Chin

by Larry McShane

  His lawyer continued to oppose any form of long-term treatment, and Father G. maintained his public defense of Vincent Gigante. “Is there any proof that he is connected with the Mafia?” the priest asked reporters at one point. “Where does that information come from?”

  By now, charges of Vincent Gigante’s Mob links were supported by reams of FBI documents culled from anonymous informants and frequent surveillance of the Genovese veteran. Yet, the Chin continued to walk the tightrope between street boss and psychotic, checking himself back into the hospital again between September 20 and October 19, 1971. His explanation: “This was ordered for me by my lawyer.”

  Another hospital visit came right before Christmas: “I feel nervous all the time.”

  So did anyone who was doing business with the Chin, who was now in full control of the Village streets. His wife would come to visit on weekends, bringing along their youngest child, Rita, to Yolanda’s apartment. During a 1972 trip, the five-year-old girl was sitting beneath the dining-room table in her grandmother’s apartment, out of her father’s view.

  A man was brought in for a business discussion with Vincent. Voices were raised, drowning out the sound of the Italian music playing in the background. The Chin finally spoke.

  “Don’t ever fuckin’ disrespect me,” he said before bashing the man in the head.

  The stunned victim fell to the floor; blood now ran like a red river toward the terrified child. The beating continued, first with pinky-ringed punches and finally with a shoe stomping the man’s head.

  “I’m done with him,” Gigante declared. “Get him out of here.”

  The FBI agents who came looking for Gigante after the April 7, 1972, mob murder of “Crazy Joe” Gallo encountered a far less menacing version of the Chin. Gallo was gunned down during an early-morning forty-third birthday celebration at Umbertos Clam House in Little Italy. Earlier in the night Gallo was partying with actor Jerry Orbach, who later played NYPD detective Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order.

  The curtain came down on Gallo in a hail of bullets around 5 A.M. His new bride and stepdaughter watched in horror as the mortally wounded mobster staggered into the street and collapsed in an execution that was as stunning as it was dramatic. The killing happened just south of Gigante’s kingdom, and two agents were dispatched to find the Chin and squeeze him for details.

  The pair started at the Chelsea apartment door of Chin’s brother Pasquale, who graciously invited the feds inside and answered a few questions. His brother Vincent, according to Pat, was suffering brain damage from old fight injuries. When the agents mentioned the Gallo hit, Pasquale replied that “it would be useless” to interview the Chin because “he did not appear to understand any of the recent publicity surrounding the killings.”

  And then, as if dropped from the sky, the Chin appeared, walking around the apartment in an apparent daze and ignoring the bewildered agents. The dumbfounded feds finished up with Pasquale and headed for the door, without even speaking a word to their intended target.

  The agents noted in a subsequent report: [Gigante] was obviously quite disturbed. No attempt was made to interview him under these conditions.

  Advantage, Chin—and Vincent Gigante held the upper hand in other ways. The feds were still staking out his home in the suburbs, long after he had relocated to the Village. An April 1972 report indicated that even in Chin’s absence, floodlights on the property kept the house lit up like a “Christmas tree.” While the FBI remained focused on New Jersey, the Genovese family was in turmoil on the other side of the river.

  * * *

  In the early-morning hours of July 16, 1972, there was a turnover in leadership for the family. The demotion of its boss was announced on a Brooklyn street in a hail of bullets.

  It was around 1 A.M. when Genovese boss Tommy Eboli exited the Crown Heights apartment of his mistress. Driver Joseph Sternfeld held the car door open for his boss, but Eboli never made it inside.

  A lone assassin was waiting inside the cab of a red-and-yellow truck, and he sprang into action at the sight of the mobster. His aim was true: Eboli took five bullets in the head. Blood poured from his wounds, red covering the gold crucifix hanging from his neck.

  Sternfeld told cops that he dove for cover after the first shot, and never laid eyes on the killer—although later reports indicated he gave up the names of some possible suspects. The hotheaded Eboli was gone. The murder was never solved, with Genovese bigwig Frank “Funzi” Tieri and boss Carlo Gambino—reportedly irate over an unpaid debt—cited as the possible forces behind the hit.

