by Joe Pistone
Even if Vecchione doesn’t have a wink and a nod of an informal deal on “Mafia Agent,” prosecuting Lin vigorously would still help Vecchione’s first book sales. By prosecuting the Mafia Agent—win or lose—he’d get plenty of headlines that would help him promote “Mafia Detectives.” Next stop, Hollywood. Vecchione wouldn’t even need James Caan to show up and throw him thumbsup in front of the jury. Although, endorsement from a star is always a welcomed touch.
Could any of this “personal interest in self-promotion and making money” stuff have been on Vecchione’s mind when he first opened Angela’s package? When he opposed Lin’s bail? When he accused retired dedicated FBI agents of conspiring to intimidate witnesses? When he publicly accused these decent heroic lawmen of planning to help Lin flee the country?
You swim right into a fish net when you cross over the line into your own self-interest. In the first Donnie Brasco, we stayed on the ethical side of the line and I’m not even a lawyer. Consider that Vecchione would actually be freer to write his book—as Marcia Clark was—if he lost Lin’s case in front of a jury. He wouldn’t have to wait for Lin’s appeals to be exhausted.
As the songwriter Johnny Mercer put it, “Hooray for Hollywood, where you’re terrific if you’re even good.”
CHAPTER 23
THE LAST DON
JUST BECAUSE YOU WORK for the government does not mean that you lack passion for your work, that you’re in it for the security, the benefits, and the pension. Whether you’re a postal worker or the president, you can still have a passion for getting your job done as well as you can get it done. Government workers, I found, are no different from a movie’s cast and crew.
I knew only a handful of people in the FBI who somehow lost their passion along the way. And nearly every one of us agents retires with one case that still rankles because of the way it ended up—either in defeat, or unsolved, or in an incomplete victory.
You’d have no trouble guessing that the Bonanno family and I had a special relationship that lasted long after I left the Bureau both times. The Galante hit and the three capos’ hit were crimes that went largely unsolved. Nothing for nothing, and I’ll keep it short, but had I stayed under a couple more months I am certain I’d have brought home the goods on Galante and the three capos.
The hit that I would not have been able to get any evidence on was obviously Sonny Black’s hit, because he went as a result of my coming out and he’d have gotten it just as surely no matter when I came out. And that’s the hit that I still asked about from time to time over the years when I spoke to the agents working the Bonanno family.
The hit could not have been done without Big Joey Massino. Rusty was in jail when I came out and Sonny needed to go. Rusty used Joey on the outside to take care of business for him.
Joey, meanwhile, prospered from the hit on Sonny. Joey no longer had Sonny as a rival to take over the top spot when Rusty died. Everybody inside and outside the Bonanno family knew Joey was the top power now that Sonny was gone.
The first thing Joey did after Rusty died was to shut down the social clubs. Joey, who was an electronics whiz himself and very clever at finding bugs, learned from Gotti’s mistakes at the Ravenite and the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, as well as the bugs in the rest of the cases. Joey figured that the social clubs were no longer safe havens from the prying government. Joey knew he couldn’t find all the bugs all the time, and the bugging devices were getting harder and harder to detect.
If I had been consigliere, however, I would have recommended against closing the social clubs because they gave a cohesiveness and unity to a crew that bred loyalty. It was a lot harder to turn on people you spent every day with at a club than people you saw only when your work required it. And any business you needed to discuss in a social club you could write down on paper and immediately burn the paper. If someone couldn’t read or write you could always turn the TV up and whisper to him.
Big Joey was a dropout from Grover Cleveland High School, but what I’m talking about here isn’t rocket science. It never occurred to Joey because he too, like the other bosses, was hearing our footsteps every time he made a decision.
The next thing Joey did was to isolate himself further from his men by requiring that they never utter his name. Like the Chin’s men touching their chins, Joey’s men would have to touch their ear. Some of the agents began to call him Joey the Ear.
Joey would conduct some minor business at his restaurant, the CasaBlanca. It was decorated in the motif of the classic Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman film. “Here’s looking at you, kid” was Bogart’s classic line. And business could be conducted there simply with looks.
