by Ron Felber
CONTENTS
Title Page
FOREWORD
1. THE COMMISSION
2. BRONX BOY DISCOVERS BODY
3. INITIATION
4. BIRTH OF THE AMERICAN MAFIA
5. INTO THE MIRROR
6. BOSS OF BOSSES
7. SURGEON 1
8. STUDIO 54
9. BABANIA
10. GIULIANI AT THE WALDORF
11. THE BUSINESSMAN GODFATHER
12. LOVE AND BULLETS
13. MOB COURIER
14. JFK AND THE MAFIA
15. GODFATHERS AND PRESIDENTS
16. TROUBLE IN PARADISE
17. THE SPEED OF SOUND
18. THE MAFIA AND HOOVER’S FBI
19. GIULIANI VS. GOTTI
20. TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE
21. RICO REDUX
22. STAR WARS
23. HURRICANES, TORNADOES, AND PESTILENCE
24. THE CONCRETE CLUB
25. THE HIT ON SCOPO
26. “NEW GODFATHER HEADING GAMBINO GANG”
27. A TANGLED WEB
28. AN “INTERESTING” LIFE
29. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO FRANKIE VALLI
30. THE DEATH OF MYSELF
31. A NEW BEGINNING
EPILOGUE
Copyright
FOREWORD
The idea for writing See No Evil was given to me by Bill Bonanno, author of Bound by Honor, A Mafioso’s Story. The son of godfather and Commission founder, Joseph Bonanno, in addition to writing, he was involved in film and having read a manuscript of mine titled The Privacy War became interested in the possibility of a movie. We were meeting at Anthony’s, a restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, to discuss the project when, in the course of conversation, he mentioned an acquaintance who’d led an intriguing life and now was willing to have a book written about it.
At first, I was cool toward the notion of writing yet another “Mafia book.” Certainly anything that needed to be said on the subject had been committed to paper by more capable authors than myself ranging from Gay Talese, Honor Thy Father, to Mario Puzo, The Godfather, and Joseph Bonanno, A Man of Honor. Nevertheless, since I was living in New Jersey, as was Dr. Elliot Litner, I agreed to meet with him to see what kind of chemistry developed.
To my delight, I found Elliot to be brilliant, likable, and remarkably “human.” Contrary to what one might assume about the stereotype for a man raised on the periphery of organized crime and who had by choice opted to lead a double life, I became enamored with the notion of it. A “double” life. What did it mean? Were there people in this world for whom one life was simply not enough? People whose hunger for living allowed them, perhaps even compelled them, to be two different men? If that was the case, what was the penalty for living too much? Once ethical considerations vanished from one’s radar screen and the borders of individuality were wiped clean, what was it like to be two people, one living the life of a high-society Manhattan physician with wife and children, the other living the life of a sex addict and inveterate gambler working secretly for the Mafia?
The introduction that Bill Bonanno offered, I understood after meeting Elliot, was an opportunity to explore a world that few will ever live or even know about. It was an invitation to see the world of La Cosa Nostra through the eyes of an outsider, a self-confessed “nerd” who hailed from the Bronx in New York and through a series of choices and coincidences evolved into an “everyman” historian capable of walking one through a Mafia house of mirrors as unfamiliar and frightening to him as it would be to any potential reader.
From that point on, Elliot Litner and I worked together on this project. He drove me to his old haunts on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx and even to the “backies” where as a young boy, his brother, Steve, their pals, Jewish and Italian, and he would ride cardboard boxes down the garbage heaps, their version of Swiss Alps. As important, I spent hours taping the events that made up his life, past and current, putting those accounts today—with the benefit of hindsight—into their historical context, while getting to know him as a person and his family going back to their emigration from Russia immediately following the Revolution.
Beyond that, during my two years of research, I had the good fortune to get to know Bill and meet his father, Joseph, shortly before he died. Having taken my nephews along on the trip, we found ourselves at Joseph Bonanno’s home where the feisty godfather, then in his mid-nineties, told anecdotes about Al Capone, the Kennedys, and a priceless gem about having once bribed President Calvin Coolidge. Prior to that, I had, of course, instructed my nephews, Matt, fifteen, and Colin, ten, to be “polite” and on their “best behavior.” Once we’d finished talking and were about to leave, I was careful to point out that I wanted them to “shake hands” and say “thank you” for the hospitality.