  In a telling sign, the upper echelon of the city’s mobsters steered clear of his funeral.

  Tommy James recalled getting the news at the Roulette offices. The place was in total chaos as Levy tried to figure out what this meant for business, and James tried to figure out exactly how his career had led to this bizarre moment.

  “It happened six blocks from where I was playing in the Brooklyn Paramount Theater,” said James. “They shot him all over the place. The night before he was killed, he had his arm around me, telling me how proud they were. This was not a guy prone to fits of sentimentality. It kind of put an exclamation point on things when he was hit the next night.”

  Long-retired Frank Costello enjoyed a bit of a last laugh when the FBI visited him two days after the shooting. He was back in his Central Park West apartment after a weekend at his Long Island summer home when agents came knocking to ask about Tommy Ryan’s murder.

  The perpetually cool Costello said he had only met Eboli twice, both times while out for dinner. The pair’s paths hadn’t crossed in about six years, he added. One agent asked about Eboli’s role as the getaway driver and backup shooter for Gigante in the murder attempt of fifteen years earlier.

  Costello advised that Gigante was acquitted of this charge and he never heard that Tommy Ryan had anything to do with the shooting, read an FBI summary of the conversation. Costello advised that he does not know anything concerning the murder of Eboli and does not expect to hear anything.

  Eboli’s removal seemed sudden, but it was actually a long time coming. His headstrong ways in the years after Vito Genovese’s incarceration alienated many in the family. Eboli had once advocated removing many older Genovese members from the books in a cost-cutting move, sounding more like a bloodless CEO than the boss of a family. His position was regarded by many as disrespectful toward the old guard. Though he was the acting boss, Eboli was informed the incarcerated Genovese would have the final say-so on his ultimately rejected plan.

  Father G. presided over the final send-off for his old Greenwich Village neighbor. A police surveillance attempt failed when their red station wagon broke down, leaving NYPD photographers stranded as mourners headed from a Queens funeral home to a cemetery in Paramus, New Jersey.

  Eboli’s bronze coffin was festooned with an arrangement of purple orchids and yellow roses. His widow, dressed in black, denounced the media coverage of her husband’s execution.

  “He was a very good man,” she said through tears. “The newspapers filled him up with trash, and he didn’t deserve it.”

  The death of his old manager accelerated the highly regarded Vincent Gigante’s climb up the Genovese ladder. The New York Times even cited Chin and his brother Ralph as candidates to succeed Eboli, although Tieri was designated the likely front-runner.

  With a typical touch of Genovese misdirection, the position actually went to Benny “Squint” Lombardo, who was content to let Tieri serve as the titular don and represent the family at meetings of the Mob’s ruling commission. It was a lesson not lost on Vincent Gigante, who benefited from more than his boss’ leadership lesson: the Chin was given control of the late Eboli’s lucrative gambling interests on the West Side and in Lower Manhattan.

  Lombardo pulled the family strings as Tieri, Carmine “Little Eli” Zeccardi and Tieri held the boss’s seat before finally the old man turned things over to Fat Tony Salerno. Lombardo retired to Florida, where he
died in April 1987.

  * * *

  While Gigante’s role grew in prominence, the back-and-forth continued in the Jersey case—hanging over the Chin’s head like the sword of Damocles. An informant, in a possible bit of disinformation, advised the FBI that Gigante “is going psycho and is undergoing treatment.”

  Another Mob insider said, “Chin’s medical problems during recent months are all pretended, and he is putting on this act for reasons of his own.” Yet, even the informant was perplexed by the scam, admitting he could envision “no logical reason for Chin putting on an act.”

  But it was Bergen County prosecutors who were losing their minds as the case stretched into a third year. Assistant Prosecutor Charles Buckley finally offered Gigante a deal: plead guilty to a lesser count, with a sentence of no jail time and outpatient psychiatric treatment.

  Gigante pondered his options while, among other legal and illegal pursuits, hobnobbing with guests attending a “large wedding followed by a magnificent reception,” according to FBI surveillance.

