Lion in the Basement Growing up in the Gallo Crime Family

by Frank DiMatteo

Mr. Hubela who lives at 77 President Street, was standing at the intersection of President and Columbia Streets, about 100 feet from his home at 10:20 P.M. When he was shot in the head. He was taken to Long Island College Hospital where his condition was reported as poor.

  Mr. Hubela, the police say, was indicted in December, 1963, with 15 other Gallo gang members, including Albert Gallo Jr, and was held under $25,000 bail on an indictment charging conspiracy to murder 22 members of the Mafia's Profaci family.

  NEW YORK TIMES SEPTEMBER, 3RD 1974

  A MEMBER OF GALLO GANG SHOT BY BROOKLYN SNIPER

  By JOSEPH B. TREASTER

  A long-time member of the Albert Gallo crime "family" was shot on a Brooklyn street by a sniper yesterday in what the police said was another episode in a war between rival factions of the Mafia.

  The victim, 46 year old Frank Illiano, who had served as a cook and personal bodyguard to Mr. Gallo, was hit in the right shoulder, the police said. They said he suffered more serious injuries as he fell and struck his head on the sidewalk.

  Mr. Illiano was the fourth member of the Gallo gang to be shot this summer, the police said, in a feud that began after a man named John Cutrone led a group of dissidents away from Mr. Gallo's organization. They said three of Mr. Cutrone's followers had been wounded.

  After Joseph Gallo was shot to death in Umberto's Clam House in Lower Manhattan in April 1972, Albert Gallo took nominal control of the gang But almost from the start there had been some criticism about what was felt to be his "weak leadership." But they said that Mr. Cutrone and his men might not be the only ones gunning for the

  Gallos. They pointed out that there had been a lingering hostility between the Gallo organization and faction headed by Joseph Colombo Jr. since Mr. Colombo's father was critically wounded in June 1971 the shooting was attributed by some police officials to the Gallos.

  The police said the bullet that struck Mr. Illiano had been fired from a roof about 200 feet away as he talked with another member of the Gallo organization on the northwest corner of President and Columbia Streets. It was only a short distance from the gang's headquarters at 76 President Street.

  THE NEW YORK TIMES SEPTEMBER 12TH 1974

  CHAPTER 17

  Hitting the Streets

  After everything calmed down on President Street, we started moving around the neighborhood freely. One night I went to Goomba Louie's house on Douglass Street. Some of his family from Texas, were visiting. Em and Jo wanted to go for a walk to show the family the neighborhood, as they were walking on Court Street a car pulled up to them and someone inside and was trying to talk to them. When one guy in the back seat yelled out "let's get the fuck out of here that's Frankie Milone's girl", the girls said that the car took off so fast that the guys head snapped back.

  As the girls were telling the story it seemed like they were mad that it happened. Then Em and Jo said that they were like prisoners, so we said 'go look for them and go for a ride, who gives a fuck'. We then laughed. A few minutes later some guy we knew came to the house and said he wanted to talk to me. I said 'Ok' we went outside, I see a car with four guys in it, so I said 'whats up', he said 'Frankie, I was in the car with these guys, I saw Emily and I told the guys that was your girl and we left, I don't want you to be mad at us'. I said 'thank you for coming to me and that I wasn't mad I and thought it was funny', he said 'you thought it was funny?, fuck, we were thinking of running home and begging our parents for help, we didn't know whether to cry, or shit!' I said "Get out of here, we'll see you later at Ju-Ju's for a drink".

  I turned to Louie and said I think we are starting to get real "reps". We laughed and went inside. Everyone inside were all impressed that we were "big shots" from Brooklyn. Louie was always bragging about me to the family in Texas.

  Guys would come to us with a score or if they had a problem. We went to the local bars and most guys bought us drinks. We knew a few guys who had a pot business they asked us for protection. They gave us $500 a week to say it was "Our pot", if someone tired to move in on them.

  Then we started to sell swag, and do some hijackings. One day Goombaile's brother got us a key to a warehouse downtown so we could get in and clean out the place, it was a stereo warehouse. One night we got in and loaded a truck and took off with it. I jumped in my van to follow them, we got to 4th Avenue, when the truck went on fire! I tried to push it with my van but we heard police sirens, so we took off with shit, nothing! I asked Marty what happened, he said he must have crossed the wires wrong when he hot wired the truck. Marty said there was no key so we just went back to the poolroom and laughed about it.

