The World's Most Evil Gangs

by Nigel Blundell

  Accordingly, armed with law books instead of a service revolver, Giuliani personally oversaw hundreds of top Mafiosi frogmarched into court, some of them sent to jail for a long stretch. In what was termed ‘The Mafia Commission Trial’, which ran from February 1985 to November 1986, he indicted 11 organised crime figures, including the heads of New York’s ‘Five Families’ – Genovese, Bonanno, Lucchese, Gambino and Colombo. He utilised the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (known as the RICO Act) which allows for the leaders of a Syndicate to be tried for the crimes which they ordered others to carry out. Under this federal law, the Godfathers were convicted of charges including extortion, labour racketeering and murder for hire. Eight defendants were found guilty on all counts and subsequently sentenced on 13 January 1987 to hundreds of years imprisonment.

  Time magazine quoted Giuliani as saying, ‘Our approach was to wipe out the Five Families’, and credited his success in so doing as ‘the most significant assault on the infrastructure of organised crime since the high command of the Chicago Mafia was swept away in 1943.’ Guiliani was congratulated by President Reagan and was given a special reward by the Italian government for his help in cleaning up some of the Mafia mess in their country.

  A second significant reason for the Godfathers’ downfall over this period was that the computer age had made the Mafia miserably outdated. Founded on an almost feudal system of overlords and chieftains, enforcers and soldiers, La Cosa Nostra managed to maintain a hold over a frightened public for longer than most oppressive governments ever did. But one area the Mob were tardy in entering, and one that has caused it most damage, is electronics. While the torpedoes were still out on the streets offering ‘protection’, the law enforcers were learning about the newest sophisticated eavesdropping devices.

  Taking lessons from the CIA, local police forces and the FBI tooled up with the sensitive micro-technology used by spies. They planted bugs in the homes, cars and offices of top Mafiosi, including Gambino leader ‘Big Paul’ Castellano, Lucchese gang boss Antonio ‘Tony Ducks’ Corallo and Genovese captain Matty ‘The Horse’ Ianiello. When Paul Castellano had a new home built in 1979 – an opulently tacky replica of the White House in exclusive Todt Hill, Staten Island – he demanded plush fittings but also got a couple he didn’t order. In the ensuing years, his conversations were picked up by FBI bugs and mentioned in evidence as his trial opened.

  Unfortunately for Castellano, he felt so superior as head of the Gambinos, America’s most powerful crime family at the time, that he constantly bad-mouthed the other Godfathers who sat on the Commission. When transcripts of the tapes were released, as required by law, his fellow members went ballistic. An FBI agent was quoted as saying: ‘The other bosses had never liked the arrogant Castellano but now they detested the man with a passion. Those tapes probably did more to seal his fate than anything else. It certainly gave one of his ambitious underlings, John Gotti, the excuse to eliminate his boss.

  On 16 December 1985, while on $3 million bail from The Mafia Commission Trial, Castellano was driven by his equally unpopular underboss, 46-year-old Thomas Bilotti, to Manhattan’s Sparks Steak House, where a hit team of four gunmen were waiting, with Gotti and his close friend Sammy Gravano observing the scene from a car across the street. Castellano and Bilotti were shot several times.

  In releasing the Castellano tapes, the FBI had not intended to cause the 70-year-old Godfather’s death, only to turn the Commission members against each other – to divide and conquer. The tactic was already working successfully by the time of the hit on Castellano. The Feds had placed a bug under the bed of Castellano’s bitter rival for the position of Godfather, Gambino enforcer Aniello ‘Mr. O’Neil’ Dellacroce, as he lay dying in a New York hospital. Lung cancer and diabetes got him two weeks before the bullets of his followers got Castellano. But during the last two months of 71-year-old Dellacroce’s life, dozens of mobsters visited the hospital to pay their respects to the departing don – and to broadcast details about family business.

