It was 6 P.M. on July 7, 1958, when Gigante was arrested at the Lexington Social Club, conveniently located at the corner of Sullivan and Spring Streets. News reports noted the suspect was dressed rather slovenly, and prosecutors called him a prime mover in an international drug ring.
The main target of the federal probe was arrested two hours later near the Jersey Shore: Vito Genovese. It was the latest in a run of incessantly bad news that beset the new family boss in the months after the Costello shooting.
* * *
Vito Genovese was already known as one of the high-level mobsters involved in the foiled national Mob summit meeting in the tiny upstate hamlet of Apalachin in November 1957, an event that forced Director J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI to pull his head ostrich-like from the ground and acknowledge the existence of an organized crime syndicate run by Italian immigrants and Italian Americans.
Just one week before the drug bust, Genovese was summoned to appear before a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating what was then known as “the rackets.” The senators’ interest in Genovese was piqued by prior testimony putting his reported net worth at $30 million. This was in an era when virtually all professional athletes worked off-season jobs to make ends meet.
The estimate of his cash reserves was provided in part by his bitter ex-wife, Anna, who dumped the don and exposed his revenue streams from gambling, nightclubs and Mob-controlled unions in property settlement papers. The widow whose first husband was reportedly executed on Genovese’s say-so was now killing him, much more slowly and publicly.
Genovese took the stand and refused to say a word. He invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 150 times before quietly stepping down. Asked if he was a member of the secret society that emigrated from Italy, the Mafia boss declined to answer. He did the same when asked directly if he had ever “killed a man.”
Gigante, likewise, was drawing unwanted attention during his scant few weeks of freedom after the acquittal. Hoover, in a national FBI dispatch, promoted Chin to the agency’s “top hoodlum” list. Oddly enough, Hoover noted the gangster went by the alias “Billy Chin,” an obscure nom de guerre from his days in the ring.
* * *
Gigante was merely a supporting player in the heroin bust, with most of the newspaper ink dedicated to Don Vito. JAIL GENOVESE ON DRUG RAP, trumpeted page one of the Daily News above a smaller statement, T-Men Arrest Rackets King.
The headlines sat above a picture of Genovese as he arrived in Manhattan for court. The accompanying photo captured the boss, his eyes hidden by dark glasses, riding shotgun alongside one of the arresting agents who invaded his Atlantic Highlands home. A half smile played across the godfather’s face, as if he knew this day was somehow inevitable.
The case was brought by U.S. Attorney Paul Williams, who would run for governor later that year based in part on his crime-busting three-year run as a federal prosecutor. He lost to Nelson Rockefeller, a defeat that did little to eclipse his stellar work at putting crooks behind bars.
Williams moved up after obliterating crimes from prostitution to corruption in a pair of upstate counties, and was among those who prosecuted powerful Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa.
He stood front and center in announcing the arrests, with authorities charging the multimillion-dollar ring’s tentacles extended to drug sources in Europe, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Williams personally greeted the suspects when they were brought into court.
“Genovese was the hub around which this entire conspiracy revolved, and Gigante was one of his protégés and a rising star in the underworld,” said Williams. “The arrest of Genovese is one of the most important arrests ever made in this field.”
Reveling in the takedown, Williams predicted this latest offensive “could easily drive the Mafia out of the narcotics business.” Or not, as it turned out. Codefendants Genovese and Gigante exited the courthouse side by side, neither saying a word.
In perhaps the most stunning development in the case, this takedown of a powerful and previously untouchable Mob boss was based primarily on the testimony of a low-level drug dealer named Nelson Cantellops.
The prosecution’s star witness, unlike the defendants, hung around the lowest rungs of the criminal ladder. The man known as “the Melon” had three minor busts, including attempted forgery and marijuana possession, before his 1958 arrest for peddling heroin. His criminal past made Cantellops a poor fit for business partner with a Mob boss: a junk dealer reaching into the highest level of the well-insulated Mafia hierarchy.
