The Sixth Family

by Lamothe, Lee

  “They says they would leave me as the acting captain if I could bring everybody in,” Lino said. “The next day I got in touch with Joey D’Amico. He brought everybody in. … I made them come back into the neighborhood. I told them what happened, that the guys got killed and that they says that if everybody came in and didn’t retaliate, you know, it would be forgotten about,” he said. “The only ones that didn’t come in was, like, Bruno and Tommy Karate.”

  Massino and Sciascia were willing to let Lino live, but their magnanimity did not extend to Bruno, Sonny Red’s son. Massino and Sciascia did not relish living with an aggrieved mobster out walking the streets, likely harboring thoughts of revenge. Massino’s orders to his men on Bruno’s fate were explicit: “Just kill him and leave him in the street.” Sonny Black saw this as yet another chance to earn his favored associate, Donnie Brasco, a Mafia membership. He told Lefty and Brasco to hunt down Bruno and kill him.

  Sally Fruits was then named the acting boss while Rastelli remained in prison. He was a candidate that both Massino and the Zips could tolerate. Both knew he would not interfere with their plans.

  “The way it was explained to me,” Vitale said, “they picked him to be like a figurehead between the Zips and the American guys, just to keep harmony and peace until Phil Rastelli came home.”

  Soon after the murders, Massino, Sciascia and Sally Fruits went to visit Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, the boss of the Genovese Family. (The Chin was later dubbed “The Oddfather” because of his attempts to dodge indictments by feigning mental illness; to carry it off, he frequently wandered the streets in his slippers and housecoat. The ruse failed; he died in prison in 2005.)

  “[They] went to Chin’s club to tell Chin that they took care of business,” Vitale said. “When they walked into the club to see the Chin, Mickey Divino [a Genovese captain] said to Joseph Massino to sit here. He said, ‘I don’t want to sit, I’m not sitting,’ and they asked George to wait outside.” The powerful Genovese Family did not seem to have much trust in Sciascia, and Massino was likely nervous about the Chin’s previous support of Sonny Red.

  QUEENS, MAY 24, 1981

  Shortly before 4 p.m. on May 24—19 days after the shootings—children playing in a vacant lot on Ruby Street in Ozone Park, Queens, were drawn by an odd smell to a section of rough dirt and garbage. The lot, plowed under just two months before, had quickly become an unofficial dump, but this odor, oddly attractive to both flies and young boys, stood out from the usual stench. Kicking at the loosened soil, a neighborhood lad discovered a hand. The boy ran for his parents, who called police. At 4:20 p.m., New York City Police officer Andrew Cilienti arrived at the lot to find a left arm, bearing a tattoo of two hearts and a dagger and bejeweled with a $1,500 Cartier watch, poking out from the dirty bedsheet in which a body had been wrapped. The watch had stopped ticking two days after the captains’ murder, with its hands resting at 5:58. The cool pressure of the soil around it in its rough tomb had slowed decomposition of the body, so, prior to autopsy, finger-prints could be carefully taken from the malleable hand. The prints came back to police as a match to Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato. Four days later, Salvatore Valenti, Sonny Red’s 33-year-old son-in-law, had the gruesome task of officially identifying the body.

  News of the find on Ruby Street spread quickly through the ranks of the mob. Sonny Black telephoned Massino and said he had some bad news to share. Massino hung up and hopped into Vitale’s car for a drive over to Sonny Black’s club, where his captain broke the news to Massino in person.

  “The body popped up,” he said.

