Murder Machine

by Gene Mustain

  In another month, Walter’s tour ended. He came home to New York at a time of mounting domestic turbulence. He joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War—more for the healing effect of being among other veterans than the radical politics of some of its members. He had serious questions about whether politicians had deceived soldiers about the war’s merits but hardly identified with veterans who wanted to wage war against the government or those who fell deep into drugs and negativism. Politically, he was a liberal Republican, and so he took a job as a Nelson Rockefeller advance man in the 1968 presidential primary races.

  After that, law school at Columbia University in New York. Then, two years in a private firm. Then, the Southern District. He bought a motorcycle, got his pilot’s license and fell in love with a Sarah Lawrence graduate who became a television reporter and his wife. By December 1981, Vietnam was mainly a buried memory, but some of the traits he took to war—and some of the lessons he brought home—were now part of his investigative and prosecutorial approach.

  Walter meant it when he told John Murphy that once he took personal command of the car case he would stay with it “to the end”—but he did not believe, as Murphy did, that the case was significant. Having reviewed his predecessor’s files, he did not see Patty Testa as a major organized crime figure; the case was just a simple one of interstate shipment of stolen cars involving Patty, with the key witness being Matty Rega, who had in the interim agreed to become a cooperating witness in order to win time off his prison sentence. In Walter’s mind, Murphy’s claim that as many as seventeen homicides were related to the car-theft business in Brooklyn was interesting, but just an allegation.

  Indeed, the case’s appeal was its simplicity; it was one Walter could manage while concentrating on his new job—being administrator of the Southern District’s organized crime unit and supervising its fifteen other prosecutors. His other motivation was proving to dubious NYPD brass that the Southern District was sincere and that law enforcement agencies could lay turf issues aside and work together under the task force model.

  Early in 1982, Walter set about building a team. He already had John Murphy, Harry Brady, and a few other auto crime officers. He called on the FBI first, and discovered that their organized-crime experts also rated the Patty Testa case a minor one. Patty had not turned up in the bureau’s Empire Boulevard investigation. The Brooklyn-Queens office was on to other matters—namely, a major heroin investigation involving the Queens-based crew led by former Brownsville-Canarsie resident John Gotti, protégé of Aniello Dellacroce, boss of the Gambino family’s Manhattan faction. Unknown to Paul Castellano, Gotti’s cronies—including brother Gene—were going way off record and dealing heroin in large quantities, according to a wiretap that had recently been installed on the telephone of Gotti’s top aide.

  Seeking to increase his firepower, Walter asked Bruce Mouw, supervisor of the bureau’s “Gambino squad,” to assign six agents to the “Testa task force.” From his vantage point, Mouw could not justify the request. Patty was on the Mafia fringe; Gotti was at the center. “Out of the question,” he said. “I’ve got something good going on the Gotti crew. I have to put my resources there.”

  Walter kept cajoling. Mouw said no; then maybe; then okay, but only one agent would be assigned—“my best agent”—and “only on a very part-time basis.” Consequently, Special Agent Arthur Ruffels joined the Testa task force.

  Like Kenny McCabe’s unofficial partner Tony Nelson, who was busy on another case, “Artie” Ruffels was atypical. Unlike most agents, who are trained as accountants or lawyers, Artie was a former high school art teacher. He also was a Navy veteran, a former amateur boxer, and a champion sailboat captain. With his gold wire-rim spectacles, close-cropped silver hair, and sportscoats with turtleneck sweaters, he still looked like a member of some faculty. He had joined the bureau twelve years earlier, at age thirty-five, after an FBI man came to his school in Connecticut to give a Law Day speech at a time Artie was tired of teaching.

  A year later, he was, in FBI parlance, a “brick agent”—a street agent in the New York office, assigned to every manner of federal situation, from bank robbery to surveillance of suspected foreign spies on Manhattan’s East Side. He and another agent, Bruce Mouw, became friends, and years later Mouw asked him to seek assignment to the Gambino squad. When the assignment was made in 1981, he was required to write a report listing his “performance objectives.” Artie wrote, “One of my objectives is to destroy the Robin Hood image of the Mafia and let the public know what members of the Mafia are really like.”