  A little electronic device was somehow affixed behind the car dashboard of another don, Tony ‘Ducks’ Corallo. The 73-year-old head of the Lucchese family earned his nickname because of an uncanny knack throughout his life of dodging arrest and prosecution. But this time he’d forgotten to duck. His conversations with his driver and capo, Salvatore Avellino, were picked up by the bug and recorded by agents tailing the car from a distance. For four months the little transmitter spewed out fantastically detailed information about the inner workings of the Cosa Nostra, with names and places and specifics on the rackets that Tony ‘Ducks’ and the others were running. The case against Corallo was also built on 80 other bugging devices and 90 telephone wiretaps that picked up his many indiscretions. In 1986 he was found guilty and sent to prison, where he died in 2000.

  Another transmitter was planted in the car of Colombo mobster Ralph Scopo, a 56-year-old former cement workers’ union boss. Yet another went into a Brooklyn restaurant used by the family’s acting boss, 48-year-old Gennaro ‘Jerry Lang’ Langella. Both of those detailed the widespread corruption in the construction and restaurant industries.

  Key evidence in the trial against 66-year-old Matthew ‘The Horse’ Ianiello consisted of 7,000 tape and video recordings of him and his cronies at work. They were made by hidden transmitters planted by the Feds in Ianiello’s New York offices and proved beyond doubt that ‘The Horse’ was the secret proprietor of five restaurants and topless bars from which he skimmed millions of dollars. He had denied ownership.

  When government agents were investigating Mob control of the waterfront, they planted four dozen bugs in strategic spots, thereby obtaining 146 indictments and 118 convictions. Union president Anthony Scotto had one in his fancy desk, which picked him up vociferously complaining that his rake-off hadn’t come in on time. Bizarrely, additional secret tapes were acquired by an FBI couple posing as lovers aboard a yacht.

  Apart from transmitters, the FBI made extensive use of telephone taps to secure vital evidence. The mobsters often spoke in code while on their own phones but were more open when sneaking out to public payphones. But they got lazy and would use the same ones time and again. The lawmen noted them and put wiretaps on them too. In the mid-1980s, the FBI taped more than 7,000 hours of evidence in less than two years. With bugs and phone taps and the use of a dedicated Washington computer that cost $4 million a year to operate, the FBI nailed such Mafia overlords as Carlos ‘Little Man’ Marcello of New Orleans, Nick Civella of Kansas City and Russell Buffalino of Pennsylvania.

  But the most publicly dramatic success of the entire war against the Mafia was the nailing of the brutal Godfather who ascended to the head of the Gambino family after the brilliantly executed killing of ‘Big Paul’ Castellano. After that putsch, John Gotti, 46, became an overnight underworld star, glorying in his nickname: ‘The Dapper Don’.

  Born in Brooklyn to dirt-poor Italian immigrants on 27 October 1940, Gotti became a teenage street fighter, whose first arrest was in 1958 for burglary. When he was 22 he was accepted as a part-time soldier by the Gambinos, who put him onto gambling and construction union matters. In this role, he met Salvatore Gravano, nicknamed ‘Sammy the Bull’ because of his muscular frame. Gravano came from the same background but lacked Gotti’s ambition. As the latter rose up the ranks, Gravano was happy to be a loyal underboss. So blindly subservient was he that he would later say: ‘John Gotti was my master and I was his dog. When he said “Bite”, I bit.’ But the dog was later to turn on his master in the most sensational manner.

  Gotti took the faithful ‘Sammy the Bull’ with him as he climbed the Mafia command ladder over three decades. His first conviction, for unlawful entry, was in 1966. The next year, he headed a Mafia crew that used phoney passes to get into New York’s JFK Airport and hijack a truckload of electronic equipment. Four days later they did it again, this time taking a truck full of women’s clothing. They were nabbed and he served three years in prison. In 1
973 Gotti and two others shot to death another mobster in a Staten Island bar. Charged, he plea-bargained for attempted manslaughter and served two of his four years. When he came out, he became a capo, heading a particularly tough crew of seven soldiers, and set out to make his way to the top.

  Gotti’s principal loyalty was to Gambino family enforcer Aniello Dellacroce, the Number Two to Paul Castellano. But when the popular Dellacroce died in December 1985, Castellano instead chose his bodyguard, 45-year-old Thomas Bilotti. By eliminating both of them, Gotti ended up the new Godfather.

