"The News Archive"

[mafioso]

I want to try to post the good old stuff that can still be found on the internet.
Please add as you find, but don't clog it up with stuff we see all the time.
It will be a good reference point too.
Worth a shot?

[mafioso]

Suspected New York Mob Leaders Are Indicted in Contract Rigging


By SELWYN RAAB


Published: May 31, 1990



LEAD: Several suspected leaders in four crime families were among 15 men indicted yesterday on Federal charges that they skimmed ''tens of millions'' of dollars through a conspiracy to control awarding of window contracts at the New York City Housing Authority.

Several suspected leaders in four crime families were among 15 men indicted yesterday on Federal charges that they skimmed ''tens of millions'' of dollars through a conspiracy to control awarding of window contracts at the New York City Housing Authority.

The United States Attorney General, Dick Thornburgh, and other officials said the indictments, which were handed up in Brooklyn, were the Justice Department's most significant blow to America's traditional Mafia groups since 1986, when the hierarchies of the city's five organized-crime families were convicted of racketeering.

For more than 12 years, the indictment asserted, four of the crime families monopolized the selection of contractors for the manufacture and installation of more than one million windows. By dominating a crucial labor union and about a dozen companies, the Mafia leaders determined who would bid for most contracts to replace or install windows for the Housing Authority, the indictment said.

Federal authorities said the most prominent defendant indicted was Vincent (the Chin) Gigante, whom they identified as the boss of the Genovese crime family. The 62-year-old Mr. Gigante, who was described as a ringleader of the plot and who is often seen walking in his bathrobe and mumbling to himself in Greenwich Village, was arrested in his pajamas when agents raided his apartment in the morning. The officials said that he refused to put on street clothes.

The man whom the authoriities call the boss of the Lucchese crime family, Vittorio (Vic) Amuso, 56, was also indicted in the case, which focused on rigging bids for $142 million in window contracts since 1978.

Besides the Genovese and Lucchese families, top members of the Gambino and Colombo groups were indicted, including Peter Gotti, a brother of John Gotti, who the Justice Department says is the head of the Gambino family.

The indictment named 14 men identified by the authorities as leaders and members of the four families. A 15th defendant is a business agent of Local 580 of the Architectural and Ornamental Ironworkers Union, the union that has jurisdiction for installing windows at the authority's 318 projects.

Law-enforcement officials said Mr. Gigante and other defendants determined who would bid for most of the contracts by threatening potential competitors that if they won a contract, they would face labor problems and damage to their property. By controlling the bids, the Mafia inflated the authority's costs, the officials said.

All the defendants were accused of violating the Federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. They also were charged with separate counts of mail fraud and violating the Taft-Hartley labor law. If convicted on the RICO counts alone, each faces a prison sentence of more than 50 years.

'Closes the Cash Window'

''Today's indictment closes the cash window on this lucrative enterprise,'' Mr. Thornburgh said at a news conference. Noting that in the last six months Federal prosecutors had obtained major indictments against crime families in Chicago, Pittsburgh and New England, he said, ''We intend to keep the heat on.''

The United States Attorney in Brooklyn, Andrew J. Maloney, said he expected that the investigation would produce 50 more indictments in three to five months. After the news conference, Mr. Maloney said that ''right now we know of no involvement in this case by Housing Authority officials.''

The F.B.I.'s deputy director, Floyd I. Clarke, said yesterday's arrests ''represent the most significant multifamily indictments since the Commission Case.'' In that case in the mid 1980's, the leaders of New York City's five Mafia families were convicted and some were sentenced to prison terms of up to 100 years each. The Commission was described by the Justice Department as the Mafia's informal board of directors that resolved disputes and set policy. The Bonnano crime family was the only one not cited in yesterday's grand jury indictment.

The indictment said the defendants rigged bids for 75 percent of $191 million, or about $142 million, of the window contracts awarded since 1978 by the authority. Most of this came from Federal funds, an authority spokesman, Val Coleman said, and all the windows met the authority's requirments for ''high-grade thermal panes.''


The indictment referred only to about $2 million in illegal payoffs that were said to have been shared by the defendants through direct payments of up to $2 for each of one million windows installed since 1987. In an interview, Gregory J. O'Connell, a prosecutor in charge of the case, said, ''We can't tell exactly how much they made, but it is in the tens of millions.''

A narcotics arrest and a double murder were the main components that led to the investigation, law-enforcement officials dislcosed yesterday. Charles E. Rose, the executive assistant United States Attorney in Brooklyn, said an associate in the Genovese family, Barclay Farenga, was arrested in November 1987 for trafficking in cocaine.

Mr. Farenga, officials said, told the authorities that two murder victims had been buried in a window-manufacturing plant at 99 Scott Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The company was said to be run by Peter Savino, who the authorities said was an associate in the Genovese family.

After F.B.I. agents found the bodies, Mr. Savino was picked up and gave information about the bid rigging, Mr. Rose said. For 18 months, Mr. Savino then worked undercover for the bureau and wore a concealed microphone to gather evidence about Mafia involvement in the contracts, Mr. Rose added. Mr. Savino and Mr. Farenga are now in the witness protection program.

Eleven of the 15 men indicted yesterday were arrested in the early morning at their homes, said James M. Fox, an assistant F.B.I. director in charge of the New York City office. Mr. Amuso, who lives in Howard Beach, Queens, and who the F.B.I. says is the boss of the Lucchese family, and Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso of Brooklyn, identified as the underboss of the Lucchese group, were missing yesterday and were being sought. John (Sonny Blue) Morrissey, identified as an associate in the Lucchese family, also was missing.

Mr. Fox said the 12 who were arrested surrendered without incident.

Mr. Gigante's lawyer, Barry I. Slotnick, and Mr. Gigante's brother, the Rev. Louis R. Gigante, a Roman Catholic priest, have long maintained that Mr. Gigante is mentally ill.

Bail Hearing

At a bail hearing yesterday in Brooklyn, Federal Magistrate John L. Caden granted a defense request that Mr. Gigante be taken for psychiatric examination to St. Vincent's Hospital in Harrison in Westchester County.

Ordered held without bail by the magistrate were Benedetto (Benny) Aloi, identified by the authorities as the consiglieri, or counselor, in the Colombo family; Venero (Benny Eggs) Mangano, identified as the underboss in the Genovese family; Dominic (Baldy Dom) Canterino, identified as a Genovese family captain; Caesar Gurino, identified as an associate in the Gambino family, and Vincent (Three Fingers) Ricciardo, identified as an associate in the Colombo family.

Released on $1 million bond each were Peter Gotti, identified as a Gambino family captain; Peter (Fat Pete) Chido, identified as a Lucchese captain; Joseph Zito, identified as a Genovese captain; Dennis DeLucia, identifed as a soldier in the Colombo family; Joseph (Joe Cakes) Marion, identified as an associate in the Lucchese family, and Thomas McGowan, a business agent in Local 580.

[mafioso]

The New York Times

October 22, 1990, Monday, Late Edition - Final


By SELWYN RAAB, Special to The New York Times



Battered by aggressive investigators and weakened by incompetent leadership, most of America's traditional Mafia families appear to be fading out of existence, law-enforcement officials and independent experts say.

The Mafia remains potent in the New York City area, where officials say the mob is hard to uproot because it has five separate and large crime families, and in the suburbs of Chicago. But in most other areas, where prosecutors have to contend with only a single family, the legendary mob that once controlled entire labor unions, city governments and criminal enterprises has clearly lost its grip.

Officials say the convictions of top Mafia leaders and their hierarchies have dismantled thriving underworld organizations in Philadelphia, New Jersey, New England, New Orleans, Kansas City, Detroit, Milwaukee and St. Louis.

'The Geritol Gang'

Here in Los Angeles, investigators speak of the "Mickey Mouse Mafia" and say the mob is so enfeebled that illegal bookmakers refuse to pay it for the right to operate. In Cleveland and Denver, where Mafia gangs once flourished, officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation say each city is left with a lone mobster who was "made," or formally inducted in a secret ritual. And in New Jersey, Col. Justin Dintino, the State Police Superintendent, calls the Bruno-Scarfo group the "Geritol gang," so aged and ineffective does he find its leaders.

Many experts and officials say it is premature to write the Mafia's obituary, and they emphasize that its decline does not mean that organized crime has been banished: other groups are moving in to take the Mafia's place. In particular, Chinese international gangs called the Triads are making a strong bid to succeed the Mafia in the sophisticated crimes of large-scale gambling, loan sharking and labor racketeering.

But experts say the recent defeats of the Mafia will nevertheless mean real gains for the public, reducing the financial and social costs of rigged public contracts, of domination of labor unions like the teamsters and longshoremen, and of influence in the construction, trucking, trash-collection and garment-manufacturing industries.

Causes of Decline

While there is wide agreement that the Mafia is declining, there is much disagreement on the causes. Law-enforcement officials generally credit a long-term strategy adopted by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the early 1980's: developing cases against the top leaders of organized-crime families and relying largely on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, as a courtroom tool.

By concentrating on enterprises rather than individuals, Federal prosecutors in the last five years have removed the high commands of families through the convictions and long prison sentences of almost 100 top Cosa Nostra leaders.

The chief architect of the RICO act, G. Robert Blakey, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, admits he was surprised by its impact. "It was sort of like George Kennan's containment policy of the Soviet Union," he said. "We tried it and by God it worked."

Impact of Changed Society

But two other experts, Peter A. Lupsha and Howard Abadinsky, say demographic changes, too, have helped undermine the Mafia. Mr. Lupsha, a political scientist at the University of New Mexico and who is a consultant on organized crime for Federal and state agencies, and Mr. Abadinsky, founder of the International Association for the Study of Organized Crime, a research organization, cite these factors:

*The dispersal of white populations away from urban neighborhoods. This diminished both the Mafia's political influence, which was strongest in Italian-American sections of big cities, and the surreptitious protection that organized-crime bosses often got from the local police and political machines.

*A new generation of Mafia leaders who took control after the convictions or deaths of previous bosses and capos, or captains, but who were less competent than their predecessors.