  We started going to the clubs in the city, like the "Blue Angel", it was one of the hottest clubs in New York. I used to meet Bulleye and Stevie G there. The broads were beautiful there and everyone was coming over to talk to me. I thought I was some "big shot", but then Stevie told me they were mostly high class hookers, who cared, they were hot and I was young. From there we went over to "Punchy's club", it was on 2nd Avenue and 67th Street. One night when we were there, it was packed. A few guys we knew from Red Hook came in, we knew they were going to be trouble.

  About midnight one of the guys got into an argument with some guy. We had to go over to break it up, about an hour later we see everyone running up the stairs from where the bathroom was. What happened was this guy was coming up from the bathroom, he saw the other guy coming down, so he stabbed him in the belly and took off.

  As we were leaving, we were standing outside, a dikey looking broad came over to my cousin Blake and hit him. So Blake knocked her out! What happened was, early in the night one of the lesbo's came in to the club from a Lesbian bar next store, and Blake had a drink with her. She must have went back and told her girlfriend she liked Blake and her girlfriend didn't like that. So in the end, she got knocked out and the girl went with us. That night 'The Law' came in and shut the club.

  From there we started to stay at "The Drift Inn", a bar on Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn. It was owned by a gangster named Louie Pizza. We hung out there with his son, a short roley poley guy, always smiling. Louie was a friend of my father, so he invited me right in to his little crew of guys. It was a small place, had good "oldies" and great Italian music on the jukebox, a lot of broads and knock around guys stayed there.

  I used to go into the bar and tell the barmaid to "give the bar a drink", as soon as I walked in, she would smile, she knew what I was doing. I bought maybe five or six guys a drink, by the time they all bought me back a drink, plus (the house would buy back one after every three drinks) by that time I was grinding my teeth. Don't ask me why?, I would think about things and get mad, then think someone was going to start with me, not knowing I was an alcoholic and it was the alcohol that was frying my brain. At the end of the night I was always getting into a fight. Someone would say the wrong thing then I would hit them, it seemed everyone was always saying something wrong to me. One good thing, that round of drinks only cost me ten dollars. Scotch and water was only two dollars a drink those day. The "Drift Inn" was close to Coney Island, so someone was always running to "Nathans" for hotdogs, fried shrimp, chow mein on a bun and fries, we ate like pigs.

  One night some of my "nice friends" came to the bar to hang out, they were having a ball talking with all the girls and dancing. I was standing outside having a smoke talking to someone, when I saw their girlfriends coming, my girlfriend Emily was the one that took them there. I saw their car parking so I ran inside to tell the guys. I got to some, not all, when the girls came in, they came right over to me with big smiles. I said "hi what's up? want a drink?". They said "we saw you run inside", I said "who me? no way!" One of the girls found my friend Andy with a girl on his lap kissing, man, she was pissed! He told me after, he could never go out again with me. I said, "What the fuck do I have to do with it?, you guys came to me". Everything was always my fault. Emily just smiled and said "You lucky fuck".

  One night I walked into the Drift Inn and everyone was a little quiet.
I asked "What's up?", they told me one of the guys named Joey left the night before, he went to see a broad who was going out with a wise guy. Well, he got caught and they cut off his prick and balls!, stuck them in his mouth, beat him to death and tied him to a tree in a cemetery in Staten Island! That was fucked up, we drank the night away.

  Just before we stopped going to the "Drift Inn", I was drinking at the bar, the place was packed. The barmaid came over to me and said, a guy in the middle of the bar was talking to some people and said he was Steven Gallo. I looked over and saw the he was a young guy from Court Street, his name was Stevie Honda. So I went over to him and he shit!, he thought he was at a bar where nobody knew Stevie G. I said to him to finish his drink and go, he didn't even finish it, he just ran out the door!I went over to the barmaid and said "Let it go, he was just a moron", "and that I didn't know him. If I did, she would have told Steven and the moron would have "got a smack". The barmaid knew he wasn't Steven because she was "fucking Steven", and let me tell, she was hot!

