The FBI simultaneously descended on his suburban New Jersey home. Natale, generally a live-and-let-die kind of guy, still nurtures a grudge against one of the FBI agents who kicked in the front and back doors in Pennsauken, where Lucia was inside with two of their daughters—ages eight and fifteen. The agents waved their guns in front of the trio, who minutes earlier were baking cookies.
An agent discovered Natale’s cache of hidden hollow-points and approached Lucia, who was standing with her younger girl.
“That’s what your husband does,” the agent announced. “These bullets are for an assassin. Your husband is an assassin.”
Natale’s ire rises at the thought: “My eight-year-old, she never forgot that to this day. And my wife just looked at him: ‘You had to say that right in front of her?’”
A second grudge rose from the arrest: the blood betrayal by Cousin Ray still rankles Ralph: “Jesus Christ, my own cousin! Why didn’t he tell me the day before, ‘I can’t do it, they’re setting you up.’ The whole world would have changed. Everything would be different. But it wasn’t. It is what it is.”
The FBI’s thinking was simple. Natale, out on bail in the other case, would immediately go to prison once the new charges were known. This would give the feds a chance to lean on Natale with some leverage, working their way up the family hierarchy in an attempt to finally take down Angelo Bruno.
The jailing instead offered Bruno’s enemy an unimpeded path to take down the Docile Don.
Natale immediately knew this was a major jackpot. Combined with the arson case, this meant he was facing—for the first time, after thirty years in organized crime—a seriously lengthy time in lockdown.
“When I got arrested in Florida, I said, ‘This is gonna be a long one for me.’ But it was everything else but the murders. They all thought I did those, but they had no proof. As the old cowboys say, ‘Dead men tell no tales.’”
Natale made three decisions going into the uncharted future: He was no rat. He wouldn’t give up shit to anyone about anything. And he was now a vegetarian.
As he sat inside the Lauderhill jail after his arrest, the guards brought in bologna-and-cheese sandwiches for the prisoners awaiting processing. Natale asked for one sandwich, hold the bologna. And he hasn’t had a piece of meat since.
The next morning, Natale was summoned by a corrections officer at the Lauderhill city jail. Two FBI agents were waiting to make his acquaintance.
“Listen to them,” the captain advised. “They’re good guys.”
The pitch was short: They wanted Angelo Bruno. And they wanted Ralph Natale to serve him up on a silver platter.
Natale’s head was suddenly swimming. “In my mind, at that time, I’m worried about my wife. They went in my house, broke down all the walls, looking for money and guns. They had just grabbed me off the boat—the change of culture at that moment, you’ll never feel that. You’re living like a human being, and then you’re—boom! Like a dog.”
His priorities changed quickly as the two agents started talking. “You wanna talk about pressure? They put a list down: ‘Take a look at these names. You recognize any of these names?’”
Natale recognized them as victims from Philadelphia mob killings. He quickly realized this was more than a simple drug case, and prosecutors from Florida to Philadelphia to Chicago and New York had an interest in his prosecution.
The taller of the two finally spoke. “Ralphy, we know that you either killed these people personally or with others on orders from Angelo Bruno, Carlo Gambino, or Tony Accardo. All you have to do is become a federal witness against these men, and all of your problems with the law will go away. Tell us who ordered these killings, and you won’t have to spend a night in jail.”
Outwardly, Natale’s demeanor remained calm as the agent addressed him. Inside, one thought ran through his head: “These sons of bitches are gonna try and bury me.”
Natale didn’t waste his time or his breath: “You got the wrong guy. Captain, put me back in my cell.”
The parting words of one agent rang in his ears: “You’ll be back.”
Natale was convicted on three counts, each with a twenty-five-year term—but was expecting a much more lenient sentence on a simple drug bust, especially after dodging charges for his other mob sins. Then prosecutors tried to sentence him under the Dangerous Special Offender Act, putting him in line for a life sentence.
Natale, while not surprised, was outraged. “I ain’t a rapist,” he snapped. “I ain’t a serial killer.”
Back in Philadelphia, Bruno reached out for an old friend: his trusted lawyer, Kossman. The boss and the semiretired barrister were client and lawyer, but they were much more—the two men socialized and played the stock market together.
