abiding citizens and weren't scared of him, later when they found out he was a major figure in the New York underworld they didn't know where to run. Lucchese's tenure as Boss of his Family wasn't that long, about 14 years, compared to his long tenure as Underboss: about 23 years. It shows Lucchese was a loyal soldier and at least abided by the few rules that were left for a mobster to follow.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236987258,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />Gaetano Thomas Lucchese was born 1899 in Palermo, Sicily. He had come to America as an 11 year old boy. He had risen rapidly through the ranks of the New York underworld, and was a soldier in the family of Gaetano Reina. As he cruised the underworld he made contacts with powerful people and set up business everywhere. When Lucchese was 19, he lost an index finger in a machine shop accident. In 1923, he was arrested for stealing a Packard automobile and sentenced to three years in prison. Paroled after 13 months, it was the only time he ever spent in prison throughout his long criminal career. At the age of 31 Lucchese had become Underboss of Gaetano Reina. When Gaetano Reina was murdered in March 1930. His Family came under the control of Gaetano "Tom" Gagliano, Lucchese would stay on as Underboss. Gagliano would run the Familie without problems. Under Gagliano Lucchese went on with expanding his power. His legitimate business interests were many and varied. He would come to be a major power in the garment industry and also made friends in the legit world befriending politicians and judges. A young Thomas LuccheseLucchese also had a reputation as a man of violence. It was estimated by the police that he was personally involved in at least 30 murders.<br /> <br /> In 1953 Lucchese's Boss Gagliano died of natural causes. Lucchese now became the new Boss of the Family. He was 54 years old and at the peak of his power, both as a criminal and as an arch manipulator of the convoluted political system that drove the powerhouse of the New York political engine. If Frank Costello was the Prime Minister of the underworld, then Lucchese was undoubtedly its Director General. Lucchese was for many years a personal friend and confidant of Thomas Murphy, who just happened to be the Police Commissioner of the city of New York, and consequently the head of the entire New York Police Department. In 1952 Thomas Lucchese was brought out in the open, the Kefauver Hearings started and all the major mobsters were there to be admired. It was because of these hearings that the Family got the name: The Lucchese Crime Family, a name that still goes.<br /> <br /> Under Lucchese and Gagliano the Lucchese Crime Family reached it's peak. The Lucchese crime family generated its money from many sources,: union control, loan-sharking, gambling, hi-jacking, numbers and drugs. The huge amount of profits from importing and selling heroin, or as they called it "babania," was so enormous, that Lucchese, like so many of his peers, turned a blind eye to the edict that had been laid down many years before, prohibiting the involvement in drug trafficking. In 1961 the Lucchese family was involved in one of the highest profile cases ever, involving heroin importation. It became famous world wide because of a book that was written about the case, and an award-winning movie that followed. The incident was known as "The French Connection."<br /> <br /> In the late 1960s Lucchese developed brain cancer. In 1967 he underwent brain surgery to remove a tumor. He died on July 13, 1967. Over 1,000 mourners came to his funeral. The crowd included politicians, judges, policemen, racketeers, drug pushers, pimps and hitmen. Some bosses did not show up out of fear of the F.B.I. surveillance, but others like Carlo Gambino and Aniello Dellacroce did to show respect. </p>
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Profile of Lucchese family soldier Frank Gioia Jr.
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-soldier-frank-gioia
2010-11-26T10:30:00.000Z
2010-11-26T10:30:00.000Z
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<div><p><a href="http://www.facebook.com/GangstersInc" target="_blank"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236988673,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9236988673?profile=original" width="566" /></a><br /> Posted in 2006 - Updated in 2017<br /> <br /> Frank Gioia Junior was born in 1967. From the start, his life was pretty much set in stone. He was born into "the life" as they say, his father Frank Senior and grandfather both were involved in organized crime and members of the Mafia. Growing up around mobsters it wasn't long until Gioia himself became one. At age 12, he hung around a mob owned social club, getting drinks for wiseguys and doing small tasks for them. By the age of 18, Gioia had left behind the errand-boy role and showed his violent capabilities. He shot a bouncer who had disrespected a Lucchese wiseguy. This act of violence earned Gioia huge respect from his mob buddies.<br /> <br /> By the age of 21, he had earned more than $1 million dollars dealing in drugs. In October 1991, at age 24, Gioia became a made guy in the Lucchese Crime Family, his sponsor was George Zapolla. Where most wiseguys believe that upon becoming "made" all their problems are solved, it usually means the opposite. This was true in Gioia`s case as well. In June of 1992, he got arrested on gun charges. And a year later he got arrested again on serious federal drug charges. He was accused of running a heroin pipeline from Manhattan to Boston and was sentenced to 7 years in prison.<br /> <br /> Behind bars, Gioia didn't stay quiet. He got into a fight with another inmate, breaking the man's jaw. Then he got some bad news from his cousin, Vincent Salanardi. The Lucchese family was plotting to whack Gioia's father over some money dispute. After hearing this, Gioia called the feds, got himself, his father, and family a deal, and began cooperating. He was moved to a special prison unit for witnesses and there he, again, broke an inmate's jaw. This time it was an argument over use of the prison phone that lit the fuse.</p>
<p>After serving just 6 years in prison, Gioia was released early, given a new identity and was relocated under the federal witness protection program. Gioia testified against scores of mobsters and drug dealers. As it stands now his testimony resulted in the conviction of over 80 criminals, including one cop killer. Once in the Witness Protection Program, Gioia began giving lectures about organized crime to rookie and veteran FBI agents. </p>
<p>He also had another lucrative gig scamming mall owners and real-estate developers out of tens of millions of dollars, <em>The Arizona Republic</em> reported in November of 2017. Read about <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/former-lucchese-mobster-frank-gioia-outed-as-multi-million-dollar" target="_blank">that story here</a>:</p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family boss Alphonse D'Arco
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-acting-boss-alphonse
2010-11-26T10:30:00.000Z
