Garden State Gangland

by Scott M. Deitche

  After pleading guilty in the video-gambling racketeering case, Joe Sodano went to prison. When he was released, he returned to the streets of Newark. There was a new boss in town, John Stanfa, who took control of the crime family in the early nineties. Sodano began to complain about having to send money to Philadelphia, and once Ralph Natale replaced the imprisoned Stanfa, Sodano stopped sending money altogether, and though he was called to come down to Philly to make an appearance and pay homage to the new boss, he refused—a tactical mistake on Sodano’s part.

  Joe Sodano was found slumped over the wheel of his SUV on December 7, 1996, with two bullet shots to the head. The car was parked in front of a senior citizens’ center in Newark. Sodano’s murder was partially of his own making, if you ask Myron Sugerman. “The reason he got killed is that Philly sent for him twice and he didn’t go.”[23] Ralph Natale, after he flipped, backed up the story, telling the feds that he and "Skinny Joey" Merlino had ordered the hit on Sodano because Sodano had refused to meet with them and share part of his earnings. “I said he [Sodano] got the message and didn’t respond . . . we got to kill him. If we don’t, we’ll lose the respect of our own family, and we’ll lose the respect of the other families. Send the message, he’s got to go.”[24]

  The gunman in the Sodano murder was Philip Casale, who was partners with Peter “Pete the Crumb” Caprio. Casale called up Sodano and told him he wanted to meet, luring Sodano to the location. When Sodano pulled up, Casale jumped in the passenger seat and immediately shot Sodano in the right side of the head. Then, as the vehicle started to roll backward, “Casale jumped out, dashed around the front, pulled open the driver’s door, and shot Sodano again, in the left side of the head.”[25] Casale took cash and jewelry off Sodano to make it look like a robbery. In July of 2001, a jury did not find Skinny Joey responsible for the murder of Joey Sodano despite the testimony of Ralph Natale and Pete the Crumb Caprio. He was retried in 2004 and again acquitted of complicity in the Sodano murder.

  At a time the other crime families operating in New Jersey were experiencing major shifts in leadership and attention from law enforcement was growing more intense, the Genovese family was not immune. But SCI found that, “Although the Genovese family has been faced with a variety of disruptive incidents within the last few years, it has been able to maintain most of its New Jersey operations.”[26] And a good portion of those operations were aimed at the docks at the port, where the mob has maintained a presence for over fifty years.

  1. Volz and Bridge, The Mafia Talks, 65.

  2. Around About Peterstown (Elizabeth, NJ), “John Riggi Passes at Age 90,” no. 101 (August/September 2015): 15, archived at http://peterstownnewjersey.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/AAPAug15.pdf.

  3. Former DeCavalcante associate, personal interview with the author regarding the DeCavalcante family, telephone, July 2016.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Sherry Conohan, “Riggi Described as Mob Boss at Racketeering Trial.” Asbury Park (NJ) Press, May 25, 1990, 31.

  6. Joseph Ricciardi, personal interview with the author about the New Jersey Mafia, e-mail, February 20, 2017.

  7. Former DeCavalcante associate, personal interview with the author regarding the DeCavalcante family, telephone, July 2016.

  8. Limited, “Anthony Rotondo 2005 Cross Examination,” The Black Hand Forum, posted by B., May 7, 2016, http://theblackhand.club/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1824&hilit=rotondo+cross+examination (registration required).

  9. Ibid.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ted Sherman, "John Riggi, Jersey Mob Boss Who Inspired 'The Sporanos," Dead at 90," NJ Advance Media, August 4, 2015.

  12. Limited, “Anthony Rotondo 2005 Cross Examination,” The Black Hand Forum, posted by B., May 7, 2016, http://theblackhand.club/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1824&hilit=rotondo+cross+examination (registration required).

  13. New Jersey State Commission of Investigation, Video Gambling (Trenton: New Jersey State Commission of Investigation, 2001), http://www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/video.pdf.

  14. Ibid.

  15. Myron Sugerman, personal interview with the author regarding New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Frank “Frankie Loc” Locascio became consigliere to John Gotti.

  18. Myron Sugerman, personal interview with the author regarding New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.

  19. New Jersey State Commission of Investigation, Video Gambling.

  20. Myron Sugerman, personal interview with the author regarding New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.

  21. Ibid.

  22. Joseph Ricciardi, personal interview with the author about the New Jersey Mafia, e-mail, March 2, 2017.

  23. Myron Sugerman, personal interview with the author regarding New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.

  24. Guy Sterling, “A Mob Chief’s Desire for Respect and Murder,” Newark Star-Ledger, February 21, 2004.

  25. Jim Barry, “Trouble with a Capital N,” Philadelphia City Paper, April 19–26, 2001, text available at https://mycitypaper.com/articles/041901/news.mob.shtml.

  26. State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation, 21st Annual Report: 1989 (Trenton: State of New Jersey Commission of Investigation, 1990), http://www.state.nj.us/sci/pdf/annual21.pdf.