*The disintegration of traditional Mafia loyalties, with members breaking the code of silence to become informers against leaders.

*The emergence of rival crime groups controlled by Asians, Colombians, black Americans and the Sicilian Mafia, a powerful unit that operates independently of America's Mafia or Cosa Nostra. These new groups dominate drug trafficking and illegal gambling, especially in the inner cities.

A Multinational Trend

"The real trend in organized crime today is transnational with the ability to move drugs and money across borders," Mr. Lupsha said. "The old Italian-American organized crime groups were too content with what they had and too slow to think globally."

Outside of New York and Chicago, the Mafia is an anachronism, Mr. Abadinsky said, adding: "They changed like the rest of society. The younger ones are better educated than their elders, they have more opportunities in life and they know the mob is being pounded by the Feds."

Many experts say the American Mafia lacks the nerve and ability to compete with the new underworld rivals. Ronald Goldstock, the director of New York's Organized Crime Task Force, said a high-ranking Mafia defector had bitterly told him that his crew could no longer find reliable assassins in its own ranks and had to take outside contracts.

"The new drug gangs are wild groups, and the old-timers don't want any confrontations with them," said Ralph F. Salerno, a former New York detective who is a consultant to Congressional committees on organized crime. "Moreover, west of the Mississippi, there is nothing left of the Cosa Nostra to fight anybody."

The East
Power Dwindling, But Still Strong




The largest Mafia concentration, 1,200 of about 2,000 "made" members nationwide, is in New York, Long Island, the suburbs north of the city and in Northern New Jersey. With five families, New York is the only area where so many factions have co-existed for half a century. Law-enforcement officials maintain that their campaign to eradicate the Cosa Nostra in New York is hampered by the mob's large numbers, its wide-flung illicit networks and an ample supply of recruits to fill the ranks of convicted capos and soldiers.

But since 1985, the bosses and underbosses of the five families -- Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno and Colombo -- have been slain or sentenced to long prison terms. The changing of the guards within such a short period has led to feuds, sapping the strength of every family.

The reputed bosses of the Genovese family, Vincent Gigante, and of the Lucchese family, Vittorio Amuso, along with their top lieutenants, were indicted in May on charges that they had taken part in rigging bids for $142 million in window contracts at New York's Housing Authority.

Mr. Amuso, 56, and the man the F.B.I. lists as his underboss, Anthony Casso, 50, are fugitives in another sign of the disorder in the Lucchese organization, agents said. Relatives of the 62-year-old Mr. Gigante maintain that he is mentally unfit to stand trial, but prosecutors contend that is a ruse.

In 1986, the F.B.I. identified John Gotti as the new boss of the Gambino family, the largest and most powerful Mafia family in the country, with 400 to 500 members. Since then, Mr. Gotti, 50, has twice been acquitted on separate Federal and state criminal charges.

The F.B.I., which was not involved in Mr. Gotti's earlier trials, and Justice Department officials said Mr. Gotti was the subject of new RICO investigations. The latest ones focus on his purported role as the head of a criminal enterprise, the Gambino family, and the 1985 murder of Paul Castellano, the family's previous boss, whose death cleared the way for a takeover by Mr. Gotti.

On Oct. 18, Thomas Gambino, a prominent captain in the family, was indicted on charges of masterminding a conspiracy that imposed "a mob tax" on every item manufactured in Manhattan's garment industry.

"The Gambino and Genovese families are still functioning, but their power is dwindling," said Jules J. Bonavolonta, the head of the F.B.I.'s organized-crime branch in New York. "The other three families in New York are shattered and pretty well beaten."

Based in Philadelphia, the Bruno-Scarfo family in the early 1980's was rated by law-enforcement experts as Pennsylvania's premier underworld group. The gang's gambling, loan sharking and labor rackets extended into Atlantic City, other parts of New Jersey and Delaware.

"Today they are a limping relic," said Frederick T. Martens, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Crime Commission, a state agency.

When Nicodemo Scarfo took over as boss of the family in the early 1980's, he inherited 75 "made" members and more than 500 associates. Law-enforcement officials said Mr. Scarfo's mismanagement and ruthlessness damaged the family's operations and encouraged defections. Five of Mr. Scarfo's cronies, including his nephew and his underboss, Philip Leonetti, became turncoats and are cooperating with investigators.

Mr. Scarfo, 60, along with 15 gang members, were convicted in 1988 of Federal racketeering and conspiracy charges. He was sentenced to 69 years in prison.

Officials said that Anthony Piccolo, 67, was the acting boss of the family when he and Mr. Scarfo's son were indicted on state racketeering charges in New Jersey in August. "The latest indictments have left them with about 10 active members, and the number keeps declining," Mr. Martens added.

In New Jersey, the authorities combat seven organized Cosa Nostra families; this is the most operating in any state. Besides the five New York families and the Bruno-Scarfo faction from Pennsylvania, New Jersey has an indigenous group, the DeCavalcante family.

Until this year, the suspected DeCavalcante leaders were legally unscathed. But in June, John Riggi, described by prosecutors as the boss of the DeCavalcantes, was convicted of RICO violations, including extortion and labor racketeering. He faces as many as 70 years in prison on those charges.

As part of the Bruno-Scarfo case, New Jersey prosecutors in August filed new racketeering counts against Mr. Riggi and most of the remaining reputed higher-ups in the DeCavalcante family.

For 35 years in New England, law-enforcement officials acknowledge, the Patriarca family conducted an extensive web of rackets in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Raymond L. S. Patriarca, the founder and boss of the family, died in 1984, and prosecutors say he was succeeded by his son, Raymond J. Patriarca, of Providence, R.I.

Last March, after a five-year investigation by the F.B.I., grand juries in Boston and Hartford indicted the 45-year-old Mr. Patriarca and 20 other men on RICO charges involving murder, extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking and gambling. Prosecutors said the 21 were the active leadership of the family in New England.

The F.B.I. asserted that it had penetrated the inner sanctum of the Patriarca family with an informer, who taped a secret induction ceremony in 1989. According to an affidavit, four new members burned a holy card with the image of the Patriarca family saint, pledged to uphold the code of silence and then intoned in Italian: "As burns this saint, so will burn my soul, my soul. I want to enter alive into this organization and leave it dead."

Stanley A. Twardy Jr., the United States Attorney in Connecticut, said "the backbone of organized-crime control and influence throughout New England" would be broken if the men were convicted.



The Central States
An 'Outfit' In Disarray




Chicago's traditional organized-crime family is called "The Outfit." Unlike other Cosa Nostra groups, it shuns secret rites. "They're different here," said Robert E. Walsh, the assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Chicago bureau. "Instead of a swearing-in ceremony for new members, they have a banquet in a good restaurant."

Mr. Walsh says intelligence reports place the Outfit's strength at from 100 to 150 members, compared with more than 200 five years ago. Law-enforcement officials and independent researchers say the Outfit has little influence in Chicago and now runs and manages its operations in an arc from the northern and western suburbs to southern Wisconsin.

In 1986, the Outfit's boss, 78-year-old Joseph J. Aiuppa, and most of his top lieutenants were convicted of skimming $2 million from gambling casinos in Las Vegas. The convictions and deaths of other veteran leaders, said Mr. Walsh, "left them in disarray."

The Outfit's main activities are sports bookmaking and loan sharking, conducted through suburban wireroom or gambling dens.

Sgt. Robert M. Lombardo of the Chicago police says the Outfit is divided into five gangs, with the largest one known as the Taylor Street crew.

Jerry Gladden, the chief investigator for the Chicago Crime Commission, an independent research group, said the commission had identified Sam Carlissi, 68, as the Outfit's "street boss." But police officials said the new leader is a Taylor Street veteran, John DiFronzo, 61.

Investigators said Anthony Accardo, an 84-year-old former mob leader who is considered an elder statesman, frequently visits the Chicago area from his retirement home in Palm Springs, Calif., to advise the less-experienced group.

Since the mid-1940's, Las Vegas has been an open city, a place where any Mafia family could operate and where there were no territorial rights.

But the Chicago Outfit's influence was paramount until the mid-1980's when the F.B.I. found records pinpointing how $2 million in casino winnings had been skimmed and split by Mafia leaders. The records helped convict a dozen mob chiefs and their top lieutenants in Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland and Milwaukee.

In 1986, Anthony Spilotoro, the Outfit's main emissary in Las Vegas, was found beaten to death in an Indiana cornfield. Law-enforcement officials believe the killing resulted from mob feuds in Chicago and that the Outfit's power in Las Vegas ebbed further after Mr. Spilotoro's slaying.

Preston E. Hubbs, the Las Vegas Police Commander, said no member of the mob had succeeded Mr. Spilotoro, who oversaw Chicago interests in bookmaking, loan sharking and casino skimming. "We think we have pretty well knocked them out of the casinos," said Edward J. Jenkins, the assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Las Vegas bureau.

Organized crime's roots in Las Vegas go back to the 1940's, when Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, a New York-based gangster, operated from a casino wing with secret doors and escape tunnels. That vestige of Mafia history will soon vanish. The wing, now part of the Flamingo Hilton Hotel, is to be demolished and replaced with a swimming pool.

At the age of 80, Carlos Marcello is free on parole. But the crime group that he headed in New Orleans for 35 years is in tatters.

"The all-powerful Godfather is gone, and so is his organization," said Rafael C. Goyenche, the managing director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission in New Orleans, a civic crime-monitoring agency.

New Orleans, with a 100-year history of organized crime gangs, had the oldest Mafia tradition in the country. Mr. Marcello, experts said, controlled the city's Mafia for 30 years until his conviction in 1983 for trying to bribe a Federal judge. After six and a half years in prison, and in poor health, he was paroled last year.

With about 12 members, Mr. Marcello headed the smallest Cosa Nostra family in the country and the organization disintegrated after his conviction. "He didn't make any new members; he didn't train anyone" Mr. Salerno explained. "He wanted to run everything himself."

Peter Marcello, a 28-year-old nephew of Mr. Marcello, had visions of resuscitating the family's underworld fortunes, investigators say. But in July Peter Marcello was arrested and indicted on Federal drug-trafficking charges.