  Incredibly, despite the involvement of so many people from two Mafia families, the unexpected discovery of Sonny Red’s body, the accidental crippling of one of their own and the improbable escape of Frank Lino, the conspiracy by Massino, the Zips and the Sixth Family seemed to remain a secret. Only bits and pieces of the events filtered out. With the high tensions in the Bonanno Family over the purge and the unsavory prospect of an FBI agent being handed a gangland murder contract, the FBI had to pull Special Agent Joe Pistone out of his unprecedented six-year ruse as gangster Donnie Brasco. When Pistone was called in by his handlers, other FBI agents visited the Bonanno leadership and soon-to-be indicted gangsters, informing them that Pistone was an undercover agent and not a mob turncoat; it was a move designed to protect him from vengeful gangsters. While killing rats was fair game in the American Mafia, murdering a federal agent was still beyond the pale. Agents also visited Philip Rastelli in prison, seeking his assurance that Pistone would not be hunted down. As proof of the true identity of “Donnie Brasco,” the agents showed Sonny Black and other gangsters photographs of Pistone posing with grinning FBI agents. Pistone’s subsequent evidence, however, sketched in only some of the peripheral events to the murders.

  The fact that the massacre went unsolved for more than 20 years speaks volumes about the power and cohesiveness of the Mafia when it operates according to plan. The Canadian connection to the murders remained a closely guarded secret.

  Those who helped to purge Sonny Red and his dissidents from the Bonanno ranks were well rewarded. Some who helped were later inducted into the family. For Massino, his power widened both within the family and on the streets of New York. His claim as heir apparent to Rastelli was now assured.

  “He was very influential. He was one of the strongest captains in the family, if not the strongest,” Vitale said.

  QUEENS, FALL 1981

  Sal Vitale stood at the top of a stepladder, tilting up ceiling panels and peering into the dark infrastructure that housed J&S Cake, a brick storefront-catering facility on a side street in Maspeth, Queens.

  J&S Cake, despite its decidedly benign-sounding name, was not a legitimate catering facility. Rather, it acted as a social club and gathering place, dubbed the “Rust Street Club” by the Bonannos, as well as a seemingly legitimate front for the criminal activities of its two proprietors. The “J” in its name stood for Joe Massino and the “S” for Sal Vitale. It was from J&S Cake that many of the participants in the hit against the three captains disembarked, and it was at J&S that, every Tuesday night, Massino would host a sprawling dinner meeting with his underlings, with Bonanno members taking turns doing the cooking, after which they played cards, with Massino taking a cut on each hand played in the high-stakes games of Continental. After the murders of the three rival captains, Massino’s position as the first among supposed equals was assured. In a display of respect by ambitious and fearful mobsters, soldiers and other captains would make regular pilgrimage to J&S Cake to ingratiate themselves to Massino.

  Anyone in the Bonanno Family who wanted to talk to Massino knew where to find him—at J&S Cake. Likewise, the FBI also knew they could find him at J&S Cake. And, in the cat-and-mouse continuum of the struggle between the Bonannos and the FBI, Massino knew that the FBI knew that he used J&S as his headquarters. Quite simply, this was why he had sent Vitale up the ladder to poke around underneath the ceiling tiles. It had become a routine for Vitale, who periodically searched under furniture, in light fixtures and behind the drop ceiling at the hangout for signs of hidden electronic listening devices installed by government agents. Massino was always cautious, but at that point he was particularly jumpy. The murder of the three captains and his subsequent rise in status within the family meant he was both a greater target for law-enforcement scrutiny and had more to hide.

  “I would actually look for the bugs,” Vitale said. “I would get up on a ladder and lift the ceiling up—the drop ceiling—look on the furniture. We’d have a Bearcat scanner to pick up voices in the club,” he said of a common counter-surveillance technique. Since the electronic bugs carried their intercepted conversations over radio frequencies, they could sometimes be detected that way. Massino even periodically paid for a professional “sweep” to be done.

  “I just normally would search every two weeks, three weeks, make it my business to sweep the place and go through the place,” Vitale said. The mo
bsters had good reason to worry. The FBI’s Bonanno Squad had targeted Massino for special scrutiny, attention befitting his obvious rise in underworld status. With court authorization, members of the FBI’s Special Operations team had managed to break into J&S Cake and secretly place a bug inside. With great anticipation, the squad switched on its equipment and finally had a glimpse into Massino’s inner sanctum.