  We stood a few more weeks there. The owner Louie Pizza was dealing dope and the place got hot, so we left. A while later we found out that Louis Pizza was killed. It was only a matter of time, because the year before Louie Pizza and Bobby Darrow went to kill a wise guy named Apples Maclntosh, who was close to Carmine Persico and he shot him in the balls. The guy never got a hard on again. Mac was just waiting for the right time to kill Louie, that was one of the reasons he got whacked, plus he was dealing in junk, big time!

  We just finished fixing the house in Gerritsen Beach and was moving in. It was on the water, how the fuck did my father find this place?, it was in "no mans land". We were right smack in the middle of an Irish neighborhood, and a fucking trip to get back downtown.

  Blast was staying with us at the house so I had to give my room up, for him. I didn't care, I was out all night and when I got home I passed out on the couch.

  One night I get a call to go President Street, when I get there my father told me that Steven Boriello got shot on President Street and he was hit bad.

  He got shot in the face and they didn't think he was going to make it. It was February 1976, meanwhile I was told that Blast was trying to find out why it happened. Everything was ended, we thought. So Blast went to Chin to make a beef. They found out that Mooney and Chitoz was behind it, they were called in but they didn't show, being defiant they were open for a hit. We knew it was them, the hit had the same M.O. as the shooter, that shot Punchy, Louie, and Steven C. Stevie B made it, but was never the same and then had years of surgery.

  I wasn't told who was sent to kill Chitoz at the time, the boss don't tell guys who was going to do the hit, unless you are a part of the hit. The word is that Bobby B and Preston were given the hit. They caught Chitoz in "Franks Diner" on Nevins Street, on June 16th 1976. When I found out, I wasn't happy about it. I liked Chitoz, he was a good guy. I knew him since I was a kid, I knew his sons. My mother was friends with his wife, my father always said he was a 'real man'.

  Why did this have to happen? I knew he didn't want to be with Blast, and I also knew he had done many things with them. You just couldn't let him walk away, it hurt, not as much as Steven C, Louie, Punchy, or Steven B, getting shot, I should have opened my eyes then.

  For the 4th of July 1976 my dad throws a pool party at the house. We had everyone from the crewthere. There must have been 100 people in and out. Dad had a 32 foot boat and everyone wanted to go out for a ride. We were taking guys back and forth. I remember one trip when we were coming back to the house, a boat came next to us yelling that no one was steering the boat! When they pulled up next to us they looked up and saw Armando "The Midget" behind the wheel, we laughed our ass off!

  After Chitoz was killed, Mooney was called in again, and was told the Chitoz hit would end it, but he had to go, Too much bad blood. On October 5th 1976, at "Danny's Luncheonette" on East Second Street and Avenue M, Ricky and Tony B caught Mooney at a diner and killed him, now it was over.

  Now us being with the Genovese family and the Gallo family broken up, it wasn't the same. Going to the city with the Chins family was like getting adopted. Blast and Punchy 'got made' and Ricky got 'passed up', we never found out why. Ricky did a ton of work and earned it, Ricky felt that there was a Judas in the discussion.

  Joey, Louie, Blake, Frankie, Gene, did we really look like that

  Richard Dimatteo

  Tony Bernadro

  Gallo Gang Veteran Is Rubbed Out

  By Albert Davila and Paul Meskil

  Mafia capo John (Mooney) Cutrone, a veteran of Brooklyn's gangland wars, was shot and Killed yesterday morning in a luncheonette where he had stopped for coffee.

  Cutrone, a captain in the Colombo crime family and boss of a mini-mob of former Gallo gangsters, was the second prominent Mafioso to be Killed in the last 12 days.

  Andimo (Tommy Noto) Pappadio acting head of the Luchese mob, was Killed by a fusillade of bullets on the night of September. 24 outside his home in Lido Beach L.I. Which is less then 15 miles from Cutrone's residence at 75 Marine ST, Massapequa, L.I. Although Pappadio and Cutrone reportedly were both active in the Long Island rackets of their organizations, the police were unsure whether the two rubouts were connected "It could very well be that the first Killing led to the second," a police official said.

  Cutrone, 56, was sipping his coffee at the counter of Big Danny's Luncheonette on the corner of E. Second St. and Avenue M, in Midwood, Brooklyn, when two men walked in at 10:25 a.m. One wore a ski mask, but it was the other who pulled out an automatic pistol. "Hit the deck," everybody, one of the men said.

  Cutrone jumped up and ran to the rear of the lunchroom. The four other customers dropped to the floorm as did owner Donald Big Danny Murer and Thomas Frangapane.