2010-11-26T10:30:00.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /><br /> Alphnose "Little Al" D'Arco was born July 28, 1932 in Brooklyn, New York. As early as D'Arco could remember he hung around people who were either associates, members or even bosses of the Mafia. As he grew up in Brooklyn he made visits to bosses of all the 5 Families in New York. Pretty soon Little Al knew that this was the life for him, he too wanted to become a wiseguy, a made guy, he too wanted to belong to a Family. To become a member D'Arco first had to become an associate of one of the 5 New York Families. And so he did, he became an associate of the Lucchese Crime Family. As an associate D'Arco stood at the bottom of the food chain and could only do his best and hope that one day he would become a made guy, During his years as an associate D'Arco had spent some time in prison in the 1960s and when he got out he still had to wait for his membership. It wasn't untill 1982 that he became a made guy. At the age of 50 Alphonse D'Arco became a made guy in the Lucchese Crime Family under boss Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo, and he was assigned to the crew of capo Paul Vario (made famous worldwide by the movie Goodfellas in which Vario was played by Paul Sorvino).<br /> <br /> After finally becoming a made guy D'Arco didn't have much time to enjoy it, in 1983 he was arrested for dealing heroine and sent to prison untill 1986. When he got out things started moving fast for Little Al, in 1988 D'Arco was appointed capo of Paul Vario's crew when he died, by his boss Vic Amuso who had become boss after the imprisonment of Anthony Corallo. D'Arco waited 50 (well 30) years to become made member, 30 years of waiting for that moment and now since he had been made things went fast: he had spent 3 years in prison, he had become a capo and the ride wasn't about to stop. In 1990 D'Arco's boss Vic Amuso and his underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso went on the lam following a federal indictment and in 1991 Amuso appointed D'Arco acting boss of the Lucchese Crime Family to take care of the Family while they were gone. Now D'Arco was at his highest level, he controlled one of the 5 Families. In his 30 years of involvement with the Lucchese Crime Family D'Arco had learned all there was to know on how to run the business. The Lucchese Family made money through a variety of illegal activities including gambling, loansharking, and dealing in stolen property. Now D'Arco oversaw all of that and also had to somehow keep the real powers who were on the lam happy and content and this proved more difficult than anything.<br /> <br /> When they were on the lam Amuso and Casso went crazy. They ordered mobster after mobster whacked because they thought they would flip or either had flipped. Casso was an extra pain in the neck as D'Arco recalled since he kept asking about money matters. As a result of Casso's badgering D'Arco started keeping records of money coming in and would send them to Casso he would also keep some copies himself. In 1991 D'Arco got word from Amuso that he should whack Lucchese capo Pete Chiodo. Chiodo had fallen out of favor with Amuso when he plead guilty in the same case that Amuso was now on the lam for. Amuso feared Chiodo would flip and so told D'Arco to take care of it. D'Arco tried, he even had his son in the hitteam, but failed. Chiodso survived the shotwounds and immediately called for the F.B.I. he had some stories to tell. When Amuso was finally arrested D'Arco thought he'd might get some easy time, he was wrong. While in prison Amuso started thinking about D'Arco and his time as acting boss and decided he wasn't happy with him. Amuso decided that D'Arco was to rule the streets as part of a 4 man ruling commission made up out of Steven Crea, Frank Lastorino and Sal Avellino. D'Arco felt uneasy with these new changes but decided to just go along with it. But when at meetings he saw how Amuso was trying to avoid him and this made D'Arco unsure of his future in the Mafia. But D'Arco decided to keep going with it, it was the life he chose and it probably was the stress that went to his head. On September 18, 1991 however when he attended a meeting at the Kimberley Hotel in New York he was sure it wasn't the stress. The meeting D'Arco was at went on into the early hours of the morning. D'Arco had no worries untill Michael DeSantis arrived, he noticed that DeSantis was wearing what looked like a bulletproof vest underneath his shirt and he also saw a bulge on his hip, which looked exactly like a gun. At this point D'Arco excused himself and ran. At home D'Arco packed his bags and drove his wife and his children to a hideout on Long Island. On September the 21st he went to the F.B.I. and decided to become a cooperating witness.<br /> <br /> In his mob career D'Arco had been part of/committed 10 murders and also admitted to drug dealing and labor racketeering. At one trial D'Arco was asked by the prosecuting counsel if it was worth it, D'Arco answered:<br /> <br /> "No. I’m sixty-five years old. What has it gotten me? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Yes, I have my wife and I have my son. But I was the one who got my son into the Mafia. And what did I accomplish by doing that? My son is a drug dealer! No, I’ve got nothing to show for it. What a waste of my life."<br /> </p>
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A Death in the Family
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/a-death-in-the-family
2010-11-24T21:27:29.000Z
2010-11-24T21:27:29.000Z
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<div><img src="https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/10663250486?profile=RESIZE_400x&width=300"></div><div><p>By Thom L. Jones for <a href="http://www.gangstersinc.org" target="_blank">Gangsters Inc.</a><br /> <br /> In those last few seconds, as his life was disappearing like an evanescent breath, nothing to protect him, no salvation at hand, his thoughts must have been perhaps his wife and children; his family to be torn apart by his sudden and awful ending. Did he cry out in frustration at the inevitability of this act of duplicity locking him into this act of ultimate violence; or the venal manoeuvre that enticed him into a cul-de-sac from which there could be no escape? The ultimate treachery which was the hallmark of his chosen profession. Maybe in that split-second he had a glimpse of his older brother, Andimo, dying on the roadway, in front of his home. The shotgun blooming into his face like the orange belch from some dragon of death; killed because he stood in the way, just as he had now found himself. Maybe he saw all those men whose lives had been foreclosed by a bank that offered no line of credit other than the certainty that debts had to be paid, in full, on the due date. Perhaps in that last and fleeting moment, he embraced the finality, but still could not accept the reason.<br /> <br /> ‘Why are you hitting me?’ he screamed out in despair.<br /> </p>
<hr style="width:100%;height:2px;" />
