Garden State Gangland

by Scott M. Deitche

  The Luciano murder angered one of his young protégés, Tino Fiumara. Tino was from Down Neck and started as a Bruno guy with Louie Luciano. When Luciano was killed, Tino knew that the order had to come from above. The Campisis told other members in their group that Carlo Gambino had given the order. But it was apparent to Fiumara that Tony Bananas Caponigro had to have been consulted. Luciano was a made guy and in his crew. There was no way that Caponigro would have allowed this to happen, in his backyard, without at least being consulted. Tino made his frustration felt. He went over to the Vesuvius Restaurant on Bloomfield Avenue and complained. Everyone knew there was going to be a problem between Fiumara and Caponigro if this continued. A move was made on Tino’s behalf to bring him over to the Genovese family. He was “straightened out” with the Genovese and put in the crew of Pete LaPlaca, which kept the Brunos from going after him. But it also put Tino in a crime family that was bigger and more influential than the Brunos, a crime family that was the largest and most powerful in New Jersey.

  1. Former New Jersey wiseguy, personal interview with the author regarding Newark and the Down Neck mob, in person, January 2017.

  2. Volz and Bridge, The Mafia Talks, 22.

  3. George Anastasia, e-mail interview with the author, regarding Bruno-Scarfo family, March 18, 2017.

  4. Jim Barry, “Trouble with a Capital N,” Philadelphia City Paper, April 19–26, 2001, text available at https://mycitypaper.com/articles/041901/news.mob.shtml.

  5. Anastasia, Blood And Honor, 95.

  6. Myron Sugerman, personal interview with the author regarding New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.

  7. National Commission . . . Surveillance, Commission Hearings.

  8. Former New Jersey wiseguy, personal interview with the author regarding Newark and the Down Neck mob, in person, January 2017.

  9. He was also arrested in 1977 as part of a stolen-property ring that included Bruno guy Joe Sodano and Genovese soldier Joseph Gatto.

  10. Lansing (MI) State Journal, “Six Men Nabbed in Armed Robbery,” November 10, 1947.

  11. This information appeared on a wanted poster for Gerardo Fusella, issued October 19, 1944, by the US Department of Justice.

  12. Paul G. Durkin, Harold Konigsberg, Bureau Airtel 8/16/65, Newark, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1965.

  13. George Fresolone and Robert J. Wagman, Blood Oath: The Heroic Story of a Gangster Turned Government Agent Who Brought Down One of America’s Most Powerful Mob Families (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 44.

  14. Former New Jersey wiseguy, personal interview with the author regarding Newark and the Down Neck mob, in person, January 2017.

  15. Fresolone and Wagman, Blood Oath, 46.

  16. John Patrick Devlin, La Cosa Nostra—Newark Division, Newark, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1967.

  17. Federal Bureau of Investigation, The Decarlo Tape Transcripts (Original Full Set), 1962.

  18. J. Robert Pearce, Special Agent, Angelo Bruno, Special Summary Report, Philadelphia, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1962).

  19. Devlin, La Cosa Nostra.

  20. Francis Patrick, “Killer Who Squealed on 9 Mobsters Faces Death Each Day,” San Antonio Star, June 6, 1976.

  21. Paul Hoffman, To Drop A Dime ( New York: Putnam, 1976), 104.

  Chapter 10

  The Genovese Family

  The Horizon House co-op in Fort Lee, New Jersey, sits atop the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River, just south of the George Washington Bridge. Building four is a seven-story mid-rise in the center of the complex. In 1972, the rent on an apartment was eight hundred dollars, an easily affordable sum for Genovese boss Thomas Eboli and his common-law wife, Mary. But the gangster, who had suffered some recent health setbacks, was looking to relocate and purchased a home in Passaic, New Jersey, fifteen miles away.

  Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli was born in Italy and lived for many years in various New Jersey towns—Ridgefield, Teaneck, and Englewood Cliffs—before moving to Fort Lee. But it was during a formative year living in Greenwich Village in New York City that he became friends with Vito Genovese and Anthony “Tony Bender” Strollo and started on his life of involvement with the Genovese family, eventually working his way up to acting underboss by the mid-1960s. When Vito Genovese died in 1969, Eboli became part of a family ruling panel that also included Mike Miranda and Jerry Catena. Though described by fellow underworld denizens as a hothead, Eboli kept a low profile during his time at the top.

  On the night of Saturday, July 15, 1972, his driver, Joseph Sternfeld, drove Eboli to New York, through Manhattan and into Brooklyn. He dropped Tommy Ryan off at 388 Lefferts Avenue in the Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn, next to Crown Heights. It was allegedly the home of Eboli’s mistress. According to police, Sternfeld told them he had been directed by Eboli to drive around for a bit and come back to pick up the mob boss around 1 a.m. on the 16th. Sternfeld did as he was instructed and pulled back up to the building at Lefferts Avenue just after 1 a.m. Eboli was waiting it the lobby, and when he saw the car pull up he walked outside.

  When Eboli emerged from the building, a yellow truck that had been parked just up the street started up and drove toward him. As Eboli walked toward the blue 1971 Cadillac, the truck passed by, from which rained a fusillade of shots at him and the Cadillac. The driver, Sternfeld, later told police that he ducked under the dashboard when the shooting started. “I didn’t see anything, I don’t know what happened, I just heard the shots fired.”[1] Five bullets ripped through Eboli’s body, hitting him in the face and neck, from a .38 caliber pistol and a machine gun. Eboli fell to the ground, dead, and the truck with its shooters tore away from the scene, the gunshots awaking neighbors. Police rushed to the scene and found the truck with its engine still running, abandoned a few blocks away. They also found a stolen car nearby with an M3 machine gun. It was obvious that two cars had been used in the hit.

  Police found two thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills in Eboli’s coat pocket. His trademark hat was nowhere to be found. The funeral home where Eboli was laid out, Romanelli F. and Sons in Ozone Park, Queens, was awash with local, state, and federal law enforcement, but few mob guys showed up. Neither did many come to Eboli’s resting place, a cemetery back across the bridge in Paramus, New Jersey. This lack of respect paid to the fallen mob boss may have hinted at one of the reasons for his demise. To some on the street, the reason for Eboli’s death had been pretty simple: he wasn’t well liked. Some sources said that his murder had been orchestrated by Jerry Catena and Phil Lombardo after Eboli had disrespected Catena. Lombardo at the time was just a soldier, but a well-connected one who was close to the powerful Catena.

  Joseph Sternfeld gave police the names of some suspected underworld figures who may have played a part in the killing. The police didn’t reveal the names at the time, but among those that they were looking at were Vincent Mauro and Vincent Gigante, the one-time boxer who’d shot Frank Costello in the head in 1957 and would come to play a prominent role in the Genovese family in the 1980s.

  In April of 1972, a few months prior to his murder, Eboli was supposed to have flown to Florida for a meeting with Vincent Aloi of the Colombo family and Santo Trafficante Jr. but had been held up in New York. There was talk that Eboli’s death was linked to fifteen other gangland murders that had started with the shooting of mob boss Joe Colombo on June 28, 1971. Authorities speculated that the Gallo-Colombo war then raging in the streets of Brooklyn may have played a part in Eboli’s death. But the message was clear from the other leaders in the Genovese family: Eboli was no longer of use to them and was even considered an impediment to the family’s growth and prosperity.

  The Genovese family has the largest New Jersey operations of any of the New York crime families. The West Side mob, as they are often colloquially known, has long been considered one of the most secretive, and successful, mob families in the United States. And the vagueness of their exact leadership structure was on
e way they maintained that secrecy. Even their own mob guys on the street were often a little cloudy as to who exactly was running things and when. Sources describe the Genovese family operation like General Motors; it was one company with different divisions. The Genovesi had a whole different corporate structure than did other mob families. As they trusted each other, they let each crew do what it wanted, which had the added benefit of shielding the boss from the prying eyes of law enforcement who might be investigating a crew at any given time.

