By the time Sam DeCavalcante had been inducted into the Elizabeth family, Delmore and the mob had solidified their base of power with their control over Local 394 of the Hod Carriers’ union. Hod carriers are skilled laborers that provide support to bricklayers. The union was established in 1903, and by the time the Elizabeth crime family—known from 1963 on as the DeCavalcante family—were in control of Local 394, the national headquarters of the union was in Washington, DC. Delmore had started working the union from a number of angles. He was part of a scheme accepting payoffs from contractors who wanted to work on major developments with less than the full share of union employees—or, in some cases, none at all. Delmore was described as a “top-level mafioso, formerly a bootlegger, who has retired from violent crime to the quasi-legitimate field of labor unions. Obtains ‘kickbacks’ from Italian emigrants for whom he obtains employment through his power in the labor unions.”[13]
The Elizabeth family’s hold on the union was deep, with members like Louis “Fat Louie” Larasso and Frank Majuri holding offices in the local. They controlled the flow of work to members as well as how those members acted on job sites. The union also became a de facto employment office for members and associates of the crime family, supplying endless no-show jobs to mob guys who needed a way to show legitimate income on their tax returns.
Sam DeCavalcante’s primary sources of revenue for the crime family were “gambling, some shylocking, control of labor unions, and he used the labor unions so that the construction people, the builders, had an agreement that they would pay so much per room to him so that they would not be obliged to use union labor at union scale.”[14]
In addition to overseeing gambling in the Garden State, DeCavalcante’s empire also extended up into Connecticut and west into Pennsylvania—specifically the town of Bristol, Pennsylvania, some twenty-three miles outside Philadelphia. Starting back in the late 1940s DeCavalcante had become a regular at local craps games run by members of the Philly mob. When Philadelphia boss Joe Bruno retired in 1944 and leadership of that crime family passed to Joe Ida, DeCavalcante moved into Bristol. He “consolidated control over his [Bruno’s] numbers operations in this area during the 1950s and caused the virtual elimination of the independents.”[15] He took over the numbers game, and eventually dice and cards games, by aligning himself with two of the biggest independents, Charles Chillela and Augustus Montevino, and by financing a layoff back in Trenton run by the Philly family. His gambling in the Bristol area was expanding dramatically and often took place in some unusual locations. Case in point was a 1951 raid of a pig farm that resulted in the arrest of sixty-nine players at a floating dice game.
DeCavalcante also had some operations “down the Shore,” as Jersey natives call it, primarily in Monmouth and Ocean counties. This didn’t sit well with some of the other wiseguys, like Anthony Russo, who operated out of Long Branch, New Jersey, who was caught on FBI wiretaps complaining to Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo about Sam’s moves into his backyard.
So he [Boiardo] started off about the mustached [DeCavalcante]. So I said, “Boot, let’s straighten things out about that. Ninety percent of the Shore belongs to Ray [DeCarlo]. He gave me 50 percent to handle.” He [Boiardo] didn’t answer. I said, “Number two mustache is coming up with all this talk about Gene Catena and Jerry Catena over here, and when he goes to New York it’s Carlo Gambino.” I said, “Am I supposed to back away because of him?” Am I supposed to sit back and see him [DeCavalcante] take over the seashore? He’s got Elizabeth tied up, closed, and he wants to push us out of the Shore.[16]
In the early 1960s, the FBI had started to target organized-crime figures in New Jersey using a variety of new methods, including wiretaps. One of their first operations was to wire the offices of DeCavalcante, who owned Kenilworth Heating and Air Conditioning on North Michigan Avenue in Kenilworth, New Jersey. The bugs, planted in 1961 through 1965, provided law-enforcement agents a compelling glimpse inside the world of organized crime in New Jersey.[17] Recorded conversations ranged from the mundane to the absurd, with enough nuggets of viable intel to allow agents to fill in many gaps about the organization of many of the mob families operating in the Garden State. Conversations of a personal nature came up as well, prying open the internal struggles of a mob boss with personnel issues with both his crime family and his own family.