<p><br /> Saturday, May 13, 1989, dawned as a soft, spring day in New York. Michael Pappadio was awake early; he had a lot to do. The next day was Mother’s Day, and also his birthday. He would be sixty-seven.<br /> <br /> Dressing casually in a yellow polo shirt, tan slacks and a yellow wind-cheater, he pulled on a pair of white sneakers. He had suffered a stroke in August, 1982, which had left him with a permanent limp in his right leg, and he found the soft, leather casual trainers, more comfortable than shoes.<br /> <br /> His wife was organizing a celebration-bash for later in the afternoon, at their big, comfortable, colonial-style home on Little Neck Boulevard in the gated Bayside Gables Community in Queens. There would be a barbecue, out in the backyard, starting about lunch time, celebrating his special day and Mother’s Day, and all their family and some close friends had been invited.<br /> <br /> A little after 8.30 am, he and Frances left their home and drove in the Mercedes-Benz to 35th Avenue and Bell Boulevard. Here, Michael asked his wife to drop him off at The Great Bay Diner where he told her he was going for a coffee, before heading next door to the produce store to pick up fruit and vegetables. They agreed to meet in an hour, and Frances drove off to do her own shopping. She returned about 10 am, but Michael was not waiting for her. She checked the store and diner, and being unable to find him, assumed one of her four children must have collected him. She drove home. <br /> <br /> But Michael was not at home. Frances rang her children and they agreed to come over, and the family sat down to discuss their next move. Guests, and relatives started to arrive at the house, and several of them went off in groups to scour the neighbourhood. Some dropped by the diner and food store, and discovered that Michael had in fact not visited either.<br /> <br /> Later in the day, Frances phoned her brother-in-law Fred, her husband’s only living brother, at his home on 76th Street in Jackson Heights. Towards the end of the afternoon, he came across to the house in Bayside, and with him were his cousins, Victor and Butch Panica. They sat and talked with Frances, the three men speaking softly, with long awkward pauses, like people comforting each other at a wake. One of them suggested that perhaps Frances should notify the police that Michael seemed to have disappeared. After a while, the three men left, and although Frances spoke to Fred on the telephone from time to time, she never saw any of them again.<br /> <br /> At 11am on May 14th, Frances went to the 11th Precinct on 215th Street in Bayside, and filed Form 336, the New York Police Department’s missing person report. Any trace of the man she had been married to for seventeen years, effectively vanished, until February 11th, 1992. <br /> <br /> Frances Ierfino, who was eleven years younger than Michael, had married Joe Fannelli, a garment cutter, in 1955. They had four children, and divorced in 1969. In 1972, she married Michael who legally adopted the children in 1974. This was his first marriage. The year they married, Michael arranged for an imposing, four bed, four bath brick and stone Colonial to be built in the exclusive Bayside Gables complex in Queens. For some strange reason, with all the wealth in the family, Frances worked part-time as a computer data entry operator at Liz Roberts Apparel in Manhattan, and even stranger, as a part-time counter help at The Bagel Club on 35th Street, in Bayside.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:left;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236981901,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />At 5’8” and 200lbs in weight, Michael Pappadio (left) was a plug of a man, physically and mentally strong, and someone who did not openly display fear or physical discomfort. Michael handled all the household finances. When anyone needed money, he gave it to them. He was a domineering personality, whose word was never questioned. When anyone asked about his work, he simply told them he was employed in the garment district. He had four different telephone lines installed in his home, and they seemed to ring non-stop every day. <br /> <br /> One of seven brothers, he was born on May 14th, 1922, in New York, and spent a lot of his life working in and around the garment industry, based largely in mid-town Manhattan. He also spent a lot of his life working in and around the Mafia, in particular, the group known on record as the Luchese crime family. <br /> <br /> New York’s garment district and related industries were for many years controlled by the New York mob, and the Luchese family, according to some sources, had primary rights to the district, along with the Gambino family. This was exercised by their hold over the trucking industry, a vital lifeline into and out of the area, and the way they manipulated the unions controlling the thousands of people employed in the business.<br /> <br /> The Luchese family had their roots in the garment district, going back over 50 years.<br /> Following the death of Jewish gangster Arnold Rothstein in 1928, his garment rackets were inherited by Lepke Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro. By the early 1930s, Tommy Luchese, working under Tommaso Gagliano, (who headed up the old 107th Street mob,) as his under boss, was exerting a major stranglehold on the district, through his political manoeuvring with Tammany Hall leader Jimmy Hinds, and indirectly though his contacts in mayor William O’Dyers office. Using men like Jimmy Plumeri, Johnny Dioguardi and Joe Stracci, Luchese filled the vacuum created when Buchalter and Shapiro died.<br /> <br /> Tommy Luchese controlled Champion Trucking, one of the biggest hauliers operating in the district and along with Plumeri’s Ell-Gee Carriers Corporation and Barton Trucking, dominated the movement of goods in and out of the area.<br /> <br /> The garment industry is divided essentially into two parts: the jobbers who design and sell the garments, and the contractors who assemble and sew the apparel. The bulk of the products were made-up in Chinatown, so there was a constant movement back and forth between the garment district located mainly between 34th and 39th Streets and the makers located south of Canal Street, three miles down the island. The trucking operation was the life-blood of the business, connecting the heart (the district) to the limbs (Chinatown.) Whoever controlled the trucks controlled the garment industry, which by the 1950s was employing more than 300,000 workers.<br /> <br /> In 1962, Luchese’s daughter, Frances, married Thomas, the eldest son of Carlo Gambino, the powerful mob boss, and this union cemented close relationships between the two families, including their interests in the garment district. Again, through control of trucking companies, as well as union control, the Gambino family became a major force alongside the Luchese family in this major New York industry.<br /> <br /> Fifteen years later on August 22nd, 1977, Women’s Wear Daily, the ‘Bible’ of the rag trade began a series of articles exposing Mafia influence and control among the apparel manufacturers, trucking companies servicing them and unions representing the workers. <br /> <br /> It leads off:<br /> <br /> ‘The Mafia: Seventh Avenue’s Silent Partner called New York’s multibillion dollar industry their thing, because virtually every piece of clothing made here is touched by the hands, or the money, or the influence of organized crime.’