But most of Joey’s business was conducted on location in places like Monte Carlo, Paris, or Mexico. He was taking no chances on being bugged or having his activity filmed in the U.S.A.
By 2002, ten years after he got out, Joey had earned the nickname of the Last Don. His was the only family not to fall apart; the only family to prosper; the only family not to have a single made man ever turn for the 71 years of its life. Joey was also the only clearly identifiable boss of a family. Thanks to the Mafia Commission Case and the individual family cases, the other bosses were here today and gone tomorrow. All the major bosses were in jail except Joey. And Joey, for reasons known only to him, changed the ceremony for made men. They were no longer to be inducted into the Bonanno family. They were to be inducted into the Massino family.
For Christmas 2002 I got a present I could never have expected. A little birdie told me that the Sonny Black murder was solved and there would be an indictment on it. There sure was.
On January 9, 2003, Big Joey Massino was arrested under RICO for a single murder, the murder of Sonny Black Napolitano. Good-looking Sal Vitale, Joey’s underboss and brother-in-law, was named in the same indictment, but for another murder.
A lot had changed since Big Joey orchestrated Sonny’s murder and waited outside in a van with a gun in case Sonny ran out still breathing. The Bureau now used something called forensic accounting. They had agents who specialized in tracking down a criminal’s assets and linking them to his profits from crime. Congress had passed civil forfeiture laws designed to strip these ill-gotten assets from Mafia members and others such as drug lords. Forensic accounting agents Kimberly McCaffrey and Jeffrey Sallet had been able to identify over ten million dollars worth of illicit assets belonging to Joey and his wife Josephine, who was Good-looking Sal’s sister.
Another thing that had changed was the sentencing guidelines in federal cases. Congress had eliminated federal parole. A convicted criminal was required to serve 85 percent of the time he got.
Joey would have been better off getting arrested in 1981 for the Sonny Black murder.
Can you imagine how I felt to hear the news that Sonny Black’s 22-year-old murder, which had been caused by the Donnie Brasco operation, was now about to bring down Big Joey Massino?
As the weeks went by the news got even better and better. Made men who had been indicted with Joey were jumping ship, going into Witness Protection, and being debriefed. Charges were being added.When all the debriefing was done there were six more murders added to the murder of Sonny Black. For example, Joey the Mook D’Amico, whose mother paid to have him made, admitted that he killed his uncle Tony Mirra on orders of Big Joey Massino on account of me. Another made man turned and admitted that Joey had ordered the hit on my old crewmember, Boots Tomasulo’s son. This hit was done because when Boots died his son wouldn’t share his father’s gambling machines that he felt he inherited.
One of Sonny’s shooters was Frank Lino, a Bonanno capo and the cousin and former roommate of Gambino capo and shooter of Big Paul Castellano, Eddie Lino, who the Mafia Cops whacked on the Belt Parkway. After 27 years as a Bonanno, Frank Lino turned. Lino described how he and Stevie Beef Cannone lured Sonny to a house in Staten Island. There was a meeting in the basement that was supposed to be held to discuss me. Sonny headed downstairs, but he turned when he heard
the door slam. Lino shoved Sonny down and Sonny ended up on all fours. Another man fired into Sonny, but his gun jammed. Not wanting to prolong his agony the tough Sonny Black said, “Hit me once more. Make it good.” And they finished him off.
Turncoats described how Big Joey and Sonny Black had orchestrated the May 5, 1981 massacre of the three capos and the accidental paralyzing of another made man. Good-looking Sal and three Zips from Canada were hiding in a cloakroom when the three capos walked into a social club with George from Canada. When George gave the signal, the four shooters burst out and opened fire on the capos. In 1987, Joey had beaten the charge of conspiracy to murder the three capos in our Bonanno family trial when he got back from the Poconos. But under the genius of RICO, he had been charged here with directly participating in the May 5 hit on the three capos. It was technically a different charge and therefore not barred by double jeopardy.
Goldie Leisenheimer, who hid Joey at his parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains, was a lookout on the May 5 hit. Joey had to smart more than a little bit when he learned that his disciple, young Goldie, had turned.