The official version of his participation was that a street informant tipped a federal drug agent about Cantellops’s dealings with Genovese, and the inmate, who was doing five years on his heroin bust, agreed to testify against the Mob boss and his cohorts. Cantellops improbably swore the boss had met with him personally, a tale that still rings false in the new millennium.
Tommy Eboli, the Chin’s old manager and by now a Genovese mainstay, ordered a hit on the witness before the indictment even became public, according to Valachi.
“There’s some Spanish guy testifying against the old man, and we got to find him,” Eboli told him. “His name is Canteloupes, you know, like the melon.”
Gigante was specifically accused of delivering narcotics from the city to a Cleveland mobster, driving to Ohio with a second man. Cantellops also claimed the Chin provided his introduction to Genovese, arranging a September 1956 meeting at an emergency turnoff on the West Side Highway.
It took several months for the case to come to trial, and fourteen weeks for prosecutors to lay out all the evidence. It took the jury just twelve hours to convict Genovese, Gigante and thirteen codefendants. It was the first criminal conviction for the elusive Don Vito since a 1917 bust for carrying a pistol, when he did sixty days.
The sentence this time was fifteen years for the sixty-one-year-old Genovese, who would never walk again as a free man. The dapper, bespectacled boss offered only a wry grin when the verdict was returned shortly after 10 P.M. on April 3, 1959.
A resigned Genovese accepted his fate with a single, terse comment to the judge. “All I can say, Your Honor, is that I am innocent,” he said before leaving for the federal lockup.
The Chin received just seven years at his April 17 sentencing after the judge was flooded with letters attesting to his character from neighbors in Greenwich Village.
The conviction irked Gigante for the rest of his life, lingering long after he entered into his “crazy” Mob boss era. During a June 1997 “forensic social assessment” done upon his arrival at the federal prison in Butner, North Carolina, Gigante made a point of declaring he had “always been against drugs.”
Asked specifically about the drug-dealing conviction, the Chin, with the haze of his purported mental illness suddenly lifted, offered a one-word answer: “Framed.” And maybe he was right.
In The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, the original boss of the family claimed that Cantellops was paid $100,000 to testify. The payment came half from Luciano and half from fellow boss Carlo Gambino, as retribution for the Apalachin debacle. Costello and Meyer Lansky, the notorious financial wizard for the Mob, were also in on the fix. Costello kicked in half of Luciano’s payment for a guarantee that Gigante would go down with Genovese.
“As far as I know, Cantellops never set eyes on Vito until they got in the courtroom,” Luciano supposedly said. “I don’t know if the [federal] narcotics bureau knew that Genovese was a gift, and I don’t give a shit.”
Cantellops, once sprung from jail, didn’t last long. The ex-con informant was killed in a 1965 bar fight, and his murderer was never found. Genovese remained behind bars; the Mafia don, betrayed by his bride and by the lowly Cantellops, would die on Valentine’s Day, 1969.
Gigante fought his case, and managed to avoid prison until running out of appeals in February 1960. His criminal efforts continued unabated during the legal fight, with an FBI memo sent just days before his incarceration identifying him as “the person who ‘kept order’ in th
e Greenwich Village area.”
Before heading off to prison, the Chin took care of one last bit of business. New York University bought up the tenements on Bleecker Street, leaving the Gigantes—his parents, his brother Ralph and his own family—looking for a place to live. He approached one of the building owners at 225 Sullivan Street about finding a new home for the clan. Two apartments opened up—no waiting list, not a lot of questions. His family moved into one, with his mom and pop taking the other.
CHAPTER 4
COLD IRONS BOUND
THE CHIN ARRIVED AT THE FEDERAL PENITENTIARY IN LEWISBURG, Pennsylvania, on February 18, 1960, leaving his family behind in their new homes. His admission paperwork listed his codefendants from the trial, with the name Vito Genovese right at the top.