For almost three decades in Kansas City, Mo., the River Quay, the fruit and vegetable market area near the Missouri River, was headquarters for one of the Midwest's oldest Mafia groups, the Civella family. Nicholas Civella presided over the family's gambling and loan-sharking activities until he died of natural causes in 1983.

Later, Roy H. Williams, the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, testified that he was controlled for two decades by Mr. Civella, who forced him to arrange union pension-fund loans to members of the mob and their allies.

Mr. Civella's brother Carl, now 80, took over briefly as the head of the family before he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for participating in the Las Vegas skimming.

The F.B.I. says Carl Civella's son, Anthony, is the boss of a reorganized underworld family. "We have the remnants of the Civella organization still in business," said Frank J. Storey, special agent in charge of the F.B.I. office in Kansas City. "They are nowhere near as powerful as they were in Carl's time. We don't believe they have any influence or control over labor unions."

Anthony Civella operates out of restaurants and clubs in the North End. As another sign of changing times for the Mafia, the old Civella headquarters near the riverfront will be razed to make way for a shopping mall.



The West
In Splinters, With No 'Brain'




"All the muscle is out of them," Bob Morehouse, supervisor of California's Organized Crime Bureau, said of the Cosa Nostra here in Los Angeles and in Southern California.

Thomas R. Parker, the assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s office here, added: "They've been stripped of what they had for years. All that is left is a couple of splinter groups without a real brain or an organization."

Federal and state officials say the last known boss of the Southern California Mafia was Peter J. Milano, 64. Mr. Milano, according to investigators, took control of a small group in 1983 or 1984 and tried to revive the mob's fortunes in Southern California through narcotics and exacting street taxes, or tribute, from bookmakers and loan sharks. But two members recruited by Mr. Milano became Government informers, and in 1988 their undercover work led to the convictions of Mr. Milano, a brother, and six other men identified as the last functioning Mafia gang in Southern California.

"No one has replaced Milano," said Capt. Stuart J. Finck, the commander of the organized-crime intelligence division in the Los Angeles Police Department.

With the local Mafia apparently knocked out, Federal and state investigators said an increasing number of Cosa Nostra members from the East had been seen recently.

Open City of Las Vegas Is Closing




Since the mid-40's, Las Vegas has been an open city, a place where any Mafia family could operate and where there were no territorial rights.

But the Chicago Outfit's influence was paramount until the mid-1980's when the F.B.I. found records pinpointing how $2 million in casino winnings had been skimmed and split by Mafia leaders. The records helped convict a dozen mob chiefs and their top lieutenants in Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland and Milwaukee.

In 1986. Anthony Splotoro, the Outfit's main emissary in Las Vegas, was found beaten to death in an Indiana cornfield. Law enforcement officials believe the killing resulted from mob feuds in Chicago and that the Outfit's power in Las Vegas ebbed further after Mr. Spilotoro's slaying.

Preston E. Hubbs, the Las Vegas Police Commander, said no member of the mob had succeeded Mr. Spilotoro, who oversaw Chicago interests in bookmaking, loan sharking and casino skimming. "We think we have pretty well knocked them out of the casinos," said Edward J. Jenkins, the assistant special agent in charge of the F.B.I.'s Las Vegas bureau.

Organized crime's roots in Las Vegas go back to the 1940's, when Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel, a New York-based gangster, operated from a casino wing with secret doors and escape tunnels. That vestige of Mafia history will soon vanish. The wing, now part of the Flamingo Hilton Hotel, is to be demolished and replaced with a swimming pool.

[mafioso]

Mob Story

How a crime family turned dysfunctional


Friday, May 9, 2003

BY ROBERT RUDOLPH
Star-Ledger Staff


They were once the epitome of Mafia propriety. Their patriarch was the model for Marlon Brando's Godfather. His successor was an impeccable dresser known to chew out underlings who wore the wrong thing to a family gathering or wake.

But in the past 10 years, the DeCavalcante crime family - New Jersey's only home-grown Mafia clan - has become a wretched parody of itself.

Its founder - Simone Rizzo DeCavalcante, better known as Sam the Plumber - is dead. The man who followed in his footsteps, John Riggi, has been behind bars for years with no hopes of release. Riggi's son-in-law has turned informant, and the family, racked by internal strife and paranoia, has been slaughtering its own people.

"It's certainly not the A-Team," said Kevin McCarthy, the former head of the U.S. Organized Crime Strike Force in New Jersey, and the man who sent Riggi to jail.

In fact, tape recordings of behind-the-scenes gossip among mobsters have caught them comparing themselves not to the tradition-bound "Godfather" families but to the beer-bellied street goons of "The Sopranos."

A federal racketeering trial in New York has spotlighted the degree to which the family fortunes have declined. Many of the bosses who turned "rat" are detailing a series of bungled murders, inept conspiracies and petty jealousies that turned the family into a virtual viper pit.

According to testimony in the trial, which began Feb. 2, the family gunned down a former newspaper editor in the street to try to win the respect of New York crime czar John Gotti, and they killed one of their own officers because he was so good at his job they were afraid he would pull off a coup.

They even executed their own boss after they found out he was gay. "Nobody's going to respect us if we have a gay homosexual boss sitting down discussing business with other families," Anthony Capo, a mob soldier- turned-informant, explained in court.

The murders became so frequent, another mobster testified, that the family had to call in its own disposal service - a guy known as "the Undertaker" who would pick up dead bodies and take them to his property in upstate New York.

Robert Buccino, the former chief of organized crime investigations for the state, said, "They're killing off their own army."

The scale of murder plotting was probably the broadest since Lucchese crime family boss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso grew so frustrated with the antics of the New Jersey branch of his family that he issued a blanket order to "kill 'em all." (The orders were never carried out, and Casso, charged with a later murder, was found hiding out in the home of a former high school classmate in Budd Lake. He later turned informant.)

According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Miriam Rocah, the DeCavalcante family - which once held a stranglehold over the construction industry in New Jersey and was a trailblazer in setting up crooked "pump and dump" stock deals on Wall Street - has deteriorated to little more than a gang of "thugs" scratching for a living through low- level extortion and gambling operations.

One informer testified that two would-be "hitters," trying to gun down a victim while they were sitting in a car, became so frantic that they shot each other instead.

"It's laughable," said Cathy Waldor, a prominent New Jersey defense lawyer who once represented Riggi. "It's sort of like the Wild West."

This week, former DeCavalcante capo Anthony Rotondo told of a litany of killings and murder conspiracies, some of them hatched by mob members as they huddled together in the basements of their mothers' homes.

Rotondo's father, Vincent "Jimmy" Rotondo, had served as the underboss of the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family until he was found shot to death in a car outside his home with a jar of fish on his lap. The significance of the fish was never made clear.

In court, Rotondo, balding and dressed in an open-neck dress shirt and dark suit, appeared at ease Tuesday as he described how a bunch of Mafia hitmen staked out the Staten Island apartment of Frederick Weiss, a Staten Island recycling executive who had rubbed Gotti the wrong way. Weiss, a former city editor for the Staten Island Advance, was gunned down as he walked to his car.

"We left him in the street," Rotondo said.

But that hit, designed to put the family "back on the map" by currying favor with Gotti, brought only new problems. According to Rotondo, Joey Garafano, a mob hanger-on who had been recruited to drive a "crash car" - with orders to crash any police car that arrived on the scene - was spotted dumping the murder weapons in a nearby creek.

To disguise his own car, Garafano had stolen a set of license plates. But the plates were from a car belonging to the wife of another mob figure. As a result, her husband became the first person called in for questioning on the killing.

"I'm sorry," Garafano was quoted as saying to fellow mobsters. "I hope everybody doesn't blame me."

The mob's verdict for the mistake: the "white death," a Sicilian term for a killing in which the body is never found.

Garafano was lured to a mobster's home with the promise the family would arrange for him to go on a trip. He showed up carrying a packed suitcase, was invited into the garage, and was summarily shot with a silenced handgun. The body was wrapped up in a tarpaulin and given to "the Undertaker" to cart away.

Rotondo remembered "the Undertaker" waving goodbye as he drove away.

Rotondo said they tried to report the killing to Riggi at a diner in New Jersey, but the family boss replied: "Don't even tell me, as long as the family's intact."

According to Rotondo, the family didn't remain intact for long.

After Riggi went to jail in the early 1990s, the family set up a three-man ruling panel, but the structure began to buckle.

At one point, John D'Amato, then the family underboss, declared, "I'm taking over," indicating he had the personal support of Gotti.

D'Amato proved even more bloodthirsty.

Rotondo said D'Amato issued orders to kill an Elizabeth-based capo, "Fat Louie" La Rasso. D'Amato thought La Rasso was too powerful and was "acting subversive," Rotondo said.

LaRasso was reported missing when he failed to show up for his 65th birthday party and his body was never recovered.

Anthony Capo said D'Amato's downfall was a comment by a girlfriend who said D'Amato would take her to sex clubs, then swap partners and have sex with men.

Other mobsters were so shocked that they felt they had only one recourse. Capo said he carried out the "hit" on D'Amato himself.

As D'Amato hopped in a car and said, "Let's go eat," Capo testified, "I turned and shot him twice." When he didn't die immediately, "I shot him twice more."

[mafioso]

Jersey Mafia boss admits ordering hit

An ill Riggi confesses to doing Gotti a favor


Friday, September 5, 2003

BY ROBERT RUDOLPH
Star-Ledger Staff


John Riggi just gave up.

Riggi, the hospitalized czar of the once-powerful New Jersey-based DeCavalcante crime family, admitted yesterday to doing a fatal favor for John Gotti that will ensure that the New Jersey Mafia boss spends the rest of his life in prison.

"I think he's tired and he just gave up," said defense attorney Cathy Waldor, who had represented Riggi for years. "He's given up the fight."

Riggi, now 78, and suffering from a variety of ailments ranging from prostate cancer to high blood pressure, confessed yesterday that he gave the okay for a hit on Frederick Weiss, a former city editor of the Staten Island Advance, in 1989.

