Alite would later tell a federal jury that he warned Casasanto about moving to New York.
“I told him, ‘Johnny, you’ll get killed in New York. Every corner there’s guys, not like in Philly where there’s only one crew. And they fight each other all the time.’”
Alite described Casasanto as “a wild kid” who “didn’t understand the life, not New York gangster life. He might have understood the mob life in Philly. It’s a big difference.”
How well Casasanto understood life in his own city is open to question. He had apparently run afoul of the local leadership after returning home from prison. He was involved in several bar fights and confrontations. He was suspected of shooting up the front of a row house owned by the brother of Philadelphia mob boss Joe Ligambi, and he was fooling around with the wife of another jailed mob leader, according to underworld gossip.
Alite told the FBI he had met with Ligambi and two other members of the Philadelphia hierarchy, capo Anthony Staino and underboss Joseph “Mousie” Massimino, in 2001 or 2002. They discussed the cell tower company he had taken over from Ronnie Turchi’s son. But they also asked several questions about Casasanto, including reports that while he was in Allenwood with Alite he had informed on several other inmates who were smuggling drugs into the prison. Alite knew about the rumors but offered nothing new to Ligambi and the others. He came away from the meeting with the same feeling he had had when he spoke with Ronnie Turchi as they were about to leave the halfway house.
Like Turchi, Alite figured Casasanto had been marked for death.
“Johnny, be careful, they’re gonna kill ya,” he said he told Casasanto during one of their last meetings. Casasanto said he’d be fine. But he asked Alite for a favor. He had always admired the gold chain and medal that Joe Gambino had given Alite. He asked Alite if he would trade that chain and medal for the thicker gold chain that he wore around his neck. Alite readily agreed.
“When I gave him the chain and medal, I said, ‘I hope this helps you.’ I guess it didn’t.”
On November 22, 2003, the body of Johnny Gongs was discovered in the kitchen of the row house where he lived in a quiet residential section of South Philadelphia. He had been shot in the back of the head. There was no sign of forced entry. Police speculated that someone he knew and trusted had killed him. It appeared Casasanto had let his killer or killers into his home and then turned his back on them as he walked toward his kitchen. The shooting occurred around 1 A.M. Casasanto’s brother Steve discovered the body several hours later.
No one has ever been charged with that murder. But from thousands of miles away, Alite could imagine how it went down. It was always someone you trusted, he thought. Nothing was ever going to change. He was more certain than ever that the only things for him back in the United States were a bullet or a prison cell.
CHAPTER 17
John Alite spent three years in Brazil. The first year was “The Girl from Ipanema” meets Goodfellas. He loved every minute of it. The next two were hell.
“A friend of mine in the Cayman Islands had introduced me to this woman who was from Brazil,” he said. “I started asking her about the country. I knew the weather was great and the women were beautiful. She told me the government was corrupt and it was easy to maneuver. She said she had a cousin named Johnny in Rio who would help me out. But she warned me that he was a real hustler, that he’d try to get over on me. I decided to check it out. I also had some distant relatives who lived in São Paolo so I knew I could visit them when I was there.”
Alite traveled by boat from the Caymans to Salvador, the capital of the Brazilian province of Bahia, in the north of the country. Bahia is celebrated for its food, passion, and women in the novels of the great Brazilian writer, the late Jorge Amado. Amado, who grew up there, described Bahia and its people as gritty, passionate, violent, and sensual. Alite said it was all of that and more. He liked Salvador and several other cities he visited in the province but knew he couldn’t stay there.
“I liked the people, but they told me I’d never be able to blend in,” he said. “They were right. They suggested Rio because there were more tourists and there was more of an international presence.”
Within a month he was living in an apartment in Copacabana. His building—most of the other tenants were working girls—was a block from the beach. There was a gym just up the street. There were stores and restaurants and all kinds of people. He happily settled in, following the same routine he had used in other countries. He quickly became known as “American John,” a boxer from the United States with what seemed like an unlimited supply of cash.
“Every prostitute in the Copacabana district knew me,” he said. “It wasn’t because I was a customer. I got to be their friend. I’d loan them money. We’d go out to dinner or to a club. They knew everybody and pretty soon, so did I. And everybody knew me.”
He went to the beach almost every day, renting a chair from one of the vendors. He also ran a tab with another vendor who had a cart on the beach out of which he sold sandwiches, cold drinks, beer, and snacks. Alite started buying food for the kids who roamed the neighborhood. In packs they could be dangerous, but he established a relationship early on and never had a problem.
“I used to walk around wearing an eighty-thousand-dollar, diamond-encrusted Rolex watch,” he said. “Nobody ever bothered me. If a tourist did that, he’d be beaten and robbed. Those kids used to run in packs. They’d surround someone and take everything. Then they’d disappear in the neighborhood or run back to the slums, the favelas, where they lived. I never got bothered. They knew me.”
Alite said he decided to live in Rio the way he had lived in New York. The only difference? The weather was better. He started each morning with breakfast at a local restaurant. After coffee and a bun, he’d sit in the sun for an hour or two and then go for a jog on the beach. He might run four or five miles. In the afternoon he’d work out at the gym. Eventually he started boxing there and got involved with other fighters, training some and working out with others. He also learned some jujitsu.
