Mob Star (4 page)

1982
—
April:
Angelo Ruggiero’s home is bugged.

May:
Salvatore Ruggiero dies in plane crash.

October:
President Reagan orders crackdown on the mob.

1983
—
March:
Castellano’s White House is bugged.

August:
James Cardinali arrested, becomes government witness as Angelo Ruggiero, Gene Gotti, and others arrested in heroin case.

1984
—Romual Piecyk accuses John Gotti and another of assaulting him.

1985
—
March:
Federal Strike Force chief predicts acquittal of John Gotti two weeks before Gotti is indicted in federal case; annex next to Gotti club is bugged by state task force.

June:
Aniello Dellacroce’s home is bugged, Angelo Ruggiero refuses to turn over transcripts of heroin tapes.

December:
Dellacroce dies; Castellano names Thomas Bilotti underboss; Castellano and Bilotti murdered.

1986
—
January:
John Gotti becomes boss of Gambino Family, names Frank DeCicco underboss.

March:
Piecyk can’t remember who assaults him, case dropped.

April:
Gotti’s federal racketeering trial begins; Frank DeCicco murdered; Gotti jailed after bail revoked. Trial postponed.

August:
Federal trial begins again.

1987
—
March 13:
Jury in federal trial of John Gotti reaches verdict. FBI “Gambino squad” begins “get-Gotti” investigation.

1988
—
February:
FBI points video camera with a telephoto lens on the front door of the Ravenite Social Club to capture the comings and goings of John Gotti and his friends.

August
: Willie Boy Johnson is shot to death in front of his house as he leaves for work.

1989
—
January:
John Gotti is arrested in Manhattan for assault in the 1986 shooting of a carpenters union official.

May:
After two mistrials, federal jury reaches a verdict in the third trial stemming from the electronic surveillance that began in 1981 at the home of Angelo Ruggiero.

November:
A bug in an apartment two floors above the Ravenite Social Club picks up its first conversation.

1990
—
February:
State court jury in Manhattan reaches a verdict in the assault case against John Gotti.

December:
John Gotti and Salvatore Gravano are arrested and detained without bail on racketeering and murder charges; Gotti and Gravano hear taped conversations made in the apartment above Ravenite Social Club.

1991
—
August:
Federal Judge disqualifies Bruce Cutler and Gerald Shargel, lawyers for Gotti and Gravano, from representing them at trial.

November:
Gravano agrees to testify against John Gotti and other members and associates of the Gambino crime family.

 

1992
—
January.
Jury selection begins in racketeering and murder trial of Gotti and
consigliere
Frank LoCascio.

March:
Gravano takes the witness stand against Gotti and LoCascio.

April:
Federal jury reaches a verdict.

June 23:
Gotti and LoCascio are sentenced to life in prison; Gotti supporters rally and riot outside Brooklyn Federal Court; Gotti is flown to Marion Federal Penitentiary.

O
ver the sixteen years—on and off—that it took us to write this book, we spoke to many people whose lives intersected with John Gotti’s. We can’t thank many of them publicly, but they know who they are, and we especially salute them for trusting us so that we might tell a good story.

Over the same time, we wrote hundreds of articles and columns about the mob star and his grimy world; we covered his trials and most other major events in his public life, and came to read or possess many secret documents describing his not-so-public life. Gotti left a very large paper trail.

We can publicly thank many people, including these current and former members of the United States Attorneys’ offices in New York: James Comey, Patrick Cotter, Raymond Dearie, Fran Fragos, John Gleeson, Douglas Grover, Karyn Kenney, Walter Mack, Andrew Maloney, Kenneth McCabe, Edward McDonald, Leonard Michaels, James Orenstein, Charles Rose, and Laura Ward. At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we thank William Doran, James Fox, George Gabriel, Greg Hagerty, George Hanna, Jim Margolin, Bruce Mouw, Arthur Ruffels, Philip Scala, Lewis Schiliro, and Joseph Valiquette.

At the New York state law enforcement level, we thank Ellen Corcella, Michael Cherkasky, Ercole Gaudioso, Barbara Jones, Eric Krause, Robert Morgenthau, Pasquale Perrotta, Jeff Schlanger, and Eric Seidel.

