Carmine the Snake

by Frank DiMatteo

  Joey Mags was shot to death outside the Union Street Diner. His death graced the cover of my book The President Street Boys: Growing Up Mafia. In fact, Joey Mags’ death is one of my first memories. I was there, just five years old, with my mother, visiting my mother’s girlfriends Chickie and Lillian in their apartment, and we were standing twenty feet away when Joey Mags was wasted.

  An informant talking to the FBI said that he believed the hit on Mags had been intended for Joey Gallo. The gunmen were inside the diner and Gallo and Mags got out of their car, Mags went into the restaurant while Gallo crossed the street to say hello to someone he recognized. The same informant said that Profaci’s man Charles LoCicero had been opposed to Larry and Joey Gallo being allowed in the family from the start, despite the Anastasia hit, that he felt the Gallos and their crew—who were mixed ethnicity and religion with Irishmen, Syrians, and a dwarf—were not “the right type of people.” The informant said he’d been to meetings between the sides held at the Golden Door Restaurant at Idlewild Airport (now JFK), and that these meetings were marked (really ruined) by the antisocial behavior of Crazy Joey Gallo. Even before the meetings, he’d known that a civil war was on the horizon because Carmine Persico and the Gallo brothers had approached him about quitting Profaci and going on their own.

  One of the best photos of all time was taken the night after Joseph Magnasco’s murder. A bunch of the Gallo crew were picked up on President Street and run in and there’s a photo of the lineup, with the dwarf Mondo’s head coming no higher than the other guys’ midsections.

  Cops asked Mondo if he saw the killer.

  “I saw his belt buckle,” Mondo said. “Show me a line-up of belts and I might be able to recognize it.”

  Because my mom and I were too-close-for-comfort when Mags was whacked, it was often the talk at my house. I learned that, with Magnasco that day were my dad’s friends Punchy and Chitoz. Punchy was Frank “Punchy” Illiano, Mondo’s first cousin and coiner of the name “Snake.” He was tough as nails, fought in the Golden Gloves when he was a kid, and hung out on President Street since Day One. Later, he used those hands to put a hurt on the Gallos’ enemies. A lot of guys are called Punchy because they’ve been on the receiving end of too many punches, but this Punchy got the name for dishing them out, often in crisp and destructive combinations. He ran all of the street fairs in South Brooklyn and finally became a made man in the 1970s. Punchy was close to my father, and they stayed close their whole lives. Chitoz was Gennaro Basciano, a real South Brooklyn tough guy, born and raised in the heart of Red Hook. He was a stone-cold killer, but you would never know it by speaking to him. He was right-hand man to Joey and Larry Gallo for many years. Like my dad, he could’ve earned a living in the ring. He had one-punch knockout power. He was quiet but deadly—and loyal.

  So those guys and Joey Mags were driving up Union Street looking for Harry Fontana. They were looking for him because he was supposed to be on the Gallos’ side but hadn’t been doing as much as he could. In fact, it seemed like he was avoiding the Gallo crew, as if he might have something to hide. They found him in front of the Union Diner at the corner of Union and Fourth Avenue. Mags jumped out of the car and started arguing with Fontana.

  In the heat of the argument, Harry’s bodyguard killed Mags on the spot. My mom, being an adult when it happened, remembers it clearly. She became aware that there was some running around, some commotion nearby, a scuffle, car horns blaring, and gunshots. She grabbed me and started heading away from the action. She saw a couple of guys running away, just a glimpse out of the corner of her eye, so she couldn’t say for sure who they were. Not that she would have said anyway.

  “I’m smart enough not to look,” she says. “None of my business.”

  I was little but I remember seeing Mags yelling and then falling to the ground. I knew that these were friends of my father’s, but I didn’t realize until later that I had seen Mags die there on the street. Even when I did figure it out, which was pretty quick, I was young and it didn’t bother me very much.

  Later, while doing research for my first book, I found a photo that had been taken by a newspaper photographer of Joey still on the sidewalk, looking for all the world like he’s taking a nap, a police chalk mark around him, and a priest, Father Benny Calleja, administering the last rites. That’s how I know the date, October 4, 1961.

  * * *

  Later that month, the Gallos gained intelligence that the “olive oil king” was hiding out at his hunting lodge in the wilderness of New Jersey, so a crew went there to take care of business. They were met at the door by an aged caretaker who convinced them Joe Profaci wasn’t there.