But while the feds and local and state law enforcement had begun to infiltrate the mob in Jersey, for guys on the streets of the Garden State things couldn’t have been better. And that was causing some issues. Because things were going so well for Jersey-based mobsters, wiseguys from New York were looking to move over and take part in the action. Anthony “Little Pussy” Russo was caught on FBI wiretaps talking to DeCavalcante about it.
Do you know how many guys in Chicago are peeling [safecracking]? Do you know how many friends of ours in New York that made it peeling? What they gonna do? Now there’s a [Cosa Nostra] law that they can’t touch it. They have no other way of making a living, so what can they do? All right, we’re fortunate enough that we moved around and didn’t have to resort to that stuff. We had legitimate things going on as well as horses, numbers, and everything. What are the other poor suckers going to do? Do you know how many deadheads we take for them [New York bosses]? Two guys with Mike Sabella are running a ziginette game in New Jersey. Pretty soon we’ll have all the mob here.[18]
DeCavalcante lamented that he was now on the radar of law enforcement after many years of not having really been known to them. He claimed his newfound conspicuity stemmed from a 1961 raid on a gambling house he was running in Trenton. And that, in addition to his having become boss of the family, meant he was involved with too many hangers-on and had to support too many people, including floating loans to customers with no means of repaying. But apparently his business sense sharpened, because by 1964 DeCavalcante was in solid financial shape. “Even his shylock loans have improved. He said he receives twenty-four thousand dollars per year from one person and ten thousand dollars from another person in interest alone.”[19] Adding his extensive gambling operations, labor racketeering, and spoils from the proceeds of his underlings’ criminal activities, DeCavalcante was doing quite well in his new position.
In 1964 DeCavalcante was drawn into a precarious situation with both the Commission—the Mafia’s governing body—and one of his friends in the underworld, New York mob boss Joseph Bonanno. The Bonanno situation developed because Joe Bonanno and the Commission were at odds over a number of moves Bonanno had made in hopes of increasing his territory. There had also been dissention in the Bonanno family. Finally, Joe Bonanno left New York, claiming he’d been kidnapped—though that assertion was met with skepticism by members of the mob. In his place, the Commission appointed Gaspar DiGregorio, longtime capo, to be the new boss of the family. DeCavalcante took the side of the other bosses, telling his underlings that the Commission had no intention of hurting Bonanno and that Bonanno had better not retaliate in return. He also complained to Bayonne Joe Zicarelli that Bonanno knew the way the Commission operated, wondering why Joe would take issue with them when he himself was involved in other instances of the Commission’s moving in to dictate terms to a family.
Sam: The Commission went in there and took the family over. When Profaci died, Joe Magliocco took over as boss. They threw him right out! “Who the hell are you to take over a borgata?” He’s lucky they didn’t kill him. And Signor Bonanno knows this. When we had trouble in our outfit, they came right in. “You people belong to the Commission until this is straightened out.” They done the same thing in Pittsburgh. They made the boss John . . . uh. . . .
Joe: LaRocca.
Sam: LaRocca, step down.
Joe: He’s no more boss?
Sam: Oh, it’s straightened out now. But Joe Bonanno was in on that deal. They made LaRocca take orders from the Commission until everything was straightened out. So do you understand, Joe? If these people don’t enforce what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s the
point of having the Commission?[20]
When the Commission voted to officially strip Bonanno of his status as boss, DeCavalcante sat down with Bayonne Joe Zicarelli to let him know and to warn him to watch out for any blowback from Bonanno—either against the Commission or back at his own family, saying, “the Commission doesn’t recognize Joe Bonanno as the boss anymore . . . the Commission has nothing against any of you fellows. They respect all your people as friends of ours. But they will not recognize Joe, his son, and Johnny [John Morales]. Joe better not get any intention of hurting anybody either—that’s the most important thing to tell you . . . he might try to hurt people in his own outfit to cover up the story—his story.”[21]
Though the DeCavalcante family was much smaller in comparison to the five families of New York and the Bruno family in Philly, there was a level of respect offered Sam DeCavalcante that made some members of other crime families envious of his organization, even though their rackets may not have been as lucrative, or their influence as strong. Louis Larasso was told that “people from Carlo Gambino’s family, people from Tommy Lucchese’s family, and people from Gaspar DiGregorio’s family wanted to join the DeCavalcante family because they know that DeCavalcante is a fair man and they have more chance to better themselves.”[22] (Starting in the mid-1960s law enforcement and the press began naming the crime families after their bosses. From that point on, the Elizabeth crime family was known as the DeCavalcantes.)