  “It lasted maybe 12, 24 hours, then it went quiet,” said Patrick F. Colgan, a retired member of the Bonanno Squad, who spent a decade investigating Massino. “We knew we were compromised,” he said. Sure enough, just a day after the microphone was switched on, Vitale had made his trip up the ladder and, behind the ceiling tiles above the table where the mobsters typically sat to chat as they played cards, he found a tiny microphone and transmitter.

  “I discovered the microphone and left it right where it was in the ceiling,” Vitale said. For the agents monitoring the bug, there was concern over the sudden silence. It did not take long for them to realize that the bug in J&S had been discovered. There was little the agents could do but go over and collect the expensive device. While the two mobsters were at their headquarters there was a knock at the front door. Outside was Agent Colgan, whom both Vitale and Massino recognized by sight. Vitale answered it.

  “Can I have my bug back?” Colgan said, according to Vitale.

  “Hold on, let me find out,” said Vitale, who ran over to Massino to check.

  “Pat wants his bug back,” Vitale said to his boss.

  “Give him his bug back,” Massino said. Vitale returned to the door with the microphone and its related pieces in hand and passed them over to the agent, who then left. It was an embarrassing turn for the proud agents.

  A new era within the Bonanno Family had begun and the FBI’s Bonanno Squad clearly had a lot of work ahead.

  With the rebellious faction dead or muted, the balance of power in the Bonanno Family had significantly shifted. In accordance with an explicit prior agreement with the Zips, the Massino-Sonny Black faction also took over from Sonny Red the lucrative job of distributing the heroin being brought in by the Sicilian gangsters, including the Sixth Family. On June 15, 1981, just before Donnie Brasco was unmasked as an FBI agent, Lefty Ruggiero spoke to the undercover agent about the sweeping changes in the wake of the murders. The two men huddled on the street near the Holiday Bar in Manhattan.

  “Since these guys got hit,” Lefty said, “Sonny [Black] took over all the drugs.”

  The deal had been consummated. Everyone was happy and the drugs kept flowing. While Carmine Galante and Sonny Red had both been executed for moving to be the Bonanno boss while Rastelli still held the title, Massino managed to balance maintaining power while still respecting Rastelli’s title and the Commission’s interest in non-violent leadership transition.

  For Vito Rizzuto, he had earned respect and favors-owing from his New York colleagues and demonstrated the efficiency and contribution of the Canadian connection in a visceral and explosive way. He had cemented the Sixth Family’s relationship with the emerging power within the Bonanno Family in a way that Paolo Violi or Vic Cotroni never could. Sciascia, Montreal’s main representative in New York, also experienced a burgeoning of his influence in the Bonanno Family and was recognized by all as a key ally of Massino and as a force to be reckoned with in his own right.

  More important, the Canadian assassins had protected the Sixth Family’s heroin franchise in New York.

  CHAPTER 20

  ATLANTIC OCEAN, OFF SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, MAY 6, 1982

  The Gates Learjet 23 N100TA—or “One-Hundred Tango Alpha” in aircrew jargon—took off from Teterboro, New Jersey, at 10:28 a.m. on May 6, 1982, which was a good day for flying. Pilot George Morton had been told, when he checked conditions earlier in the day, that there was no hazardous weather on the horizon and it looked like clear flying through to Orlando, Florida.

  On board the Learjet, which was owned by IBEX Corporation, Morton was joined by a stand-in co-pilot named Sherri Day and two passengers—a husband and wife—who were described by IBEX management as business associates being flown to a meeting in Orlando. Morton flew the jet while Day handled the radio communications. For more than an hour, the flight was uneventful. Then, from over the Atlantic, Day radioed the Jacksonville, Florida, air traffic control center requesting landing status.

  “Descend and maintain flight level three-nine-zero,” an air traffic controller radioed to Learjet N100TA at 11:31 a.m., instructing the pilot to lower its altitude from Flight Level 410 to Flight Level 390.

  “Three-nine-zero, One-Hundred Tango Alpha,” Day responded calmly. The Learjet, however, did not immediately start its descent. A minute and a half later, Day came over the radio again.