  Still in October, errant shots were fired by two gunman, one of them being “Cadillac” Louie Mariani, at former Gallo business associate Jiggs Forlano outside Forlano’s home in Astoria, Queens. The sound of bullets whizzing past his ears gave Jiggs pause, caused him to reconsider life’s priorities. He left the Gallos and joined Profaci, eventually becoming a capo under Joe Colombo.

  At just before 3:00 A.M. on November 11, 1961, in a smoke-filled Brooklyn nightspot called the Hi-Fi Lounge, gunfire erupted, sending an estimated one-hundred customers screaming into the street, while others cowered under tables. Police later had trouble finding two eyewitnesses who saw the same thing, but eventually concluded that two or three men had entered the joint and started firing guns. Forty-two-year-old ex-con John Guariglia and twenty-seven-year-old club-owner Paul Ricci, a.k.a. Paul Rich, were dead. Thirty-one-year-old Thomas Riccardi also needed an ambulance for a bullet to the knee. FBI documents suggested that WW II vet Sal Mangiameli and Michael Rizzitelli may have been the gunmen. Rizzitelli was originally a New York gun but had been living in California for years before returning east to help out the war-torn Gallo crew.

  On November 22, cops raided two Sheepshead Bay apartments and confiscated an arsenal of weapons that, according to NYPD Assistant Chief Inspector Raymond V. Martin, were to have been used to “finish off the Gallo gang.” Martin said the war was being run on behalf of Joe Profaci, by Sally, who was connected to at least one of the apartments and was free on $40,000 bail in connection with the cop shooting outside the Sahara Lounge. (The other apartment, at 2701 Ocean Avenue, belonged to an “attractive divorcee” named Zoya Linova.) The weapons were six high-powered hunting rifles, two of them with telescopic sights, two shotguns, a sawed-off shotgun, a revolver, and ammunition for all of the guns. Also seized were $8,500 in clothes stolen from a freight warehouse in the city.

  The Gallos were facing two sorts of attrition during the first weeks of the war: guys getting shot, and guys defecting to the other side because they could read the writing on the wall.

  Maybe he’d just seen the Billy Wilder picture Some Like It Hot, which combines cross-dressing and gangsters, but on December 2 Carmine Persico decided that wearing drag would make a perfect disguise for a hit squad. And so it was that he and Sally D’Ambrosio, neither one of them very pretty, dressed up as women, climbed into a convertible sports car, and hunted down Larry Gallo. Sally drove, Carmine sat shotgun with an actual shotgun across the lap of his dress. They found Larry, and Carmine managed to get off a shot but missed. Maybe his earrings got in the way.

  On December 11, three Gallo associates, including Larry “Big Lollipop” Carna, age thirty, were fired upon eight times from a drive-by car. Carna was wounded in the ankle, and a passer-by was slightly injured. Carna was stepping out of a paint store along a busy Red Hook street when he was shot. The two men with him, Angelo Pafumi and Sal Mangiameli, ran to their cars and fled.

  Police asked Big Lollipop who shot him.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” Carna replied.

  In mid-December, Profaci declared a ceasefire. Assigned hits were canceled. Peace talks broke out. Charles LoCicero approached Larry Gallo with an offer of peace and Larry told him he liked the idea of a ceasefire but thought the undisclosed terms ridiculous. Profaci wanted subservience. The Gallos wanted Profaci
to step down.

  On December 18, a pretty twenty-two-year-old brunette named Palma Vitale was in court facing criminal contempt charges before Kings County Judge Hyman Barshay based on her refusal to testify before a grand jury investigating gangland tumult. She was there because she was Sally’s special friend, and her refusal to talk had Assistant D.A. Aaron Koota calling for her to be jailed, but the judge gave her a suspended sentence and warned her to stop consorting with “worthless characters.” On her way out of the courtroom, Miss Vitale was handed a subpoena to testify before the next grand jury, a move that made her roll her eyes.