  The prosecution finally managed to get a second psychiatric sit-down with Vincent Gigante in August 1972, when Dr. Joseph Zigarelli of Paterson shared a typically twisted session with the mobster. Their meeting featured all the physical and mental hallmarks of the still-nascent act: Gigante appeared unshaven and with his hair a mess. He squinted at the doctor “with a perplexed facial expression.”

  With Vincent’s mother sitting in the waiting room, Zigarelli began his questioning. Gigante’s left leg shook, and his muttered answers came only after much hesitation.

  “I ain’t sick,” he offered at one point.

  “I came to see my doctor,” Gigante announced later.

  On several occasions the Chin stood up and tried to join his mother outside the office. Zigarelli was convinced that Gigante was the real deal. The patient is not mentally competent and cannot adequately consult with his attorney in his own defense, the psychiatrist wrote in a letter to prosecutors.

  Gigante’s new treating psychiatrist examined him yet again for the defense. The news, unsurprisingly, was even worse for prosecutors.

  He was in no position to stand any trial, and it is doubtful he would ever be advanced enough mentally to do anything but lead the narrowed life he is leading at the present time, wrote Dr. Hugh McHugh, who remained blissfully unaware of the Chin’s expansive exploits outside his office.

  By August 1972 the case was crumbling. Defense attorney Joseph Greaney was angling for a dismissal; by now, one of the “bribed” cops was actually appointed the new police chief of Old Tappan in a very pointed rebuke of the prosecution.

  Informants were almost simultaneously reporting Gigante had shown “no indication of emotional instability.” Nevertheless, the FBI declared another hiatus in its investigation of the Chin; it would remain shut down until February 1973.

  The legal wrangling ratcheted up that same month, when Greaney’s motion to dismiss was shot down by the trial judge—but not before the defense lawyer doubled down on the insanity claim.

  Gigante was “suffering from catatonic regression resulting in a return to infantile feelings and behavior,” the attorney insisted. “He will never be well again. The last time I saw him, he didn’t even know who I was. He will never get any better.”

  The defense lawyer noted the relatively minor case had dragged on for three years, with no end in sight. “If three years is not reasonable, what is?” he asked. “Is it five years? Or three years and three months?”

  Accused co-conspirator Zupa’s case had just finally gone to trial, with ex-chief Schuh brought in as the prosecution’s star witness. His testimony was far more beneficial to the defense.

  Yes, Gigante gave him Christmas cards with cash, but that was a common practice among local residents and businesspeople, the chief testified. No, he never considered the gifts to be a bribe, Schuh added under oath.

  Zupa was acquitted of bribery on March 13 when a judge blasted the prosecution’s moldering case as weak at best.

  “The state has failed to prove a prima facie case against Mr. Zupa,” announced superior court judge Thomas S. Dalton. As for Schuh, the judge was even more dismissive: “His testimony was so replete with contradictions, as not to be worthy of belief. It was not worthy of credibility.”

  Among those in the courtroom, hanging on every word, was attorney Greaney. An unidentified Genovese associate sat down with his FBI handler that same month to give his professional assessment of the Chin’s mental health. It was detailed and damning, and left no doubt that Gigante was running a one-of-a-kind game.

  According to the note summary: [The informant] advised that he has made numerous observations of Vincent Gigante. . . . During these observations, [he] saw Gigante regularly acting in a normal manner. [He] stated that due to Gigante’s normal behavior, he believes that Gigante’s “mental problems” are largely inflated.

  [He] stated that he has observed Gigante carrying on conversations with other individuals, playing cards in a social club and conducting his normal routine unassisted.... As a result of his observations, he thinks that Gigante is in complete control of his faculties.

  The memo never reached prosecutors or the judge. In early October the case against the Chin was dismissed because his mental condition was “deteriorating instead of improving.” Charges against Olympia Gigante were dropped as well.

  By now, all the cops were cleared as well by a judge, who proclaimed the cash was “something of a customary action at the time. I am satisfied there is nothing to indicate criminal involvement.” A full 750 of the small town’s 3,800 residents had signed a petition urging their reinstatement.