"We agreed he should be murdered. Pursuant to the agreement, he was murdered," Riggi said in televised broadcast from a federal prison hospital in Butner, N.C., to a federal courtroom in New York.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey asked Riggi over the video link if he was aware that approving the killing amounted to a death sentence for Weiss.

"Yes, your honor," Riggi replied.

Riggi told the judge that he had given his assent to the murder meeting with other mob associates.

In a previous court proceeding, a former acting boss of the crime family - who later turned informant - acknowledged he had been the person who actually carried out the hit. Vincent "Vinnie Ocean" Palermo, a one-time fishmonger who took over the mob family after Riggi was jailed in the early 1990s, had shown no emotion as he testified in court earlier this year that he had personally committed four murders, including the killing of Weiss.

"I shot him twice in the head," Palermo said, adding that the killing proved a good career move for himself. "Being I shot Weiss, they made me a captain."

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Burns said prosecutors had evidence to prove that the murder was carried out as a favor to Gotti, the so-called "Dapper Don" who headed the powerful Gambino crime family. Convicted of racketeering in 1992, Gotti was sentenced to life in prison and died there last year.

During yesterday's court session, the judge offered Rigge ray of sunlight: because he pleaded guilty to the murder charge, he was facing only 10 years in jail instead of the 30 years he would have faced if he had not negotiated a plea deal.

Authorities had long maintained that despite his own imprisonment, Riggi continued to exercise control over the family from behind bars, issuing orders for more than a dozen mob executions.

In addition to reaping proceeds from gambling and loansharking operations, the indictment charges that the family dabbled in stock fraud schemes while using its power over labor unions to demand payments and arrange no-show jobs for its members from contractors through threats of violence and work stoppages.

Known as the "Eagle," Riggi has always maintained a proper air of decorum, insisting he be allowed to dress in a suit even as he was being arrested.

"I think he was the last of an era of distinguished (Mafia) gentlemen," Waldor said.

But in recent years, a series of prosecutions decimated the crime family, named after the late family patriarch, Simone Rizzo (Sam the Plumber) DeCavalcante.

Court testimony has since shown that the family has further been weakened by in-fighting among the survivors, as well as the defection of large numbers of members who elected to become government informers, including Riggi's own son-in-law.

In fact, tape recordings of behind-the-scenes gossip among mobsters have caught them comparing themselves not to the tradition-bound "Godfather" families, but to the beer-bellied street goons of "The Sopranos."

Testimony also showed them engaging in a virtual rampage of violence, killing off their own bosses for reasons ranging from greed, to embarrassment that one of their acting bosses turned out to be gay - a revelation headlined in one newspaper as "fairy Godfather."

The scope of murder was the broadest mob bloodletting since Lucchese crime family boss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso grew so frustrated with the antics of the New Jersey branch of his family that he issued a blanket order to "kill 'em all." The orders were never carried out, and Casso, charged with a later murder, was found hiding out in the home of a former high school classmate in Budd Lake. He later turned informant.

[mafioso]

Gotti Plotted Huge Bribe, Witness Says


By SELWYN RAAB

Published: March 6, 1996



The courtroom saga over the sanity of the suspected mob boss Vincent Gigante took another bizarre turn yesterday: This time, the focus was on John Gotti, who was called so desperate to get out of prison that he considered bribing the President of the United States.

Salvatore Gravano, who was Mr. Gotti's top lieutenant before defecting, testified that Mr. Gotti, while awaiting trial in 1991, rejected a plan to use a rope to escape from the 11th floor of the Metropolitan Correction Center, a Federal jail in Manhattan. Mr. Gravano said that Mr. Gotti preferred paying a $4 million to $5 million bribe to get sentences commuted for himself and other top Gambino family mobsters.

We had a rope," Mr. Gravano said at a hearing in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. "We were not going to jump out of the 11th-floor window. We had accomplices."

"That was my plan," said Mr. Gravano, known as Sammy the Bull. "John Gotti had a different plan. He said he was a little leery about going out of an 11th-floor window."

Mr. Gravano's description of the escape plot came out during cross-examination by Mr. Gigante's lawyer, Barry I. Slotnick, who has contended that his 67-year-old client not only is not a mobster, but he is also mentally and physically ill and therefore should not stand trial. But prosecutors say Mr. Gigante has feigned mental illness by, among other things, strolling around Greenwich Village in a bathrobe.

Mr. Slotnick is trying to use the escape scheme to show that Mr. Gravano was desperate to avoid a tough prison sentence and therefore falsely implicated Mr. Gigante and other suspected mobsters to gain favor with prosecutors.

Under cross-examination, Mr. Gravano said he had expected to be sentenced to life in prison if he had been tried with Mr. Gotti on murder and racketeering charges.

"It seemed pretty obvious that we would lose the case," Mr. Gravano testified. "So we planned to escape."

"John Gotti's route was to bribe the President of the United States," Mr. Gravano testified. "Somewhere down the road, he would put together four to five million dollars and bribe the President."

As it turned out, neither scheme got past the planning stages.

Judge Eugene H. Nickerson of Federal District Court, who will rule on Mr. Gigante's competency to stand trial for murder and racketeering, restricted further testimony about the escape and bribery plans as immaterial to Mr. Gigante's case.

Mr. Gravano, who admitted being the underboss of the Gambino family before defecting in 1991, testified on Monday that Mr. Gigante had been recognized by Mafia leaders as the boss of the powerful Genovese family in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

[mafioso]

THE CITY;


Conviction Upset In Rackets Case


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS


Published: January 20, 1984


A Federal appeals court yesterday overturned the conviction of one of four men found guilty of racketeering as a result of an F.B.I agent's infiltration of the Bonanno ''crime family.''

But a three-judge panel upheld the convictions of the three major defendants in the case, which involved a triple murder in 1981 carried out during a gangland war for control of the Bonanno mob.

The court dismissed charges against Antonio Tomasulo, 58 years old, because of a defect in the indictment. He had been sentenced to five years in prison for a racketeering conspiracy.

The convictions of three others were affirmed. They were Benjamin Ruggiero, 57, and Nicholas Santora, 41, both sentenced to 15 years, and Anthony Rabito, 49, sentenced to 13 years. They were convicted in August 1982 after a trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

[mafioso]

Judge Ousts Juror At Bonanno Trial


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: August 14, 1982


A juror was removed yesterday from the Federal trial of five reputed members of the old Joseph Bonanno crime ''family.'' The juror, Jeanice Mills, was accused of being tardy and of dozing.

Judge Robert Sweet said she had nodded off several times during testimony.

She was replaced by one of six alternates. The defendants are Benjamin Ruggiero, 55 years old; John Cerasani, 43; Anthony Rabito, 48; Antonio Tomasulo, 56, and Nicholas Santora, 39. They are accused of engaging in a conspiracy involving drug dealing, illegal gambling and the murder of three rebellious members of the gang.

In a half-day session, closing out the trial's third week, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ronald Kosednar, testified about stakeouts at the Motion Lounge in Brooklyn following the May 5 disappearance of the three. He said he took photographs of known mobsters near the lounge.

[mafioso]

March 31, 1984


REPUTED LEADER OF A CRIME FAMILY IS INDICTED BY U.S.


By ARNOLD H. LUBASCH



Paul Castellano, the reputed head of the Gambino organized-crime family, and 20 other people were charged in Manhattan yesterday with operating a group that committed 25 murders and scores of other crimes.

The charges were contained in a 51- count Federal indictment, which described the 68-year-old Mr. Castellano as the boss of a crew that had participated in a ''pattern of racketeering activity'' since 1973. The racketeering charges included extortion, theft, prostitution and drug trafficking, as well as the murders.

The group committed murders to obtain money and to get rid of witnesses and competitors, according to the indictment. It said six members of the group had not been named as defendants because they had been murdered.

'A Very Big Case'

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the indictment at a news conference in his lower Manhattan office. It was attended by Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward, District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman of Brooklyn and other law enforcement officials.

''This is no doubt a very big case,'' Mr. Giuliani said. He added that the continuing investigation involved extensive cooperation among Federal and state law enforcement agencies, with the city's Police Department deserving ''the lion's share of the credit.''

Commissioner Ward said the investigation began three years ago when a police unit uncovered a scheme to ship stolen cars from Brooklyn to Kuwait.

The indictment said the defendants included the leaders, members and associates of a crew or group that constituted a criminal enterprise under the Federal racketeering law.

It said the crew was headed by ''the defendant Paul Castellano, also known as Big Paul.'' Another defendant, Anthony Frank Gaggi, 58, of Brooklyn, was identified as the crew's captain and was said to have reported to Mr. Castellano.

James M. LaRossa, Mr. Castellano's lawyer, said after the news conference that ''we deny the entire indictment.'' He added that Mr. Castellano had ''no knowledge of any of the underlying facts even having occurred.''

Mr. Castellano, who lives in Todt Hill, Staten Island, has been identified in law enforcement records as the boss of the Gambino crime family, Mr. Castellano was a brother-in-law of the late Carlo Gambino, who headed the crime organization until he died in 1976. The New York group has been described as the largest and most powerful crime organization in the country.

In recent years, the Government has used the Federal racketeering law to prosecute many organized-crime figures for a wide range of crimes. Murders are not generally Federal crimes, but can be included as racketeering acts, as they were in yesterday's indictment. State murder charges frequently require more evidence than the Federal racketeering charge.

Released on Bond

At a bail hearing, United States Magistrate Naomi Buchwald set bail of $2 million for Mr. Castellano, who was released when he posted a bond secured with his home and other assets. Several more defendants were released on lower bail, some remained in prison on previous charges and the rest were scheduled to be arraigned soon.

According to the indictment, the ''street leader'' who supervised the crew's day-to-day operations was Roy DeMeo, who was slain last year.

All 21 defendants were named in a racketeering charge and a related conspiracy charge. The defendants were also named in various other charges, with Mr. Castellano cited in 26 charges.

If convicted, Mr. Castellano could face up to 20 years on the racketeering charge and additional sentences on the other charges, according to Walter S. Mack Jr., the assistant United States attorney who is supervising the investigation.