As would become de rigueur for the gangster later in his life, he sat down for an initial assessment by the prison staff. Their analysis: Gigante was vain, dangerous and—most tellingly—quite at ease in acting the part of somebody else.
A March 18 summary read: He takes pride in the praise showered upon him by the clergy and to be recognized as a henchman with racketeers, giving him the role of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality. It is anticipated that prior patterns will prevail following discharge . . . in view of past history, therefore, prognosis in this case for community adjustment must be guarded.
His IQ tested at 101, putting Gigante in the average range. However, his intake evaluation noted he had an “inferior intelligence and depends primarily on his brawn for existence.” His reading and writing skills were those of a ninth-grade student.
A report by a prison committee recounted: He was reared in a high delinquency area of New York City and has associated with big time gangsters most of his adult life. He was a light-heavyweight prize fighter prior to an injury.
If the Chin was a lousy candidate for rehabilitation, he became a model prisoner during his time in the federal lockup. His weight had ballooned back up to 288 pounds. While he turned down a spot in the educational program, Gigante became a hard worker who caused few problems during his time in the federal lockup.
But he did make the announcement more than once that the prison was holding an innocent man: Gigante denies all allegations. He claims that because he was acquitted (in the Costello hit), he would be charged or sentenced eventually. He claims that he “never saw, spoke or handled narcotics in my life.” He claims to “hate” narcotics.
At a 1962 meeting with the parole board, Gigante vented his rage at a prison official. “You know I was framed!” he roared loudly enough for other inmates to hear.
His postprison plans, the Chin said, were to move back with his wife and kids in the Village, while resuming his career as a truck driver. Two of his children, he confided, were already attending parochial school. Gigante also said he intended to “participate in all phases of our Catholic program” offered to Lewisburg inmates.
In a detailed March 2 “Report of Medical History,” Gigante confirmed that he had never suffered from depression, amnesia, nightmares or excessive worry. No, the Chin confirmed, he had never checked into a mental hospital for any reason.
In her own sit-down with prison doctors, his mother described her beloved son as a healthy and happy kid. She never mentioned any boxing injuries or any psychiatric issues.
Authorities noted that Gigante, while under the employ of Genovese, was also a presence at Village clubs and church groups preaching an antidrug message. The Chin, in neat penmanship, signed off on a document attesting that he had never used drugs.
Gigante’s Lewisburg file was clean, except for medical reports detailing a pair of workplace injuries. He suffered a fractured left big toe in a boiler room mishap, and hurt his wrist a year later while working in the prison icehouse.
His boss at the prison power plant weighed in with a glowing June 1961 review of his charge: Gigante was a “very good maintenance man.” He could be “depended on to complete assigned duties without supervision and to the best of his abilities.”
The Chin endured one devastating blow behind bars: His father, Salvatore, passed away on May 9, 1961, succumbing to lung cancer forty years after coming to America. After his diagnosis the dying Gigante patriarch moved into Chin’s two-bedroom apartment with his daughter-in-law and four grandkids.
The death hit Gigante hard, and years later he recalled how moody it left him behind bars. His father was dead; his widowed mother was alone in her apartment; his wife was at home with their kids.
Prison paperwork indicates the Chin was almost assigned to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, where Genovese and family soldier Valachi were doing their time. It was there that one of the most earthshaking developments in Mafia history was playing out.
Genovese, who once stood as Valachi’s best man, now decided his old pal was an informant and needed to die. A fellow Mafioso charged that Valachi was working for the FBI, and that was enough for Don Vito. Valachi dodged several murder tries before finally killing another inmate in a case of mistaken identity: Valachi thought the innocent man was sent by Genovese. Valachi famously became the first member of the crime family to flip in 1962.
The next wouldn’t follow for another twenty-four years.
Gigante finished his Lewisburg time as a pleasant and compliant inmate. A February 7, 1964, a progress report noted his hard work, his “neat and orderly” grooming habits and his role as a “well-known leader of the young, more aggressive Italian-American inmates.”
Prison doctors “found no special abnormalities” and “considered that he is experiencing good health at this time,” the report concluded.