Though they often wouldn’t say much, we also appreciate courtesies shown us by defense lawyers Benjamin Brafman, Anthony Cardinale, Charles Carnesi, Bruce Cutler, David DePetris, Jeffrey Hoffman, Susan Kellman, Albert Krieger, James LaRossa, John Mitchell, Richard Rehbock, George Santangelo, Michael Santangelo, Gerald Shargel, and Barry Slotnick. We also thank Lewis Kasman and Carlo Vaccarezza, two friends of John Gotti, for speaking to us on the record.

We also thank some journalism buddies who often made covering Gotti a lot of fun—Pete Bowles, Bill Boyle, Leonard Buder, Ying Chan, Irene Cornell, Ed Frost, Pablo Guzman, Hap Hairston, Beth Holland, Patricia Hurtado, David Krajicek, Terri Lichtstein, Michael Lipack, Arnold Lubash, David Martin, Eric Meskauskas, Phil Messing, John Miller, Mary Murphy, Juliet Papa, Karen Phillips, Tom Robbins, Faigi Rosenthal, Philip Russo, Larry Sutton, and JoAnne Wasserman.

At Alpha Books, we thank Development Editor Jennifer Moore and Production Editor Billy Fields for the special care they afforded us, and we convey an extra special thank you to Gary Goldstein, the Acquisitions Editor who sought us out, encouraged and reinforced our efforts, and was the brainchild of this updated edition of
Mob Star.

Lastly, we thank the people we love the most and who will always be tops in our book—Ms. Doreen Weisenhaus and Jake Mustain, and Barbara, Matthew, Kim, Haley, Jenna, and Craig Capeci.

 

Gene Mustain, Jerry Capeci
June 5, 2002

THE POPE LIVED ON A HILL called Death.

His home on the hill was a stately mansion his followers called the White House. He owned or controlled many businesses in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Florida. He was a national expert on unions and labor contracts. He was an elegant dresser, dined in expensive restaurants, and rode to meetings in a chauffeured car. He said he was a butcher.

Only some of his followers called him the Pope. Others called him Paul, Paulie, or Uncle Paul; outsiders called him Big Paul. His natal name was Paul Constantino Castellano. He was born in Brooklyn on June 26, 1915, the son of immigrants from the oppressed island of Sicily. His father
was
a butcher.

Presenting himself as merely a butcher who wound up a successful businessman and labor consultant was an unpapal pose, a shield for his family against the whispers of strangers. His three sons were successful businessmen; his daughter was happily married, although for a time she was not, and this had made the Pope very angry.

It was the way he presented himself to his followers that enabled him to acquire great wealth. As a young man he fell in with other men whose families came from Sicily, where thrived a culture outside the law. In the new land of opportunity, they felt isolated and discriminated against. And so they resorted to native customs, which included the use of violence and intimidation to get what they wanted. Crime became their profession.

The young pope was talented—and lucky—and in 1976, he became the most powerful criminal in America.

That was the year he customer-built his White House on Todt Hill, or Death Hill to the Dutch settlers of
Staaten Eylandt,
which became one of the five boroughs of the capital of crime, New York City. He succeeded his brother-in-law, Carlo Gambino, as the “boss” of a large “Family” of criminals—the largest of the Crime Capital’s five Families and the nineteen others around the country. Gambino, a boss for twenty years, died of old age. His Family, out of respect, carried on as the Gambino Family.

Most of the time, the Families found it advantageous to cooperate and to recognize each others’ criminal spheres of influence. In 1931, Salvatore Maranzano, a boss who had great power—and was an admirer of the military system developed by Julius Caesar—imposed on each Family a highly organized structure. The boss would be aided by an underboss and assisted by captains who would command individual crews of soldiers. Each Family also would retain a counselor, a kind of in-house lawyer. The spoils would flow upward from the soldiers.

The system was designed to insulate the boss and protect him from prosecution. For a long time, in the Gambino Family, it did.

The Pope alienated some followers right at the start. In succeeding his brother-in-law, who also was his cousin, he vaulted over Aniello Dellacroce, the Gambino Family underboss since 1965. Castellano’s solution to this potentially fatal situation was to relinquish to Dellacroce near total authority over some Gambino Family crews, including one led by a Dellacroce protégé, an ambitious former hijacker and degenerate gambler, John Gotti. Over the next several years, an aberrant situation arose: a Family within a Family.