Five defendants were named in a separate charge involving the murders of two witnesses, a charge carrying up to life in prison. They are Ronald Ustica, 39, of Brooklyn; Joseph C. Testa Jr., 29, of Queens; Anthony M. Senter, 28, of Brooklyn; Joseph Guglielmo, 56, of Brooklyn, and Henry Borelli, 35, who is in prison on other charges.

Slaying of Witness

Mr. Testa's brother, Patrick Testa, 27, of Brooklyn, was named in fraud and theft charges.

Most of the 25 murders cited in the indictment were listed as part of the racketeering charge. One defendant, Richard Mastrangelo, 38, of Dix Hills, L.I., was accused of conspiracy to murder James Bennett, who was killed in Brooklyn in 1981, a few hours before he was to testify in a narcotics trial.

The indictment said Mr. Castellano, Mr. Gaggi and Mr. DeMeo had murdered James Eppolito Jr. and Mr. Eppolito's father, who were shot to death in Brooklyn in 1979. The Eppolito murders were listed in the indictment as racketeering acts.

Acquitted of Murder

Mr. Gaggi was acquitted of murder in the Eppolito case in 1980, but yesterday's indictment said he had bribed a juror, Judith M. Hellman. She was named as a defendant in the racketeering charge, along with her husband, Wayne Hellman of Marlboro, N.J., and her father-in-law, Sol Hellman of Brooklyn.

Among the defendants charged with extortion were Peter LaFroscia, 34, and Paul Dordal, 39, who are both in prison on other charges; Ronald Turekian, 26, and Edward J. Rendini, 34, both of Brooklyn; Douglas Rega, 34, of Staten Island, and Guy Kalevas, 31, of Holmdel, N.J.

A charge of transporting stolen cars named several defendants, including Herman Weisberger, 63, of Brooklyn, and Pedro Luis Rodriguez, 54, who is already in prison on other charges.

Another defendant, Salvatore Mangialino, 47, of Queens, was named with Mr. Castellano and several others on charges of possessing guns.

[mafioso]

Monday, Jul. 23, 1979.


Death in the Afternoon

Mafia Don Carmine Galante is gunned down in Brooklyn

On a hot, muggy afternoon last week, four men sat at an oilcloth-covered table shaded by grapevines behind the Joe and Mary Italian-American Restaurant in Brooklyn. Over pasta and red wine they were ostensibly celebrating the departure next day of the restaurant's owner, Giuseppe Turano, 48, on a vacation trip to Sicily. Suddenly a blue Mercury sedan drew up outside, and five ski-masked men rushed into the restaurant. Six feet from the table, they opened fire with shotguns and semi-automatic rifles. In a litter of rolls, half-eaten salad and .45-cal. shells sprawled the body of short, balding Carmine Galante, 69, shot in the left eye and chest, his teeth still clenching his familiar black cigar. Galante was one of the Mafia's most powerful and feared bosses. Killed with him were a bodyguard, Leonardo Coppola, 40, and Turano, reputedly an adviser to Galante's crime family. The restaurant owner's son John, 17, was wounded. The execution had been carefully set up in advance. While the gunmen blazed away, Caesar Bonventra, 28, a Galante recruit who a Mafia insider said had set up his boss for the slaying, stood quietly by. Then he walked calmly out of the restaurant and disappeared.

According to law enforcement officials, the murder was the latest round in a gangland struggle to succeed Carlo Gambino, who died in 1976, as the top boss of New York's five Mafia families.

The chief competitors were the pushy and aggressive Galante, who in 1974 shot his way into control of the criminal clan once run by Joseph ("Joe Bananas") Bonnano, and Aniello Dellacroce, 65, the treacherous head of the Gambino family.

The bespectacled Galante, nicknamed "Lillo" or "Cigar," looked more like a grandfather than a godfather. Nonetheless, a Mafia source once told TIME: "Lillo would shoot you in church during High Mass." Galante spent almost half of his life behind bars, starting at ten when he was sent to reform school as an incorrigible delinquent. At 17 he was sentenced to Sing Sing prison for assault. By 1952 he had become a high-ranking enforcer for Bonnano. Because Galante spoke French, Spanish and several Italian dialects, he often acted as the family's emissary in overseas assignments to arrange multimillion-dollar drug deals. He was also involved in pornography, loan sharking and labor rackets.

Soon after Gambino's death, Galante seemed destined for the mantle of capo di tutti capi (boss of bosses). By 1977, however, it was apparent that Galante, who was back in prison for parole violation, had failed to unite the other New York dons behind him. While Gambino had shied away from drugs because of the heavy penalties involved, Galante pushed for increased Mafia trafficking in heroin and moved in on black and Hispanic cocaine rings.

That policy, and the resulting publicity when the Drug Enforcement Administration targeted him as organized crime's top man, began to alienate the other Mafia bosses. While Galante was still in prison, he was stalked by killers.

For his own protection, federal officials kept him in solitary confinement at Danbury Prison and then secretly moved him to the federal prison in San Diego. Freed in March, Galante returned to New York.

According to FBI officials, Galante then asked the Mafia's governing commission for permission to retire after putting his affairs in order. The commission approved his request. But within a short time the dons discovered that Galante had secretly built up a force of 30 "greenies," hardened young recruits from Sicily.

Afraid that Galante was about to double-cross them, and angered by his greed in muscling in on other families' rackets, New York's most powerful Mafia commissioners met early in July to determine Galante's fate. At that meeting, Dellacroce convinced the others that Galante should be retired more permanently.

[mafioso]

Sex, sports and the mob: The Gold Club trial

June 15, 2001

Web posted at: 11:57 a.m. EDT (1557 GMT)


The Gold Club is one of Atlanta's most prominent strip clubs.






ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Atlanta's Gold Club is one of the city's most prominent strip clubs, bringing in millions of dollars a year and attracting athletes, celebrities and other wealthy patrons.

Federal prosecutors allege that the club is also a front for prostitution, credit card fraud, money laundering and other crimes. In a sweeping racketeering indictment that reads like a crime novel, authorities allege that club owner Steve Kaplan and his associates had ties to the Gambino crime family.

Kaplan, along with a former dancer at the club and five others, is on trial at the federal courthouse in Atlanta.

Former club manager Thomas "Ziggy" Sicignano, one of the prosecution's star witnesses, testified that he arranged for dancers to have sex with a number of high-profile athletes, including former New York Knicks' basketball player John Starks.


The case has focused on allegations that Kaplan and trusted employees paid club dancers to have sex with athletes and other celebrities to raise the club's profile.

Prosecutors have said Terrell Davis of the NFL's Denver Broncos, Jamal Anderson of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and Patrick Ewing of the NBA's New York Knicks will testify. In addition, at least two other basketball stars, Dikembe Mutombo of the Philadelphia 76ers and former NBA player Dennis Rodman, have been subpoenaed.

An attorney for Starks told CNN that Starks, if called to testify, would confirm he had sex with Gold Club strippers "a long time ago" before he "re-dedicated his life to Christ."

Sicignano cut a plea deal with prosecutors, admitting to a felony charge of failing to turn over information to the government about a crime in exchange for his testimony.

He testified Kaplan arranged for dancers to have sex with the players in private rooms at club, in the players' hotel rooms and even sent dancers to the Knicks' 1997 training camp in South Carolina to meet with players.

Toronto Raptors star Antonio Davis was also named in the testimony. He called the allegations against him "malicious lies" and has filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Sicignano.

The defense argues that Sicignano was responsible for any prostitution that may have gone on in the club.

Steve Sadow, Kaplan's attorney, told jurors in his opening statement that the case was built on "lies and prejudice" from witnesses "bought and paid for" by the government. He called Kaplan a "legitimate, hard-working businessman."


Former club manager Thomas "Ziggy" Sicignano testified that he arranged for a number of athletes to have sex with dancers.

The Gold Club charges were brought under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the government's principal weapon against organized crime.

A property seizure law, RICO was designed to attack Mafia-style organized crime, but its application has been broad. Prosecutors have used it to target a wide range of businesses, from adult video and book store owners to politicians and union leaders.

Prosecutors allege that Kaplan and his associates were involved in a wide-ranging criminal enterprise involving:

• Credit card fraud, for allegedly overcharging customers and adding huge, unauthorized, tips to their credit card bills. One customer allegedly was charged $24,000 in one visit.

• Failing to report earnings used to pay the Gambino crime family for protection.

• Bribing police.

• Bribing two Delta Airlines employees to get illegal discounts on airfare.

• Obstruction of justice.

• Extortion.


NBA star Antonio Davis is suing Sicignano for $50 million saying claims that he had sex with dancers are "malicious lies."
In addition to Kaplan, the defendants are:

• Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo, accused of extortion, money laundering and obstruction of justice. He is identified in the indictment as a captain in the Gambino crime family, though he has never been convicted of a crime.

• Norbert Calder, the club's general manager, accused of allowing prostitution and illegal drug use at the club.

• Roy Cicola, a club assistant manager, accused of allowing prostitution at the club.

• Reginald Burney, a former Atlanta police officer, accused of tipping off club management about pending city inspections.

• Larry Gleit, an accountant accused of credit card fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice.

• Jacklyn Bush, stage name "Diva," accused of prostitution.

All of the defendants have denied the charges and Kaplan is paying for their defense. Kaplan's attorneys have said that he knew nothing about sales of sex or drugs at the club.

[mafioso]

3 charged in case of dead man in a drum

Feds: Trio pulled off 20-year-old mob hit


Thursday, January 22, 2004

BY ROBERT RUDOLPH
Star-Ledger Staff


It's a mob mystery that has taken two decades to solve.

On April 17, 1984, FBI agents searching a Garfield office building for evidence in a stolen goods operation made a grisly discovery: a collection of bloody, dismembered body parts stuffed into three unmarked 55-gallon drums.

Now, after a massive roundup of reputed members of the New York-based Bonanno crime family and others, authorities say they know who was responsible for the mutilation-killing, one of the goriest in Mafia history.

Authorities have charged Louis "Louie Ha-Ha" Attanasio, 59, of Toms River, who they said was later promoted to acting underboss of the Bonanno family. Also charged were Attanasio's brother, Robert "Bobby Ha-Ha" Attanasio, 57, and Peter "Peter Rabbit" Calabrese, 55, both of Staten Island.