Sam was also generous with his family, especially around the holidays, when he would throw them a Christmas party. He was recorded talking about it with his Connecticut capo, Joe LaSelva:
It’s going to be over at Ange and Min’s—down the cellar. Bring your brother down, too. I’m gonna have all the kids that are proposed down there, too. What we’re gonna do—Carlo Gambino gave me two thousand dollars for that score we made over there in New York. So I was going to give everybody fifty dollars in the outfit. A Christmas present from us—which I think will be a nice thing. Give them a card from you, me, Frank, and the widows—we’ll send them all fifty dollars. Give Mary Amari and Delmore a hundred dollars each—the rest fifty dollars each. If it’s alright with you . . . at one o’clock we’ll sit down and send for the other kids. So they’ll be about forty of us. We’ll blow the two thousand dollars.[23]
DeCavalcante was also loyal to the way the Mafia worked. He was steeped in protocol and respect for other made members, whether they were in his crime family or not.
There is no difference between you and our people. When you people are here, you are respected like our people. Respect for you belonging to another family; you don’t have to tell me anything. If you need money, we will give it to you. We will respect you as amico nostro . . . Cosa Nostra is Cosa Nostra. I can only speak for my people but not for anyone else. When you call the family for your intention, an amico nostro is an amico nostro. If he belongs here or there, it doesn’t mean a thing. If you give me preference, I will also give you preference.[24]
Sam DeCavalcante’s outsized influence with the Commission may also have been influenced by his political savvy, both within the mob and without. He had a number of ties to elected officials, from state senators to local city councilmen. The bugs that caught much of the internal wranglings of the crime family also netted investigators tantalizing pieces of information about business dealings and “rainmaking” on DeCavalcante’s part. Sam claimed to have a contact in the office of then-governor Richard J. Hughes. Sam claimed this person kept him abreast of law-enforcement efforts against the crime family. Obviously his contact was not privy to extensive wiretapping. Sam also boasted of contacts in the state beverage commission and of how he was able to straighten out issues ranging from associates who sold liquor on Sundays—which was against the law at the time—to getting liquor-license issues ironed out. Whether it was wishful boasting or an accurate representation of his prowess, DeCavalcante was still sought out by all kinds of people who needed help straightening out their problems.
Others in the family benefitted from his connections. One of those was Emmanuel Riggi, who was facing the prospect of deportation by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service; another of the family’s political contacts was consulted about the case and assured Riggi that he would not be deported. Then, DeCavalcante told his underboss, Frank Majuri, that he was able to meet with a judge to iron out zoning problems that a DeCavalcante-associated developer was facing. And Majuri’s son was arrested on gambling charges in 1965 and DeCavalcante pledged a payoff of five hundred dollars to the judge and a thousand dollars to the mayor of Elizabeth if the court decision came out favorably for the younger Majuri.
Other mobsters shared information with DeCavalcante when things were getting hot. Anthony “Jack Panels” Santoli, a Genovese solider in Ray DeCarlo’s crew, came to Sam with some information about a pending federal raid:
Panels: Unless you got a real good friend—we don’t like to kick this around, because if it leaks out, these guys will come the following week and really catch everybody. But if you got any good friends, the feds are going in there this week.
DeCavalcante: Essex?