The styles and deeds of the Family branches overlapped, but distinct identities did emerge. The Castellano wing was more white collar, because of its labor racketeering and bid-rigging in the construction, cartage, meat, and garment industries. The Dellacroce wing was more blue collar, because of its preoccupation with gambling, loan-sharking, and hijacking.

Until Neil Dellacroce’s death in December 1985, there was peace if not harmony.

 

 

On December 16, two weeks after Dellacroce died of cancer and other illnesses, the Pope rose early and padded around his house. He was a large, bespectacled, seventy-year-old man with a big hawk nose, weary jowls, and thinning hair combed straight back. The last two years had been difficult. Caesar’s system had finally failed the Gambino Family. The Pope was a defendant in two federal racketeering cases. The trial in one case—in which he stood accused of being the puppeteer of a murderous gang of international car thieves—was underway.

Beset by his own worries, Castellano had not gone to Dellacroce’s wake, a serious lapse of judgment for a man who already had enough trouble with the Family within the Family.

Today, he was savoring a twenty-four-hour break in his trial. He wouldn’t have to fight rush-hour traffic to get to the United States Court House in the borough of Manhattan by 9:30 A.M., his daily duty for the last two months. For him, the worst part of the trial—the testimony of the only witness directly linking him to the stolen-car ring—was over. In three days, the trial would recess for two weeks, and the judge had given him permission to take a holiday at his condominium in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Today was to be leisurely. He had a meeting at noon near his house with the boss of another Family and with one of his loyal captains, James Failla. Then he intended to drop by unannounced at his lawyer’s office, on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, and present Christmas envelopes to the secretaries. He was going to be in Manhattan later anyway. He was to meet Failla and another Gambino captain—Frank DeCicco, who was a Failla protégé—and two other men for dinner.

“Sparks, 5 P.M.,” read the entry in his diary.

Sparks Steak House is located at 210 East Forty-sixth Street, just east of Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan, one of the world’s most pedestrian-congested areas, especially at that going-home hour. Grand Central Station, with its ribbons of steel to the suburbs, is at East Forty-second Street, one block west of Third.

That week the restaurant had been named the city’s best steak-house by
New York
magazine. A woodsy, manly place, it was popular with businessmen from the surrounding office towers and with diplomats from the United Nations complex, two blocks east on First Avenue. Castellano, the owner of the Meat Palace, a supplier of fine cuts, was an occasional customer; he knew the Sparks beef was top quality.

The Pope had helped Sparks’s management win a sweetheart union contract. He didn’t expect to be treated like a butcher when he went there, and he wasn’t; but in a secretly recorded conversation with two union leaders, he had complained that Sparks wasn’t respectful enough to pay for his meal. The Pope was a complex man. Although generous with secretaries, he could be surprisingly grubby about money in his business relationships.

“Ya know who’s really busy making a real fortune?” he began. “Fucking Sparks … what those guys do is good for a hundred grand a week. I don’t get five cents when I go in there.”

His colleagues expressed surprise that Sparks allowed the Pope to pay for his dinners.

“Pay, hell, I don’t get a thing. You know, they don’t buy you a drink. Forget about it.” “Forget about it” is a common expression among New Yorkers seeking to shrug off the everyday absurdities and ironies of life.

The Pope would be chauffeured today by forty-seven-year-old Thomas Bilotti. Bilotti was not an ordinary chauffeur. He was an official of a concrete company on Staten Island and thus a member of the Family’s white-color wing. He had become Castellano’s aide-de-camp in the last few years, and Castellano had just named him to succeed Neil Dellacroce as underboss.

 

 

The rise of Bilotti, rather than John Gotti, the protégé of Dellacroce, was another disappointment to the Family within the Family. Dellacroce had been its buffer against misfortune.

Gotti, at age forty-five, was the swashbuckling “skipper” of a large crew in Queens, the Crime Capital’s largest-sized borough. He was a dangerously handsome man who dressed to kill. He regarded himself as Dellacroce’s successor, although in recent years his position had been undermined by drug charges against some of his crew members. Like Carlo Gambino, Paul Castellano had forbidden drug dealing.