The Coffey Files

by Coffey, Joseph; Schmetterer, Jerry;

Instead Joe had Vito Arena and other slimeballs like Kenny “the Rat” O’Donnell lined up to bring “Big Paulie” down. Waiting in the wings were legions of young button men and middle-aged capos hoping their godfather would stick by the code of silence he so ruthlessly enforced over the years. If he did not, they were more than willing to take him out as he took out the capos and soldiers who threatened his own evil empire.

  There was a very businesslike atmosphere as Coffey placed handcuffs on the sixty-eight-year-old godfather. “I guess we both had a measure of respect for each other. Paulie wasn’t an idiot. He asked me how Pat was, making it clear to everyone in the room we knew each other,” Joe remembers. “Once you understand that Italian mob guys live only to make money it’s easier to deal with them. Of course they think the only smart cops are the corrupt cops. So I don’t think Paulie thought I was very smart. Of course he was the one who was in handcuffs.”

  As the four men walked through the lobby of LaRossa’s office building, a newspaper photographer jumped from behind a column and snapped their picture.

  Coffey, who was always accused of being a publicity hound, immediately defended himself to LaRossa. “Don’t look at me, I didn’t call them,” he said.

  “I know you didn’t,” LaRossa answered. “I did. Where could I buy publicity like this?”

  The arrest of Paul Castellano was big news. The newspapers were filled with accounts of what Giuliani was going to prove. The luxury car ring, the Kuwait connection, the homicides, the murder of Castellano’s own son-in-law all were stories the tabloids fought for. The picture of Joe leading the godfather to justice made the front pages.

  Eventually there would be two trials growing out of Giuliani’s fifty-one-count indictment, but none of the big three would ever be convicted.

  DeMeo was killed on Castellano’s orders because it was believed he was cooperating with Coffey and Ferguson. Nino Gaggi died of a heart attack in the midst of his second trial on the charges, and Paul “Big Paulie” Castellano was gunned down outside Sparks Steak House in midtown Manhattan December 16, 1985, in the middle of his trial in Federal Court. The Coffey Gang was not too disappointed that the mobsters died before convictions in a court of law. “They got the ultimate sentence,” says Joe.

  VIII

  THE RULING COMMISSION

  U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani’s success in connecting Castellano to the evil doings of the Roy DeMeo crew through use of the RICO statute sent shock waves through both sides of the criminal justice community.

  Mob lawyers realized they had a courageous and innovative new adversary in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They advised their clients that it would be much more difficult to beat the conspiracy charges than individual murder or extortion raps. Not since Al Capone was sent away for tax evasion had the mob been forced to deal with a new twist in society’s favor.

  On the other hand, prosecutors all over the country began taking a different look at their ongoing investigations. The idea of linking a small-time drug dealer to his capo or don appealed as much to a sheriff’s deputy in Montana as it did to an assistant district attorney in Los Angeles.

  In New York in late 1983, while indictments were still being prepared in the auto crime case, Ron Goldstock, Director, New York State Organized Crime Task Force, figured out the way to use RICO to hit a grand-slam home run against La Cosa Nostra. Earlier in his career he had helped draft the federal RICO laws.

  Goldstock was the assistant district attorney in Manhattan who, ten years earlier, had listened to Joe Coffey’s first breathless report from Munich on the Vatican case. The two remained close friends throughout their careers. Joe often passed on important intelligence information to the Organized Crime Task Force.

  A few weeks after the auto crime indictments were officially brought against Castellano, Gaggi, and DeMeo, Goldstock visited Giuliani’s office in St. Andrew’s Plaza.

  With Coffey and Walter Mack in the room he stepped to the blackboard across from Giuliani’s desk.

  “Ron was very serious. He looked Giuliani right in the eye as he held a piece of chalk near the blackboard. He said he thought he had a way to bring down New York’s five Mafia dons including Castellano in one vast RICO indictment,” Coffey remembers.

  Goldstock drew a circle representing a wheel on the blackboard. In the middle he drew the hub. He said the group should consider the hub to be a black 1982 Jaguar owned by Salvatore Avellino, Jr., whom Joe Coffey knew to be the chauffeur of Antonio “Tony Ducks” Corallo, godfather of the Lucchese crime family.