  On January 5, 1962, Carmine Persico, along with turncoat Jiggs Forlano, and Dominick “Donnie Shacks” Montemarano, went to the Copacabana. (Donnie grew up less than a block from the Persicos on Carroll Street but was younger, born 1939, and didn’t hang with the former Garfields until the President Street days.) There, they encountered a guy named Sidney Slater who was behind on his loan payments. So, taking care of business that had nothing to do with the Gallos, they beat the shit out of him, left him howling. Jiggs wore a newspaper hook on his ring finger and Slater almost lost an eye.

  January 29, Michael and Philip Albergo, Gallo associates, came out of a restaurant and found their parked car with a flat. Upon closer inspection, they saw the tire had been ice-picked. So they were pretty pissed off as they started to put on the spare. As they squatted beside the car with jack and lugnut wrench in hand, a car drove by and shot them. The ceasefire was over.

  March 5, bullets flew in Joe Profaci’s general direction but he was unharmed.

  March 11, Carmine, Jiggs, and a couple of other Profaci capos sent out word that the old man was sick, Profaci was very ill, and it was time for him to step down. This might have sounded ungracious on Carmine’s part because the olive-oil king had given him the big break that would make him a very rich man. But he was forgiven when it became obvious that he was not being disrespectful but merely addressing an actual problem. Simultaneously, the Gallos—who were taking a licking in the ongoing war—went to the commission to ask that they handle the Gallo-Profaci dispute. Carlo Gambino advised Profaci of the Gallos’ request, and meetings were held on the subject in Chicago and Detroit. Gambino and Tommy Lucchese asked Profaci nicely to step down.

  By this time, the papers, citing anonymous sources, were referring to Carmine Persico as “Profaci’s top gun,” the man who “held the contract to liquidate the remaining members of the Gallo gang,” a guy who cruised the streets of South Brooklyn in a car full of guns “hunting Gallos.”

  Profaci guns, under Carmine’s command, tended to shoot straighter than Gallo guns. Anthony “Tony Fats” Regina in particular had skills. He was considered a “small arms expert” and had been decorated for sharpshooting in Korea (before he went AWOL)—interesting in that President Street would be plagued by sniper fire.

  With the Profacis pre-occupied with civil war, the other four families were growing increasingly concerned. Publicity over the death count was bad for business.

  All the squabbling over Profaci was moot as Profaci died before the month was out, on June 6, 1962, of liver cancer. He was buried five days later in St. John Cemetery in Queens, also the resting place of Lucky Luciano, and later of Joe Colombo and John Gotti.

  It was custom for a family to take some time to mourn when a boss died before naming a new boss, but in this case, because of the war, Joseph Magliocco immediately and unofficially took over the family. He was never okayed by the commission, and his reign was brief.

  The Gallos had no voice in the decision as they were not recognized as an entity by the commission. The Gallos were out, and if they wanted to get back in they were going to have to apologize to the commission for their upstart behavior and maybe, just maybe, they would be received back into the Profaci family.

  Now, while Carmine Persico was rapidly rising up the ranks, a shooting star gaining influence and power with each shake-up at the top, Magliocco was a guy who had been stuck in place for a long time. He had been with Joe Profaci when Profaci was given the fifth New York family and had been Profaci’s underboss for thirty-four long years. So, when he was elevated to the top spot after all that time, he was a frustrated man, an ambitious man who became suddenly power-hungry—not to mention the fact that he was still angry with the Gallos for kidnapping him and not allowing him to use a toilet when he needed to take a leak.

  So it’s no surprise that one of Magliocco’s first moves as boss was to order a skim of all gambling operations to go into a war fund, money ear-marked solely for the destruction of the Gallos. In the meantime, no such fund existed on President Street, where morale was scraping bottom. Guys getting scared and bailing continued to be a problem. The first turncoats switched over to the Profaci side, but as that side lost some of its structural integrity during the exchange of power, others went to the Gambinos looking for a safe spot to work.

  June 1962, the FBI filed a report saying the Gallo-Profaci war was hurting the numbers business.

  October 1962, two low-level guys who were friends of the Gallos, Anthony DiCola and Marco Morelli, simply disappeared, poof, reportedly hit by Carmine Persico and Jiggs Forlano. Carmine wanted the Gallos to know he would hit big men and little men, that he knew no distinction.