  When Artie joined the Testa task force in 1982, he was forty-seven, older than anyone on the team but John Murphy. He had an outdoorsman’s weathered face, an aging athlete’s still-solid frame, and a professor’s gently circumspect manner. Murphy and others on the task force began referring to him as “Mr. FBI.”

  Artie already knew some aspects of the case because he was a long-time friend of Kenny McCabe’s, whom he had met on a previous case. Since joining the Gambino squad, he had sat on surveillance of the crew with Kenny and Tony Nelson. He knew of Vito Arena’s aborted attempts to cooperate and urged Walter to launch an all-out hunt for Vito. “Of course, with this crew, he might already be dead,” he added.

  Artie also gave Walter some feel for the geography of the case, the neighborhood of Canarsie in particular: “A natural death there is defined as six bullets to the head.”

  Readying for battle, Walter had already picked the brain of Kenny McCabe. Murphy had told him that Kenny and Joseph Wendling knew the most about Patty and company. Listening to the Brooklyn DA’s experts, Walter began to appreciate why Murphy kept insisting the case was important. The power behind Patty was Roy DeMeo, a Gambino soldier, and the power behind DeMeo was Anthony Gaggi, a Gambino capo and ally of Paul Castellano himself. “The people who work for them are all killers,” Kenny added. “They are the most vicious gang we’ve seen, and what makes them so unusual is that they are all killers. They are a whole crew of killers.”

  As Walter heard Kenny and Wendling describe how Joey Testa and Henry Borelli beat the Andrei Katz case and how Peter LaFroscia beat the John Quinn case and how the DeMeo crew had operated with virtual impunity for a decade, he began to believe that despite what the FBI thought, more deserving targets did not exist.

  “This is a group that is undervalued as far as law enforcement is concerned,” he told his boss, John Martin. “In essence, they have never been touched.”

  Walter added that it now seemed to him that the simple car case could evolve into a major racketeering and conspiracy case involving numerous defendants—in other words, a lot of time and money.

  “Whatever you need, do it,” Martin said.

  Walter’s predecessor had told him he did not believe that cooperating witness Matty Rega had told all he knew, so Walter stepped up the pressure on the former highflying owner of the Bottom of the Barrel. After acquiring more of Rega’s business records, he discovered canceled checks Rega had written to Roy DeMeo; Rega, who had not mentioned Roy’s name in previous debriefings, was brought from his prison cell to a meeting.

  “What about these?” Walter said. “And we know Roy DeMeo isn’t just a guy who hangs out around cars.”

  Matty was in no position to resist; he had signed an agreement requiring his candor about everything—if he held back, anything he had already said could be used against him. “You are in the worst of worlds,” Walter said. “You have given up information, yet you get no credit for cooperating because you haven’t done so fully.”

  Walter had given this speech before. Almost every cooperating witness tries to hold something back—until the noose around the neck tightens and the mouth starts working, as Rega’s began to do now. Suddenly, Walter had a witness able to testify about heretofore unknown elements of the case—large-scale loansharking by Roy and, most dramatic of all, a murder: Rega had heard Patty Testa talk about how Roy had gunned down a teenager who worked part-time as a vacuum cl
eaner salesman. The murder had something to do with a cocaine ripoff in which the victim was mistaken for a Cuban assassin.

  Rega also gave up the identity of an individual no one had identified yet, even though he appeared in many surveillance photographs Walter reviewed: Dominick Montiglio. Rega said that except for Gaggi and DeMeo, Montiglio knew more about the crew than anyone because he looked after Gaggi’s business with the crew.

  As the case grew, Walter began researching the applicable federal statute under which the defendants could be charged if the task force obtained enough evidence to ask a grand jury to return indictments. The Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—or “RICO,” as it was commonly referred to—was the centerpiece of a sweeping crime bill approved by Congress some dozen years before with the Mafia specifically in mind.

