Manhattan Mafia Guide (29 page)

East 107
^th
Street today.
Courtesy of Shirley Dluginski
.

Upon investigation, it turned up that Giannini, a Calbrian immigrant, had been working as an informant for the FBI. According to the 1969 testimony of Joe Valachi, the orders to kill the forty-two-year-old turncoat—who shot and killed a police officer in 1934—came from the very top, meaning the exiled Charlie Luciano, who told Vito Genovese that the doomed mobster had been “talking to the junk agents [the Federal Bureau of Narcotics] for years,” and “he had to be hit.” Valachi was given the contract to kill Giannini, who in turned recruited his sister’s son, twenty-five-year-old Fiore Siano, and two other up-and-coming gangsters, Joseph and Pasquale “Pat” Pagano.

According to Valachi, he drove the getaway car, and Siano did the shooting.

G
IORDANO
, J
OHN

100 East Seventy-seventh Street

On the evening of April 11, 1995, fifty-five-year-old Gambino capo “Handsome Jack” Giordano paid a visit to ailing fellow mobster Louis DiFazio, a patient of the Lenox Hill Hospital at this location.

At 7:19 p.m., Giordano left the hospital and and set out toward a dark blue 1994 Chrysler sedan, parked in front of the hospital on Seventy-seventh Street near Park Avenue. As he was climbing into the passenger side of the vehicle, a slow-moving car crept by and fired a barrage of bullets at the mob leader, hitting him three times. One of the bullets severed Giordano’s spine. He survived but was paralyzed from the waist down.

Giordano—who ran his crew out of De Robertis Pasticceria—was a close and trusted associate of John Gotti Sr. During the “Teflon Don’s” 1990 federal racketeering trial, Giordano visited his boss regularly for moral support, and the pair often had coffee together during breaks.

Investigators later theorized that the shooting grew out of a dispute over a loan-sharking debt, and DiFazio had perhaps set Giordano up. A Bronx man name Ernesto Rodriguez was allegedly paid $50,000 to carry out the hit.

L
ATINI
, B
RUNO

Tenth Avenue and West Forty-ninth Street

On December 25, 1971, the lifeless body of mob associate Bruno Latini was found inside his car in the parking garage at this location. The victim, whose brother was Gambino capo Eddie Lino, had just left a restaurant he owned on Eighth Avenue, only four blocks from the crime scene.

According to
The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer
by Philip Carlo, the triggerman was the “Ice Man” himself, Richard Kuklinski—the notorious three-hundred-pound, Polish/Irish American hit man who claimed to have murdered over 250 men on behalf of the New York and New Jersey mob over four decades.

The murder of Latini may have been personal, however. During an interview at Trenton State Prison, Kuklinski allegedly admitted to Carlo that he killed the restaurateur “out of principle.” According to the Ice Man, Latini owed him $1,500 and refused to pay, feeling his mob connections would shield him.

Richard “the Iceman” Kuklinski mug shot, 1986.

After the Kuklinski family celebrated Christmas Eve dinner at their New Jersey home on the night of the murder, Richard snuck out and drove to Manhattan looking for the man who had been avoiding him. He tracked Latini to the parking garage at this location, where the would-be victim was getting into his car. Latini invited Kuklinski into the vehicle to talk about the situation, but when Latini refused to fork over $1,500, the Ice Man pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and shot his victim two times in the head at close range. Kuklinski then took $1,500 from Latini’s wallet and returned home to his family; he was never charged with the murder.

L
UCIANO
, C
HARLIE

Sixth Avenue and West Fiftieth Street

Charlie Lucky claimed he was abducted at this location on October 17, 1929, by three men who forced him into the backseat of a car, beat him and stabbed him several times in the back. The gangster claims he blacked out after being stabbed and woke up on the side of a road in Staten Island.

Luciano never identified his assailants, and several theories have since emerged, including one that law enforcement agents may have been behind the attack. This theory is based on the fact that no other person in history has ever been “taken for a ride” and lived to tell about it. Some believe the incident was an attempt to either shake up the rising mobster or gain information.

M
ADONIA
, B
ENEDETTO

743 East Eleventh Street

On the morning of Tuesday, April 14, 1903, the body of Benedetto Madonia, a Sicilian immigrant living in Buffalo, New York, was found stuffed inside of a wooden sugar barrel on the sidewalk in front of this address.

The victim, whose throat was stabbed repeatedly with a stiletto, matched the description of a man that the Secret Service had observed in the company of the Morello gang in the days leading up to the murder. Acting in concert with local authorities, eight Morello gang members were rounded up on April 15 in a coordinated sting—all were armed with revolvers and daggers and put up a fight but were overpowered by police in the vicinity of the Bowery. Four others, including Giuseppe Morello, were picked up soon after and thrown in jail in lieu of a hefty bail. In the pockets of Morello and gang member Tommaso Petto when arrested were cigars of a “peculiar brand,” which were also found in the pockets of the victim. This and the testimony of three Secret Service agents was enough to hold the gang on suspicion of murder.