  The “history-making” indictment ended with a thud, rather than the expected law enforcement triumph. Historian Bissett, years later, dismissed the whole thing as a bit of a fiasco.

  “It really wasn’t much when it all turned out,” he said. “They shut down the whole police force, checked it all out, and it was nothing. It was a big thing for a very small town. But in the larger scheme of things, it was nothing. We still joke about it.”

  The FBI summed up Gigante’s winning first act with an air of resignation: Local prosecution against Gigante dropped due to ruling that subject mentally incapable of standing trial. Gigante continues to run his illegal activities from Greenwich Village.

  The Chin’s lawyer and psychiatrists were already using the insanity ruling as a battering ram to drive off other inquiring prosecutors. In a January 4, 1973, missive to the Queens district attorney, McHugh said the Chin was in no shape to appear before an investigative grand jury: [Gigante’s] entire world [was] confined to the block where he lives and the church he attends regularly with his mother.

  Other investigators, despite determined efforts, had little to show for their Chin-chasing labors. A grand jury hearing allegations of a gambling operation run by Gigante and Alongi came up empty despite initial optimism. A probe into the fatal stabbings of two Village club owners produced nothing. The IRS probe was dying a slow, lingering death; it was finally scuttled in August 1974.

  Chin and brother Mario were cited in a newspaper story as the moneymen behind a ring smuggling illegal cigarettes and fireworks into the city, but neither was ever charged. And a federal prosecutor asked for portions of testimony related to Chin’s mental-health claim in Bergen County, mounting an unspecified case.

  Still, nothing—other than a brief FBI memo that Gigante dodged the federal case “by using insanity as a defense.”

  There was also evidence that officials were underrating the kooky criminal. The NYPD, three months before the IRS case was dropped, ranked the powerful Genovese capo as a paltry number forty-four on its list of top “100 Public Morals Violators.”

  Weeks before, another FBI report said the Chin was intentionally “making himself scarce”–but federal agents apparently missed the memo. Gigante was front and center at the St. Anthony’s Feast, an annual Village event that profited the local parish and th
e Genovese crime family. He appeared three times in six days to join in the June 1975 revelry, greeted and feted like a local celebrity, according to another FBI report.

  “Vincent Gigante, who was clean shaven and cleanly dressed, appeared to be very bright and alert and was the center of attention among the group,” stated an FBI undercover. His two bodyguards stood nearby, keeping the hoi polloi at bay. A trio of locals actually interrupted the FBI surveillance at the corner of Sullivan and Houston Streets, using a series of whistles to announce the federal presence.

  The Chin was later spied casually sipping wine with two other men.

  In addition to his Village crew, Gigante was now serving as Genovese point man for business dealings with other families. Among those who made the trip to visit the Chin inside the Triangle was Paul Vario, head of a notorious Lucchese family crew based in Brooklyn.

  “Big Paulie,” who stood six-three and weighed 250 pounds, occasionally traveled with an unknown young Mob wannabe from his neighborhood. The aspiring gangster’s name was Henry Hill.

  The 1970s

  Hill was a kid born to the Mob, growing up opposite a Brooklyn taxi stand run by the Vario crew. He took instantly to organized crime, although his Irish father (despite a Sicilian mom) insured Henry would never become a made man. Hill nevertheless moved up quickly in the Lucchese ranks, aligned with another loyal Irish mobster, Jimmy “the Gent” Burke.

  Though a low-level gangster, Hill was a bit of a “Zelig” among the Lucchese family, turning up in the middle of some major-league scams. He was part of the 1978 Lufthansa heist, which netted a stunning $5.8 million from Kennedy Airport. Hill was also involved in a college basketball point-shaving scandal involving Boston College in the 1978 through 1979 season. Hill also tagged along with his capo when Vario headed across the East River, twice a month, to see Gigante at the Triangle. The Chin had adopted the bizarre wardrobe that served as his business attire by now.

  “Paulie was quite friendly with him,” recalled Hill. “He was one of the bookmakers taking bets from Chin. It was hell getting paid from him. Paulie would bust his balls, and then they’d make arrangements for Paulie to get paid. Paulie would see him at least once every couple of weeks.”