But the unkindest cut of all came when Good-looking Sal flipped in front of his own sister. No doubt Sal flipped because of the deck that was stacked against him and because of all those who had already flipped. But Sal claimed that Big Joey had frozen him out long before he flipped. From having been there, I can see how all that isolation that Big Joey had instituted for the Massino family influenced Sal against Joey long before Sal turned. Things such as closing the social clubs—including the club the two boyhood friends had together, J& S Cake—could not have endeared Big Joey to Sal. I’m sure that club meant the world to Good-looking Sal.
Another thing that had changed over the years was the 1994 federal murderin-aid-of-racketeering law that provided for the death penalty. It was a federal penalty and could be enforced in New York City for any RICO murder that qualified after 1994 regardless of whether the State of New York had a death penalty that was useable in the same circumstances. Nothing for nothing, but Governor Mario Cuomo had vetoed the state death penalty time after time when he was governor, regardless of the will of the people—and here it was, about to be used against the old “ugly stereotype.”
Thanks to Good-looking Sal, a separate indictment was brought against Big Joey for an eighth murder that subjected Joey to death. It was the March 18, 1999 hit on capo George from Canada. George had made the mistake of complaining to Joey about the excessive cocaine use of another capo. Big Joey thought the otherwise very loyal George from Canada was questioning his authority. Big Joey told Good-looking Sal,“George has got to go.” Big Joey had planned to take Josephine to Cancun, Mexico, no doubt for a meeting down there with some capo or other. Joey said to Sal, “Get it done before I get home.” Sal got it done as instructed, and now Joey was going to get a hot load from a needle if he got convicted for ordering it.
Every bit of this stemmed from the murder of Sonny Black. It was too good to be true, but it was as true as it gets. It was the domino theory in spades. The Donnie Brasco operation was finally finishing its unfinished business.
Jury selection began in April 2004 in what I’ll take the privilege of calling the Sonny Black Plus Six RICO murder case. By the time it went to trial there was almost no one left in the Bonanno family to take to trial. Among the 422 people assembled for jury selection was the daughter of Bobby Boriello, one of the shooters of Big Paul Castellano and whose own murder was one of two dropped from the Mafia Cops case to satisfy the judge. The juror was excused.
It turned out they didn’t need me in this case. In his opening statement to the jury, Joey’s lawyer admitted that Joey was the boss of the Bonanno family. Hello. I heard that, loud and clear. The question of whether there was a Mafia or whether it was just “a lot of baloney” was now like the ancient question of whether the earth was round or flat.
Joey’s lawyer, a Mafia defense attorney named David Breitbart, claimed in his opening statement that the turncoat witnesses against Joey had been subjected to “the same methods that were used in Iraq” against prisoners. The turncoats “were sleep-deprived and weakened. And then . . . offered a deal.” The government got their witnesses to turn against Joey because the government endeavored to “bribe them . . . to torture them.”
Once the witnesses took the stand and the jurors got a chance to see them, no juror in his right mind would think these tough men had been tortured—or if they had been tortured, that they wouldn’t have stood the torture like men. These witnesses proved they weren’t pansies when they stood up to Brietbart’s desperate cross-examinations.
An old pal o’ mine, retired agent Doug Fencl—the agent who had informed Sonny of my status as an agent—was subpoenaed as a prosecution witness. The prosecutor first wanted Doug to look at some photos in preparation. From behind him Doug heard a familiar voice call out, “Hey Dougie.”
Doug turned around to face Big Joey Massino sitting with his lawyer.
“Joey, how’re you doing?” Doug said, heading over to Joey to shake hands.
“Doug,” Joey asked. “What kind of bullshit is this case?”
“I don’t have a clue,” Doug said. “I’m just here to testify on a minor point.”
The two old adversaries had a pleasant visit with each other, talking about their health and the health of their families.
The trial, however, was an unpleasant slaughter for Big Joey.
After the anonymous jury found Joey guilty of all eleven counts, the United States Attorney for Brooklyn, Roslynn Mauskopf, said, “Joseph Massino reigned over the Bonanno crime family’s bloody history for more than two decades. He was the last boss walking the streets of New York.”