  The package of laws funded a program to protect and relocate witnesses, eased restrictions on wiretapping and electronic surveillance, gave prosecutors more leeway in immunizing balky witnesses, and gave the executive arm of government, rather than the judicial, authority to empanel grand juries. On paper, RICO was the most potent weapon in the government arsenal, a hammer especially molded for incorrigible career criminals such as Paul, Nino, Roy, and the DeMeo crew.

  Under certain circumstances, RICO made just the fact of membership in a criminal “enterprise” a separate federal crime punishable by up to twenty years in prison. Under RICO, it was even possible to take another shot at trying defendants for crimes they had already been acquitted of in state court by charging the crime was committed to aid the enterprise. So Walter would now take another look at the Andrei Katz and John Quinn cases.

  RICO also made it possible to use a defendant’s guilty plea against him—again on the theory that the admitted crime was part of “a pattern of racketeering” in support of the enterprise. Only two crimes, or “predicate acts,” were required to show a pattern. A guilty plea to an enterprise crime meant that a prosecutor in a RICO case was halfway home—free of charge. So Walter began taking another look at the case in which Henry and Freddy had pleaded guilty, the FBI’s Empire Boulevard case.

  Reviewing the John Quinn case, Walter learned about Quinn’s cousin Joseph Bennett—the car thief who had kept his mouth shut when Roy and Peter LaFroscia offered him money to lead Quinn and Cherie Golden to their deaths. Walter learned that when the murders occurred, Bennett was an FBI informer, and even though Bennett had not informed the FBI of the plot, he was now sitting in federal prison on an unrelated case; maybe his tongue was looser now.

  Walter, John Murphy, and others worked on Bennett during several meetings, but Bennett was a scared, bitter convict. Finally, Murphy told him: “You’ve been living with the ghost of John Quinn for five years. Why don’t you put it to rest?”

  “You’re right,” Bennett said.

  With cooperating witness number two in the fold, Roy DeMeo became the case’s primary target. Freddy, Henry, Joey and Anthony, and LaFroscia all moved ahead of Patty Testa in importance; except possibly with loansharking, Walter did not see the case reaching to Anthony Gaggi or his nephew, who appeared too far removed from the crew’s actual crimes.

  Walter’s confidence in the value of the case was increasing, but he was realistic too. The case was going to take time. Getting Matty Rega and Joseph Bennett into the fold were big successes, but just pieces of what was now a much larger puzzle.

  Murphy’s Auto Crime Division boss, Joseph Harding, visited Walter regularly for updates. Harding wanted to move as quickly as possible against some crew members. “Let’s wait,” Walter replied. “It’s a big jumble; I’m getting a piece here, a piece there, but let’s see how far we can take it.”

  “How much more time do you need?”

  “Sixty, ninety days.” Careful, methodical Walter knew this prediction was overly optimistic. As time wore on, his comment became the case mantra and inside joke: “Sixty–ninety days.”

  The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office permitted Kenny McCabe to begin spending time with what was now the “DeMeo task force”—but each time Walter was required to submit an official request. The DA, however, rejected similar requests for Joseph Wendling’s help, much to Wendling’s chagrin. Wendling was a terrific cop, but not the best politician. Many years before, he had complained about the inability of the homicide squads to make much headway in Canarsie and had offended too many departmental egos. His aggressive nature did not suit his immediate boss either; they had an uneasy acquaintance going back to their days as kids in the same neighborhood.

  The Nassau County Police Department also assigned an officer to the task force but not Charlie Meade, the auto crime cop who had helped John Murphy so much when Murphy was first pitching the case to the Southern District. Meade had since furnished his informant to Walter, and the informant was shoring up the now less important thread of the case involving Patty Testa’s interstate shipment of stolen cars with Matty Rega.

  Meade was chagrined too. Walter had asked for him, but the Nassau detective assigned to the Falcaro-Daoud missing-persons case successfully argued to Nassau brass that he should be assigned.

  “Since I’m just a cop, and he’s a detective,” a disappointed Meade told Murphy, “I can’t plead my case to the level he can.”