  To his admirers, the new Capo di Tutti Cappi was a generous guy who kept the drug-dealing scum away from ordinary, decent folk. Every year, he held a fireworks display on America’s Fourth of July Independence Day, releasing thousands of dollars worth of rockets to the delight of the neighbourhood. On the street, the ‘Dapper Don’, in his $4,000 silk suits and his pure cashmere coat, would acknowledge the respectful greetings of well-wishers as he made his way to the Ravenite Social Club, a nondescript tenement in the heart of Little Italy. It was behind these doors, armoured and alarmed, that the Godfather held court – and the veneer of the philanthropist was dropped. This was the office of the Godfather. Gambling, corruption, liquour sales, prostitution, drugs and murder were his business and he did it well. So well, in fact, that he earned another title; the FBI called him the ‘Teflon Don’ as no indictment they threw at him ever stuck.

  Gotti’s film star looks made him a celebrity far beyond New York’s Italian community. The subject of awe-struck media profiles, he lived in an impressive house in suburbia. He had a wife, Victoria, a married daughter and a grown-up son, John. His other son, Frank, had been just 12 in 1980 when he rode his bicycle out from between two parked cars and was killed instantly. It was a complete accident. The horrified driver of the vehicle was Gotti’s neighbour, John Favara, who four months later disappeared for good. Witnesses saw him being hit over the head with a board and then bundled by two men into a van. Informers told police that Gotti, eaten up with hatred, had the neighbour brought to a disused warehouse, where he personally cut the man to pieces with a chainsaw.

  Gotti never forgot disfavour, and one of those doomed to find out the hard way was Wilfred ‘Willie Boy’ Johnson, a low-level soldier in Gotti’s crew who later turned FBI informant. ‘Willie Boy’ had been living under an assumed name in Brooklyn ever since his testimony led to the convictions of several Mob figures, not least of all Gotti’s brother Gene, subsequently sentenced to 22 years for heroin trafficking. One morning in August 1988, as ‘Willie Boy’ left home to go to work on a construction site, three hitmen stepped out of the stolen car and riddled him with 14 bullet holes. The main triggerman was ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravano.

  In 1985 Gotti was accused of assaulting a repairman and robbing him of $325 in a petty argument over a parking space. As soon as the repairman learned who Gotti was, he checked into a hospital and said he had developed amnesia. The charges had to be dropped. A year later, Gotti was accused of running a racketeering enterprise and hit with three charges including murder. He beat the rap. In 1992 he made it a hat-trick when jurors ruled he did not order the bungled contract-killing of a union official who wasn’t paying his dues. But it was the loyal, psychotic lieutenant ‘Sammy the Bull’ who did most of the dirty work. On his own admission, by the late Eighties he had become kill-crazy and committed so many murders that he actually forgot many of them.

  On 11 December 1990 FBI agents and New York City detectives swooped on the Ravenite social club and arrested Gotti and Gravano. Although this was the fourth indictment since Gotti’s bloody rise to leadership, it was the first time he was charged with the murders of Castellano and Bilotti. At this time, the prosecution was relying on dozens of wiretaps and on the hearsay evidence of informants, including Philip Leonetti, former underboss of the Philadelphia crime family, who had since become a government witness. Leonetti was prepared to testify that Gotti had bragged about Castellano’s execution while at a meeting of Philadelphia crime leaders. But the FBI suddenly knew they had a cast-iron case – when, hardly able to believe their luck, ‘Sammy the Bull’ Gravato, who had only served time in the past for low-level offences like hijacking and theft, offered to become the highest ranking informer in criminal history. It transpired that Sammy, who was tipped to be the heir apparent to the Gambino family, had a dread of ending his days in prison.

  Gotti was denied bail. In Brooklyn Federal Courthouse, Judge Leo Glasser prudently pointed out: ‘There are no conditions of release that will reasonably assure the safety of any person in the community.’ In the spectacular trial that followed, through March and April 1992, Gravato took the stand to testify against John Gotti and his Mafia empire. Methodically confessing to all the murders ordered by Gotti, he squirmed under the gaze of the Godfather’s steely eyes and knew that he would forever be a marked man. In return for his testimony, Sammy could expect leniency for his own crimes – but it would be a life spent looking over his shoulder.