“Ang said, ‘You gotta go save his ass,’” Natale remembers. “He knew: they wanted him! They woulda gave me anything. But he knew I wouldn’t give them shit.”
The lawyer—whose clients also included Blinky Palermo—headed south. A special hearing dragged across three contentious days, with lots of legal wrangling as Natale nervously awaited his fate.
“Imagine that!” he snaps. “I was never arrested, even for an assault. Put me in front of a judge as a dangerous special offender? The prosecutors put in that I did this, or I did that. No evidence! After the second day, the judge said, ‘Do you have any more? Do you have any evidence?’ Thank God. Suppose he said, ‘This little dago bastard, I’ll bury him.’”
Once Kossman worked a little legal legerdemain, Ralph Natale was sentenced to fifteen years by a judge who almost apologized for the draconian sentence. The time would run consecutively with the twelve years waiting back north for the Mr. Living Room blaze.
The federal guidelines for his criminal convictions were fifty-two months to eighty months—a shade short of seven years. He was instead facing twenty-seven years, and Natale was stunned by the severity of the sentences.
“Oh my God, they buried me,” he said. “Wouldn’t give me parole, wouldn’t give me nothing. I lost everything I had on the street. It cost me all my homes, and it almost cost me my family. I could cry when I think of it. My eyes were full of tears when I went into court, thinking about it.”
He was shipped by bus, shackled with leg irons, linked to forty other inmates by a waist chain, and then thrown into solitary confinement. But Natale was nothing if not resilient. He was soon confident he could do the time, and he was pleased to see an assortment of familiar faces behind bars.
“When I went into prison, I was held in high regard because of what I did on the street,” he said. “When I first arrived, every made man treated me with respect.”
With his jail time came plenty of time to reflect on life, and Natale pondered what was going on back home. He was troubled by what he’d seen and sensed in the Bruno regime before heading down to Florida after his own pinpoint in time with Charlie Allen. Something about Caponigro and Sindone made him feel hinky.
“Tony was courting Sindone, and through Sindone, John Stanfa,” Natale recounted. “But if I had said anything to Ang about their sudden closeness at that time, he would have flown into a rage. Imagine anyone talking about his consigliere and one of his most trusted capos!”
Time would tell that Natale’s assessment was deadly accurate.
15
ANGELO BRUNO, WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO YOU?
With Ralphy off the streets for a good long time, things were changing in Philadelphia—mostly because of the man in Newark, Caponigro. The festering bitterness inside Tony Bananas bubbled and bubbled until he decided it was time to take action. Natale felt it was no coincidence that the turmoil took place with him imprisoned far from home.
“That’s what Tony Bananas was waiting for,” he said. “Not that he was afraid of me. But he was afraid I might kill him. He knew how I was. As soon as I heard it, I would know where it would come from. I’d go right to that bar he had in Newark. And I would bring my crew with me. I’d bring the Hachet—Mike Marrone—and
Ronnie Turchi, a killer. But Mike and Ronnie got arrested first, a couple of months before me.
“When I was home, when Skinny was alive, nobody would even look at Angelo Bruno. Skinny would kill ’em right there. And when they took out me and my little crew, the door was wide-open. They didn’t wait long. They put it together. They talked to goddamn Frank Sindone. I shoulda killed him. Another jerk-off. Him and Nicky Scarfo.”
The plot to murder Angelo Bruno required the treachery of two mob families in the two cities at either end of the New Jersey Turnpike. While Caponigro angled to replace Bruno as boss, the mighty Genovese family saw an opportunity to extend its influence in the Garden State—and perhaps as far south as Atlantic City.
Caponigro had surreptitiously reached out to his Genovese equivalent, consigliere Frank “Funzi” Tieri. The unusual request, made only after careful consideration, was delivered in a blanket of secrecy. Caponigro knew the topic would bring repercussions from Philadelphia to the Big Apple to the Outfit in Chicago.
The Genovese family was in ascent since the death of Carlo Gambino and the rise of its own powerful leader in Vincent “the Chin” Gigante—a brilliant mob mind who hid his light beneath a ratty bathrobe and floppy cap. The Chin posed as a mental patient, checking himself in and out of a psychiatric hospital, to successfully dodge prosecution for decades.