  The gunmen ran after Cutrone and fired one shot that hit himin the back of the heard. Then the Killers drove off, leaving Cutrone's body at the kitchen entrance. Witnesses gave the police the licence number of the getaway auto.

  Anthony Dell' Arena, a former counterman at the luncheonette, said that Cutrone was a regular customer and a friend of Big Danny. "He was a nice, quiet, friendly guy," Dell' A rena said.

  Cutrone was unarmed and without a bodyguard. He drove to the lunchroom in a large blue automobile with a bumper sticker, proclaiming "Skate With the Islanders." A red plastic "devil's horn" to ward off evil spirits dangled from the rear view mirror.

  Shell Casing Found

  Detectives found two pairs of eye glasses on the front seat, a red jucket and a medical chart ebtitled "Human Pharmacology" in the back and an imitation leather hat, a telephone extension cord and two bottles of antifreeze in the trunk.

  A 38- caliber shell casing was on the lunchroom floor near the body. The police believed that the ski mask was worn by a fingerman who knew Cutrone and identified him for the hit man.

  " We have no idea what the motive was, said Lt. Ben Pulice, commander of the 10th Homicide Squad. Nassau County detectives investigating the Pappadio murder expressed an interest in the latest mob hit.

  Cutrone was an original member of the South Brooklyn gang formed by the three Gallo brothers Larry, Joey, and Al. He took part in the bloody Profaci Gallo war in which a score of Brooklyn mobsters bit the dust. The war ended when Joe Colombo took over the Profaci mob.

  After Larry Gallo died a natural death and Joe was shot dead in Little Italy restaurant in 1972, Cutrone defected to the Colombo camp and took 15 Gallo soldiers with him. Albert(Kid Blast) Gallo, the surviving brother, put out a contract on Cutrone and his crew. In the mini-war that followed in the summer of 1974, a Gallo loyalist was killed and at least seven hoods were wounded.

  Daily News Wednesday, October 6, 1976

  Email me at frankied@mobcandymag.com and every 100 Email I'll give a Signed book to whoever can tell me were this photo is from?

  CHAPTER 18

  On A Roll

  When Blast got married he had his wedding party at "The Golden Chariot", in Queens Patty Mac'
s restaurant. Dad was in jail again, so I took my mother and Emily, I called Emily my "Blond Alibi" because she always looked like a million dollars and always was there for me. When we got to the wedding Blast grabbed me and said stay with me, so all through the night I walked around with him if he wanted to go for a cigarette, I was there, if he needed anything I went for it, thinking about it I didn't get a thank you "That's Fucked Up".

  In 1977, me and Goomba Louie found a store front on 20th Street and 6th Avenue in Brooklyn. We opened a "Social Club," it was up the block from "Toddo Marino's Dixie" tavern. We put a ton of arcade games there, and we built a small bar. I had a secret room in the back, the only way to get in it was to go behind the bar, and I would move the liqueur shelf and a hole was there to get in it. We would hold meetings, hide guns and swag in there. I also had a bed back there, it was hooked up nice, we had card games every night. We were making three to four thousand a week! We were there for almost three years, just before I gave the place to Louie, who had Matty "Square" coming in as a partner. I had a beef in the club with some local "Wannabees," this guy said, in the middle of the beef that 'he was with Aniello Dellacroce,' I said I didn't give a fuck and threw them out.

  About an hour later my cousin heard a knock on the door, he went to answer it, as he opened the door some guy hit him. We all ran outside, the guys that I threw out were back, with more help.

  All of us went around the block to a school yard to fight, as soon as we threw the first punch, the cops were there. I had a gun and threw it in the yard, as we came out the cops went in and found the gun, we all got arrested. After two days in jail, we all got out because no one took the blame for the gun. They couldn't hold six guys for one gun, so we got it thrown out.

  A few weeks later, Louie and Matty had a beef with the same assholes. Matty called us down to help out. When we pulled up we see Matty fighting with one of them, and the guy was biting Matty's thumb! They were trying to get him to stop, they had forty guys there! So the first thing we did was pull a shotgun out of the trunk of the car, and let go a blast! He let go of Mattys thumb fast! Everyone then took off, the cops came fast. So we took off, six of us hid on Long Island for a week until we found out if the law knew it was us... they didn't.