  In reality, while Eboli was thought to be part of the ruling panels that oversaw the family’s business concerns, the real power lay with Jerry Catena. From his early years as a driver and partner of Longy Zwillman, Catena had moved up the ladder of influence in New Jersey through the 1960s and had become a major mediator in disputes as well as a ready source of consultation and advice for other mob bosses. Along with Gyp DeCarlo, Catena was the most prominent Genovese family representative in Jersey. But Catena held far more sway than DeCarlo.

  Catena, according to one former wiseguy, “wanted to rule with no rule. His power was undisputed. He was one of the most underrated mob bosses in history.”[2] Others echoed those sentiments. “The most underrated, without a doubt. My father said he could run either the Pentagon or General Electric. He was that qualified. He had extreme executive skills and ability.”[3]

  In 1959, Jerry Catena appeared before the Senate Select Committee on Improper Practices in Labor and Management—or the McClellan Committee, as it was also known. There Catena was grilled about his criminal activities and his interest in jukebox companies. True to form, the mobster, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, refused to answer any questions, invoking the Fifth Amendment some seventy times. Catena’s influence extended to Vegas, as did other Genovese members’, who were more forthcoming with the committee on their Vegas activity. Gyp DeCarlo, for example, outlined his position in the Desert Inn and the Stardust: He said that the Cleveland mob held fifty-five points in the Desert Inn and sixty points in the Stardust and that they received about $120,000 from all their points combined, as their take from the skim. He calculated the value of each point as being worth $1,800 in the skim. He admitted he had points in both hotels as well.

  Upon Eboli’s death, many thought the Genovese family mantle would naturally be taken up by Jerry Catena; but, according to some sources, Catena—who at the time of Eboli’s shooting was serving time at Yardville Youth Reception and Correctional Facility, in a section specially set aside for mob figures—did not want the position. Catena had been boss since early 1969 and did not want the additional exposure and headaches that came with heading the family. He’d already amassed a sizeable fortune and was looking forward to stepping out of the limelight and enjoying himself. He saw another candidate who would be a better choice than he.

  Funzi Tieri, a Naples-born mobster of slight stature, was sixty-eight at the time of Eboli’s death and mentioned as a likely successor to the throne. According to some sources, Tieri was approached by Carlo Gambino, Philip “Benny Squint” Lombardo, and Catena to take the top spot. He initially didn’t want it but eventually agreed. Part of his reluctance was based in the common perception that Carlo Gambino wanted to have some influence over the Genovese family and, with the appointment of Tieri, would be able to do just that. Tieri, however, was adamant that he was going to rule the family without interference. Tieri also wanted his friend Frankie Casina to take over as capo of his crew. Fat Tony Salerno was appointed consigliere.

  However, the generally accepted hierarchy of the Genovese family has Benny Squint Lombardo taking the top spot post-Eboli. He remained in the leadership role throughout the 1970s until 1982 when Fat Tony Salerno took over. Part of the confusion with developing an accurate hierarchy of the family has to do with how the Genovese family was set up and how they often used front bosses and acting bosses in place of the real power. The Lombardo/Tieri boss situation is a perfect example of the type of obfuscation that allowed the Genovese family to shield the bosses from law enforcement for so many years. Another reason the Genovese inner workings remain shrouded in such secrecy is that, after Joe Valachi’s explosive federal testimony, the Genovese family did not have another major turncoat for decades. The family kept things running tight.

  There was a Genovese crew based in Bergen County, in Northern New Jersey, in the borough of Lodi. Home to Satin Dolls—the strip club featured on HBO TV series The Sopranos as Bada Bing!, main character Tony Soprano’s headquarters—Lodi is a blue-collar town with long-standing ties to the Genovese family. For years the crew operating there was led by Peter “Lodi Pete” LaPlaca. Lodi Pete was known for his aptitude in dealing with stolen securities and bank fraud. He was considered “one of the strongest criminal bosses in New Jersey and one of the most feared and dangerous men in organized crime.”[4] That may have been a bit of hyperbole, but LaPlaca had significant influence in a number of criminal rackets, one of which was refuse disposal.