Panels: Yeah. Anyway, they’re definitely coming in next week—the feds—looking for stamps—bookmaking, horses, or numbers.[25]
One of the biggest connections with elected officials was the relationship DeCavalcante fostered with Thomas Dunn, longtime mayor of Elizabeth, New Jersey. In the months leading up to the election of 1964, Dunn, a former city councilman, was looking for a different result than the 1960 elections, where he’d lost his first bid for the mayoralty. He visited Sam at the Kenilworth Heating location, and the two discussed Dunn’s chances, along with Larry Wolfson, DeCavalcante’s attorney.
DeCavalcante: After November 3, you address him as Mayor.
Dunn: I been waiting for it for fifteen years.
DeCavalcante: Do you think we can get any city work?
Dunn: [laughing] Well, maybe.
Dunn then spoke of the difficulty he faced vote-wise in a primarily Jewish section of town. DeCavalcante promised that his “paesans” would do whatever they could to help out. Dunn then told DeCavalcante that at a debate Dunn’s opponent, former mayor Nicholas LaCorte, had accused Dunn of having ties to gambling interests and to another individual named Mr. Magnolia.
Dunn: If you have any way of getting to Magnolia and LaCorte, tell them to keep their lousy mouths shut, because you know better than I do that I have no . . .
DeCavalcante: Oh, sure.
Dunn: Because this thing could cream me at the last minute. So, if you can in some way get to these two guys, tell them to keep this out of the papers.
DeCavalcante: It’s a lot of talk. He couldn’t come out with a thing like that with no proof.
Dunn: Well, just by association, Sam. So, if you have any way of getting to Magnolia.
DeCavalcante: I sure will.
Dunn: Well, that’s good enough for me.
DeCavalcante: So, I wish you a lot of luck. Can you use this in your campaign?
Dunn: Thank you, Sam. You bet I can use it! Enjoy your trip to Florida.[26]
The last two lines were believed by investigators to refer to a campaign contribution Sam made to Dunn, who later admitted DeCavalcante had contributed around a hundred dollars to the campaign. Though this conversation was later made public, it did not do much damage to Dunn’s success. He was elected Elizabeth’s mayor in 1964 and served in the office twenty-eight years. He later claimed in 1969 that he’d found out that his buddy Sam was a Mafia boss through a book he’d read—but he’d learned this, he insisted, only after their recorded meeting had taken place.
When the DeCavalcante wiretaps were released to the public, they became the subject of a number of books. These wiretappings were one of the first major efforts by law enforcement to gather intel for the sake of intel. Other similar efforts were occurring in Chicago and other cities. Though some of the wiretaps were not authorized, and others barely legal, they
started to reveal the depth of the mob’s influence in the United States. In fact, it’s safe to say that the heyday of the mob in America ran form the 1940s through the 1960s, and it was the efforts of law enforcement and the new tools it had at its disposal—both at a state and federal level—that enabled them to start gaining ground against a criminal organization that had for decades been entrenching itself.
Managing risk was an important part of being a mobster—whether soldier, capo, underboss, or boss. It was also about balancing reward with risk, the chance that the police might arrest you. As the years went on, it became increasingly difficult for street guys to get away from the myriad of eyes looking at them. Not only were there police, but reporters, both print and TV, scrutinized their every move. But at least they could find some level of comfort in knowing that their own compatriots would never turn against them. The code of omertà—or, basically, keeping one’s mouth shut about all things Costa Nostra—was still strong. To be sure, there have always been guys who fed the cops information on potential rivals or gave them threads of intel, enough to whet their appetites but not enough to do any real damage. It was a dance between cop and robber, both playing the other in an attempt to keep one step ahead in the game. But real damage was about to be done. Even with sensational reports of wiretaps, confidential informants, and the revelations of the Kefauver Committee, it would be a live witness, testifying before Congress, who would captivate the country and lay bare the inner secrets of the mob in America.
1. William Sherman and Matt Sullivan, “Bidder End for Mob House,” New York Daily News, August 4, 2002, http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/bidder-mob-house-article-1.493826.
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