<br /> <br /> The articles explained how the industry was controlled by the mob through loan sharking, shakedowns for labour peace and professional hijackings.<br /> <br /> And this is how things stood in1989.<br /> <br /> Cosa Nostra profits from the industry managed by the Luchese family, belonged solely to the official bosses, the permanent administration members as recognized by the Commission or ruling body, of the mob. Acting bosses, captains and soldiers were not allowed to personally earn from these sources without permission from the head of the Luchese crime family, who at this time was Vittorio Amuso.<br /> <br /> Michael Pappadio had for many years been an inducted member of Cosa Nostra, getting his stripe, or admission into Cosa Nostra, sometime between 1974 and 1977. He wasn’t the only member of his biological family to have been seduced by the lure of easy money and the power of being a wise guy. His elder brother, by eight years, Andimo, also know by his quant nickname, Pop Wilson,’ had served the Luchese family for many years, until he was blasted to death by a shotgun outside his home in Lido Beach on September 25th 1976. A close friend and confident of Tommy Luchese himself, Andimo had been involved in one of the boss’s many legitimate business ventures, serving as vice-president of Bal-Fran Blouse Company, located at 130 West 46th Street in the garment district, between 1947 and 1950, and Ann-Lynn Sportswear at West 35th Street. Andimo had risen through the ranks to be powerful enough to apparently sit on the board of directors of the mob family, a group referred to as ’the administration.’ He was also very tight with many powerful Cosa Nostra figures, including Vito Genovese, who replaced Frank Costello as the head of their family, in 1957. He was even indicted on the drug rap that snared <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/get-the-right-man-how-the-fbn">Genovese</a> and another group of mobsters in 1958, although he was fortunate to avoid prosecution in this case.<br /> <br /> His murder was never solved. Some sources claimed he was killed by Carmine Galante because he had been trying to muscle in on some of the Bonanno crime family mobster’s gambling and loan sharking activities. Other sources believed his killing was ordered by the Luchese family boss of the time, Tony Corallo, who feared Andimo was plotting a coup against him.<br /> <br /> Michale Pappadio was charged with the responsibility of managing the Luchese’s family’s interests in the garment district, his elder brother’s main focus prior to his murder. Michael had been ‘in place’ for many years, taking over the position on the death of his brother, and as such, was one of the most powerful crime figures in the area. Not only did he milk huge revenues out of this bustling commercial centre in mid town Manhattan, he also operated a very lucrative loan sharking business among the teeming streets, one that grossed millions of dollars each year. <br /> <br /> A classic way in which gangsters like Pappadio sapped money out of the area was a ‘bust out,’ a bankruptcy fraud. In one such example, he along with two associates, and legitimate garment operators, incorporated a firm called Fashion Page. In 1975, when the firm’s business began to decline, the associates made a fictitious loan to the company of $275,000. Shortly afterwards, a fire destroyed the business. Most of the insurance money, over $300,000, went to pay off this loan, rather than the numerous creditors of the business.<br /> <br /> Michael Pappadio had a major say in the corruption of all industry operations that would benefit his superiors, including union control, trucking, cutting rooms, suppliers, etc. He had worked hard and successfully, generating massive revenues in his years managing the garment centre business, as well as developing majority or partial interest in at least twelve garment manufacturing companies, but his downfall and ultimate death came about because of his origins in the Luchese crime family.<br /> <br /> Vittorio Amuso and his right hand man, a psychotic killer called Anthony Casso, who were running the crime family in 1989, came from the western Brooklyn faction and because of this, were regarded with suspicion and resentment by the Harlem/Bronx cell which had traditionally ruled the family. There is confusion as to what position Michael Pappadio actually had in the Luchese’s at this time. Some sources claim he was a capo or crew boss in his own right, others that he was a soldier or simply an associate in the crew under Alphonse D’Arco.<br /> <br /> The origins of the Luchese family, sometime near the beginning of the 20th Century, began in the teeming streets of East Harlem, centred on and around 107th Street. Michael Pappadio was originally from this section of the family, and as a result, became one of the targets earmarked for early retirement by Amuso and Casso as they attempted to solidify their hold over the family, once they had wrested control of it following the imprisonment in 1985 of Anthony Corallo, the family boss since the early 1970s.<br /> <br /> In 1986, Corallo knowing he would spend the rest of his life behind bars, made his mind up and decided on a replacement. He chose a senior capo, Anthony ’Buddy’ Luongo to be his successor, and passed the word down to the troops. At least that’s one of the theories that exist. Another is that Corallo sent word out from prison that he was considering this selection. Either way, it was enough. One night in December 1986, Luongo kissed his wife goodbye in their Bronx home, and told her he was off to meet with some friends in Brooklyn. He never returned home. It’s surmised that he was lured into an ambush and killed either by Amuso or some of his aides. The body was disposed of and no trace of him has ever been found.<br /> <br /> Heresy information subsequently confirmed that the killing had taken place.<br /> <br /> Vincent ‘Fish’ Cafaro, a soldier in the Genovese crime family, gave evidence before a Congressional Committee on Organized Crime in 1988. <br /> <br /> This is part of his statement:<br /> <br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">I also know Vic Amuso who succeeded Buddy Luongo as boss of the Luchese family. I remember discussing Luongo and Amuso with Ralp the General (Ralph Tutino,) a Luchese associate who was recently convicted in New York on federal drug charges. In December, 1986, Ralph told me ‘Buddy’s missing-he had an appointment in Brooklyn with little Vic (meaning Amuso) and he never came back.’ A few days later, Ralph told me that Eddie Coco, ’Mac’ (Mariano Nacaluso) and Vic Amuso were running things for the Luchese family. Luongo was never heard from again. Sammy Santora (at that time the under boss of the Genovese family-not to be confused with Salvatore Santoro, under boss of the Luchese family) later told me that Luongo had been murdered and that he believed that the ‘guy from Brooklyn’ was responsible. I know the ‘guy from Brooklyn’ to be Vic Amuso. The then consigliere of the Luchese family, Eddie Coco is the power behind Amuso. Even though he is the boss, Vic takes counsel from Coco.