As it turned out, the conversation was enthralling, and at its conclusion, Colin and Matt lined up dutifully in front of me to bid farewell to the retired godfather. As Bill, and his nephew, Frank, looked on, Colin stepped forward expecting to shake hands when to his shock and amazement, the old man turned his right cheek to him. Colin was mortified, not having a clue about what he should do, but wanting to remain ever polite, simply stood there in silence. It was then that his older brother nudged him. “He wants you to kiss him, stupid,” he exhorted. At which time, Colin looked into the eyes of the grizzled Joseph Bonanno, whose cheek was still showing, then turning to me in total desperation, asked, “Where?”
Our good-byes were suitably arranged in the moments that followed, and we all had a good-natured laugh about the comedies of everyday life. Still, sensing at that moment the possibilities for historical intimacy that Elliot’s story offered, I vowed then to write something more than just another Mafia book. I wanted to capture not just his life, but the Cosa Nostra way of life from his unique perspective, interweaving the exploits of Rudolph Giuliani, for example, known to him through his career as a well-respected Manhattan surgeon, with those of John Gotti, known to him through his alternate life as I1 Dottore, the Mafia doctor.
In the final analysis, then, I was determined to discover who this man was. How could he be so driven by the need to heal and achieve social acceptability in his visible life, yet demonstrate such destructive tendencies, steeped up to his eyeballs in what, at best, could be described as moral ambiguity in his invisible one? Was there a price to pay for living too much? The answer would come for Elliot Litner in the unlikely specter of heart patient Ralph Scopo, union official and capo for the Columbo crime family, whom he would be coerced both to murder and to save on the operating table of New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital in December 1986.
What was the price for cutting a Faustian deal with New York high society and the godfathers of La Cosa Nostra? This was the mystery I set out to solve in the biography of a physician forced to probe for “truth” amid the inner workings of the Mafia, the hidden agendas of American hypocrisy, and the darkest recesses of his own spirituality.
R.F.
Mendham, New Jersey
August 2004
1
THE COMMISSION
“Giuliani had achieved a national visibility he’d craved his entire life.”
—Foley Square, February 27, 1985, 10:35 A.M.
Abuzz of speculation swirled around U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani as he stood on the Federal Courthouse steps in Manhattan. Flanked by FBI Director William Webster, the news conference had a carnival air about it as television and newspaper reporters roiled around New York’s top federal lawman calling out questions, popping camera flashbulbs, and shooting videotape as he tried to wave them down.
“The New York City Bar Association called you ‘overzealous’ and said your use of RICO has led to abuses. What do you say about that?” asked David
Margolick then of the New York Times.
“I’d say they’re provincial and should stop acting like a trade organization,” Rudy shot back, casting a quick grin in Webster’s direction.
“What about John Gotti?” called out NBC’s Gabe Pressman. “There’re reports that with Castellano out of the picture, he’s the new boss of bosses.”
“No comment.”
“You wanna be mayor? That’s the word down at City Hall,” shouted Newsday’s Lenny Levitt.
“I’ve been U.S. attorney less than a year, Lenny. Why don’t you give me a break?” Rudy answered, then directing himself to the crowd and Webster, who stood by his side bemused, “Come on, guys!” he exhorted. “Let’s get a little organized here!”
The night before, on February 26, 1985, fifty major mob leaders were busted and hauled before a swarm of cameras in Foley Square. Today, Giuliani was about to rock the world of organized crime again by announcing grand jury indictments against the bosses of New York’s five ruling Mafia families.
“This is a great day for law enforcement,” Giuliani proudly declared, “but a bad day, probably the worst ever, for the Mafia because we have not only attacked the ‘heart,’ but the ‘brain’ of La Cosa Nostra.”