All three, authorities say, participated in the murder of Cesare Bonventre, a 33-year-old Brooklyn loanshark who had once served as a bodyguard to Bonanno crime family boss Carmine Galante.

Galante himself was gunned down on July 12, 1979, while having lunch at Joe & Mary's, a local mom-and-pop restaurant in Brooklyn. Authorities believed Bonventre, who was guarding him, had quietly stepped aside to accommodate the killers.

The question of who killed Bonventre had remained an open one for almost 20 years, despite suspicions of investigators that had pointed to several different mob figures -- including a Caldwell man who was gunned down in October 1984 in the parking lot of a Clifton restaurant.

It was only now, following the indictments of dozens of reputed Bonanno family members, that authorities publicly named those they say participated in the Bonventre killing.

The indictments, handed up on Tuesday, stemmed from a four-year investigation in which one ranking Bonanno crime family member agreed to wear a wire to high-level family meetings. Authorities did not disclose the specific evidence they say linked the three suspects to the Bonventre killing, but said family members have been secretly cooperating with authorities and giving up closely held Mafia secrets.

"The code of omerta (silence) has been abandoned," said Pasquale D'Amuro, assistant director of the FBI's New York office.

Investigators said Bonventre's body was found during an FBI search of the fourth-floor offices of the T&J trading Co. in Garfield, which was suspected of being a front for a stolen goods operation.

It was clear from the evidence, however, that Bonventre had been killed elsewhere, and the body delivered to Garfield for storage. The obvious clue was that the body parts were coated with glue.

That fact led investigators to a now-crumbling glue factory in Wallington, which was later designated as one of the nation's worst Superfund sites.

At the bottom of a large glue-mixing vat inside the Industrial Latex Co. plant, authorities found traces of Bonventre's blood and hair, as well as some money and a shoe.

New Jersey attorney Cathy Fleming, who was a federal prosecutor at the time, said Bonventre vanished after appearing in court for arraignment in the infamous "Pizza Connection" case that traced a $1.65 billion narcotics pipeline from the Italian and Sicilian Mafia to the organization's counterparts in the U.S.

"When they found the body, they knew why" he had disappeared, Fleming said.

Months later, federal authorities said they believed they had a suspect: Cosmo "Gus" Aiello, 52, of Caldwell, who had been charged in a separate scheme to manufacture bogus Lacoste shirts. The counterfeit clothing scheme, authorities said, had been financed by the late Joseph "Joe Bayonne" Zicarelli.

Aiello, however, never got a chance to tell what he knew.

In October 1984, Aiello was found murdered in the parking lot of a Howard Johnson restaurant on Route 3 in Clifton.

"They shot him on a Sunday," Fleming said. "I remember when I got the call, the Giants had just kicked off ."

Coincidentally, Fleming said, despite pressure from the government, Aiello had reached a plea deal to admit to the counterfeit clothing charges. However, he had rejected efforts to get him to cooperate.

Investigators now believe Aiello, who held the key to the Bonventre murder, was silenced because the mob was fearful he would turn informant. He had allegedly arranged a meeting with an underworld figure to show him the agreement and prove he was not cooperating.

But despite the wording on the document --which specified that he was not cooperating -- one official said, "he wasn't going to walk away from that meeting."

"They found my plea agreement on him," Fleming said. "He had been shot at point-blank range. He clearly knew his killer."

But if Bonventre's murder was one of the more sensational mob hits in New Jersey, it wasn't the last for the Bonanno family.

In the months that followed, two other mobsters authorities had linked to the Bonventre killing were themselves murdered, establishing a pattern of bloody Bonanno family warfare that has now taken the lives of 20 Mafia members.

Police said that in addition to the three charged in the Bonventre case, those indicted this week were responsible for seven previously unsolved homicides in recent decades.

[mafioso]

Mistrial Is Declared in Mafia Murder Case


Published: January 6, 1994


A mistrial was declared yesterday in the Federal racketeering and murder trial of three men accused of having participated in a murder for which a Mafia boss, John Gotti, was convicted in 1992. A hung jury failed to find any of the defendants guilty, a prosecutor said.

The defendants -- Pasquale Conte, 68, Francisco Paul Graziano, 56, and Anthony Vinciullo, 58 -- were identified by prosecutors respectively as a captain and two soldiers in the Gambino crime family, headed by Mr. Gotti.

The three were tried before Judge I. Leo Glasser in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on charges of participating in the murder of Louis DiBono, a construction contractor and reputed Gambino family member whose bullet-ridden body was found in a World Trade Center parking garage in 1990. Mr. Gotti was convicted in April 1992 of having ordered the murder.

William Muller, executive assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District, said that prosecutors intended to retry the the three men. A trial date was set for June.

[mafioso]

Message for a Mobster


Monday, Sep. 06, 1982

A second witness in the Donovan probe is murdered


In most ways it was a rather standard gangland slaying. The victim was driving his 1977 Lincoln Continental through The Bronx in New York City one evening last week when a passenger in the car suddenly placed a .38-cal. pistol to the back of his head and fired a single shot. The Continental swung out of control and smashed into a parked car. The assassin jumped out and climbed into a trailing red Buick LeSabre, which then sped away. But the victim happened to be Nat Masselli, 31, son of Mobster William ("Billy the Butcher") Masselli, 55. And that made the hit something special.

As it turns out, both Nat and William Masselli were crucial witnesses in the investigation, reopened in mid-July, into charges that U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan had dealings with organized crime when he was part owner of the Schiavone Construction Co. The investigation is being conducted by Special Federal Prosecutor Leon Silverman, who stated in June that there was "insufficient credible evidence" to prosecute Donovan. TIME has learned that Silverman's investigators had in fact questioned Nat Masselli at least once in the renewed probe. William Masselli was recently transferred from a prison near Lake Placid, N.Y., where he is serving a seven-year sentence for hijacking, to a Manhattan jail in preparation for his appearance before a grand jury investigating new charges against Donovan. The FBI is looking into the Masselli assassination as a possible obstruction of justice. It is the FBI's second such probe. Last June, the body of Fred Furino, a Mafia bagman who was alleged to have received payoffs from Schiavone Construction and who became a Silverman witness, was found stuffed into the trunk of a car parked on a Manhattan street.

Tracing the license-plate number of the getaway car, New York City police at week's end arrested Salvatore Odierno, 67, a reputed associate of mobsters who have been questioned in the Silverman probe, and charged him with second-degree murder. Federal investigators believe that the Mob, unable to "reach" the elder Masselli in prison, may have ordered the death of his son as a message to keep quiet. Masselli is also co-owner of Jo-Pel Contracting & Trucking Corp., which has been named in a half-million-dollar New York City landfill and excavation scandal. But investigators tend to discount this as a possible motive for Nat Masselli's murder.

In the first phase of Silverman's investigation, the elder Masselli provided evidence that, he claimed, showed a Schiavone official had arranged for Masselli to receive a $200,000 loan from the firm in return for a $20,000 kickback. But the special prosecutor did not find the evidence clear-cut, and the Schiavone official denied the charge. Masselli's son Nat also consented to telephone taps of his conversations with a Schiavone lawyer. Silverman told TIME: "Those conversations, although they may have been illadvised, were not criminal."


Federal investigators have hoped that the Massellis could shed Light on fresh charges that Donovan had met with the elder Masselli and another mobster, Albert ("Chink") Facchiano, in Miami in January 1979 to discuss a complex and illegal financial skimming scheme. Donovan has denied knowing Facchiano and has said he encountered Masselli only a few times at job sites.

At week's end no one knew if investigators' hopes would be fulfilled. "Billy Masselli may be hell-bent for revenge," says one official. "It's a question of whether he'll take it on the street or whether he'll even the score by telling the special prosecutor everything he knows."



http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 39,00.html

[mafioso]

338 GUILTY IN SICILY IN A MAFIA TRIAL; 19 GET LIFE TERMS


Published: December 17, 1987


LEAD: PALERMO, Sicily, Dec. 16 -

PALERMO, Sicily, Dec. 16 -

The largest Mafia trial in history ended today with guilty verdicts against 338 of 452 defendants accused of running a vast criminal empire financed largely with heroin trafficking to the United States.

The jury ordered life sentences, the maximum penalty, for 19 men, including the foremost leaders of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and professional killers who did their bidding.

Among them was Michele Greco, nicknamed the Pope because of his place atop the Mafia hierarchy. Mr. Greco was found guilty of ordering 78 homicides, including the assassinations of several important government officials. Two Informers Testify

The most important evidence came from two informers, Tommaso Buscetta and Salvatore Contorno, who have also testified at New York Mafia trials. The prosecutor, Giuseppe Ayala, told reporters tonight, ''Their testimony was accepted when other facts confirmed it.''

On the basis of that testimony, for the first time in Sicily the Mafia was prosecuted as a single, unified orgnanization with its own leadership.

Most of the specific crimes cited in the trial occurred in the early 1980's, when the Sicilian Mafia provided 50 percent of the heroin reaching the American East coast, the United States Justice Department estimated. 'Very, Very Tough Verdict'

The ''maxi-trial,'' as it became known, was viewed throughout Italy as a demonstration of the state's willingness to strike back at a criminal organization that grew steadily more powerful and murderous as it expanded its lucrative drug trade.

''Maxi Condemnation'' read the banner headline today in Giornale di Sicilia, the island's largest newspaper. Although the jury did not endorse all of the prosecution's sentencing requests, the verdict fell clearly on the side of law enforcement.

''It was a very, very tough verdict without a doubt,'' said Santi Mocciaro, a defense lawyer, as he left the heavily fortified courtroom built especially for this trial on the grounds of Ucciardone Prison in Palermo. Life Terms Asked for 28

The prosecution had requested life terms for 28 defendants and a total of 4,675 years in jail terms for others. The verdicts include 2,665 years of jail terms. Nearly $10 million in fines were imposed. Among the 114 declared innocent were 49 against whom the prosecutors did not seek guilty verdicts.