  Chapter 15

  On the Docks

  The Huck Finn Diner sits on the north side of Morris Avenue in the New Jersey township of Union. Like so many other roadside diners that dot the state, the Huck Finn is open from sun-up to late in the evening, almost twenty-four hours on the weekend. The standard diner fare is served, along with an impressive list of burgers and chicken sandwiches. The back of the parking lot abuts the baseball field for Union High School. Some time in late October 2005, a Silver Acura was parked in the last row of the back lot at the Huck Finn. The owner of the diner thought he knew who the car belonged to, so it didn’t arouse too much suspicion when the car sat, undisturbed, until November 30. That day, a patron walking by the car noticed flies gathering around the trunk and a stench emanating from the car and alerted the manager. The manager found that the car was unlocked and retrieved the registration.

  When the police were called, they ran the registration and immediately contacted the FBI. The feds had been on the lookout for the car and its driver, the cousin of the car’s real owner. And when they popped open the trunk, they found the driver, facedown, shot dead. Though they sent the body to the coroner for an autopsy and official identification, they knew right away they had found Genovese capo Lawrence Ricci, who had last been seen leaving his girlfriend’s on October 5.

  Earlier that year, in February 2005, Ricci had been indicted, along with Genovese soldier George Barone, International Longshoremen’s Association Union president John Bowers, and ILA vice president Arthur Coffey. They had been indicted on extortion and mail fraud in a scheme to keep the top leadership of the union in the hands of the mob, specifically the Genovese and Gambino families. “Over time, the Mafia developed a stranglehold over the ILA and used that control to select ILA officers and used its influence over the officers to steer lucrative contracts to companies controlled by the mob and paying money to the mob.”[1] Ricci’s part had been to steer a lucrative contracts to a mob-run pharmaceutical company.

  At the time of the trial, in the fall of 2005, George Barone had become a witness for the government and testified against the defendants. Maybe fearing Ricci would be next, the old Genovese associate was set up to be killed. The ironic postscript to his murder was that he was acquitted in early November (along with Daggett, Bowers, and Coffey). But it was unclear exactly who had ordered Ricci’s killing. Ricci’s ties to the Genovese family had been strong for decades. In the late 1970s he had hung around Tino Fiumara’s crew and had gotten caught up in the massive Project Alpha investigation. And it was Fiumara, along with Michael Coppola, that investigators figured for prime suspects in
the Ricci murder. Authorities theorized that Coppola had killed Ricci under orders from Fiumara. At the time of the Ricci murder, Coppola had already been on the lam for over a decade, hiding out on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His time on the run had begun after he’d been approached by the FBI in 1996 and asked to give a DNA sample to tie him to the 1977 murder of Johnny Coca-Cola Lardiere.[2]

  Fiumara had spent fifteen years in prison. He’d watched from behind bars as the Genovese family’s hold on the docks hit some turbulent times. Pressure from the Gambino family and the imprisonment of key Genovese operatives had reduced the footprint of the crime family in the lucrative world of shipping.

  Influence over the waterfront has been organized-crime legacy in New Jersey since the early 1900s. From the beginning of the mob’s infiltration of the port facilities, “Witnesses testified that payoffs were a part of virtually every aspect of the commercial life of the port. Payoffs insured the award of work contracts and continued contracts already awarded. Payoffs were made to insure labor peace and allow management to avoid future strikes. Payoffs were made to control a racket in workman’s compensation claims. Payoffs were made to expand business activity into new ports and enable companies to circumvent ILA work requirements.” And it only got more crooked from there. “Corrupt practices were commonplace on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast waterfronts.”[3]

  Investigations into the International Longshoremen’s Association and its practices started back in the mid-1950s, around the time of the movie On the Waterfront, which dramatized events that were taking place at docks every day. In 1953, a compact was developed between New York and New Jersey to form the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor. It was done to address a host of issues but also to reflect the changing geographic nature of where the main waterfront facilities were located. “Shipping firms, unhappy with aging pier facilities in Manhattan, began moving their operations to New Jersey.”[4]

  During the August 1957 hearings of the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, led by Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, witnesses testified about the unsavory hiring practices and poor working conditions for many of the longshoremen. And it was one of the first times the committee heard about the siphoning of union dues from the coffers of the locals. It was clear that organized crime was exploiting the workers on the docks. To show indignation and promise reform was one thing, but to really accomplish meaningful change was quite another. The money was so great for the mob that they were not about to simply step aside at the whims of a congressional committee. And it wasn’t only the stealing of workers’ pay that filled the mob’s coffers.

  In addition to the directly impacting of how labor is allocated, work at the docks provided a veritable cornucopia of hijacking delights. With so much cargo coming and so little oversight, especially in the earlier days before electronic tracking of containers and packages, mob crews tried to steal as much as they could. Those stories of “it fell off a truck” appliances were completely based on fact. Drivers would either be paid to divert their loads, or the loads would simply be stolen. Appliances from television sets to washing machines to all types of household goods would be sold through a fence, traded for other commodities, or, literally sold out of the back of a truck. The theft of goods cost shippers, stevedore companies, and suppliers tens of millions of dollars annually. Dockworkers were also offered a variety of vices to pass their time—from numbers to prostitutes. They drank at mob-owned bars and taverns where loan sharks preyed on the financially challenged. In many ways the docks became mini-empires of vice that were completely mobbed up.