  One of the men under LaPlaca was Ernest Palmieri, head of Local 945 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, in which LaPlaca also had an interest. The local was in West Paterson, New Jersey, right in the heart of Genovese territory. Palmieri “controlled garbage in New Jersey during his reign.”[5] He became a centerpiece of the mob’s control of waste handling in the New Jersey/New York area starting in the 1970s. And one of the mob’s more lucrative ventures was the handling and disposal of chemicals and other toxic refuse.

  Prior to the establishment of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act, both signed into law in 1976, there had been little effort to split toxic materials from regular garbage. All materials were often comingled in landfills. But around the time of the passage of the two acts, coupled with increased attention paid to the environmental consequences of improper disposal, a market emerged for handling this material. By 1983 the market had expanded to “between four billion and five billion dollars a year to manage the regulated portion of hazardous waste.”[6]

  With the regulations, the cost of disposal of chemicals increased. To maintain tight cost control and ensure that waste companies under the mob’s ownership controlled the marketplace, a meeting took place in the mid-1970s to form a waste-haulers association in New Jersey. The representatives at the meeting, according to insider Harold Kaufman, included Pete LaPlaca, James “Jimmy Brown” Failla, a Gambino capo, and Tino Fiumara.

  Fiumara, by the early seventies, was firmly in the crew of capo Pete LaPlaca. He also dealt with another up-and-coming Genovese crime-family member who was making waves in New Jersey—John DiGilio. John was described as “cruel and heartless, a bearded man in his mid-forties who often wore a poor boy’s cap over his brown hair and was built like a small bull, packing 180 pounds into his 5’ 7” frame. He was not someone you wanted to spend a lot of time around.”[7] When he switched over from the Bonanno family crew of Bayonne Joe Zicarelli, DiGilio made his move onto the waterfront, becoming secretary-treasurer of Local 1588 of the International Longshoremen’s Association, which base he used to expanded his criminal empire across the Jersey docks.

  By comparison, Tino Fiumara had “a reputation for being particularly vicious. Waterfront executives were terrified of him, and many wiseguys lower down on the Genovese ladder were scared to refer to him by his real name, instead simply calling him ‘T’ or ‘the Good-Looking Guy.’”[8] Already entrenched with the Down Neck mob and Genovese family, Fiumara also had good relationships with members of the Lucchese and Colombo families.

  The New Jersey State Police were keeping an eye on the activities of Fiumara, DiGilio, and Bruno family member Jackie DiNorscio. While surveillance was a good way to gain valuable intel, the state police felt they needed a better angle, an undercover operation set up to allow the mobsters to hang themselves. The plan was to dangle a legitimate business in front of them and let them infiltrate, take it over, and use it as a base of operations. It was by no means a guaranteed success, however; guys like
Fiumara were cautious and not readily open to new people in their sphere.

  Future New Jersey State Police superintendent Clinton Pagano set the operation into motion with the help of an inside source, Pat Kelly, a businessman with ties to the mob. When it came time to pick the undercover operatives, Pagano chose among them Robert Weisert, Ralph Buono, and Bob Delaney. Best known as a longtime referee for the NBA, Delaney got his start as a New Jersey state trooper and was the pivotal agent in the undercover operation, codenamed Project Alpha. In a bold move, Delaney chose as his undercover name “Bobby Covert.” Not too subtle.

  Alpha got underway in the summer of 1975 when the state police opened a trucking company, Mid-Atlantic Air-Sea Transport, in Elizabeth. The building was completely wired for sound and video. The setup was nondescript—and that was the point. Even the keenest mob eye wouldn’t notice the hidden monitoring equipment, which, for 1975-era technology, was a feat. Working at the trucking company by day, Bobby Covert hung out at mob bars, like the Sting Lounge in Bayonne, at night. He eventually gained the trust of members of DiGilio’s crew. “For me,” Delaney recounted, “this early period was all about being seen, being around, trying to make some breakthroughs for the operation . . . I could talk like they talked, exude the same Jersey attitude, and come across as real.”[9]