The 1966 pact between Chicago, the Gambinos, and Philadelphia left the Genovese family on the outside looking in when the casinos opened down the Jersey Shore. It also left a bad taste in the mouths of outflanked family leaders, a bone of contention that never disappeared.
Caponigro intended to exploit the situation for his own benefit. His friend and driver Freddie Salerno drove his boss from Newark to the Triangle Civic Improvement Association, the dingy Sullivan Street social club that served as Gigante’s headquarters in Greenwich Village. A pair of thick-necked goons quickly steered Tony Bananas inside the small storefront heavy with the smell of good cigars and better coffee.
Tieri was waiting for him. Caponigro pondered his pitch to open the door for both the Genovese and himself by murdering the Docile Don. Tieri led his visitor to a table in the rear of the cramped, no-frills club, where the two men sat at a thick-legged table to talk. Espresso was served, and the two mob veterans began their verbal bobbing and weaving, the conversation like a showdown between two fighters.
It soon became clear that Caponigro was punching above his weight class. And in his bloodlust to fill Bruno’s shoes, he seemingly forgot a previous beef over a bookie operation claimed as his own by both Funzi and the Philly consigliere. The dispute had gone before the Commission, and Caponigro was declared the winner.
Tieri, still nursing a grudge, decided this was the time to gain a cruel measure of vengeance—and regain control of the North Jersey turf.
“Tony Bananas was, in his own right, a cunning and devious mafioso,” said Natale. “But not in the class of Funzi Tieri when it came to Machiavellian tactics. Old Niccolò Machiavelli could have taken lessons from the elder statesman of the Genovese family.”
Caponigro asked about boss Gigante by rubbing his chin and asking about “our friend”—standard procedure when discussing the permanently paranoid Genovese boss, who barred one and all from using the name. Tieri offered a half smile in return before asking, “How are all of our friends in Philadelphia?” Tony Bananas was thrilled when Tieri didn’t mention Bruno by name, taking the omission as a sign that he was on the right track. Caponigro then ranted for more than an hour about the situation in Philly, about the unholy marriage of the Gambino family to his family in Atlantic City.
Tieri finally leaned over to respond, his voice a hiss: “Do what you have to do.”
Those six words set in motion a calamitous and cruel series of events that left three Mafia dons dead in five years, dozens of soldiers slain, and two mob families in total disarray.
“Funzi Tieri played Tony Bananas like a Stradivarius,” Natale said. “He used Tony’s own treachery to anesthetize his cunning and awareness to the hidden Genovese agenda.”
Caponigro and Tieri hugged before the Jersey guy headed home, totally unaware that he was a pawn in a deadly game run by the New Yorker. Tony Bananas, with his steps urgent and his face dead serious, marched toward the big black sedan where Salerno was waiting.
“As soon as we get to our joint, call [Sindone] and tell him we’re coming in tonight for dinner about seven p.m.,” Caponigro announced. “Felix and Meats are coming with us. And tell him he’ll be drinking champagne after he hears what I’ve got to tell him.”
When the pair arrived thirty minutes later at Caponigro’s bar, Down Neck, in Newark, Tony “Meats” Ferrante and “Little Felix” Bocchino were drinking at the bar. Natale was unsurprised by their inclusion in the plot: “Well, they were strutting way before the killing, when I was on the street, before I went away. They did little things, hijackings, and then big things—this scheme, that scheme, they were big schemers. Tony Meats was the blood nephew to Tony Bananas, so he became somebody. And Felix was with him, so he became somebody. Eventually, Tony Bananas made them.”
Ferrante and Bocchino once went as far as proposing a hit on Blinky Palermo after a couple of business deals went bad. They arrived at the Rickshaw Inn for a meeting with Natale to lay out their plan.
“They said, ‘Ralph, you got pretty close with Blinky, didn’t you?’ Normally I would say, ‘None of your fucking business.’ I didn’t like their tone already, but if you respond too fast with men like that, they won’t tell you the rest,” Natale recalled. “They said he fucked up a couple of deals, and they were going to kill him.”