Much of the reaction to the verdict by public authorities was subdued in recognition of the fact that the Mafia is still very much alive in Sicily. Proof of that arrived less than four hours after the sentencing when one of the defendants declared innocent, Antonino Ciulla, was murdered immediately after he was released from custody.

About a thousand lawyers, defendants and spectators had been waiting for three hours when Presiding Judge Alfonso Giordano entered the amphitheater-shaped courtroom and began, ''In the name of the Italian people . . .'' Financier Gets 7 Years

The short, plump judge, who grew a beard during the 35 days he guided jury deliberations, read as fast as he could. A nearly indecipherable stream of names and legal citations poured forth. Gradually it became apparent that men once considered untouchable were being sent to jail.

Ignazio Salvo, a rich and well-connected financier, was sentenced to seven years in prison for criminal conspiracy. He had been described in testimony as a key mediator between the Mafia and Sicily's political and business elite. After his sentence was read the jury's intentions were obvious.

In the 30 grilled cages that line the back of the room men leaned forward against the bars listening attentively but without expression. Wearing a plush shearling coat, Mr. Greco, who was captured 10 days after the trial began on Feb. 10, 1986, turned away and paced the back of his cage smoking a pipe. His nephew, Giuseppe Greco, chewed gum ever faster.

As the jury of four women and two men stood next to him, Judge Giordano read at a furious pace for an hour and a half. In a courtroom where catcalls and shouted insults from the gallery and from the cages have been the norm, there was only silence when he finished. 'A Great Wager,' Mayor Says


''This is a demonstration that the state, when it wants to, can constrain citizens to obey the law,'' said Assistant Judge Pietro Grasso.

Palermo's Mayor, Leoluca Orlando, has often described the anti-Mafia fight, and the trial in particular, as ''a great wager.''

Prosecutors gambled by attempting one mass trial that sought to portray crimes not only as the acts of individuals but also as the work of a vast criminal conspiracy.

The Government gambled by spending an estimated $90 million on the trial, including about $18 million to build the courtroom plus the cost of maintaining a small army of 3,500 policemen to protect the proceedings.

Mr. Buscetta, the first Mafia boss to break the Sicilian code of silence, described the Mafia as a hierarchical organization with a precise decision-making process. He alleged that a 12-man ''commission,'' with Mr. Greco as its chief, ordered major crimes and tried to mediate clashes between rival clans.

This view of the Mafia became known as the ''Buscetta Theorem,'' and it was the keystone to the prosecution case. It was the vehicle for pressing homicide charges against members of the commission because they were held collectively responsible for crimes allegedly authorized by the group.

This presentation of the Mafia as a well-structured organization was also important to the prosecution of 358 defendants under a broad conspiracy statute. The jury returned 202 guilty verdicts on these charges.

In the course of the proceedings, 14 of the original 475 defendants were removed from the case and 10 died.



http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A961948260

[mafioso]

Taping the Mafia


Friday, Jun. 20, 1969



Sam: "Jack, what happened to Pickles two weeks after he broke away from me?"

Jack: "He got killed."

Marty: "The guy in Elizabeth, huh?"

Sam: "Yeah, he was away two weeks. I told him that was what was going to happen to him. So when people don't want to listen . . ."

Marty: "He tried to be a big man?"

The dialogue sounds like a Grade-B gangster movie on late-night television, but the script is from life. It is a chillingly real conversation that took place among three Mafia hoodlums in their hangout. The subject of the session: methods of dispatching associates to a better world. This and other candid peeps at organized crime became available last week when a 2,000-page transcript of FBI tape recordings was filed in Federal District Court in Newark, N.J. The tapes were presented by the district attorney in connection with extortion-conspiracy charges against Simone Rizzo ("Sam the Plumber") De-Cavalcante, a New Jersey Mafia leader. The FBI had bugged four mob hangouts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including the office of DeCavalcante's Kenilworth, N.J., plumbing-supply firm.

The transcript referred to eight murders. These facts, however, cannot be used to prosecute anyone because such bugging and wiretapping was illegal at the time. Subsequent legislation legalizing eavesdropping under certain circumstances is not retroactive.

Protecting People. Much of the recorded conversation centered on the fine points of murder, and it was clear that, in the underworld, neatness counts. The 1951 gunning down of Willie Moretti in a Cliffside Park, N.J., restaurant was distasteful to Angelo DeCarlo, who had a better idea: "Now like you got four or five guys in the room. You know they're going to kill you. They say, 'Tony Boy wants to shoot you in the head and leave you in the street, or would you rather take this [a fatal drug], we put you behind your wheel, we don't have to embarrass your family.' That's what they should have done to Willie. Sure, that man never should have been disgraced like that." Added DeCavalcante: "It leaves a bad taste. We're out to protect people." At times, the mob seems to have a conscience.


Mobsters were overheard deploring the 1962 hand-grenade slaying of "Cadillac Charlie" Cavallaro in Youngstown, Ohio, because the blast also killed the victim's eleven-year-old son.

Another time, DeCarlo told of the stylish dispatching of a cooperative victim named Itchie: "I said, 'You gotta go, why not let me hit you right in the heart and you won't feel a thing?' He said, Tm innocent, Ray, but if you've got to do it . . .' So I hit him in the heart and it went right through him." Some victims were less cooperative, such as the one many years ago described by Anthony Boiardo, son of Ruggiero ("the Boot") Boiardo: "The Boot hit him with a hammer. The guy goes down and he comes up. So I got a crowbar this big, Ray. Eight shots in the head. What do you think he finally did to me? He spit at me."


Meatball. Efficient disposal of bodies was also a subject of great interest on the tapes. In one 1964 conversation, DeCavalcante and two other men discussed the various types of devices available. One suggested, in the manner of Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, a machine that smashes up old automobiles. DeCavalcante said that he was looking for one that pulverized garbage. Also mentioned was a gadget capable of turning° a human body into a "meatball."

Besides murder, there were heady whiffs of political corruption. The tapes indicated a familiarity between mobsters and New Jersey public officials. In one conversation, which the FBI said took place shortly before the 1964 election, DeCavalcante promised Democrat Thomas Dunn unlimited support in Dunn's campaign for mayor of Elizabeth, N.J. DeCavalcante then asked: "Do you think we could get any city work?" Dunn (laughing): "Well, maybe." When the tapes were released, Mayor Dunn denied that the mobster had any influence over his administration and said that he had not been aware of DeCavalcante's mob connections when he accepted a $100 campaign contribution.

The tapes also show Mafia Chieftain Joseph Zicarelli bragging of interceding with "my friend the Congressman," Cornelius Gallagher. Gallagher denied involvement with Zicarelli and said that the mobster was merely "name dropping." Last year Gallagher was accused by LIFE Magazine of interceding with police on Zicarelli's behalf. The Democratic Congressman denied that charge and was re-elected last fall.

Cops and Robbers. The mobsters also traded advice about corrupting police and businessmen. DeCavalcante: "You know, Tony, 30 or 35 years ago, if a [obscenity] was even seen talking to a cop they looked to hit him the next day. They figured he must be doing business with the cop." DeCarlo: "Today, if you don't meet them and pay them, you can't operate." Another time, Gaetano ("Corky") Vastola explained how to set up a dummy union: "When I sit down with the boss [management], I tell him how much it's gonna cost him in welfare, hospitalization and all that. I make a package out of it. [I say] it's gonna cost $100,000 a year. Let's cut it in half and forget about it. I show him how much I'm gonna save [him] by walking away."

But even the Cosa Nostra hoods have worries. In 1965, DeCavalcante forbade the killing of a Negro construction worker who assaulted a Marioso's son with a shovel during a fight. The Negro was a Black Muslim, and DeCavalcante feared a Muslim-Mafia war. Hoods also become disenchanted. Discussing one doublecross in 1964, DeCavalcante complained to an underling, Frank Mamri: "Sometimes, Frank, the more things you see, the more disillusioned you become. You know, honesty, honorability —all those things."


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 57,00.html

[mafioso]

Killers in Prison


Friday, Oct. 04, 1963



When Hoodlum Joe Valachi appeared before Arkansas Senator John McClellan's Permanent Investigations Subcommittee last week, he rasped out a 31-hour rhapsody of names, crimes and Cosa Nostra syndicate secrets. Valachi's song held nothing new for U.S. lawmen: he had been holding private recitals for them for more than a year. But his testimony might provide some ideas for show biz scriptwriters.

Valachi is an aging (60), two-bit punk—once a thief, a dope pusher, a willing killer for syndicate chiefs, now turned stool pigeon. Yet last week he found U.S. Senators treating him with patronizing respect. John McClellan addressed him warmly as "Joe," inquired if he wasn't tired from testifying, quickly adjourned the hearings until this week when the mug from the Mafia said he was indeed weary. In fact, Valachi's act was introduced—with some pride—by none other than Bobby Kennedy, Attorney General of the U.S. Boasted Bobby: "For the first time an insider, a knowledgeable member of the racketeering hierarchy, has broken the underworld's code of silence."

Thinking of Themselves. No one seemed certain just what Valachi's appearance before the committee might gain. Bobby spoke about new wiretap laws and extending immunity from prosecution for racketeers who cooperate with the Justice Department. McClellan said vaguely that he had in mind some kind of law to "prohibit membership in such a criminal and secret organization as Cosa Nostra." And Joe Valachi thought organized crime should probably be outlawed—largely because "the bosses been thinking only of themselves for years."

But if Valachi's testimony does nothing else, it has already produced a shocking commentary on the underworld jungle in the U.S. prison system. When Joe went to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on a narcotics conviction in 1960, the Cosa Nostra "boss of bosses" Vito Genovese, a prisoner, was there too. Valachi said Genovese arranged for them to be cellmates. One night in their cell Genovese said to Valachi:

"You know you buy a barrel of apples, and one of them is touched. That apple has to be removed, or it'll touch the rest of the apples." Then Genovese kissed Valachi. It was the Mafia's "kiss of death," to let Valachi know he was the apple to be removed.

