by Joe Pistone
l-r: Bonanno soldiers “Good Looking” Sal Vitale (left) and Anthony “Mr. Fish” Rabito outside Toyland.
l-r: FBI agents Jerry Loar, James Kinne, and Doug Fencl emerge from Sonny Black’s apartment after informing him that “Donnie Brasco” was an FBI agent.
Rudy Giuliani (left), lead prosecutor in many of the crucial Mafia trials, with FBI Director William Webster.
Luigi Ronsisvalle (seated), lifetime criminal and star witness in the Pizza Connection Case.
Gaetano Badalamenti, the Sicilian “Zip” boss convicted in the Pizza Connection Case.
Genovese boss “Fat” Tony Salerno.
Genovese boss (succeeding Salerno) Vincent “The Chin” Gigante.
Gambino boss, and boss of bosses of the Mafia Commission, Paul Castellano.
Gambino boss Paul Castellano’s second-in-command, Thomas Billoti, lies dead in the street outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. Castellano’s fresh corpse lay on the other side of the car.
Gambino boss (after Castellano) John “The Dapper Don” Gotti.
Longtime Philly family boss, Angelo Bruno, sits dead in his car as a Philadelphia policeman looks on.
Lucchese family boss Tony “Ducks” Corallo.
Lucchese underboss Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro.
Lucchese underboos (after Santoro) Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso.
The “Mafia Cops”, l-r: Steve Caracappa and Louis Eppolito.
Colombo family soldier “Crazy Joey” Gallo.
Colombo boss Carmine “The Snake” Persico.
Ralph Scopo, Colombo soldier and president of the New York District Council of Cement and Concrete Workers.
“Little Allie Boy” Persico, Colombo soldier and son of Carmine.
Colombo capo Greg Scarpa Sr. (left) and FBI agent Lin DeVecchio.
CHAPTER 12
THE MAFIA COMMISSION CASE
“IF IT WASN’T FOR ME, there wouldn’t be no Mafia left.”
That was the gruff voice of Genovese family boss Fat Tony Salerno. With a cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, Fat Tony was talking to another Tony, the Lucchese family boss, Tony Ducks Corallo. They were singing sweet music to the FBI, but they didn’t know it. Thanks to another law drafted by Bob Blakey that allowed bug and wiretap evidence in trial (as long as the affidavit for the warrant contained sufficient facts), Jimmy Kallstrom’s wizards had bugged Fat Tony Salerno’s Palma Boys Social Club on East 115th Street in the Italian section of East Harlem.
“I made all the guys,” Genovese boss Fat Tony Salerno explained.
“You pick them,” Lucchese boss Tony Ducks Corallo responded, “and you kill them.”
While normal human beings who didn’t think like that were listening in, Tony Ducks Corallo went on to discuss a “crippled” Mafia soldier who needed killing and would be killed despite his disability.
“If it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t be no Mafia left. I made all the guys.”
“You pick them and you kill them.”
That snippet of dialogue spoke volumes about the Mafia Commission.
When the green light was given in 1983 to proceed with the Mafia Commission Case investigation, supervising agent Lin DeVecchio met with Case Agent Pat Marshall and instructed him to listen to every word of every tape and watch every frame of every video that had been gathered in the five separate investigations by five separate squads of the five families under Operation Genus. This task would involve tapes and videos done by the FBI, the NYPD, and the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. Pat Marshall would be listening for evidence that proved the Mafia Commission was a criminal enterprise and that the Commission bosses were the overseers of that enterprise.
“And then,” Lin DeVecchio told Pat, “I want you to get with Joe Pistone—but check with Jules first—and get him to give you a full dump on everything he knows about how the bosses work together.”
The plan was that the five individual New York family RICO case investigations would continue, but that the Mafia Commission investigation would take priority. There were some who felt that indicting the bosses of each New York family together in one RICO indictment was merely grandstanding, and that it would jeopardize the individual family cases stemming from the individual investigations of each family—investigations that would lead to separate indictments against each family. We had already had the first individual family trial in 1982—the Bonanno family case—and it had been a success and had proven that RICO could be applied to an individual family.