  “One-Hundred Tango Alpha’s descending now,” she said. Her voice sounded hurried and the controller could hear a warning horn sounding in the background. Day made another brief transmission, which was unintelligible.

  “Say again,” the controller directed. There was no response. Not even static.

  At noon, the crew of a fishing boat spotted a huge water geyser on the surface of the Atlantic, 12 miles southeast of Savannah, Georgia. The captain sped to the scene and found debris scattered across the surface—bits of skin from the fuselage and pieces of the Learjet’s interior—but no survivors.

  Ninety minutes after the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board was notified. That same day, a team of three investigators was dispatched from Washington, DC. On May 13, a search team, using sonar equipment, began an underwater scan of the crash site. Visibility underwater was poor and it was not until late in the afternoon the next day that the main wreckage was found, 55 feet below the surface, scattered over 75 feet of the ocean floor. Morton’s body and those of the two passengers were recovered from the wreckage. All had suffered multiple traumatic injuries. Day’s body was never found. After examining the debris, the NTSB was unable to determine the cause of the crash. The weather was almost ideal for flying—another pilot said he had encountered no difficulties in the area at about the same time. An explosion was eliminated as a possible cause, as was an onboard fire. The pilot and co-pilot were both certified; the jet had been well maintained.

  “The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause for the accident was an uncontrolled descent from cruise altitude for undetermined reasons from which a recovery was not, or could not be, effected,” the official Aircraft Accident Report concluded.

  Although the NTSB investigation could not solve the mystery of why the Learjet plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, it did resolve a longstanding mystery for the FBI. One of the passengers aboard N100TA was Salvatore Ruggiero. Until his body was identified in a morgue, Ruggiero had been listed as a fugitive from justice, a member of the Gambino Family, a large-scale heroin trafficker and a key customer of the Sixth Family. A year and a day earlier, Salvatore’s brother, Angelo, also a Gambino soldier and a childhood friend of John Gotti’s, had helped Gerlando Sciascia and Joe Massino get rid of the bodies of the three captains killed in the Bonanno purge.

  Ruggiero’s flight from justice and his untimely death would mean far more to the Sixth Family than just the loss of a good customer. The search for Ruggiero—and the probe following his death—would bring grief to their American operations.

  NEW YORK, EARLY 1980s

  The Montreal-to-New York heroin pipeline was pouring product into the United States at such a rate that the supply outstripped any reasonable marketplace demand. Two years after the Bono wedding and a year after the murders of the three captains, the drug supply routes into the major cities of America were running almost flawlessly. The notion that organized crime merely supplies an existing need was put to the lie by the sheer bulk of the heroin shipments. A market had to be created, so the price of heroin was dropped considerably and the victim pool shot up accordingly, tenfold by most estimates. When it comes to street drugs, supply creates its own demand. In New York, the Sixth Fami
ly and other Sicilian-backed heroin enterprises were giving drugs on credit to Mafia soldiers and associates who were willing to take it and move it.

  “There was no demand for a down payment,” a former undercover drug agent remembers. “It was: take it, take it, take it. Just take the fucking stuff. Move it. Pay when you can, just take it off my hands, I got more coming.”

  Gerlando Sciascia certainly did not hint that his supply was running low. “How about 30 kilos?” he announced at the start of one of his ubiquitous sales calls, this one made to the home of a fellow mobster, whose children were playing in the same room.

  “I got 30 things … that’s why I’m here.” Take it, take it, take it.

  The 10 years from 1975 to 1985 were the golden years of heroin—even more so than during the decades of the French Connection, whose routes seem unsophisticated by these standards. The loads were larger, the market far wider and the facilities for repatriating the dirty money sleeker and more global. The expatriate Mafia families—the Rizzutos, the Caruana-Cuntreras and the Bonos, among others—came to true power in these heroin years, just as the old gangs of the Prohibition-era were built on their ability to move alcohol.