Mistaken Murder. Valachi quickly kissed Genovese back "to let him know I was smart and I would answer him in the same style—kill him too." Valachi was so frightened he asked prison guards to put him in solitary confinement. But as soon as he got out, Mafia Mobster John Dioguardia (Johnny Dio), who was in charge of the prison shower room, invited Valachi in to take a shower. Valachi, convinced he would be murdered there, refused. Panicky, he tried to "stay out of crowds" in the prison yard, finally grabbed a length of iron pipe lying conveniently in the yard and bludgeoned a prisoner he thought was going to kill him. An associate warden told him a few minutes later that he had murdered the wrong man. "You can imagine how I felt," said Valachi. "I just told them to lock me up."


It was then Valachi began to sing to federal officials. Ever since he has been under heavy guard—and kept away from federal prisons. When McClellan asked him what might happen if he went back to prison, Valachi croaked: "I'd have to kill or be killed. If they got at me, I wouldn't last five minutes."


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 27,00.html

[mafioso]

Brooklyn: Crime Figure Convicted


Published: July 24, 2001


Joseph Watts, a onetime star in the Gambino crime family, was convicted yesterday of conspiring to lie to federal tax agents about his income.

But the jury was deadlocked on the question of whether he laundered nearly $2 million in loan-sharking profits through his retirement estate on an island off Florida's Gulf Coast.

The government says Mr. Watts was the Gambino family's de facto ambassador to Las Vegas and its liaison to the Westies, an Irish gang that specialized in labor racketeering. He will be retried on the money-laundering charges sometime in the next several months.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... A9679C8B63

[mafioso]

Former Gotti Henchman Faces New Charges on Eve of Release

By ALAN FEUER

Published: January 24, 2001



In his heyday, Joseph Watts was the consummate New York gangster.

He had impeccable underworld credentials. He helped boost John J. Gotti to the top of the Gambino crime family, prosecutors say, by acting as a backup shooter in the curbside murder of Paul Castellano, the former Gambino boss, in 1985.

He went on to serve as one of Mr. Gotti's most devoted lieutenants. He was assigned, the government says, to be the Gambino liaison to the Westies, an Irish gang that controlled city labor unions and frequently shared spoils with the Gotti clan.

He has done his time in prison for his infamous former don. He is now serving the final year of a six-year sentence for burying the corpse of a turncoat killed less than 48 hours before he was to testify in court.

And like many in the Gotti inner circle, he developed a knack for mixing coldblooded deeds with a courtly, Beau Brummel style. He was once a debonair and handsome man who preferred fancy restaurants on the Upper East Side but would unflinchingly dispose of bodies in parking lots and horse farms when Mr. Gotti needed them to disappear.

Mr. Watts, 59, is a legendary gangland figure, federal prosecutors say, a charming and streetwise loan shark who was granted the status of a Mafia captain even though his Welsh heritage kept him from becoming an official ''made'' man. By the end of the 1980's, the golden years of the Gotti regime, he was a bright star in the Gambino constellation, sharing space with the likes of Angelo Ruggiero and Salvatore Gravano, the hitman-turned-informant better known as Sammy the Bull.

Yesterday, however, as Mr. Watts appeared in court to plead not guilty to charges in a new indictment, his star showed definite signs of fading. Earlier this month, he was charged with laundering millions of dollars from a massive loan-sharking business through a bank account in Switzerland and accused of using the money to buy what was said to be his retirement home, a luxurious estate with a pool and a tennis court on Treasure Island in the Florida Keys.

''Watts has been associated with the upper echelons of power in the Gambino family since at least the 1970's,'' federal prosecutors wrote in papers submitted yesterday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. ''Between 1970 and 1995, Watts murdered (and on occasion, tortured as well) numerous victims in order to protect and promote the Gambino family's interests.''

Andrew J. Weinstein, Mr. Watts's lawyer, denied the government's exhaustive allegations. He added that the case being built against his client was based on the word of a single government witness whom he called an ''admitted perjurer.''

Nevertheless, federal prosecutors claim that over the years, Mr. Watts has served as a sort of utility infielder for the Gambino squad, doing a variety of family business while still looking out for himself.

For example, under Mr. Castellano, they claim, he was a loyal servant who acted as the family's emissary to Las Vegas. But when Mr. Gotti took over, he quickly changed his allegiance, they added, and became what is known as an ''earner,'' making money through extortion, racketeering in the construction business and a booming multimillion-dollar loan-sharking trade.

Although he has never been convicted of murder, the government claims that at least six times he was called upon by Mr. Gotti and previous bosses to dispose of turncoats and troublemakers whom the top men wanted dead. He was put on trial and acquitted in the 1987 killing of an emotionally disturbed man named William Ciccone, for example, who made the fatal mistake of firing shots at Mr. Gotti as the crime boss stepped from his onetime headquarters at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in South Ozone Park, Queens.

In that case, the government based its prosecution on the testimony of a Gambino informant, Dominic Borghese, who said Mr. Watts drove Mr. Ciccone from Queens to Staten Island in the trunk of his black Mercedes-Benz (''the guy was kicking up a storm,'' the witness said) then tortured his victim for several hours (''hitting him with boards, poking him, putting cigarettes by his face, by his eyes'') before finally shooting Mr. Ciccone five times in the head.


And according to the court papers filed yesterday, Mr. Watts took part in at least four more mob hits.

The government says that in 1986 he stabbed and shot to death Augustus Sclafani, a Gambino soldier who was spreading rumors that a family underboss, Frank DeCicco, was a ''rat.'' In 1989, he is said to have tried to kill a potential government witness and, though he failed, was brazen enough to have dug his target's grave in advance.

Then there was Anthony Miano, the government says, who was killed in retaliation for the kidnapping of the nephew of Carlo Gambino, a onetime family boss. In court papers, prosecutors claim that Mr. Watts said he wanted to be the first person to attend Mr. Miano's wake. He wanted to see the ''finished product'' of his work, the prosecutors said.

Mr. Watts is due to be released from prison on his murder conspiracy sentence next month. But if the government successfully prosecutes him on the new money-laundering charges, he could return to prison for 20 more years.

He said nothing during his court appearance yesterday. He looked gaunt and feeble and walked with a cane. There was little evidence of his storied underworld past.

''He was never a social club kind of guy -- he liked Manhattan,'' said one investigator who spent a good part of his life tracking Mr. Watts. ''But he was a tough piece of work, a real survivor.''


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... gewanted=2

[mafioso]

Fugitive Held On '92 Count Of Fixing Gotti Jury

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM


Published: January 14, 2000



Bosko Radonjich's life has been marked by international intrigue, including, by his own account, days as a Serbian freedom fighter, a C.I.A. operative and a close adviser to Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader and fugitive war criminal.

But F.B.I. officials said it was intrigue in Brooklyn, in the service of another larger-than-life criminal figure, that landed Mr. Radonjich, a Yugoslav emigre and former New York City parking lot owner, in federal custody this month.

Mr. Radonjich was arrested at the Miami airport on New Year's Day on a 1992 indictment that charged him with tampering with a juror to help fix the first federal racketeering trial of John J. Gotti, the boss of the Gambino crime family. The case, in 1987, made Mr. Gotti's reputation as a crime boss who could not be brought down.

At the time of the trial, the authorities said, Mr. Radonjich served as an incongruous ethnic bridge: he headed the Irish gang known as the Westies, a cadre of violent toughs who often did the bidding of Mr. Gotti's crime family.

Mr. Radonjich, who became an international fugitive after the indictment, was arrested after United States Customs Service inspectors at the Miami airport, alerted by an advisory about Mr. Radonjich's traveling companion, discovered the 1992 warrant in the jury tampering case. Mr. Radonjich and his companion, who was later released, had arrived from Cancun, Mexico, and were bound for the Bahamas, officials said. They did not identify the companion.

The arrest was first reported yesterday by Ganglandnews.com, a Web site that covers organized crime.

While it was the Brooklyn charge that led to his arrest, law enforcement officials said that based on notes and photographs found in his possession, Mr. Radonjich's days of international intrigue appeared far from over.

''The search revealed he had pictures of the Iraqi Embassy in Havana,'' the official said, adding that Mr. Radonjich also had ''some notes about U.S. military installations in Georgia and North Carolina.''

The official had no explanation for the pictures or the notes, but said that at least one of the two men had recently traveled to Cuba.

The material was sobering for law enforcement officials, given Mr. Radonjich's past. He pleaded guilty in 1978 to conspiracy charges in the 1978 bombing of the home of the Yugoslav consul's home in suburban Chicago and a plot to bomb a Yugoslav social club in that city.

Wiretaps in the case recorded him talking about the Chicago bombing and making an admission that he took part in the June 23, 1975, bombing at the Yugoslav mission to the United Nations in New York, officials said. No one was injured in that attack and no one was ever charged in the bombing.

Mr. Radonjich and his five co-defendants in the Chicago case were identified as Serbian nationalists. Mr. Radonjich was released from prison in 1982.

The jury tampering indictment against Mr. Radonjich and George Pape, a longtime friend, charged that the two men conspired with Mr. Gotti, the crime boss's brother, Gene, and Salvatore Gravano, then the Gambino family underboss, to fix the case.

At the 1992 federal trial that resulted in Mr. Gotti's conviction on murder and racketeering charges, Mr. Gravano testified that he gave Mr. Radonjich $60,000 with which to bribe Mr. Pape, who was later convicted and sentenced to three years in prison in the case.

Andrew J. Maloney, who was the United States attorney in Brooklyn overseeing Mr. Gotti's case in 1987, praised Mr. Radonjich's recent arrest.

''I think it's important,'' he said. ''It's very frustrating to know that people like Bosko are bold enough to tamper with the system,'' he said, adding that the relatively light penalties for jury tampering make it worth it for some criminals to try to fix their cases. ''It pays to try to fix the jury because you get far less time than for some substantive crimes,'' Mr. Maloney said. ''So if you're facing life, why not?''

Mr. Radonjich himself acknowledged some role in the jury tampering in a 1997 interview in Yugoslavia with Esquire magazine. He also said he was a close adviser to Mr. Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader accused of genocide. But, he said, he loved America and hoped to return someday.



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