Nevertheless, the vision of a Mafia Commission Case that Jules, Jimmy Kossler, Jimmy Kallstrom, and I had—even before I came out—was not steered off course by anybody who thought we were grandstanding. They were entitled to their opinion, but we still strongly supported getting the Commission all at once in one indictment and one trial.
First, there were interlocking crimes in which several families were partnered, such as the partnerships between the Bonanno family and both the Balistrieri and Trafficante families that I facilitated. Second and more importantly, with all the experience the four of us had with the Mafia, we knew that getting them all at once would have the biggest impact. Getting them piecemeal would still leave a fully functioning Commission in place to replace bosses and assure an orderly succession of any boss who was convicted. But if the Commission bosses were convicted in a single trial, and if the judge did the right thing and banged them good, they would all be quitting at once. There would be no legitimate functioning Commission to assure a bloodless succession. There would be the potential for enormous chaos and disarray.
By the time Pat Marshall was finished, he had assembled the individual strands of evidence that led to a single grand jury indictment against the entire Mafia Commission, several lesser Mafia officials, and the bosses of the five families: Big Paul Castellano (Gambino); Fat Tony Salerno (Genovese); Tony Ducks Corallo (Lucchese); Carmine Persico (Colombo); and Rusty Rastelli (Bonanno).
Believe it or not, during the time of this expensive Mafia Commission investigation—from about 1983 to the indictment in February 1985—there was still an unsettled issue among certain quarters about whether there really was a nationwide Mafia with a Commission. The Mafia criminals and their allies had long denied it.
In fact, the Mafia put enough pressure on the producers of the 1972 film, The Godfather, such that there is not a single mention of the word “Mafia” anywhere in that movie. The Mafia also had influence over even more important people in this regard.
While under indictment in the Mafia Commission Case, and while on trial in a separate Gambino family RICO case involving stolen luxury cars being shipped to Kuwait, Big Paul Castellano was whacked on December 16, 1985 in front of Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. The very next day, the Democratic Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, gave a press conference, essentially denying the existence of the Mafia. In a tactic reminiscent of what had been done during the filming of The Godfather, Governor Cuomo urged the press and all the media to stop using the word “Mafia” in news reports about the Big Paul Castellano hit. Cuomo said, “. . . every time you say it [Mafia], you suggest to people that organized crime is Italian. It’s an ugly stereotype.” And then he took the Mafia’s 50-year-old party line, saying, “You’re telling me that Mafia is an organization, and I’m telling you that’s a lot of baloney.”
A “lot of baloney”? While we were out there working hard and risking our lives to prove that the Mafia was a criminal organization, Mario Cuomo was campaigning for the press to stop reporting that the Mafia even existed. At the moment he spoke, the newspapers were full of stories about the Pizza Connection trial and the Gambino family trial. Both had been going on for a couple of months at that point. They were huge news, and the Gambino family trial especially so, with the colorful feature story about gay hit man Vic Arena who wanted plastic surgery. Cuomo knew that we were in those and other trials in New York City and around the country, trying to prove to a jury that the Mafia was an organized crime enterprise so th
at we could put away numerous badguys under the RICO law.
An “ugly stereotype”? At the moment Cuomo chastised the press, the Italian-American Big Paul Castellano had been a key defendant in the Gambino family RICO trial that would continue without him. At the moment Cuomo spoke, Big Paul had been under indictment and facing trial as the star defendant in the wellpublicized Mafia Commission trial. I was preparing to testify that a man could not be a made member of the Mafia unless his father was 100% Italian. But then, what did I know?
Why did the governor hold a press conference to use his prestige and the power of his position against what we were doing? What was his reason? Worse than trying to suppress the news and the truth, Cuomo was verbally, at least, undermining his own state investigators. The hard and dangerous work of Ronald Goldstock’s New York State Organized Crime Task Force had provided important pieces of the Mafia Commission Case and the other Mafia family RICO cases. And Ronald Goldstock reported up the chain of command to his governor, Cuomo, formerly a New York City lawyer, who was telling the world that RICO did not apply to people like Big Paul and those who would soon whack him and Tommy Bilotti in broad daylight in front of a New York City restaurant nine days before Christmas.