  In 1969, “The government believed that organized crime families had divided the Pier of New York into three sections—New Jersey, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. The Gambino family operated on the Brooklyn docks. The Genovese family operated in Manhattan and New Jersey.”[5] The main Genovese guys on the docks were John DiGilio and Tino Fiumara.

  In the early eighties government oversight of the waterfront unions had turned up some interesting pieces of information regarding Genovese family infiltration. Carol Gardner was an international general organizer for the International Longshoremen’s Association, while Thomas Buzzanca was a general organizer and Vincent Colucci an international vice president. According to the McClellan Committee, “Evidence shows that Colucci, Gardner, and Buzzanca took direction from a Genovese crime operative in New Jersey, Tino Fiumara.”[6] Fiumara had maintained his close ties with Tieri and had been assigned by the Genovese family to oversee all waterfront activities in northern New Jersey. On May 2, 1980, a jury convicted Fiumara, along with Genovese soldier Michael Clemente, Thomas Buzzanca, Vincent Colucci, Carol Gardner, Michael Coppola, and Gerald Swanton, on 160 counts, including illegal labor payments, tax evasion, and extortion.

  Tino Fiumara was behind bars for an important event in the history of the mob on the Jersey waterfront. He was not involved in, though likely aware of, the fate of his once-trusted ally John DiGilio. John DiGilio had fallen out of favor with the Genovese leadership, particularly with Genovese capo Louis “Bobby” Manna, who operated out of Casella’s Restaurant in downtown Hoboken, New Jersey. Born in in that city in 1929, Manna had overseen most of the pier thefts on the waterfront for the Genovese family and was considered a powerful capo. During the time of Fiumara’s incarceration, Manna became the de facto leader of the Genovese family’s Hudson County operations.

  While Fiumara was in prison, DiGilio expanded his operations on the waterfront, running a large-scale gambling, loan-sharking, and extortion racket in addition to the labor racketeering and union control. While this was filling the mob’s coffers, DiGilio’s antics, which drew a lot of attention to the bearded mobster, had been eroding the patience of Genovese leadership for some time. Attention was something that the Genovese family was not fond of, and DiGilio’s behavior caused some serious rifts. Things came to a head when DiGilio was indicted along with three associates in a racketeering trial. Rather that retain an attorney, DiGilio, despite warnings from Genovese leaders, chose to represent himself. He was successful in his efforts, drawing an acquittal form the jury. His codefendants, including a union leader, were not so lucky; they were all convicted. To the Genovese family, this was the final straw. The conviction of Donald Carson, who was secretary-treasurer of Local 1587-88 of the International Longshoremen’s Association in Bayonne, was a huge blow to the Genovese family. With his removal, they lost a key ally in the union. And, to make matters worse, he was replaced by a Gambino-family associate. This was all too much. The Genovese leadership blamed DiGilio for the convictions. His time was up.

  On May 5, 1988, DiGilio drove to a meeting place in Kearny, New Jersey, with Genovese soldier Louis Auricchio and associate George Weingartner. It was the last time anyone would see DiGilio. On May 26, 1988, after he had been missing for three weeks, his body was discovered floating, in a body bag, down the Hackensack River, off the shore of Carlstadt, New Jersey, near the Meadowlands. He had been shot in the back of his head. After DiGilio was taken out, leadership over his rackets was given to Genovese capo Angelo Prisco. Louis Auricchio was convicted at trial in 1994 for the murder of DiGilio and sentenced to thirty years in prison. George Weingartner didn’t make it to the end of the trial. He committed suicide, sitting in his running car in the garage of his Ocean County home. Manna also faced a trial based on years of recorded conversation in which he was overheard planning the murder of Gambino boss John Gotti, his brother Gene Gotti, and businessman Irwin Schiff. Manna was convicted of murder conspiracy and racketeering and sentenced to eighty years in prison on September 9, 1989.

  Tino Fiumara was released from prison in 1994 and went back to work, not skipping a beat. He once again became the Genovese contact at the waterfront. His time behind bars had done little to diminish his reputation. His time back on the street was relatively low-key. So low-key, in fact, that investigators started wondering how he was communicating with his old mob acquaintances. They followed him, and wh
en they spotted him meeting with convicted felons, a violation of his parole, he was arrested in April of 1999 at his house in the town of Spring Lake, on the Jersey Shore. The parole board determined he had violated parole and was sent him back to prison, where he remained until 2003.

  Upon his release in 2003, Tino moved to Long Island and began regularly communicating with a solider in his crew, Stephen “Beach” Depiro. The FBI believed that Depiro had begun handling the day-to-day activities on the Jersey waterfront in Fiumara’s stead. It was a sobering revelation to both law enforcement and the public: Despite decades of government crackdown and intense efforts to drive out the mob, organized crime’s influence—specifically the Genovese family’s influence—permeated the New Jersey waterfront through their control of Local 1235. And the time would never be better for making money off transoceanic shipping.