  Next, Goldstock drew one spoke off the hub stopping at the perimeter of the circle. He said they should consider that spot the home of Paul Castellano. In reality, Coffey knew, it was a $2 million mansion on Staten Island called by its neighbors the “White House.”

  Then Goldstock drew another spoke from the hub to the perimeter of the circle. This spot he called the Palma Boys Social Club in East Harlem.

  “At that point a thunderbolt came out of the sky and hit me between the eyes,” Coffey says. “Goldstock was diagraming the three bugging operations in place at that time. His own unit had a bug in Avellino’s Jaguar. The Famous But Incompetent feds had bugs in the kitchen of Castellano’s mansion and in the ceiling of the Palma Boys Social Club, which was the headquarters of ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, godfather of the Genovese family.”

  As Coffey began mulling over what all that gathered intelligence could produce, Goldstock put the finishing touches on his crude diagram. He told them to consider the perimeter of the circle to be the Ruling Commission.

  The commission, organized crime experts knew, was the board of directors of La Cosa Nostra. It was composed of nine powerful gangsters including the five bosses of New York’s crime families. Created in 1931 as a means of bringing a debilitating gang war to an end, its original members included such notorious, hoodlums as Charles “Charlie Lucky” Luciano, Carlo Gambino, Albert “The Earthquake” Anastasia, Joseph Profaci, Thomas “Tommy Brown” Lucchese and Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno.

  Caught in the middle of a gang war that was not only destroying their private armies but also eating into their profits, the dons of the thirties realized they made money only when they were at peace. The commission was established as a sort of League of Nations where disputes could be ironed out without bloodshed. Unlike the League of Nations however, the commission often made rulings that resulted in the execution of troublemakers. The commission was a government within a government. It was so much like a legitimate government that its rules sometimes called for the taking of the life of a member.

  At the time Goldstock was drawing circles on Giuliani’s blackboard, the Ruling Commission was headed by capo di tutti capi Paul Castellano. The other members were Castellano’s right-hand man, the underboss of the Gambino family, Aniello “O’Neill” Dellacroce; Genovese boss Salerno; Corallo; his Lucchese family underboss, Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro; Consigliere Christopher “Christy Tick” Furnari; the Colombo family acting boss Gennaro “Jerry Lang” Langella and one of his soldiers, Ralph Scopo (who despite his low rank held a significant position); and Bonanno family boss Philip “Rusty” Rastelli, the man who ordered the murder of Carmine Galante from his cell in the Metropolitan Correction Center.

  All this was known to law enforcement, and separate investigations were constantly being pursued against all the individual characters.

  But on that day in Giuliani’s office, Goldstock proposed to use the RICO statute to go after all of them in one vast case to prove they cooperated in a criminal enterprise which used extortion, murder, and labor racketeering to achieve its illicit goals.

  Goldstock said the key to the entire case was the Jaguar tapes, more than one thousand hours of conversation between Avellino and mob leaders including Corallo recorded as they drove through the New York metropolitan area conducting the business of the Lucchese family.

  Installing the bug in the first place was a remarkable piece of work performed by investigators from Goldst
ock’s task force. For months, in the winter and spring of 1983, they followed the Jaguar, waiting for the opportunity to carry out a carefully rehearsed plan.

  Then on a windy rainy night, as Avellino attended an affair at a restaurant in Huntington, Long Island, two task force members took up position outside the entrance while two others broke into the car.

  Investigator Richard Tennien sat in the back of the Jaguar with a walkie-talkie, alert for word from the lookouts that Avellino was returning to the parking lot, while a task force technician removed the map light from its socket and placed a tiny transmitter behind it. Then, as he had practiced it on a similar car, the technician replaced the map light. In less than two minutes the device was installed. When they asked court permission to install the bug in the Jaguar, state attorneys argued it would be invaluable to their investigation of La Cosa Nostra. Years later Goldstock described the information it provided over an eighteen-month period as the best evidence he had ever heard in more than twenty years in law enforcement.

