by Gene Mustain
McDonald wanted to use Polisi in the case that he and the FBI had underway against the Gambino hierarchy, but Polisi set another agenda when he said: “I can give you a judge in Queens. I paid Mike Coiro $50,000 to fix a stolen-car case against me, my wife, and brother-in-law, and he did. Mike Coiro is the man who can fix cases in Queens.”
When Giacalone’s boss, Raymond J. Dearie, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, was told about Polisi, he took control of him because his staff was probing corruption in Queens County courts; Polisi went into the witness-protection program, was wired up, and set out to get a judge. He would make a bribery case against one who had fixed Family cases for 15 years. As part of the deal, his case in Queens was dropped in favor of a less-punitive federal charge. Instead of 25-to-life, he faced zero-to-15, closer to zero if he continued to cooperate, which is why dates with Giacalone and the trial of John Gotti were in his future.
Giacalone was busy arranging Cardinali’s deal. Jamesy had proven his value in appearances before her grand jury. And now he would plead guilty to the Castigliola murder in state court, for a 5-to-10-year sentence. As to his other crimes, including the “I-felt-bad” college-kid murder, forget about it. He would not face any punishment for any as long as he continued to tell the truth and testified at trial against Dellacroce and Gotti.
Minutes after his deal was signed, Cardinali revealed a truth to Edward Magnuson, the DEA agent assisting Giacalone. He had killed two drug dealers in Florida; when Giacalone was told, she screamed bloody murder.
“Tell me everything now! Don’t hold back!”
“Well, there was this other murder in Brooklyn.”
Jamesy had sandbagged Giacalone. She could respond in either of two ways: She could revoke the deal and cripple her investigation by depriving it of the main witness, or she could carry on with the unseemly baggage of a five-time killer in her corner. She knew that defense attorneys would capitalize on that, but it was nothing new for the government to use creepy witnesses. Often, it is the only way to make a case. Giacalone carried on. It was a legal calculation with an unspoken moral ingredient: The men she was after were more important than the killer of drug dealers.
Jamesy returned to the witness-protection program. He had dealt away five bodies—including two in Florida, which has the death penalty—for one, for which he would get a short hitch in the more palatable federal prison system.
“I think that I made a fantastic deal,” Jamesy said.
22
BETRAYERS BETRAYED
IN THE CRIME CAPITAL, 1984 was the year of mobspeak and, for FBI informers, the beginning of doublespeak.
New-age surveillance—a bug was placed in the Jaguar of the Luchese boss—was producing miles of transcripts detailing all the Family monopolies. In addition to Giacalone’s case and the Family hierarchy cases, a Southern District team—just as the Pope predicted—was targeting the Commission, which Rudy Giuliani was defining as one tremendous conspiracy.
Author Joseph Bonanno was made to regret his anecdotage; he was forced to review passages in his book pertaining to the Commission for a grand jury. Later—when prosecutors feared he might die before he could testify at trial—they sought to preserve him on videotape. The ailing Bonanno refused, and, at age 82, he and his oxygen tank were thrown in jail.
In October, the dominoes started falling. Eleven men described as the entire leadership of the Colombo Family were indicted in the Southern District. The announcement was made two weeks before the 1984 national election, and Attorney General William French Smith came up from Washington to hold a press conference with Giuliani and take political credit.
“We’re one down and four to go,” Smith said.
In the Colombo wake, the first sketchy public report on Giacalone’s case appeared in the New York Daily News. The newspaper said a grand jury had been working on it for 18 months. No targets were named, but a source was quoted saying that soon “Smith might be in a position to say, ‘Two down and three to go.’”
Several insiders snickered when they read this; they were the agents and attorneys on the Gambino hierarchy case, based in part on the White House bug. Castellano, Dellacroce, and several capos—not just John Gotti—were all targets.
Gotti tried out a low profile. Worried about bugs, he opened a satellite office on 101st Avenue. He was concerned about “the possibility of a rat in the Family,” Source Wahoo reported; and he also worried about Neil, now stricken with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy.