Natale had heard enough. He looked at Ferrante, and then at Bocchino. Natale rose slowly and leaned in close to his guests.
“If you even breathe hard near Blinky Palermo, I will kill you,” he seethed. “I’ll kill you right here if you fucking say a word. I’ll fucking kill the both of you.”
The death threat was enough to scare the pair off. The two mobsters survived to plot another murder—the killing of Angelo Bruno.
Caponigro, his team of treachery assembled, set the wheels of his high-wire act of murder in motion. The weapon, it was decided, would be a shotgun imported from Newark—no hardware with a link to Philly. The consigliere feared a stop on the New Jersey Turnpike if he transported the weapon himself, and so Bocchino and Ferrante were entrusted with delivering the gun to Philadelphia.
The pair brought the murder weapon to a slaughterhouse on Front Street. Bocchino brought the gun to an upstairs office to break it down, make sure all the parts were in working order, and then reassemble the instrument of death.
To Natale, the plot was another example—reminiscent of the late Joe McGreal—of people trying to be something they were not. “They wanted to change their destinies, from common thugs to somebodies,” he reflected years later. That trip required more than a shotgun and a black heart.
All sorts of destinies were recharted by the time the Caponigro cabal was finished on March 21, 1980.
Caponigro and Salerno traveled south together on their mission, arriving at the Philly home of capo Sindone just off the first exit after the Walt Whitman Bridge. The front door was unlocked, and the men exchanged handshakes, hugs, and kisses on the cheek. This was the type of respect that Caponigro craved—and expected—once Bruno was gone.
The Docile Don had forbidden such greetings between made men, feeling it was an ostentatious display of what was supposed to be a secret society. The only exceptions were when meeting goodfellas from New York, where such hellos were de rigueur, and for mob initiation ceremonies.
The display in Sindone’s living room was a repudiation of Bruno and his ways. The underboss served coffee as the traitors discussed the ultimate betrayal of their benevolent boss. Sindone then produced a plate of anise-flavored biscotti, a favorite of Caponigro as the capo ingratiated himself with the man who would be king.
The reverie was interrupted by another knock on
the door, and John Stanfa entered. The Sicilian-born mobster was the key player in the murder plot, the linchpin of their evil. It was a particularly cruel twist: Bruno’s old friend Gambino had vouched for Stanfa, giving his stamp of approval to the Sicilian. And now he was conspiring to kill the man who’d welcomed him.
Bruno had unhesitatingly taken care of this Judas, unaware of the duplicity in his heart. Loyalty and honor, the founding precepts of Italian organized crime, were trumped once more by greed, jealousy, and the heartbeat of blind ambition.
Stanfa, unbeknownst to his coconspirators, had already reached out to his Gambino associates in New York. He was simply following the code of his native island: promise everyone, but trust no one. The rituals of handshakes, hugs, and kisses was repeated in Sindone’s home. Stanfa took things one step further: as if on the set of a movie, he took Caponigro’s hand and kissed that, too.
“Don Antonio,” he said in Sicilian, “I give you my life.”
It was an Oscar-winning moment, played to the hilt by Stanfa for an appreciative audience of one—Tony Bananas. With the formalities done, the four sat down to discuss the specifics of their plan to murder a man who had helped every one of the quartet during his reign.
16
ET TU, TONY BANANAS?
Angelo Bruno woke up that same morning, kissed his wife of nearly a half century good-bye, and walked out the front door. It was the last time the couple would ever speak.
“You look so handsome in that blue business suit,” she told him as he exited, her final words to her beloved spouse. Bruno met with his lawyer pal Kossman for lunch, business as usual.
That evening, Bruno headed to Torano’s Italian Bar and Restaurant, owned by none other than Frank Sindone and situated just two blocks from the market. The crowd grew thick as word of Bruno’s impending arrival spread, with an assortment of mob wannabes eager for a glimpse of the boss. A nervous Sindone sipped on a martini poured into a coffee cup; even on the night when he planned to murder Bruno, he did not want the teetotaler boss to see him drinking hard liquor.
Last Don Standing Page 9