  The Jaguar tapes contained many references by Corallo to the Ruling Commission. As Goldstock’s men trailed the black car every day from Oyster Bay, Long Island, where Avellino would pick his boss up at his house, to construction sites and mob hangouts in Brooklyn and Queens, they recorded detailed explanations of the mob’s control of the concrete industry. The tapes in Castellano’s house and the Palma Boys Social Club also provided much evidence of extortion and labor racketeering.

  One conversation between Avellino and Corallo even mentioned the fact that Giuliani had added six new investigators to his strike force. “He’d better do better than that; we added six ourselves last night,” Avellino joked.

  Other recordings revealed that different construction unions were considered under the control of individual mob bosses. “That one is Paul Castellano’s union” was heard on one tape. On another tape a new Mafia recruit’s intellect is challenged. “Does this guy really understand La Cosa Nostra?” Corallo asked. At the Palma Boys “Fat Tony” Salerno was overheard saying how much he admired a trusted capo but “I told him at least eighty times he can’t sit on the commission.”

  One conversation in the Jaguar has become folklore among organized crime cops. Avellino was paranoid about being followed. He knew at least three law enforcement agencies were always after him and he prided himself on being able to lose their tails. One day he said to Corallo, “If they were able to follow us today, they’re geniuses.” Of course Goldstock’s men were able to stay close enough to pick up the secret transmission.

  Over the next few days, after the meeting at the blackboard, Goldstock laid all this out for Giuliani and Ken Walton, Assistant Director of the FBI in New York. All were comfortable with the fact that they could nail the commission for extortion and labor racketeering. What they needed to add to the mix was a commission-sanctioned murder. A homicide, they reasoned, would get a jury’s attention and reinforce the image of the Mafia as a band of ruthless killers.

  Joe Coffey was asked to suggest a case that might fit into the bigger picture. He did not have to think long. On his mind for the past four years had been the rubout of Carmine Galante. He remembered the surveillance tapes of the Indelicatos embracing Aniello Dellacroce outside the Ravenite Social Club. He said he would make that case for the Ruling Commission indictments.

  Coffey’s assignment to the U.S. Attorney’s Office was on thin ice at that time. Robert McGuire was no longer police commissioner. Jim Sullivan was no longer chief of detectives. The new commissioner, Benjamin Ward, and the new chief of detectives, Richard Nicastro, did not share their predecessors’ opinion of Joe’s work.

  His relationship with both men was strained, and he’d had run-ins with both at other times in his career. At one point Giuliani had to intercede through the mayor’s office to keep Coffey assigned to his office during the auto crime case. Now it was again suggested that he be kept on until Goldstock’s theory was played out.

  Joe was too wise to the ways of intradepartmental politics to believe his special assignment or the Coffey Gang was going to survive the changes on the top floor of One Police Plaza. He decided to retire. In February 1984 Joe was approached by James Harmon, Executive Director of the President’s Commission on Organized Crime, and asked to join the Washington-based unit as an investigator. He faced the certainty of a lessening of his stature in the NYPD with McGuire and Sullivan gone. In addition, his three children were approaching college age, and he needed to find a way to increase his income. He filed the necessary papers to make him eligible for retirement in July 1984.

  He was elated to have the chance to help make the Ruling Commission case before he left. “I thought it would be a fabulous way to end my career with the NYPD. To bring down the commission would be the icing on the cake as far as I was concerned.”

  Coffey quickly threw his energies into the efforts of the strike force, which was now being headed by an assistant U.S. attorney named Barbara Jones, whom Giuliani had chosen to replace Walter Mack.

  Ken McCabe agreed with Coffey’s assessment that the murder of Carmine Galante in 1979 was a perfect example of a hit sanctioned by the Ruling Commission. If they could explain that to a jury, they could prove that the commission was guilty of homicide.

  Joe remembered his initial investigation of the murder. He knew that the secret surveillance tapes shot by Detective John Gurnee, which showed “Sonny Red” and his son Bruno Indelicate embracing Aniello Dellacroce outside the Ravenite Social Club thirty-five minutes after Galante was hit, was proof positive of commission involvement.