On September 8, 1986, almost a year to the day after jury selection had begun in the still-ongoing Pizza Connection trial, the Mafia Commission Case went to trial in the same federal courthouse in Manhattan, in the courtroom right next door. It lasted nine weeks and was concluded while the Pizza Connection trial still had four more months—and two more shootings of defendants—to go.
There were no shootings during the Mafia Commission trial. There had been two deaths of indicted defendants, but they had occurred after the indictment had been handed down and before the trial began. Two weeks before Big Paul Castellano was gunned down (along with Bilotti, his right-hand man and father of nine children), the powerful Gambino underboss Neil Dellacroce died of cancer.
Those deaths meant that the Gambino family would not be represented in the Mafia Commission Case. We’d lose our star defendant, the boss of bosses, and some of the tapes from the bugs at the White House because they were relevant only as to Big Paul. John Gotti immediately took over the Gambino family, but we had no evidence against him, as he had not taken part in any of the Commission’s activity during the time of the bugs and taps or during the time that I was undercover. In fact, while I was undercover, John Gotti was a soldier, a hijacker, and a degenerate gambler who lost huge sums. He and his associates at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club were also known for being involved in narcotics trafficking.
Prior to trial, lead prosecutor Rudy Giuliani and his appointed trial prosecutor Mike Chertoff had made the decision to drop Rusty Rastelli from the case. The Bonanno family had been kicked off the Commission when I surfaced, and Rusty was in jail during the entire time of the investigation. Therefore, Rusty’s voice was nowhere to be found on the tapes. But the main reason for dropping Rusty was the ongoing Local 814 case. That case had gone to trial in Brooklyn on May 12, 1986 and was still in trial when the Mafia Commission trial began on September 8, 1986. Rusty couldn’t be in two courtrooms at the same time.
It was a shame to lose two of the five families from the indictment. As a consequence, the Gambino and Bonanno families, at least for a while, had an orderly succession as far as leadership was concerned.
The principal predicate crime of the Commission trial, besides murder, was extortion—a crime involving something called the Concrete Club. It was an arrangement in which a Colombo soldier and union boss, Ralph Scopo, was the primary player. Ralph Scopo was the president of the New York District Council of Cement and Concrete Workers. His hobby was collecting cars, and he transacted Mafia business in them. Unbeknownst to him, bugs were in as many of his cars as were feasible to bug.
The Concrete Club was a small, secret group of seven concrete contractors who reported to Ralph Scopo and made payments to him. Ralph Scopo collected two percent of the gross value of every successful bid for every concrete work valued above two million dollars in every single construction job in New York City. The seven contractors rigged their bids so that they would take turns winning, and the bids would be padded to ensure enough extra money to make the payoffs to Ralph Scopo. No other contractors were permitted to bid or they’d have union trouble, and the seven contractors were not permitted to bid on jobs worth less than 2 million dollars (Ralph Scopo explained to a club member that the family bosses felt the smaller contractors “had to eat, too”) Scopo sent the payoffs from the Concrete Club upstream to the bosses of the four remaining families that comprised the Mafia Commission. The fact that Rusty was not on the Commission because of me, cost him a share. Lucky for him, it also bounced him off the Mafia Commission Case indictment prior to trial.
Although Rusty was bounced, there was one Bonanno capo—Bruno Indelicato—added to the indictment in the Mafia Commission Case.
The principal crime of violence in the RICO indictment was the 1979 murder of Carmine Galante. It was believed that the two Zips, Cesare Bonventre and Baldo Amato—Galante’s bodyguards—had been active participants in the killings that took place at Joe and Mary’s Restaurant. Cesare Bonventre had been murdered shortly after his indictment in the Pizza Connection Case, and Baldo Amato was on trial next-door in that case. However, in addition to Bonventre and Amato’s participation in the Galante hit, it was known that there were three masked gunmen who burst in and opened fire. Pat Marshall had an idea how to unmask one of them.