He was in a great shape and was living well. There were plenty of women, one more beautiful than the next, and most were happy to share a bed with Alite.
He still laughs at the advice one of his Brazilian friends gave him shortly after his arrival. “The best place to learn the language,” the guy had told him, “is in bed with a woman.”
It was good advice, Alite said, and he was happy to take it.
He made connections with local wiseguys and with members of the Commando Vermelho—the Red Command. He didn’t know too much about their history, but he knew they were organized, on the streets and in the prisons, and that if you wanted or needed something done they were the people to see.
At the time, Alite needed very little. He was self-sufficient. He had plenty of cash and knew where he could get more. He would go to bars and clubs at night with some of the girls who lived in his apartment building. Sometimes they would take him into the favelas, where you could spend the night dancing to funky hip-hop music at hole-in-the-wall nightclubs. Located on the hills above the city, these crowded neighborhood slums were unlike anything he had ever seen. Poverty in the extreme.
“I got a better understanding of the country when I went there,” he said. “The people were cautious and distrustful at first, but once they got to know you, there was a loyalty that would last forever. In the middle of these slums, gangs controlled each section, there would be these massive open-air markets with food and entertainment, dancing, prostitutes. It was like a carnival.”
On the other hand, there were shopping centers in and around Rio that were comparable to those he had seen in Short Hills, New Jersey, and King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Alite moved easily in and out of those two worlds. And on occasions he would take trips, either to São Paulo to visit his distant cousins or to nearby countries like Paraguay, Uruguay, or Argentina.
“Just short trips,” he said. “I wanted to test different ways to
get out and what problems there might be. It wasn’t very difficult.”
The idea was to have a way out if and when that was necessary.
Alite hung out at an Internet café from which he might email someone back home. He also had a cell phone and used his coded system to find out what was going on. The investigations were continuing and periodically he would get reports that someone else appeared to be cooperating. Before he was extradited back to the United States he estimated that two dozen former associates, including his young cousin Patsy Andriano, had given him up.
“I had asked a couple of guys to come with me when I left,” he said. “They didn’t want to. I knew then that if things got serious they’d cooperate. I think they were already thinking that way.”
Alite figured he needed about five years. By that point, he believed, the cases in New York and Tampa would have come and gone, witnesses would have died or disappeared, and even prosecutors and FBI agents would have lost interest or retired. When all that happened, he might go back and try to work out a plea deal. Take a ten-year sentence, do eight, and be back home in Queens with nothing hanging over his head. But he didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about that. The sun, the sand, and the lifestyle in Copacabana were perfect. He was happy to live in the moment.
“I just decided to relax, enjoy life, and have some fun,” he said. “No worries.”
Crime was part of the street scene, but he was smart enough and respected enough to avoid it. He laughs now as he recounts the story of a hapless British couple who happened by his beach one afternoon.
Alite, bare-chested, was doing some pull-ups. He spotted the couple and quickly realized that they wanted someone to take their picture with an expensive camera they were carrying.
“Would you like me to take your photograph?” he asked.
At first they seemed startled that he spoke English. Then they looked him up and down, noted the numerous tattoos that covered his arms, back, chest, legs, and neck, and politely declined.
“There was a local guy sitting on a bench nearby,” Alite said. “He was wearing a shirt. I guess they figured he was safe. They asked him to take their picture. I’m doing my pull-ups and I’m watching and I know what’s going to happen.”
The couple posed and the guy in the shirt took their picture.
“Then he asked them to step back a few paces and he took another shot,” Alite said. “Then he asked them to step further back so that he could get more of the beach in the photo. They did. And with that, he took off running with their camera. They called the police, but by the time they got there, the guy was long gone.”
A few weeks after establishing his base in Copacabana he was at the beach one day when four girls showed up and took chairs under a tent nearby. He sent drinks over to them and, while still struggling with his Portuguese, struck up a conversation. He was attracted to a dark-haired beauty named Rose. She said she was celebrating her aniversario. Alite assumed it was her anniversary and thought she was married. Nevertheless, he got her phone number and asked if she would meet him at the movies—the cinema—that night.
When she didn’t show, he called. She came to the movie theater, but struggled to explain. Finally, she stopped a passerby and asked him if he spoke English. Through the tourist, Rose and Alite had their first extended conversation. It was her birthday—that was what aniversario meant in Portuguese—and she was spending it with her friends. She had said she would meet Alite at the movies the next night. He hadn’t understood. And no, she wasn’t married.
Rose was a schoolteacher and went to church two or three times a week. She told Alite early in their relationship that he was not the kind of guy she usually went out with. She thought he was a boxer and his numerous tattoos seemed to indicate that he came from a different world than she was used to. But they hit it off, and over the next six months, they were a couple. Through her he learned to speak Portuguese well enough to hold a decent conversation. He soaked up the culture, sampling some great foods, went to Carnival, and developed an appreciation for futebol.
