The Sixth Family

by Lamothe, Lee

  “While it is apparent that the outgoing Attorney General has the authority to render the decision announced here in open court today, Mr. Ashcroft’s choice to make such a sobering and potentially life-ending decision now, after several delays, and only after tendering his resignation to the President and announcing to the country that he no longer wishes to preside over the Department of Justice, is deeply troubling to this court,” Judge Garaufis said from the bench. “It is my hope and expectation that the incoming Attorney General, presumably Judge Alberto R. Gonzales, will, upon taking office, conduct a careful review of Mr. Ashcroft’s decision in the final moments of his tenure.”

  John Nowacki, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, defended the prerogative of the Attorney General to seek to have Massino executed: “The death penalty is the law of the land, provided for as the ultimate punishment for heinous crimes, and this administration is committed to the fair implementation of justice.”

  The tactic against Massino, however controversial, worked wonders. Massino now faced almost certain death. With the crime family he had worked tirelessly to rebuild and rejuvenate—even rebranding it under his own name—falling again into tatters; after facing betrayal after betrayal as he sat in the courtroom staring at his former associates testifying against him; after having his personal family torn asunder by the cooperation of Sal Vitale, his own brother-in-law; and after being handed a life sentence and now facing possible execution, Joseph Massino did something he would never have thought possible. He offered his own cooperation to the government.

  The news was as stunning as it was exciting to the few officials who were let in on one of the biggest secrets in law enforcement since Donnie Brasco roamed the streets of New York. Never before had the top boss of one of the Five Families become a cooperating government informant. His input and insight could prove invaluable. Although imprisoned, Massino had maintained his position as the boss of the family. He had continued to hear reports and give instructions from prison through intermediaries, including his wife and one of his criminal lawyers. He was in a position to provide the most accurate and detailed account of some of the most important decades in Mafia history.

  “There are some things that only Joey knows,” said a law enforcement official involved in the Bonanno investigations. It did not take long for Massino’s cooperation to pay dividends. He agreed to be wired up so that officials could record his supposedly clandestine jailhouse chats with Vincent Basciano, whom the government said was the acting boss of the Bonanno Family. In one recording, Basciano is heard telling Massino that he ordered the December 2004, shooting of Randolph Pizzolo, a mob associate. When Massino asked him why the young man was killed, Basciano had a ready answer.

  “Because he is a fucking dangerous kid that don’t fucking listen,” Basciano said, according to documents filed in court. “I thought [killing] this kid would have been a wake-up call for everybody.”

  What was even more disturbing for justice officials, however, was Basciano’s alleged proposal to kill Greg Andres, the federal prosecutor who was leading the legal charge against the Bonanno organization, and Judge Garaufis, who had been hearing all of the Bonanno trials—and meting out stiff sentences. Talk of that plot was also captured on tape when Basciano was talking to his boss, prosecutors claim. Massino had other secrets to offer as well.

  QUEENS, FALL 2004

  On October 4, 2004, 23 years after Sonny Red’s body had been pulled from the blackened soil, FBI agents, New York City Police detectives and forensic staff from the New York Medical Examiner’s Office returned to the vacant lot on Ruby Street. This time, they brought cadaver-sniffing dogs and heavy earth-moving equipment. Despite the opulence suggested by the area’s street names—Ruby is joined by Amber, Emerald and Sapphire streets—the passing of time has made the neighborhood only more desolate: a low-rise vista of ramshackle properties, dotted with abandoned rusting cars and threadbare tires, gives way to imposing apartment complexes. “Quick cash closing—Top dollar paid,” reads a sign not far from the lot, providing a phone number for remaining residents who wish to sell their land. Developers now eye the mob’s old turf near John F. Kennedy Airport, with the police activity having done little for property values on Ruby. Armed with a search warrant, police erected blue wooden barriers and yellow crime-scene tape around the same lot where Sonny Red was found. The ground had not yet given up all of its secrets.

  Authorities, led back to the site by Massino’s information, dug for three weeks, tearing deep into the marshy, rancid soil, ripping through weed trees and smashing concrete slabs that covered portions of the ground.

  After three weeks of digging and sifting through the soil, investigators uncovered pieces from two corpses. The first sign they were not on a wild-goose chase was the discovery of a severed foot and attached shinbone, still wrapped in a black shoe, a testament to the durability of sensible footwear. Other bones soon surfaced. Resting with one set of remains was the same expensive Piaget wristwatch that Philly Lucky was wearing when he disappeared; with the other was a credit card stamped with Big Trinny’s name. After DNA drawn from the bones was compared to samples provided by their families, the identity of the two missing captains was confirmed.

  News of Massino’s cooperation with the government came as a shock to everyone. Among those most dismayed were his relatives.

  “He is a bitter, tortured man who now stands alone,” Massino’s 43-year-old daughter, Adeline, told Anthony DeStefano at Newsday.

  “My mother, my sister and I [know] no reason why he is doing this and probably never will. Maybe he himself doesn’t know that answer.… We supported my dad through the trial but now feel it impossible to support or condone his actions any further,” she said, adding that it went against his oft-spoken belief of never hurting friends.