Angelo called on Neil almost every day and still refused to turn over to Paul any tapes or transcripts—they contained, he said, too many embarrassing remarks; he, Gene, and Carneglia had already spent about $300,000 in legal fees.
Neil won a small legal victory in the fall. The U.S. Tax Court ruled the IRS had incorrectly assessed him taxes on an unreported bribe. He was able to savor it only briefly. In a month he was arrested on another tax case, by some of the same IRS agents who had arrested him 12 years earlier.
The tax men found a shrunken Neil at the Ravenite Social Club, in the company of Gotti, Angelo, and others who spotted them coming. Neil ducked into the men’s room, followed by Angelo. Most of the others skipped out a back door, but not Gotti, who hung around as the agents coaxed Neil out of the toilet.
Gotti was about to acquire his second son-in-law. The bride-groom would be Carmine Agnello, 24, proprietor of Jamaica Auto Salvage. Agnello had recently beaten a counterfeiting case and, in 1980, had been the victim of a beating authorized by his future father-in-law; but all was forgiven, if not forgotten, and on December 9, 1984, he married Vicky Gotti, the former beauty pageant contestant his company had sponsored.
The wedding was unlike the bride’s parents’ wedding in every way but the “I do.” More than 1,000 people attended the reception, which was held at Marina Del Ray in the Bronx. FBI agents observed from two vans near the entrance as the guests arrived, and saw most of Gotti’s associates, except for Paul Castellano. One guest recalled that at least 30 tables were occupied only by men, who took turns paying their respects to the bride’s father.
The men played a find-the-agent game all night long, and thought they had spotted many among the waiters and musicians. Actually, none were inside to review the entertainment, which included singers Connie Francis and Jay Black (of Jay and the Americans), who was related by marriage to a Gambino soldier, and comedians George Kirby, Pat Cooper, and Professor Irwin Corey.
Despite the snoopers outside, it was a happy event, and was followed in a few weeks by another. Self-made and made, John Gotti, age 44, became a grandfather. His daughter Angela gave birth to a baby boy, whom she named Frank—a tribute to her 12-year-old brother, who died on a minibike in 1980 and who was still listed as a member of the family when Angela’s mother, in 1983, submitted an item about her family to the local newspaper.
All during the fall of 1984, “the real Italian lady” was lining up her targets. Finally, Diane Giacalone put the names and the evidence into a memo, and was promptly accused of jeopardizing a man’s life to get her revenge on the FBI.
One of Giacalone’s targets was Source Wahoo. Not only would she ask her grand jury to indict him, but she would reveal that he was an informer. This was, of course, a pressure-coated invitation for him to seek a deal and testify against the Family within a Family.
Wahoo was highly regarded at the FBI. He had provided so much about so many. “Most of this information could not have been obtained by other investigative means,” said a memo in his file. “Incalculable hours of investigative time has been saved by this informant’s specific information.” Several memos ended with cautionary footnotes such as “This informant can in no way testify to the information supplied by him since to do so would … place the lives of his family, as well as himself, in extreme jeopardy.”
The FBI had not told Giacalone about Wahoo. Once into her investigation, however, she could have deduced it in a number of ways. For instance, the Queens District Attorney’s
detective squad was helping her by turning over its Bergin gambling tapes; Wahoo had helped the Queens D.A. squad back in 1981, after he was squeezed on an attempted-bribery rap. It was reasonable to suspect and conclude: once a snitch, twice a snitch.
By including Wahoo in her case, Giacalone was setting up a mechanism for disclosing his informer status. Even though her case was not based on information he had given the FBI, she would argue that defense attorneys would be entitled to information he gave about codefendants.
The FBI felt Giacalone was playing games, and trying to shore up a case at the last moment by pressuring Wahoo into the witness-protection program and onto the witness stand. If she wanted to have him indicted, she should do it separately. Then she would not have to expose Wahoo—and thus ruin forever a “top-echelon” informant, while undermining the confidence of other informers in the ability of the FBI to keep a bargain.