“They take soccer very seriously there,” he said. “I was invited by some friends to go to a match one night. It was apparently a very important game. My friends were all fans of [the team] Flamengo. I forget who they were playing, but as we’re getting ready to leave for the game, one of the guys called me into another room and handed me a nine-millimeter handgun. He asked if I knew how to use it. I told him I did. He said good, take it with you.”
That’s when Alite really understood how seriously Brazilians took their soccer.
“I said to my friend, ‘Won’t anyone check us going into the stadium?’ I figured you couldn’t bring a gun in. He said the authorities don’t bother checking because everybody brought guns. If they checked, he said, there’d be a gunfight.”
It wasn’t Queens, but there were times when it seemed just like home.
“If you have the time and the money, Rio is a great place to be,” he said.
In 2004, John Alite had both. But he stayed too long. He had gotten too comfortable. He knew the ways of the street, but he ignored the obvious. Just as there were hustlers and con men who had befriended him and had helped him make connections in the underworld, there were others—in some cases probably the same guys—who routinely passed information on to the authorities.
Alite had been living in Copacabana for a year. There is no doubt that the police had heard of “American John,” the gringo with all the cash who had the moves and the savvy of a gangster. What he didn’t know was that an indictment had been handed up in Tampa back in August. He, Trucchio, and four others were charged with racketeering. They were named as part of a Gambino crime family crew operating in Florida that engaged in drug dealing, extortion, robbery, and murder. The indictment was under seal and had not been made public. Trucchio was already in custody for the case pending in Fort Lauderdale. The other defendants were on the street and could be scooped up at any time. The only reason to keep the indictment sealed, it would appear, was to give authorities time to locate Alite.
On November 23, 2004, they did.
Coincidentally, that was the day Alite was planning to leave. He had been told by a few locals—merchants, shop owners, bartenders—that the police had been around asking questions. Nothing specific, but a red flag nonetheless. When Alite asked if they were looking for an American, one of the shop owners said no, that there was no mention of a gringo. But Alite had a feeling and decided to move out. He told several friends that he was planning a trip to São Paulo to visit relatives. In fact, he intended to take a bus and head for Argentina.
“I was going to take a bus that afternoon,” he said. “I was going to try to get to Argentina and then maybe from there work my way up to Colombia and Venezuela.”
Venezuela, with its firebrand anti-American president Hugo Chávez, was almost as good as Cuba for an American on the run. That was Alite’s plan when he bumped into a friend of his named Leonardo, who suggested they have lunch together before Alite left. They headed for a deli/coffee shop that Alite frequented. On the way Leonardo stopped at a pay phone to call his girlfriend. Alite waited outside the shop soaking up the sun. He was wearing sunglasses and was dressed casually in jeans, a red buttoned-down shirt, and sandals. Normally at that time of the day, the neighborhood would be bustling. Alite suddenly noticed that traffic had stopped. There were no cars on the street. And a helicopter was hovering overhead. Alite felt it before his brain could even process what was going on. There was nowhere to run.
The streets had been blocked off and now a dozen armed soldiers, part of what looked like a SWAT team, were closing in. Their leader, in Portuguese, told him to put his hands in the air and drop to his knees. He just stood there.
“I don’t know why, but I didn’t move,” he said. “Maybe I wanted them to shoot me. I just stood still. I didn’t try to run or anything like that. I just wasn’t going to get down on my knees.”
At that moment, Alite said, he th
ought of his kids, his three sons and his daughter, and wondered if he would ever see them again. While living on the run he had always told himself that he would eventually get back to the States and be with them. Maybe that was a fantasy. Maybe it was his way of ignoring the obvious, that he had willingly left them behind. But this was different. A bullet to the head would end any chance of him being a part of their lives ever again. In the alternative, a life sentence, which is what he believed he was facing back in Tampa, wouldn’t be much better.
Now the Brazilian commander was next to him and had his gun in Alite’s chest. With that, Alite dropped to his knees and placed his hands behind his head.
The police closed in, grabbed him, forced him to the ground, and quickly placed him in handcuffs and leg irons. Within minutes he was in the back of an armored car with tinted windows. The drive took about forty minutes. Alite was flanked in the backseat by two heavily armed police officers dressed all in black.
One of them looked at Alite and shook his head, “You are lucky, gringo. We could have killed you. Why didn’t you do as you were told?”
Alite didn’t answer. Perhaps because he really didn’t know.
When the car stopped, he was lifted out of the backseat. He had been taken to a desolate area outside the city and was in the trash-strewn parking area of what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Alite knew this wasn’t a prison. As bad as the Brazilian jails were, this appeared even worse. It reminded him of some of the old, abandoned factories in Queens and Brooklyn, places where he and others would take a victim whom they intended to baseball-bat or kill.
Inside the warehouse it was even worse. The smell was horrific, a combination of rotting trash, piss, and shit. Alite was sweating profusely as he was led to an office in the building. Partly it was the heat. Partly it was his nerves. Rats scurried across the floor and swarms of mosquitoes, attracted by the sweat, buzzed around him as he was pushed up a flight of stairs.
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