  Dellacroce, the Gambino underboss, sat on the commission. The Indelicatos were Bonanno family soldiers. Under normal circumstances Dellacroce would not have anything to do with them. What was needed was some way of proving through physical evidence that the Indelicatos were present at Joe and Mary’s Restaurant in Ridgewood when Galante was shotgunned to death. The first time the Coffey Gang investigated that murder they were unable to come up with that physical evidence.

  Coffey and McCabe went back to Joe and Mary’s. They sat at the same backyard table where Galante, Leonardo Coppolla, and Guiseppe Turano had on that warm day, July 12, 1979. They had a glass of wine and discussed the clear motive for the murder—the argument at the time within the Bonanno family over Galante’s desire to deal directly in drug smuggling and selling.

  They knew that tapes from the Palma Boys Social Club indicated that commission members “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano as well as Galante’s own godfather, Phil Rastelli, were concerned that Galante was out of control—what they called a “cowboy”—and needed to be brought down. They also knew that capos from the Bonanno and Gambino families visited Rastelli in jail the day before the hit and the day after.

  A conversation between “Tony Ducks” Corallo and Sal Avellino recorded as they cruised in their Jaguar three years after Galante’s murder proved how concerned the Mafia was about their involvement in drug dealing. On the tape, Corallo explained how federal prosecutors were able to get all the money they needed from their bosses in Washington for investigations of drug dealing. He told Avellino that the way to get the feds off their backs was to get out of the drug business.

  Coffey and McCabe spent days going over the steps of the original investigators. In their minds they recreated the scene, imagining Galante, Coppolla, and Guiseppe Turano being blown out of their chairs and into the tomato garden behind their table. They wondered how John Turano was lucky enough to escape with a serious but not fatal wound. They knew he could probably help with descriptions of the hit men, but they knew he would not.

  They recalled that two other men at the table, close friends of Galante’s, Baldo Amato and Cesare Bonventre, were not sitting down when the hit men entered the backyard. That was a typical Mafia setup. There was no doubt that Amato and Bonventre picked the time and place for lunch that day and passed the information on to the hit men. That was standard operating procedure for the hit of a high-ranking mafio
so. It was the same way Jimmy Hoffa’s stepson arranged for his meeting with “Sally Balls” Briguglio in a Detroit parking lot. It was the same way “Sally Balls” was led to his own death by his mentor, Tony Provenzano, and his friend, Matty Ianiello.

  They went out to the street and reinterviewed the witnesses who saw the hit men enter the restaurant and then escape in the Oldsmobile. They remembered that fingerprints lifted from the getaway car, which was found a few blocks away, had not matched any in their files.

  The failure to match the fingerprints had been nagging Coffey for years, as he recalled the attitudes of the lab technicians and the precinct detectives on the case. To them it was a waste of time to even check for prints. It was the old “vermin killing vermin” philosophy that until the advent of the Coffey Gang had let so many Mafia murders go unsolved.

  The two detectives decided to ask the police lab to check those fingerprints again. This time Coffey and McCabe would stand over their shoulders, representing the weight of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the same office that had just indicted “Big Paulie” Castellano for fifty-one crimes.

  This time the fingerprint men did their work. Matches came back that placed Bruno Indelicato and a Bonanno soldier named Santo Giordano in the getaway car.

  With renewed confidence, Coffey and McCabe put together a report saying that “Sonny Red” and his son Bruno Indelicato and Santo Giordano had killed Carmine Galante, Leonardo Coppolla, and Guiseppe Turano and wounded John Turano. The report said that the hit had been set up by Cesare Bonventre and Baldo Amato and sanctioned by the Ruling Commission. For proof, they would present the fingerprints, the visitors records for the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Rastelli met with the capos, the eyewitness description of the getaway car, and, most damning of all when properly explained to a jury, the tapes showing Dellacroce embracing the Indelicatos.

  Circumstantially their case would be boosted by the fact that “Sonny Red” Indelicato and Cesare Bonventre had been murdered, Bruno Indelicato had narrowly escaped an attempted hit, and Santo Giordano had died in a mysterious plane crash. “Again, that was a classic Mafia scenario. The executioners rarely outlive their targets by much, and close associates are always used to set up someone of Galante’s level,” Coffey told Goldstock.