  There was a period of peace until Johnny “Bath Beach” Oddo had his car engine torn up by gunfire while he sat behind the wheel in 1963. And that brings us to the most famous of all attempts on Carmine Persico’s life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Indestructible Carmine

  Carmine—shot in the cheek, hand, and shoulder—got out of the vehicle, took several sideways steps, lurched forward and collapsed to the sidewalk. There he spit out a bloody bullet. Loved dearly by his crime family, he was the Man Who Could Not Be Killed, and now had a new nickname: “The Immortal. ”

  IN MAY 1963, Punchy shot and wounded Carmine Persico’s bodyguard, the hard-to-miss Hugh McIntosh. Days later a hit team from President Street—my dad Rick DiMatteo, Punchy, and Chitoz—attempted to take out Carmine.

  And they did it in a surprisingly high-tech way. Rick, Punchy, and Pete “The Greek” Diapoulis teamed up with Sal Mangiameli—a union president, and former explosive ordnance specialist during WW II—who knew how to make a bomb and gave them instructions. Knowing those guys, they probably had a few drinks to steady their hands as they built the bomb.

  And it worked. My dad was among those who built the bomb, successfully placed it under Carmine’s Cadillac, and detonated it with Carmine in the car. Just the fact that the bomb went off was considered a great success with a lot of backslapping—but they didn’t kill Carmine.

  Sure, the bomb exploded on cue under Carmine’s Cadillac, and for that matter under Carmine as well. Fortunately for the intended victim, however, there was a steel plate under his seat, and he walked away with a concussion, permanent tinnitus, some cuts and bruises, and a sore ass.

  Back on President Street:

  “Next time let’s just shoot him.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s just fucking shoot him.”

  They weren’t satisfied with going hunting with pocket guns. A job like this demanded superior weaponry so they brought with them an M-1 carbine. If it was good enough for American soldiers in WW II, it was good enough for President Street. It was light, easy to use, semi-automatic .30 caliber, and absolutely built to kill men.

  So, on May 19, 1963, my dad, Pete the Greek, and Punchy tried to kill Carmine with bullets. Pete carried the rifle. The targets were Carmine and his longtime associate, thirty-eight-year-old Alphonse “Funzi” D’Ambosio. The men were in an AMC Rambler at Bond and DeGraw streets in Gowanus, after leaving the home of Carmine’s girlfriend, and on their way to downtown Brooklyn for a court appearance, when they were ambushed by the gunmen in a panel truck.

  The shots neatly pierced the car’s windshield. Carmine took hot lead to his cheek, left hand, and shoulder. He stumbled over to the sidewalk and spit out a bloody bull
et. I’ve read that Carmine got up and drove himself to the hospital, but that’s bullshit. He was down. Both wounded men were taken by ambulance to Kings County Hospital. As Carmine was being wheeled into the emergency treatment center, his face a crimson mask, a hole in his hand large enough to put a pool cue through, he was pestered by cops.

  “You got five bullets in you, Junior,” an Irish plainclothes guy said, stride for stride with the guys pushing Carmine’s gurney. “Look, you’re going to die any minute now. Before you go, why don’t you straighten this thing out and tell us who did it? You know who it was. What’s the difference if you talk now? You’re going to die.”

  He didn’t talk. For one thing, he’d just been shot in the mouth. But he also refused to talk. He shook his head at the annoying cop, who thankfully was left behind as Carmine was transported into surgery. Even as his mouth healed, his lips remained sealed.

  Carmine was reported in “poor” condition, while Funzi was in “good” condition. Along with “Junior” and “Snake,” Carmine now picked up a new nickname, one he’d earned the hard way: The Immortal.

  They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Such bullshit. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you leaves you a drooling vegetable. This shooting did permanent damage to Carmine Persico. He never regained full use of his now twisted left hand.

  Of course, the cops knew who shot Carmine. They just wanted a witness to say it out loud, but they couldn’t find one so they rounded up seventeen members of the Gallo crew—including Larry and Albert Gallo—and charged them all with illegal gun possession. Criminal Court Judge Louis Wallach set bail ranging from $1,000 to $15,000. The low price tag went to blond, twenty-four-year-old Mrs. Paula Levatino a crewmember’s curvaceous and accommodating girlfriend. Top price went to the least active of the brothers, “Kid Blast” Albert Gallo. The judge originally said his bail would be $10,000, but Albert “talked back,” saying like a smart aleck, “Thank you very much, Your Honor,” at which point Wallach added 5K to his bail.