</span><br /> <br /> A few weeks after Luongo’s disappearance, Tony Corallo was being urged by his family’s administration to sort out the boss replacement situation, with most of the agitation coming from the Brooklyn crew that had been run by ‘Buddy.’ The under boss of the family, Salvatore ‘Tom Mix’ Santora, had grave reservations about Amuso, but was himself in prison, so had little control over the course of events. <br /> <br /> A street thug and major heroin trafficker, Vittorio Amuso was a big earner for the family, and this, as much as anything else, finally persuaded Corallo to endorse the promotion. It would be Tony Corallo’s last decision regarding the family he had served for almost fifty years. And the worst he ever made.<br /> <br /> In due course, Amuso appointed Anthony Casso as his chief aide. Together, like Bill and Ben the demolition men, or maybe more aptly, ’Dumb and Dumber,’ they would effectively almost destroy one of the tightest, best run and efficient Cosa Nostra families in New York, which at this time had perhaps 120 plus made men, and hundreds of associates.<br /> <br /> The power base of the family, long cemented in Harlem and the Bronx, swung over to the Brooklyn faction, by far the most violent and unpredictable bunch of thugs and killers in the clan, with Anthony Casso as perhaps the worst by far. They operated mostly out of Bensonhurst, a small, compact community of mainly blue-collar workers, situated directly north of Coney Island. It’s densely populated three square miles contained thousands of Italian-Americans who considered themselves lucky to live in one of the last New York areas offering wood-burning ovens for pie-making in commercial pizza kitchens.<br /> <br /> Vittorio ‘Little Vic’ Amuso, who was also nicknamed ‘Jesse,’ was a short, slim man of unassuming appearance, but like so many of his kind, very dangerous when scratched. In his early days he had acted as bodyguard and chauffeur to Carmine Tramunti, a.k.a. ‘Mr Gribbs’ who took over the family leadership after the death of Tommy Luchese, and prior to Tony Corallo. <br /> <br /> Moving rapidly upwards on his career path, by the time he was 33, Amuso was a big time heroin dealer, like so many of his peers in the Luchese family. Parlaying his drug revenues into loan sharking, he was soon developing a reputation as a major earner for the family, possibly the highest accolade a mobster could aim for. His rocketing progress came to a temporary halt when he was arrested in 1977 for importing heroin from Bangkok, Thailand. By 1987 he was solidly entrenched, running the Brooklyn crew under Luongo. He lived with his wife Barbara in Howard Beach in Queens. A close neighbour and friend was John Gotti who lived just three minutes to the south by car. <br /> <br /> As he assumed control of the family, Amuso turned more and more to Sidney Lieberman, a personal friend and Luchese associate, concerning matters in the garment industry, and Pappadio and Lieberman began more and more attempting to undermine each other in their dealings with the new administration.<br /> <br /> Michael was using his brother Fred to help him run the complex and demanding business of supervising the family’s garment business, following his stroke in 1982, and Lieberman began a campaign to undermine Michael’s standing in the family, claiming he was hiding over 50 businesses away from the family for his own benefit, and had earned $15 million that Amuso was unaware of. Michael responded by denying it all, and pointing out, quite rightly that Lieberman, being Jewish, could never be ‘made’ as he himself had and that the administration should always support a member over an outsider.<br /> <br /> A meeting called by Amuso in early 1989, was held in the Cleveland Place, Greenwich Village apartment of a Luchese mobster called Angelo ‘Shorty’ DiPaolo. Michael attended accompanied by Alphonse D’Arco. Also in attendance, were Anthony Casso and Michael’s brother Fred. In a violent and heated confrontation, Amuso demoted Michael from his job in the garment industry, demanding he handed over all record books he was maintaining that involved details on the companies and unions that the family controlled. The meeting ended with Michael storming off, vowing to stay on the job, irrespective of Amuso’s dictates. The boss warned Pappadio that if he persisted, he would issue instructions to have him killed. But like a man with a death wish, Michael Pappadio continued to involve himself in the day-to-day running of the family’s garment district affairs.<br /> <br /> His overheads were high-the $2 million Queen’s house; an apartment at 35 Park Avenue, Manhattan; a condo in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a house in the Hampton’s; the cars, Haydesa Severo, the housekeeper-the list seemed endless. Although getting on in years and a semi-invalid, Michael like so many of his fellow mobsters, was drive by the need to keep on making money, the Holy Grail of Cosa Nostra everywhere.<br /> <br /> Al D’Arco met with him on several occasions during March and April, but was unable to persuade him to accept Amuso’s edict. It seemed the die had been cast. Literally. <br /> <br /> In early April, Amuso convened another meeting, this one at the Le Parc Lounge on Rockaway Parkway, in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Present were D’Arco, Casso, Salvatore Avellino a capo in the family, and former chauffer and close confident of now jailed ex-boss Tony Corallo, and his brother Carmine, a soldier in the family. They listened while Vic announced his decision: Michael Pappadio had to go.<br /> <br /> Amuso handed over the working details of the hit on Michael Pappadio to Anthony Casso, a serial killer with possibly dozens of victims to his credit. A man who loved his work, he sat down and prepared a killing plan. Weapons were to be procured along with a body bag, and it was decided to lure Pappadio to a meeting at Crown Foods, a bakery manufacturer, on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens where he would be killed. The body would be disposed of, and he would vanish as though he had never existed. A classic mob hit scenario, one that had been repeated over and over again, for generations.<br /> <br /> The clip was to be carried out on a Saturday morning. The business would be closed over the week-end, so it would be safe and secure to carry out the killing and then dispose of Pappadio’s corpse.<br /> <br /> On that Saturday morning in May, Salvatore Avellino rang Michael and they arranged to meet outside the Great Bay Diner. They were standing talking, shooting the breeze, when Carmine Avellino pulled up in a blue Lincoln Town Car. It is not know what reason was given for Michael to go along to Crown Foods, but he must have felt comfortable with the arrangement to get in the car and travel south across Queens.<br /> <br /> At the bakery, a business owned by Carmine Avellino,( now a lube and auto repair shop,) Al D’Arco and one of the soldiers in his crew, Georgie Zappola, waited to carry out the killing. Zappola, a dyed-in-the-wool hoodlum, whose father and uncle had both been murdered by the mob in 1981, still lusted after the honour of being a ‘made man.’ D’Arco was carrying a copper wire cable wrapped in blue insulation tape, and Zappola was holding a .22 revolver. As Carmine Avellino led Michael through the bakery towards the rear office area, D’Arco sprang out from behind a pillar and started bashing Michael around the head with the makeshift sap. To everyone’s surprise, the man remained standing, blood streaming from his face. He screamed out: ‘Why are you hitting me?’<br /> <br /> Zappola stepped up, presented the revolver and shot Pappadio. The bullet actually ricocheted off his head, striking a door-frame, and amazingly the man remained standing, holding his face between his hands. Zappola then pulled out a snub-nose .38 calibre revolver and shot Michael again in the head. Unbelievably, he still remained on his feet, his legs, now spread wide, to support his dying body, while his three killers stood around him like wild dogs baiting a wounded bear. And then slowly, he sank to his knees, and toppled over, collapsing onto the floor.<br /> <br /> The three men stood there, in that empty warehouse, adrenaline pumping, bathed in sweat, the blue haze of gunshots hanging in the air, dust motes dancing through the beams of spring sunshine that shafted through the overhead windows, the smell of cordite mixing with the smell of yeast and flour, the broken body sprawled at their feet, pumping blood across the concrete floor.<br /> <br /> It could have been a scene from a Tarantino movie.<br /> <br /> Later giving evidence as a federal witness, D’Arco said:<br /> <br /> ‘There was a big mess, and lots of blood on the floor and walls. Everywhere.’<br /> <br /> They checked to make sure he was really dead, and Carmine Avellino searched his clothing, removing a thick wad of money and an old wallet. Amuso had convinced himself that Michael had turned and become an informant for the FBI, and wanted evidence of this, although there in fact was none because he hadn’t. Suspecting a victim of becoming a ‘rat’ was a classic Mob subterfuge to justify the execution of an irritant within a crime family. The body was rolled into the body bag, and carried through the bakery and then loaded into the trunk of the Lincoln, which had been lined with a plastic sheet.<br /> <br /> With D’Arco driving, he and Zapola went to a secluded intersection at Alderton Street and Trotting Course Lane, close to Woodhaven Boulevard. Here, D’Arco left the car and made his way back to the bakery, (flagging a taxi on Woodhaven Boulevard,) to supervise the cleaning of the crime scene. Zappola waited with the car for the arrival from Long Island of the man who would arrange the disposal of Michael Pappadio’s body. It was subsequently cremated, and the ashes scattered somewhere in the greater New York area.<br /> <br /> Alphonse D’Arco eventually made his way home, to his apartment at 21 Spring Street in Little Italy, Manhattan, where he removed all his clothes, cutting them into strips, including his shoes. He bundled the pieces into plastic bags, and dumped them into the apartment building’s incinerator shoot.<br /> <br /> Later in the day, he telephoned Amuso from a public telephone at the intersection of Kenmare and Mulberry Street. They talked, discreetly about the killing, and Amuso finished the conversation by saying:<br /> <br /> ‘Grazie, ai fatto bene’ which translated into English meant, ‘Thanks, you did well.’ <br /> <br /> Three years later, on a cold, miserable spring day in 1992, Frances Pappadio learned some of the details of her husband’s brutal killing.<br /> <br /> Sitting in her comfortable and luxurious home in Bayside, surrounded by her four children-son Michael, and daughters Patricia, Michelle and Jose- with her sister Dolores Saco busy organizing coffee and tea for everyone, she listened as FBI Special Agent Lucian J. Gandolfo told her what the agency had learned about her husband’s death from Al D’Arco. The day before, she had been visited by Agent Gandolfo and Agent Sharon L. Bonville and told that the FBI had information confirming that her husband was in fact dead, and not simply a missing person. She had asked them to return the following day when she would call her children around her and confront the awful news as a family.<br /> <br /> Frances Pappadio claimed she was never aware of her husband’s mob connection. Michael kept his biological family and business family life completely separate. Her thoughts and feelings as the background and fate of her husband were revealed, can only be imagined. After seventeen years of marriage to a man she thought was a successful businessman, she discovered her husband had been prosperous all right, but in a profession she could never have dreamt of.<br /> <br /> On the same day, February 12th, six miles across town in Jackson Heights, Michael’s brother Fred, was also being interviewed by an agent of the FBI, in his modest row house on a tree-lined street.<br /> <br /> He refused to answer questions without his attorney present, but admitted that unlike his brother, he was not involved in ‘that life.’ Special Agent John Flanagan knew of course that Fred had been present at the meeting on Cleveland Place, when Vittorio Amuso ‘chased’ his brother from the garment industry, and that Fred must have known the inevitability of the events that would eventually unfold, almost certainly resulting in his brother’s death. When he had called with his cousins that day in 1989 to the house in Bayside, to sit and talk with his sister-in-law, he surely knew it was all over, and that Michael had gone for good.<br /> <br /> In the twisted and devious philosophy of Cosa Nostra, family members are dispensable as long as The Family carries on maintaining its momentum.<br /> <br /> Although the ultimate fate of Michael Pappadio was resolved, his family will forever be tortured by the knowledge of his final moments and unresolved resting place.<br /> <br /> Like so many mob murders, the mysterious disappearance of Michael Pappadio would have remained just that, except for information revealed by the man from the Luchese family who knew the answers to many of their secrets-Alphonse D’Arco. He had helped to set it up and carry it out. Michael was just one of many victims who were sacrificed to the ambition of this man over the years, as he schemed and manoeuvred up the corporation ladder of the Mafia underworld.<br /> <br /> D’Arco was one of the highest ranking Cosa Nostra defectors when he rolled and came in from the cold in September 1991. Born in Brooklyn in 1932, near the Naval Yards, he had been involved with the Luchese crime family from his teenage years. <br /> His childhood, D'Arco once recalled, was ‘like being in the forest and all the trees were the dons and the organized crime guys.’ A small, balding, bespectacled inconspicuous man, he looked more like a bank clerk than a mobster. He started hanging around Amuso and the Carnarsie crew of the Luchese family, and at 29 went to prison for five years for fencing stolen stock certificates<br /> <br /> He was made relatively late in life in 1982, by the boss himself, Anthony Corallo, in a kitchen in a house in the Bronx, when he was just turned fifty, and had taken over as capo or crew chief from Paul Vario when he died in 1988. Shortly after he was given his button, he was arrested, and pled out on a drug trafficking charge, going back into prison for two years. He was earning $10,000 a week on his loan sharking book, which he had inherited from Vario, and his tributes from his crew of eleven men and dozens of associates was thousands of dollars every week. <br /> <br /> Amuso had transferred Michael Pappadio into this crew from his Harlem based one, in order to keep a close eye on him.