  On June 23, 2005, Joe Massino, then 62 years old, stood in court before Judge Garaufis and, with his hands folded in front of him, spoke astounding words.

  “As the boss of the Bonanno Family, I gave the order,” Massino said in a hoarse half-whisper.

  “And the order was to do what?” Judge Garaufis asked.

  “Kill George from Canada,” Massino answered. The boss had realized that Sciascia, and perhaps the Sixth Family, was a threat. Massino said in court that he ordered Sciascia’s slaying in order to maintain or increase his position within the Bonanno Family.

  “It was done by Sal Vitale, Johnny Joe, Michael Nose and Patty DeFilippo,” he added, immediately becoming the first boss of a New York Mafia family to testify against some of his most loyal underlings, men who had killed their friend at his request.

  His admission, guilty plea and cooperation led the government to rescind its controversial request for the death penalty and, instead, Massino was handed a life sentence. Donna, Gerlando Sciascia’s daughter, was present in the courtroom to see justice done and had written a letter to the judge about her family’s loss, but asked that it not be read aloud in court. She left without speaking to reporters. In court, Massino stood silently while a letter from Laura Trinchera, daughter of Big Trinny, was read. “Joseph Massino took away a ‘Big’ part of our lives, my father, who was absolutely the best father anyone could have asked for,” she wrote. “I will never forget that day when we were all informed that my father will not be coming back.”

  Massino’s defection to the government must have jolted Vito Rizzuto, who knew that if he was to face Judge Garaufis’s court, Massino was in a position to point a convincing finger right at him. Massino had proved the reliability of his evidence already, by leading agents to the remaining Ruby Street bodies. His cooperation certainly raised interest in the photograph used by U.S. authorities to help in their extradition case, the 1981 picture of Vito, Massino, Sciascia and Giovanni Ligammari leaving a New York motel the day after the murders of the three captains.

  Ligammari died in a most unconventional manner; police found both him and his son, also a Bonanno member, hanging together in their home. T
heir deaths were ruled as suicides, but suspicion and accusations of underworld involvement linger.

  With Sciascia and Ligammari both dead, only two men truly knew what they were doing at the motel that day. Now one of them is talking.

  Vito suddenly faced the prospect of going on trial in New York with Massino being called as the government’s star witness against him in a dramatic courtroom spectacle—the longtime boss of the Bonanno Family pointing his finger at the organization’s most successful asset.

  CHAPTER 40

  BROOKLYN, MAY 2004

  The familiar shape of the soaring neo-Gothic granite towers and the swooping cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, spanning New York’s turbulent East River, poke above the mature trees that line Cadman Plaza, an urban park forming a wide promenade outside the United States Courthouse in Brooklyn. The building features a central glass rotunda with rising towers of courtrooms and offices to each side. Inside, visitors, lawyers and court staff alike are greeted by federal marshals for a thorough security search before being allowed to enter.

  On the sixth floor, through tall wooden doors, was Courtroom 11.

  Against a backdrop of floor-to-ceiling green marble sat U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis. Before him stretched two long wooden tables, one used by the defendants and their lawyers and the other by the prosecutors. To one side sat the jury, in large wooden chairs generously upholstered in brown. Beyond that is the public gallery, where spectators crammed into achingly austere wooden benches in five long rows. This room was as much the personal fiefdom of Judge Garaufis as New York’s Maspeth district ever was for Joseph Massino, or Montreal’s Saint-Léonard for Vito Rizzuto.

  It was in this courtroom that a five-by-seven-inch color photograph, a clear, bright and sharply focused image of the face of a man with neatly coifed dark hair and a tight, crooked smile, was displayed for a jury and shown to a heavy-set witness who had been called to the stand in the prosecution of Massino, the Bonanno boss.

  “I am going to show you some photographs and I am going to ask you if you recognize the individual,” Greg Andres, the federal prosecutor, said to Frank Lino, who was under oath and on the stand testifying for the government against Massino. It was May 24, 2004, the first day of testimony by Lino, who was the first Bonanno turncoat to be willingly called to the stand.

  “Tell us who it is and what position, if any, they have in the Bonanno Family,” Andres continued. After flipping through a number of photographs—of Philip Rastelli, Joe Massino, Cesare Bonventre, Sal Catalano, Sal Vitale and Gerlando Sciascia, among others—Andres came to the photo of a man in a black suit flashing a smile.

  “Government Exhibit 2-VV, who is that?” Andres asked.

  “That looks like Vito Rizzuto from Montreal,” Lino said.

  “Did he hold a position in the Bonanno Family?” Andres asked.

  “I met him, he was a soldier,” Lino answered. The next day, Lino, again on the stand, told the court of his visit to Canada to meet with the family’s crew in Montreal, meeting and socializing with Vito.

  Similarly, on June 29, 2004, on the second day of the highly anticipated testimony by Sal Vitale, the underboss turned informant, the interest of the New York court was again drawn northward.

  “Sir,” Andres began, addressing Vitale, “does the Bonanno Family operate outside of the United States?”