* * *
The Chin was released on October 16, 1964, and ordered to remain on parole through August 21, 1966. When he returned to the streets of Greenwich Village, the neighborhood had changed dramatically—on the face of things, anyway.
A Jewish kid could land from Minnesota with little more than the clothes on his back and an acoustic guitar to reinvent himself as Bob Dylan, voice of a generation. Comics Joan Rivers and Bill Cosby were headlining at local clubs. A guitarist named Jimi Hendrix was plugging in at the Café Wha? New music for a new generation echoed through Washington Square Park, and the sweet smell of marijuana wafted down Sullivan Street.
There was one change that directly affected him—the FBI had cultivated informants inside organized crime. Unlike Valachi, they spoke only on the condition of anonymity, and each was clearly terrified of the Chin. One flatly told his FBI handler that “if the word got out about him, he would ‘clam up’ and provide no further information.”
Chin showed little interest in the social evolution or the FBI’s attention, preferring to go back in time and revisit the illegal businesses of his past: running numbers, loan-sharking, skimming from local bars. Gigante quickly reestablished himself as head of all the Genovese operations in the old neighborhood, according to a snitch’s May 1965 report.
Heavily redacted FBI documents from the time identified Chin as a Genovese soldier, even as his status continued to climb. Details were scarce, but in a January 1966 rocket to his New York office, Hoover issued orders to put Chin on their Mafia to-do list.
Hoover instructed his Big Apple charges: Inasmuch as Gigante has been reported to be a “button guy” in the Vito Genovese “family,” you should reopen this case, conduct an appropriate inquiry and bring the investigation up to date.
Chin went on about his criminal business. In his downtime, Gigante joined the Holy Name Society at Our Lady of Pompeii and became a fixture in the pews at Sunday Mass. The mobster did take one notable step that October, the first in what became a lifelong journey: To avoid his parole officer, Gigante had his lawyer call authorities to report the mobster was “in a markedly nervous state” and would need several months of rest. It worked, beyond the Chin’s wildest expectations.
Free of his minder’s attention, the Chin was spotted strutting through the Village with a menacing German shepherd at the end of a leash in the sum
mer of 1967. He reportedly owned a number of Village bars, including Goody’s, a notoriously dank dive that was home to poetry readings in the 1950s. It was now home to a hard-drinking crowd comprised of bohemians from the Village past, down on their luck and content to booze the day away.
The FBI’s attempts to catch the Chin in a crime of any kind in this era turned up nothing more than a $15 traffic ticket in 1968. Gigante’s time behind bars had fostered both a healthy paranoia about law enforcement and a serious aversion to jail cells.
* * *
Vincent’s brother Mario, by now a fellow Genovese associate, took a sweeter approach to legitimate business: Mario operated out of the B&G candy store on West Fifty-Fifth Street. FBI surveillance had spied Mario conferring with Eboli while his brother was locked up in Lewisburg.
Ralph Gigante, like Mario, was also involved in Genovese family business. Mario showed promise as an earner, bringing in money for the family and eventually working his way into position as a trusted Genovese capo. Ralphie’s rise was more of a fall.
His ancient, yellowing clip filed in the Daily News newspaper morgue is marked with a single derisive word: Hoodlum. Ralph became involved in the gambling side of things, reportedly doubling up as a loan shark, providing cash at a usurious rate to bettors who fell behind in their payments.
Ralph was a bit player in one of the era’s college basketball point-shaving scandals. He was busted on October 5, 1962, for offering North Carolina State player Donald Gallagher a $1,000 payoff two years earlier to shave points in a game against Duke. The players in the scam didn’t necessarily throw the games; instead, they insured that the favorite won, but failed to cover the point spread.
If NC State was favored by six, and instead won by five, the gamblers collected and the Wolfpack had a victory. It was win-win—until everybody lost. Ralph Gigante was scooped up with fourteen players and a dozen co-conspirators.
Chin Page 6