<br /> <br /> The reason for D’Arco’s defection speaks volumes about how much the once powerful Luchese crime family had deteriorated in the few years that its control had passed out of the hands of Tony Corallo. In a murderous campaign generated by Amuso and Casso to eliminate anyone they suspected of disloyalty they arranged the murders of nine men, tried, unsuccessfully to wipe out the head of their New Jersey crew along with his son and another aide, and organized the killing, again unsuccessfully, of capo Pete Chiodo,( a man Amuso had himself sponsored into the family,) although he was shot twelve times in the attempt, tried to kill his sister, and finally were setting up a hit on D’Arco himself, when he became aware of the danger he was in and turned himself into the FBI. At one time, Casso showed D’Arco a list of 49 names he wanted eliminated, and almost half of them were members of the Luchese family! In his de-briefing by the FBI when Casso offered to become an informant, he actually admitted his role in 36 killings.<br /> <br /> A classic hit was the one on Anthony DiLapi. An old school Bronx based soldier, he had been a force in the garment district under Tony Corallo as a Teamster’s local union leader. On his release from prison in 1986, he was summonsed to a meet with Amuso. Afraid that as a Bronx based member of the family, he would be facing problems with Amuso, he fled New York and finished up in Los Angeles, where he worked as a second-hand car salesman. In February 1990 he was shot dead in the car park of his apartment building by Joe D’Arco, the 19 year old son of Al, who crossed America in order to get his button in the mob by earning his ‘bones’ in a hit for the family boss.<br /> <br /> Casso a man so twisted and warped, he must have walked outside his own shadow, brought Al D’Arco to the edge, and in doing so, set in motion the events that helped<br /> law enforcement agencies bring down Amuso and Casso himself. D’Arco’s testimony at numerous trials was the final nail in many mob coffins. It was at D’Arco’s de-briefing by his FBI handlers that the details of Michael Pappadio’s murder came to light.<br /> <br /> "Al gave them great value for the money," said his defence lawyer Edward Hayes. "D'Arco is a lunatic, but he has a story." <br /> <br /> And what a story. For ten years, starting in the court action against Vittorio Amuso, he testified at numerous trials against the mob, including the 1997 one against Vincent Gigante, head of the Genovese crime family.<br /> <br /> In 2002, he took down his shingle as mob informant extraordinaire and retired into the obscurity of the Witness Protection Program. <br /> <br /> Salvatore and Carmine Avellino were both indicted on various racketeering charges in the early 1990s and served significant prison time. They were both charged in the murders of the Long Island garbage haulers Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow which occurred later in the same year that Michael Pappadio was murdered.<br /> <br /> Georgie Zapolla is currently incarcerated at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex in Pennsylvania. His projected release date is March 3, 2014.<br /> <br /> Vittoria Amuso and Antony Casso are both in federal prisons and will never be released.<br /> <br /> For some reason, the name of the man who disposed of Michael’s body was never disclosed.<br /> <br /> In the end, Michael Pappadio died not so much because he underestimated the evil of Amuso and Casso, rather he overestimated his ability to swim with the fish, even though they were piranhas. His belief in the sanctity of the rules of Cosa Nostra seduced him into assuming his crime family position was inviolable. An old school Mafioso he was simply a babe in the woods when he was faced with the terrible twins, whose lust for money and mob power, was greater by far than their observance of the rules they were supposed to live by.<br /> <br /> The tenet that absolute power corrupts absolutely could have been written as a job description for Amuso and Casso, two men who somehow could never understand that fear and loathing are really no substitute for grace underfire, but who most certainly would have understood the saying of Soviet revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin:<br /> <br /> ‘A lie told often enough becomes the truth.’<br /> </p>
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Profile: Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/lucchese-associate-henry-hill
2010-11-19T17:00:00.000Z
2010-11-19T17:00:00.000Z
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<p><br /> Henry Hill is probably the most famous mob rat of them all. Immortalized by Martin Scorsese's movie 'Goodfellas' in wich Henry Hill was played by Ray Liotta. Thanks to this movie Hill's life in the witness protection program isn't as boring as he had anticipated at the end of the movie 'Goodfellas'. He's doing interviews and appears on TV shows, all thanks to his shady past and the great movie made about his life.<br /> <br /> Henry Hill grew up in the Brooklyn area dominated by Lucchese Crime Family capo Paul Vario. Paul Vario was one of the more respected capos in the Lucchese crime family. He controlled a lot of the family's rackets and also had a number of criminal innovations that returned even more profit, including a number of chop shops throughout Brooklyn where the stolen parts were sold on to crooked auto suppliers and service centers.<br /> <br /> Henry was fascinated by the gangsters and mafiosi and from the moment he saw them wanted to become just like them. But he couldn't become like them, Henry couldn't become a full fledged Mafia member because he wasn't Italian. His mother was, but his father wasn't. His father was Irish and becuase of that Henry could never become a made guy. But not being Italian didn't stop Henry from becoming a close associate and friend of Paul Vario and his crew. In his teenage years Henry would run errands for Vario and his crew, and eventuelly after becoming best friends with Jimmy "The Gent" Burke and Tommy DeSimone, moved on from running errands to more serious crimes like truck hijacking.<br /> <br /> Henry was married to Karen who was the mother of his two children. Henry and Karen had a love hate relationship as Henry lived up to his gangster image having a number of affairs and girlfriends, staying out long nights drinking and partying, playing cards and just doing the usual things that wiseguys did in Brooklyn around that time.<br /> <br /> After beating up a gambler who refused to pay his debts who's sister happened to work at the FBI as a typist, Henry was sentenced to jail for ten years. Once Inside Henry soon realized that prison time for wiseguys was different compared to that of the normal convicts. The mobsters were treated with respect by everyone from convicts to the prison guards, who were paid off in order to make the time a little easier for the mafiosi and their associates. Inside Henry made some contacts in the narcotics trade which he would soon seek out upon his release.