  “Yes,” answered Vitale.

  “Where else does it operate?” Andres asked.

  “We have a group in Montreal, Canada,” Vitale said.

  “Do you know if there is a member of the Bonanno Family that controls Canada or that area?”

  “Today?” Vitale clarified.

  “Yes,” Andres said.

  “Vito Rizzuto,” Vitale answered.

  “Do you know what position he holds?”

  “Acting capo-regime,” Vitale said, using the Italian designation for an acting captain, a reference to the fact that Vitale recognized Vito as being in charge of Montreal but not having accepted the invitation from Massino to officially be named a captain.

  “When was the last time you saw Mr. Rizzuto?” Andres asked.

  “Approximately three years [ago],” Vitale said. Andres then asked if he had gone to Canada for the meeting with Vito.

  “Mr. Massino sent me there,” Vitale answered.

  One of the government’s exhibits shown to the jury was a large poster board of row after row of photographs of men’s faces. Many were mug shots, some were police surveillance photos while others were from the 1980 wedding of Giuseppe Bono. The board, labeled “Soldiers,” was a follow-up to a similar board featuring other photographs, this one labeled “Bonanno/Massino Organized Crime Family (1975-2004)—Administration/Acting Administration.” On the board showing Bonanno soldiers was a photograph of Vito, a close-up from one of the Bono wedding photos. Underneath the picture is the label “Vito Rizzuto” and the suggestion that his nickname for some was

  “Vito from Canada.” Vito’s face was placed between a mug shot of the thuggish Thomas “Tommy Karate” Pitera with his nose swollen and cut, suggesting he was not arrested peacefully, and a surveillance shot of Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero, the gangster who achieved celluloid immortality when he was depicted by Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco. Also sharing that row of photos was Tony Mirra, who was murdered for his real-life introduction of Donnie Brasco into the mob family.

  This is the type of evidence that would begin any prosecution against Vito in New York. The same prosecutors would lead the same cooperating witnesses, with the probable addition of Joe Massino, through their purported experiences with “Vito from Canada.” It must have been a chilling prospect for a secretive man such as Vito. His mob business had never before received such public judicial scrutiny.

  OTTAWA, 2005

  Vito had no intention of ever facing that gang of turncoats.

  “I maintain my innocence of all charges,” he declared. He decided, however, to claim his innocence in Canada rather than in Garaufis’s courtroom for as long as he could.

  Vito’s battle against being extradited to the United States was well funded, multipronged and well organized. At a court hearing in Quebec to argue against his extradition, he had no fewer than five lawyers working on his case, not including his youngest son, Leonardo, and daughter, Bettina, who are both lawyers and took a keen interest in the case. He also retained an experienced New York criminal lawyer, John Mitchell, who was Sal Vitale’s lawyer on two racketeering indictments and was representing the Bonanno underboss until Vitale decided to cooperate with the government. Mitchell provided legal advice and legal briefs on American law and procedures on Vito’s behalf.

  Retaining so much legal muscle is not an inexpensive proposition. After Vito’s arrest in Montreal, the need for a substantial war chest to pay the mounting fees in this legal battle was quickly realized. As it had done to weather the Tax Court case against Vito, members of the Rizzuto family started setting money aside. On February 10, 2004, Vito’s wife, Giovanna, started an account at the office of their lawyer, Jean Salois, with a $50,000 deposit. Vito’s son Leonardo would kick in $40,000 and Vito’s daughter, Bettina, $25,000. Vito’s mother and father, Nick and Libertina, would add $50,000, according to an accounting of the fund by Salois. The lawyers started putting their case together.

  “The Canadian extradition proceedings allege offences for which I am not wanted in the U.S. and for which I have not been indicted,” Vito declared in a sworn affidavit, filed in the Federal Court of Canada in Ottawa, as part of an appeal against being shipped to the United States. “I am not accused of murder in the United States,” he said of the RICO Act indictment against him, which names acts of murder as part of the racketeering conspiracy and not as separate criminal charges. He did not like the way Canadian prosecutors seemed to suggest he faced a murder charge. He felt it was a purposeful conspiracy to spirit him out from under the protection of the Canadian Charter of Rights and into the hands of hungry American law-enforcement offic
ials.

  “The confusion between the offences is intentional,” Vito has declared in an affidavit. His arguments were not well received in Canadian courts.

  If Vito was feeling abandoned by his government, at least one person in a position of power has been looking out for him. Noël A. Kinsella, a Conservative senator from New Brunswick, who was the leader of the Opposition in the Senate of Canada, rose in the Senate chambers to ask about the decision by Justice Minister Irwin Cotler to order the extradition of Vito, a man he described as “a presumed Mafia operative in Montreal.” His question for the government: “The honorable leader in this place knows that Canadian laws are in place respecting the extradition of persons to jurisdictions where the death penalty could be sought for murder. Would the minister advise this house whether the Minister of Justice has been given any assurances that the death penalty will not be sought?”

  Jack Austin, the Senate leader, said that he understood that such assurance had been “sought and obtained.”