In Petto’s possession were a large-caliber revolver and a stiletto that police suspected might have been used in the murder. They also found a pawn ticket from the Collateral Loan Company at 278 Bowery—for a watch belonging to the victim. When investigated, the broker’s description of the person who had pawned the watch matched Petto’s; he had purchased the timepiece for one dollar.

A rare image of Benedetto Madonia (center), two unidentified Morello gang members (left) and gang member Vito Laduca (right). Oakland Tribune,
Oakland, California, May 9, 1903
.

Police tried desperately to establish the victim’s identity, a motive and a definitive link to the Morellos, whom authorities called “the most dangerous band of counterfeiters that ever operated in this country.”
¹³⁸
Several pieces of evidence were uncovered in Giuseppe’s dingy apartment at 178 Christie Street, including a letter written to the gang leader from the victim and another paper with Madonia’s name scribbled in red ink—later described as the “signal of death” by the press.
¹³⁹
The problem was, at the time, authorities did not know who Madonia was.

The cards began to stack up against the Corleone outfit when an identical barrel was found in the 226 Elizabeth Street basement, where police believed the murder occurred. Though the space belonged to the Dolceria Pasticceria on the first floor, there was no baking equipment on the premises (thus, there seemed to be no need for a full barrel of sugar). In fact, the basement was almost completely empty, and several hidden compartments were found. Since there was still not enough evidence to make a conviction, defense lawyers fought hard to have the gang released. Under mounting pressure, some gang members were dismissed on April 20.

Police caught a break when an anonymous letter they received was investigated, leading them to Giuseppe De Primo, a Morello gang member who was serving time in Sing Sing prison for his role in the 1902 Morristown counterfeiting ring. Famed NYPD detective Joseph Petrosino visited De Primo behind bars on March 21. De Primo told the detective that he had asked Benedetto Madonia, his brother-in-law, to visit New York to try and recover money from the Morello gang, which he felt was owed.

Later that day, Petrosino made a special trip to Buffalo to meet with Madonia’s wife (and De Primo’s sister), Lucia. She was shown a picture of the deceased and confirmed that it was her husband. Lucia Madonia explained to Petrosino that she and Benedetto were originally from Larcara Fredo, Sicily, near Palermo, and that her husband belonged to a “secret society.”
¹⁴⁰
She believed that “Giuseppe Morrellio [
sic
]” was part of this society, of which she did not know the name.

The day after Mrs. Madonia was questioned, Giuseppe Morello was taken from his jail cell at the Tombs prison and brought to the morgue in order to examine the mutilated body of the victim. Police hoped the experience would shock Morello into admission, but the steely thirty-six-year-old was unfazed. He was ultimately acquitted on April 23, due to lack of evidence.
¹⁴¹

Tomasso Petto ended up taking the fall and being charged with the murder of Benedetto Madonia. However, he had somehow slipped out of custody and disappeared, resurfacing a couple years later in Pennsylvania. Petto was never convicted for the murder, and the Morello gang survived the incident relatively intact.

M
ARANZANO
, S
ALVATORE

230 Park Avenue

Short-lived but influential “boss of all bosses” Salvatore Maranzano (July 31, 1886–September 10, 1931) rose to power during the violent 1930–31 conflict between Sicilian Corleonesi and Castellammare Mafia clans of New York City, in what is known as the Castellammarese War.

Hailing from Castellammare Del Golfo, Maranzano inherited what would become known as the Bonanno crime family in July 1930, after interim boss Vito Bonventre was murdered during the war with Giuseppe Masseria’s Corleone organization.

The Brooklyn-based Castellammarese outfit’s previous leader, Nicholas Schiro, simply fled the city in 1930, when presented with the choice of fighting Masseria or paying an embarrassingly large tribute. When successor Bonventre was removed from the picture a few months later, forty-five-year-old Maranzano stepped up to the plate and proved to be no pushover.

With the help of young Charlie Luciano and others, the Castellammarese War ended on April 15, 1931, when Masseria was gunned down in a Brooklyn restaurant. Big changes took place in the American Mafia, largely due to the efforts of Salvatore Maranzano. It is believed that this period is when the current hierarchical structure of the Mafia was incorporated, said to be based on Cesar’s Roman military. Several contemporary Mafia codes were also established during this time to prevent the inner prejudices and wanton violence that had plagued the Italian organizations for three decades and inhibited the Mafia’s full money-generating potential.

During this restructuring, Maranzano officially established the “Five Families” of the New York Mafia and declared himself
capo di tutti capo
.

As progressive as Maranzano was, he was still too restrictive and Old World for the younger, Americanized Mafiosi, who didn’t care much about traditional Italian codes and rituals. Most of the Mafia by this time was made up of first-generation Italian Americans or immigrants who had arrived in the United States at a very young age. Growing up in the cradle of America’s melting pot, many from this new generation of mobsters did not carry the same prejudices toward non-Italians when it came to business opportunities, nor did they care about seemingly fatuous wars between provinces.