<br /> <br /> His release came after four and a quarter years thanks to Paul Vario who set up a dummy job for him, which also helped when he began his probation. It wasn't long before Henry began to use his narcotics contacts from prison and began shifting large amounts of cocaine from Brooklyn to Pittsburgh even though Paul Vario vehemently forbid any of his crew from dealing drugs. But the money came rolling in and soon Henry needed help as his operation grew. So he cut his two best pals Jimmy Burke and Tommy DeSimone in on the action. Things started going bad when Henry began using his own product and became very sloppy as he was arrested and the whole chain including his contacts in Pittsburgh was busted with him.<br /> <br /> Now Henry found himself in a sticky position. Paul Vario had banned the use or distribution of drugs because he was afraid of what the government could do with a drug charge. So Henry would be killed if he would turn to Vario. On the other hand a life on the run with two young children isn't really an option and so Henry Hill became a government witness. He ratted out his best pal Jimmy "The Gent" Burke and his capo Paul Vario, who the feds had wanted to get for a long time. And because of the wider range of rackets he had under his belt the feds valued Henry's testimony highly, as they knew all to well that he could put Vario away for probably the rest of his life.<br /> <br /> Henry Hill enjoyed the fame the movie Goodfellas brought him. He wrote several more books and regularly appeared on Howard Stern's radio show. But Henry started using drugs again, and again got in trouble with the law. In March 2005 he was arrested in Nebraska where he worked at an Italian restaurant as a chef, when drug paraphernalia (glass tubes with cocaine and methamphetamine residue) were found in his luggage at the airport.</p>
<p><strong>On June 12, 2012, Henry Hill died in a California hospital. For the full story <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/goodfella-henry-hill-dead-at-69">click here</a>.</strong></p>
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Profile: Gambino crime family capo George DeCicco
https://gangstersinc.org/profiles/blogs/gambino-capo-george-decicco
2010-11-06T16:30:00.000Z
2010-11-06T16:30:00.000Z
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<p><br /> By David Amoruso<br /> Posted: February 1, 2007 - Updated on October 12, 2014<br /><br /> On January 30, 2007 the FBI arrested several mobsters and charged them with racketeering, bribery, extortion, money laundering, loan sharking and bank fraud. Among the arrested were mobsters of the <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-crime-family-overview">Gambino</a> and Lucchese Crime Families, as well as two mafiosi from Sicily. The Feds’ biggest catch is Gambino capo George DeCicco, 77, pictured above.<br /> <br /> <img style="float:right;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9236977672,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="" />George DeCicco is the older brother of murdered Gambino underboss Frank DeCicco. Frank DeCicco was a capo under <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-paul-castellano">Paul Castellano</a> when he was approached by <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-underboss-salvatore">Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano</a> (picture on the right, with John Gotti) to help to set up the murder of their powerful boss. Gravano got the request to talk to DeCicco from <a href="http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blogs/gambino-boss-john-gotti-sr">John Gotti</a>, who was assembling a power base to make a move for the throne. DeCicco joined Gotti and his men and gave them their most useful tip. He told them he and two other capos were having a meeting with Castellano on December 16th at Sparks Steak House. Gotti put his hit team in place and together with Gravano waited in a car nearby, Frank DeCicco sat inside Sparks with capo James Failla. When Castellano and underboss Tommy Bilotti arrived they were shot dead. John Gotti became boss of the Gambino Family and for his cooperation Frank DeCicco was awarded the position of underboss.<br /> <br /> On April 13, 1986 Frank DeCicco came to his end. He and Gotti were to visit Failla’s social club that day to see their troops. Gotti canceled his appearance, so DeCicco went alone. DeCicco arrived without problems but went back to his car together with Frank Bellino to get something. When they got to the car, a bomb was detonated, killing DeCicco and wounding Bellino. The whole plot was uncovered later. Genovese boss Vincent Gigante was angry with Gotti for murdering his ally Castellano. He wanted revenge, and together with the Lucchese Family set in motion the plan that was supposed to wipe out both Gotti and DeCicco. James Failla had tipped Gigante Gotti and DeCicco would make an appearance at his club. In a ackward way you could say Failla had killed DeCicco with his own ammo.<br /> <br /> George DeCicco was one of the last of John Gotti’s inner circle who had never been busted. Things are looking bleak now though. A Gambino associate has flipped on DeCicco and his crew and taped his conversations with other mobsters, including DeCicco. In one conversation DeCicco is recorded saying: “I’ll burn your eyes, did you ever screw me? Do you want me to burn your eyes out?” to the associate because he hadn’t repaid his loansharking debt to the capo.<br /> <br /> The Gambino associate decided to cooperate with the government when he made the mistake of making a promise he couldn’t keep. Gambino soldier Joseph Orlando had a girlfriend who didn’t have legal residence status. The associate told Orlando he had connections to corrupt immigration and other government officials. Orlando gave the associate $9,000 to take care of it. The associate however had no such contacts. When he failed to deliver Orlando went nuts and threatened to kill him. The associate took the threat serious and went straight to the FBI. The FBI sent in an undercover agent posing as a corrupt immigration official. All meetings Orlando and other mobsters had with this agent were recorded by the feds.<br /> <br /> The corrupt contacts didn’t just interest the Gambino Family. A Lucchese associate also saw opportunities. Together with Gambino mobsters he wanted to smuggle gold bars worth millions of dollars from the Philippines into the US.<br /> <br /> The Sicilian Mafia was another interested party. They paid $70,000 for the release of Sicilian mobster Francesco Nania. Nania was convicted in Italy for mafia-related aggravated attempted extortion, and Italian law enforcement authorities are seeking his extradition to Italy. If he is convicted, he faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison. George DeCicco and Joseph Orlando face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.</p>
<p><strong>Update</strong>: In October of 2014, George DeCicco died of natural causes. He was 85. </p>
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