That one was Bruno Indelicato, my contract-murder target. Following the Galante hit in 1979, Bruno had been upped to capo as a reward for his participation in the hit. Two years later, the May 5, 1981 killing of three capos was supposed to have been a killing of four capos, but Bruno never showed up for his own murder. Instead he was around the corner scoring and doing cocaine.
The Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street in Manhattan was the semiofficial headquarters of the Gambino family. Neil Dellacroce, the old-time underboss, held court there. The NYPD had Dellacroce under video surveillance at the club. About 45 minutes after the hit on Galante in Brooklyn, the NYPD noticed a strange occurrence. Bruno Indelicato, then known to be a Bonanno soldier and the son of capo Sonny Red Indelicato, showed up at the Ravenite. Bruno was sweating and appeared to have a gun under his shirt. Bruno was greeted in a jubilant way as if he had just hit a game-winning home run and was crossing the plate. Neil Dellacroce hugged and kissed Bruno. Bonanno consigliere Stevie Beef Cannone hugged and kissed Bruno.
What were Bonannos and Gambinos doing together at the Gambino headquarters? And what were they celebrating? It very likely had something to do with the hit on Galante 45 minutes earlier. But what? And even if the NYPD knew, how could anyone prove it?
When Pat Marshall watched the hugging and kissing in the video, he remembered that the heel of a palm print had been lifted from the right rear door of a Mercury Montego that had been used in the Galante hit. The car was a stolen clunker and it had been abandoned and recovered by the NYPD. Eyewitnesses had reported seeing a man in a ski mask carrying a shotgun get out of the Mercury from the right rear door of the car and rush into Joe and Mary’s Italian Restaurant. In 1979, the NYPD did not have the capability to take and save what are called “major case prints,” which include a set of prints of the entire palm from pinky to thumb, including the heel. Bruno Indelicato had been arrested and printed before, but no one had anything more than his fingerprints on file.
After Pat Marshall recalled the palm print, he had Bruno’s car followed over the George Washington Bridge that spans the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. Now, I’m not going to accuse Pat Marshall of setting Bruno up for a bogus traffic stop after crossing the Hudson River. I’m not going to accuse Pat Marshall of having Bruno followed until he committed a traffic offense that would have legally justified a stop and frisk. Nope, not me. That tactic might be against one of the thousands of rules that govern today’s police work. But—surp
rise, surprise—Bruno’s car was stopped for a traffic infraction, and a weapon was found in Bruno’s possession, and Bruno was taken in for carrying a concealed deadly weapon. This time a major case print was taken and, bingo: it matched.
It was Bruno who had exited the rear door of the Mercury and had burst into Joe and Mary’s with a shotgun in his possession. It was Bruno who had blasted and wasted Carmine Galante and then reported directly to the Gambino family headquarters, and gotten a big juicy hug and kiss from the boss of bosses’ underboss, Neil Dellacroce.
This revelation formed not only a solid case of murder against Bruno; it was a case against the Mafia Commission.
Nothing for nothing, but how’s this for a connection: on behalf of Rusty’s remaining in place as the Bonanno boss, I had been picked to kill the man who two years earlier had been picked to kill Carmine Galante on behalf of Rusty being restored as the Bonanno boss. “You pick them and you kill them.”
Rusty’s family’s founding father, Joe Bananas, at 79, came close to being drafted into the Mafia Commission Case by Rudy Giuliani. In 1983, Joe Bananas published his autobiography, A Man of Honor. In the book, while he only hinted at his own crimes, Joe Bananas described the formation and the workings of the Commission. When Rudy read the book and saw Joe Bananas promoting it on 60 Minutes, he said, “If Bonanno can write about a Commission, I can indict it.”
Rudy subpoenaed Joe Bananas. Rudy envisioned that he would give Joe Bananas immunity and force the former boss to testify about the things he had written in his book, especially the origin and evolution of the Commission from its roots in 1931 until Joe Bananas got kicked off in the 1960s when he was told to give up his New York crime family and retire to Arizona in exile. This exile was punishment for violating the rules of the Commission, especially the rule that prohibited killing a boss without Commission approval.