Based on taped evidence, he asserted, the U.S. Attorney’s Office would prove that the heads of five Mafia families essentially ran the construction industry in New York, collecting two percent of the price of every significant contract in the state.
Giuliani then presented the indictment charging the bosses with running a RICO enterprise known, since its formation in 1931, as the Commission. Indicted were Paul “Big Paul” Castellano (Gambino Family); Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno (Genovese Family); Gennaro “Gerry Lang” Langella (Columbo Family); Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo (Lucchese Family); Philip “Rusty” Rustelli (Bonanno Family). In other words, every ruling godfather in the state.
On that day and the next, Giuliani appeared on ABC’s “Evening News,” “Nightline,” “Good Morning America,” and CBS’s “Morning News” boasting about his prosecutorial triumph. In those forty-eight hours, he achieved a national visibility he’d craved and worked for his entire life.
Then it happened. An event that would forever link Elliot Litner’s fate with the destinies of two of this generation’s most extraordinary men: future New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and John Gotti, Time magazine’s “Teflon Don” and heir apparent to the throne of the nation’s most powerful Mafia crime family.
On November 13, 1986, in the midst of the Commission trial, Ralph Scopo, president of the Concrete Workers’ District Council, complained of nausea and numbness in his right arm. Then, while listening to prosecution tapes of himself secretly recorded by the FBI, he stood and clutched his chest, seized by a knifelike thrust of excruciating pain. He turned to his left toward Asst. U.S. Attorney Michael Chertoff as if to say something, then to his right, robotic, as he tried to move out from behind the defense desk. Finally, reaching for the oak rail behind him, he fell forward, then collapsed to the courtroom floor, suffering a heart attack.
Coronary patient Ralph Scopo lay motionless on the operating table at Mount Sinai Hospital, chest bare, electrodes attached to the back of his shoulders, intravenous needles inserted into his right arm and left wrist. Fifty-six years old, grossly overweight, and a three pack-a-day smoker, Giuliani’s pride and joy had collapsed four weeks earlier, headlines in the morning papers screaming SCOPO HEART ATTACK DISRUPTS RACKETEERING TRIAL. But there was much more to it than racketeering. This case was an attempt by the FBI and New York City’s Organized Crime Task Force to bring down the Commission, the “bosses” of the five La Cosa Nostra families that governed organized crime in New York and possibly the nation.
In the background played “The Wanderer,” a 1961 hit by Dion in place of Verdi or Puccini, Elliot’s usual fare. The anesthesiologist jerked Scopo’s head back so the blunt blade of the L-shaped laryngoscope could be put in his throat and a one-half-inch endotracheal tube inserted past his vocal chords. A balloon on the tube’s lower end inflated, creating an airtight seal as Clark Hinterlieter, the resident surgeon, inserted a Foley catheter through Scopo’s penis into his bladder, then nodded to Dr. Elliot Litner, the chief operating surgeon.
Litner glanced to his right where outside Operating Room #2 the Giuliani team of three federal investigators led by Special Agent Peter Hogan awaited the operation’s outcome like vultures. Then, to his left where John Gotti’s right hand, Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, and two of his underlings loomed nearby the patient’s waiting room pacing the floor with equal intensity. The Brooks Brothers Ivy Leaguers versus the polyester suit gumbas, Litner mused sardonically, the voice in his head sounding like a cross between Woody Allen and a manic Jerry Lewis. “How the hell did a nerdy, Jewish kid from the Bronx get caught up in a mess like this?” he anguished. The feds want Scopo alive to prosecute and “twist” into a government witness against New York’s five families. The goodfellas don’t want him leaving this operating room alive. Either way, it’s understood, Litner was a dead man.
Dion warbled in the background about Flo on the left, Mary on the right, and Janie being the girl he’ll be with tonight. When Janie asks who he loves the best, Dion tears open his shirt to show Rosie on his chest.
’Cause I’m the wanderer,
Yeah the wanderer,
I go around, around, around …
The chest was open; the heart-lung machine ready to go. It was impossible to stall any longer. It was time for Elliot Litner, a man who could have been the poster boy for moral ambiguity, to choose between life or death: loyalty to La Cosa Nostra or devotion to his Hippocratic oath.