Two top FBI officials in New York, Thomas Sheer and James Kossler, protested to Washington to get Giacalone to back off. But she had the backing of her boss, Eastern District U.S. Attorney Raymond J. Dearie, and of her underboss, Susan Shepard, chief of the major-crimes unit. Dearie and Shepard had recently been married. The Justice Department brass understood the FBI angst, but gave the decision to Dearie, who admired Giacalone’s devotion to duty and gave her his approval.
Wahoo, playing ends against the middle since 1966, was cornered. He was warned by Agent Abbott that he might be revealed, and he was horrified.
“I will be killed,” he said. “My family will be killed.”
Abbott told Wahoo there was a way out, the way Giacalone wanted: He could take a plea, testify for a light sentence, and fade away in the witness-protection program, like Cardinali and Polisi.
“I will never testify,” Wahoo said.
In February 1985, the federal hammer raised by the Angelo bugs slammed down on the Crime Capital. In Manhattan, Paul, Neil, and bosses, acting bosses, or underbosses of the other four Families were indicted on charges of operating an illegal RICO enterprise—the Commission.
The indictment began with a history of Family crime dating to 1900. It said the Commission was formed in 1931 to “regulate” Family relationships, and that its current members had used murder as a regulatory tool. The contemporary group had also formed a “club” of contractors, and used extortion to gain control of all concrete jobs in New York City over $2 million.
Many top officials joined Rudy Giuliani to toast their work. “The indictment exposes the structure of organized crime on a scale never done before,” said FBI director William H. Webster. “The mob is on the run and we ask you to help drive the Mafia out of New York City and out of the United States,” said Steven Trott, chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and the official who gave Dearie the decision on Wahoo.
The media turned to its sources and asked who was running the Gambino Family now that Paul and Neil each had two federal cases pending.
This resulted in John Gotti’s public debut, a half-page splash in the Sunday, March 3, Daily News under this headline:
NEW GODFATHER REPORTED
HEADING GAMBINO GANG
Reporter Paul Meskil said Gotti was being identified as the “new ‘acting boss’ of the Gambinos, a position that could make him the most powerful leader of the New York underworld.”
The speculation was a bit rich. The Pope was still the boss, and though quite sick, Neil was underboss. It was true that Gotti was in a position to move up, but so were others, like the two Thomases, Gambino and Bilotti. Two photos ran with the story. One showed the “home of new reputed godfather John Gotti in Howard Beach.” The second was a mug shot from Gotti’s hijacking days, in which a young man with black hair stares into the lens, daring it to capture any emotion except defiance.
On March 18, Agent Abbott and his boss, Frank Storey, met Giacalone to turn the Source Wahoo files over to her. She had won the battle to indict him, but they still wondered why she planned to tell defense attorneys about him if her case was not based on his information. She said the defense was entitled to all his prior statements to authorities. Not all lawyers would argue it had to be done voluntarily. Why not at least wait until asked?
Sorry, boys, Giacalone said.
John Gotti knew he was about to become another Family defendant, but on March 20 he was able to joke about it.
The government was about to “knock the fuckin’ nuts off of me,” he said to Peter Mosca. “They figure instead of givin’ ya 10 years, they give ya 30 years.”
Mosca visited Gotti in the company of Dominick Lofaro, the wired informer who was working off a heroin charge after telling the state Organized Crime Task Force he was a made man in Ralph Mosca’s crew. Ralph Mosca, Peter’s father, had sent the pair to tell Gotti that a card game about to open in Maspeth—near the Gotti-controlled Cozy Corner Bar—was not Mosca-sponsored, despite its operators’ claims.
The messengers arrived on 101st Avenue and exchanged greetings with Gotti and Angelo, still hoarding his heroin tapes, which the government had turned over during pretrial discovery in his case. Gotti already knew of the rival operation from his Cozy Corner nominee, Philip Cestaro, and was amazed at the operators’ gall.