Joey’s next scheduled trial was the death penalty case for the whack on George from Canada.
Immediately following the July 30, 2004 verdict in the Sonny Black Plus Six RICO murder case, and without leaving the courtroom, Joey told a court officer, “I need to talk to the judge.”
Before the trial had begun in May 2004, nearly three months earlier, Joey had appointed an acting boss,Vinnie Gorgeous Basciano.Vinnie Gorgeous got indicted for RICO and murder after Joey’s conviction and the two of them were able to chat one afternoon in jail. During the chat Vinnie Gorgeous proposed a hit on Greg Andres, one of the prosecutors in Joey’s trial. Unknown to Vinnie, the acting boss, his own real boss, was recording the conversation.
When Joey had met with the judge immediately following the guilty verdicts, his first words were, “I’m ready to talk.”
In exchange for saving himself from a death sentence, and while accepting life without parole, and in consideration of saving about ten percent for his wife and family of the over $10 million asset forfeiture, Big Joey Massino became the first real boss in history to flip and the first real boss in history to wear a wire against his own family—in this case against his own family’s acting boss, whom he had just appointed.
Joey directed the Bureau to the buried bodies of the two capos whose bodies had not been found following the May 5 massacre of the three capos. They were buried right near where Sonny Red’s body had been found wearing his Cartier watch. But for some reason no one had looked much further when Sonny Red’s body was discovered.
Joey’s jailhouse wire of Vinnie Gorgeous led to the arrest of one of his lawyers, a defense attorney gofer named Thomas Lee. The 39-year-old married father of three had passed along a message to have another Bonanno soldier whacked when he got out of jail. The hit would have been done to the actual shooter of George from Canada, no doubt to silence him just in case he thought about becoming a cooperator in the death penalty case.
In early 2006 Vinnie Gorgeous Basciano went to trial on his RICO murder indictment. The trial was overshadowed in the press by the Mafia Cops case going on at the same time, and the Lin DeVecchio indictment. Good-looking Sal was one of the turncoats to testify against Vinnie Gorgeous. You can’t make these names up.
Big Joey was not use
d in the trial because the prosecutors felt he had too much baggage and the jury might think that, as boss, he had orchestrated all these other witnesses to turn and frame Vinnie as a sacrificial lamb to save their own hides. As it is, the turncoats turned the jury off anyway. Vinnie Gorgeous skated on the murder counts, but he was convicted on the rest of the RICO crimes. Vinnie is awaiting sentencing and could get 20 years. Thanks to the tough changes in the federal sentencing guidelines, he’d serve most of it and either die in the can or get out as an old man.
Meanwhile, the acting boss of the Bonannos is facing more murder charges and the conspiracy to kill the prosecutor Greg Andres. From what I hear, Big Joey will testify in those cases against Vinnie. On one of the tapes, Joey asked Vinnie why he had had a Bonanno member whacked a couple of weeks prior. Vinnie Gorgeous replied, “I thought this kid would be a good wake-up call for everybody.”
Like Tony Ducks Corallo had said, “You pick them and you kill them.”
Win or lose the single battle to defeat Vinnie Gorgeous, the destruction of the Last Don by turning him into an informer was a huge victory in the war against the Mafia.
In the end Big Joey Massino became what Sonny Black never would have become: a rat. Joey killed Sonny Black for being fooled by me, which was an honest mistake. But that murder caught up to Joey, and when it did it revealed his deep character to be weaker than anyone whose death he had ordered along the way.
In his summation in the Mafia Commission Case, prosecutor Mike Chertoff had said about the Commission bosses: “They joined an organization which was disciplined, which had rules that were enforceable by punishment, including the punishment of death.”
Who out there could believe today—twenty years later—that the Mafia is a “disciplined” organization with “rules” that are “enforceable.” If anybody said to me today what Mike Chertoff said to the Mafia Commission Case jury, I’m afraid I’d have to borrow the words of Governor Mario Cuomo and call that kind of talk “a lot of baloney.”