“Fifty cc’s going in to test the line,” the technician announced.
“On bypass,” Litner commanded, “start cooling.’
Almost immediately, Scopo’s heart slowed.
Judy Harrow, his surgical nurse, held the shiny stainless-steel needle up in the air. She depressed the syringe plunger, and a stream of clear liquid potassium spurted from it.
She handed it to Litner.
This was it. The moment of truth, for if ever there was a time to see to it that Scopo never awakened from his drug-induced sleep to testify, this was that time.
Litner took the syringe into his right hand, clamped the aorta, then injected the icy fluid directly into the vessels below the blockages in Scopo’s lower aorta.
Ralph Scopo’s heart had stopped beating!
2
BRONX BOY DISCOVERS BODY
“These gangsters are going to kill my little Ellie.”
Harley Hotel
Cleveland, Ohio
March 8, 1987
The tiny hotel room was overrun with the waste generated by a man who’d given up living, and it showed as he stood naked before the full-length mirror that covered the pine wardrobe before him. Elliot Litner had become part of the environment since he’d gone into hiding, as much a part of the decadent décor as the used styrofoam McDonald’s hamburger shells, crushed Big Mac wrappers, and half-empty beer cans that adorned the place: a human wreck, both physically and psychologically.
For nearly three decades, he’d maintained secret relationships with America’s most notorious criminals, smuggling precious gems from Brazil, disposing of sensitive medical records, and acting as a courier transporting counterfeit stocks, bonds, and who knew what else from Switzerland and other parts of Europe. He’d been a personal physician to Carlo Gambino, worked with capo di tutti capi Paul Castellano, and tended to business for garment district boss Al Rosengarten, as well as Mafia up-and-comer John “Johnny Boy” Gotti.
More, he’d reaped the rewards of those efforts, shooting craps gratis at the Sands in Las Vegas and Resorts in Atlantic City, $1,000 a throw; partying at Studio 54 with Cybill Shepherd, Richard Gere, and Roy Cohn; engaging in threesomes, and even foursomes, at Plato’s Retreat with the most beautiful women in the world. Christ almighty, it was like being a fuckin’ rock star.
But suddenly it came to a screeching halt. The Mafia empire tumbled down around him like a house of cards. And for him, it had all come down to the life of a single potential government witness who Gotti, himself, had ordered to be hit. A man named Ralph Scopo.
Elliot’s eyes scanned the human wreck he’d become, eyes ringed and lifeless from lack of sleep and paranoia, face unshaven, pot belly swollen, and even his penis, once the pride and joy of his life, hanging ludicrously shriveled. He sat down naked and alone on the Spartan wooden chair set before a desk as stripped and bare as his ravaged brain these days and nights to begin writing the notes that would become the basis of See No Evil: The True Story of a Mafia Doctor’s Double Life.
When did Elliot Litner’s involvement with the Mafia, or La Cosa Nostra as it’s sometimes called, first begin? Very early. In 1953, to be exact, at the age of five, when he was playing Cowboys and Indians with his older brother, Steven, in a deserted lot near their tenement apartment on Anthony Avenue in the Bronx, New York.
It was there that he witnessed a gun deal gone bad, leading to the murder of one man by two others. Bam! Bam!! Bam!!! He heard the sound of the final bullets shot into the back of the man’s head. Then, maybe to make identification more difficult or as a last gesture of contempt, a rock the size of a watermelon dropped onto his skull, crushing it in a pool of blood, bone, and brain tissue.
That’s when they noticed Elliot, a skinny, little Jewish kid, Roy Rogers’s six-shooter in hand, standing petrified with fear, not ten feet from them. Both men were huge—broad shouldered, dressed in dark overcoats and hats.
“You didn’t see nothin’, did you, kid?” the man with the pistol asked.
Elliot shook his head “no,” shaking, literally, in his shoes.
“Good,” the man said shoving a $10 bill in the boy’s shirt pocket. “You remember that. You didn’t see nothin’.”