“I cleaned [out] that neighborhood when there were junkies down there, fifteen years ago when we were on the lam,” he said, referring to his McBratney era.
The men nodded respectfully.
“Yeah, we got a game right there and we got a club there … so now this fucking pimp went around and told all the storeowners, ‘We gonna open up a game.’ He was making like he’s got a license!”
Gotti said he had dispatched Cestaro to tell the two men in Maspeth that they should just sell coffee because “John” had a game at the corner. But the men didn’t know a “John.”
At this Gotti paused to poke fun at himself. “That’s all right … I don’t even know who I am myself sometimes.”
The men laughed respectfully.
Gotti completed the story by telling Peter Mosca that the two men told Cestaro they were “with” his father.
Mosca wanted to know, “Which one?”
“I don’t know which one of them. I didn’t even go see them yet. But if I go see them, maybe I’ll … you know, I’ll crack one.”
Gotti told Mosca and Lofaro to visit the men and find out who they were really with and report back to him. Later that day, they did. Mosca said the men wouldn’t name their sponsor, perhaps not until they could find one important enough to match up against Gotti.
“Well, forget about that,” Gotti said. “I got four thousand guys, I’ll send ’em from every neighborhood.”
“I wanna know who they’re gonna come up with,” Peter said.
“I don’t give a fuck who they come up with.”
Gotti said he wouldn’t even let the men host a friendly game of poker. “I’ll tell you right now, I need the exercise. They’re not gonna play nothin’ … let someone come forward … I want somebody to come forward. I’m dying to see who’s gonna come forward.”
“Yeah, me too,” Lofaro said.
“He better go to Russia and get a guy. He can’t get nobody from the five crews we know.”
Five days later, on March 25, 1985, Czar Gotti and nine soldiers were indicted.
The indictment was sealed pending the arrest of John and Gene Gotti, Neil and his son Armond, the brothers Carneglia, Willie Boy Johnson, Anthony Rampino, Nicholas Corozzo, and Leonard DiMaria. Corozzo was named as the leader of another crew in the other mob that included DiMaria and Armond.
All were charged with two RICO counts: racketeering and conspiracy. Each faced 40-year sentences and fines of $50,000. Each was accused of varying “predicate acts”—that is, specific crimes committed to benefit the illegal enterprise.
Three of Gotti’s seven predicates were crimes he had been convicted of and served time for—two hijackings and attempted manslaughter in the McBratney case, which the RICO indictment elevated to murder. John Ca
rneglia was accused of the murder of court officer Albert Gelb; Willie Boy was accused of conspiracy to murder Anthony Plate, the loan shark whose disappearance led to Neil’s beating a case in 1979.
It was Neil’s third federal rap in five months—the mortgage on a life in crime was coming due in his final months. He was accused of supervising both the Gotti and Corozzo crews over an 18-year period. Gene and John Carneglia were not in a good spot either; they were already under indictment in the Angelo drug case.
On March 28, NYPD detectives and DEA agents moved out to make the arrests. A little after 4 A.M., they found John, Gene, and Willie Boy playing cards at the Bergin.
“What’d we do?” John asked.
“Don’t worry, you already did it,” DEA agent Magnuson replied. “Your crimes have caught up with you.”
Raymond Dearie issued a press release after the arrests. He said an investigation had reconstructed the organized acts of an illegal enterprise by interweaving almost 20 years of information from state and federal files.
“The investigation revealed that what appeared initially to be unrelated investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of the defendants for the commission of numerous state and federal crimes was, in fact, the organized criminal activity of the two crews under the supervision of underboss Aniello Dellacroce,” Dearie’s statement said.
Dearie didn’t say that most of the interwoven probes had produced no indictments. But he did salute the work of the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Suffolk County district attorneys, Billy Burns of the NYPD major-case squad, DEA agent Edward Magnuson, and assistant U.S. attorney Diane Giacalone. A veteran reporter noted the remarkable omission of the FBI and asked for an explanation. Dearie answered that the DEA was the federal agency on the case because, early on, it involved drug-trafficking allegations.