  Increasingly, the defiant Gotti failed to hide his arrogant attitude and Judge Glasser once had to clear the jury from the courtroom before angrily warning the defendant: ‘Mr. Gotti, this is addressed to you. If you want to continue to remain at this trial and at that table, I am going to direct you to stop making comments which can be heard in this courtroom, and gestures which are designed to comment upon the character of the United States attorney. I will have you removed from the courtroom. You will watch this trial on a television screen downstairs. I am not going to tell you that again.’

  Gotti’s defence was slim. ‘What happened to it?’ he complained to his team. ‘I should have put on a little song and dance.’ Finally, after tantrums and screaming matches in court, and two bomb explosions outside, the prosecution summed up by damning the ‘Dapper Don’ as leader of the Gambino family and stating: ‘Murder is the heart and soul of this enterprise.’ On 23 June 1992, Gotti wore his handmade silk suit for the last time as he was sentenced to life in prison without parole for ordering at least five murders and on 49 counts of racketeering. Going down with him was another underboss, Frank ‘Frankie Loc’ Locascio, a 59-year-old henchman also nailed by Gravano’s testimony. Outside court, a riot broke out, allegedly organised by John ‘Junior’ Gotti, who had hired 12 buses to bring 1,000 flag-waving demonstrators to the courthouse. Eight police officers were injured. In 1997 Judge Glasser dismissed the fourth and final of Gotti’s bids for a retrial. The ‘Dapper Don’ was destined to die behind bars.

  That same year, Gotti’s ex-underboss Gravano, freed after his own reduced five-year sentence, made his last appearance as a government witness by testifying against Genovese family boss Vincent ‘the Chin’ Gigante, known as ‘the Oddfather’ because he had for years feigned insanity to avoid prosecution. By then, Gravano was living the high life. The man who had admitted taking part in 19 murders had published a book, with a movie spin-off. He was a celebrity. But ‘Sammy the Bull’ could not stay clean. In 2000 he and his son were arrested for conspiring with Israeli mobsters to distribute the drug Ecstasy. The following year, they appeared in the same Brooklyn Federal Courthouse, where he had testified against John Gotti. A further trial was held in Arizona, where Gravano was also involved in a statewide drugs ring. He was jailed for 20 years. His belated incarceration pleased the families of many of his murdered victims, angry that he had been treated so leniently by the government. But his ticket to freedom had by then encouraged a wave of other Mafia members to become government witnesses.

  John ‘Junior’ Gotti continued to run the family but his reign was short-lived. In 1999 he was jailed and forfeited $1.5 million after being found guilty of extortion, loansharking, gambling, mortgage fraud and tax evasion. Two of Gotti Senior’s brothers and a nephew were also subsequently arrested. The ‘Dapper Don’ himself died in jail of cancer on 10 June 2002.

  So where does that leave the most pervasive criminal organisation the world has ever known? Where today are the descendants of t
he Italian street gangs of a century ago, of the gun-toting gangsters of the Thirties, of the Murder Inc. mobsters of the Fifties and of the silk-suited Dons of recent times? Certainly the money they made didn’t just evaporate. The billions that vanished from the public purse as the cost of organised crime in America is now largely laundered into legitimate businesses. And the pot still grows. The difference is that instead of seeing blood on the streets, the American public suffers a secret ‘taxation’ by the Mafia blood-suckers, the cost of whose criminal enterprises is reckoned to be well over a trillion dollars a year.

  When legendary Mob mogul Meyer Lansky boasted in the Fifties, ‘We’re bigger than US Steel’, most people thought he was exaggerating. Today the Mafia’s turnover is bigger than the economies of many countries. America’s over-stretched crime fighters know that the reason people tend not to hear much about the Italian Mafia anymore is because they are doing what they were always supposed to do: operating in secrecy.

  That does not mean they’re not still active. Selwyn Raab, an investigative journalist who covered the Mafia for 25 years at The New York Times, has highlighted their steady move into commercial and financial crime, which he says reflects ‘the Cosa Nostra’s Darwinian survival adaptability’. In his excellent book, Five Families, Raab writes: ‘Despite pronouncements of unabated vigilance, law enforcement’s efforts against the traditional crime families are unmistakably in a downward cycle. State prosecutors and police forces, confronting terrorism as well as violent crime pressures and budget restraints, show less zeal than previously to engage the Mob’.