  Murphy tried to be upbeat. “Yeah, well, you don’t want the glory. The glory we’re getting is sixteen- or eighteen-hour days, six or seven days a week. This guy Walter Mack is amazing.”

  Walter pushed hard for the people he wanted but placed a greater value on forging the alliance and moving the case ahead. It was one thing to get people to cooperate, another to step on toes. If any end runs would have to be made, Walter would save them for bigger moments.

  The first formal meeting of the task force took place in Walter’s large ninth-floor office on Foley Square in lower Manhattan. Windows on one side afforded a view of the entranceway to the Brooklyn Bridge, across which lay enemy territory. People were surprised that a man like Walter would have such a cluttered office: It was a confusion of half-open file drawers covered with “I Love NY” stickers; papers and law briefs piled haphazardly on work tables and desk chairs; books, knickknacks, and cartons strewn across shelves and the floor. In the corners, baseball bats, umbrellas, and tennis rackets leaned against poster-size crime-scene exhibits from old cases or were potted in a large Civil Defense emergency potable-water container. The two most unsurprising details hung on one wall and sat on his credenza—a watercolor of Marines on the move from the Corps’ Combat Art Collection and a replica of the sculpture of Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima.

  “Don’t worry, I can put my finger on anything in a second,” Walter would tell first-time visitors.

  Everyone at the meeting was optimistic. Because Rega and Bennett had opened up, the beast of Brooklyn, Roy DeMeo, was within their sights—especially if Vito Arena could be found.

  “And I know Roy,” Kenny said. “He can’t take pressure. He’ll crack. So when the time comes he’s either going to roll and come on board with us, or his own friends are going to kill him.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Retirement Party

  During the first half of 1982, the newly invigorated members of Walter Mack’s team chased Vito Arena tips all across the country, even though they believed it was more likely he and Joey Lee were in the New York area—because some more doctors and dentists had been robbed by men fitting their description and ways and means. Because they were questioning so many lowlifes, the intensity of the hunt and the new federal momentum behind it became apparent to Roy, who stepped up his own efforts to find Vito. Roy felt that time was running out—and it was.

  While looking for Vito, the task force kept pestering Roy. In May, at the Gemini, Roy again denied to Kenny McCabe that he knew any Vito, but asked: “Have you got a picture?” At the time, Kenny did not.

  Two weeks later while at home, Kenny got a tip that Vito was with Roy in a restaurant nearby. Two auto crimes cops on the task force, John
Murphy and Harry Brady, happened to be at Kenny’s home, paying a get-well call. Days before, in a freak accident at a neighbor’s home, Kenny had injured a leg, but he and the others went to the restaurant to check out the tip. He was wearing bermuda shorts, because of a cast on the injured leg.

  Roy was with Joey and Anthony and a beefy man the tipster had mistaken for Vito. Roy, greeting the officers gregariously, was about to make a mistake too.

  “Hi, Kenny! You guys want to join us? What the fuck happened to your leg?”

  “This is not a social call. We’re looking for Vito.”

  “Vito’s not here.”

  “Oh, you do know who he is. I thought you needed a picture.”

  Embarrassed, Roy tried to recover as best he could. “Look,” he said, now all defiant, “I do know who he is, and he’s not here!”

  “Where is he?” Murphy asked.

  “Haven’t seen him in ten months.”

  The officers searched the restaurant, then left, confident that in Roy’s effort to salvage his ego he had actually told the truth. If Roy had not seen Vito in ten months, Vito was probably alive.

  He was not just alive, it soon turned out, but nearby.

  Early on the evening of June 4, 1982, as a ferocious spring storm pelted Suffolk County, a stolen car with two hungry men inside pulled into the parking lot of the Good Earth Restaurant in Terryville. Vito Arena and Joey Lee got out and went inside for a Chinese meal.

  Since slipping through the cracks a year earlier, Vito and Joey had discussed a preemptive strike against Roy, but decided, as Henry Borelli always said, that Roy could not be killed. They had been living in a motel near the restaurant and taking their phony father-son act to dentists’ and doctors’ offices whenever they ran out of money. They were wanted not just by the task force but by robbery squads in Nassau County and Brooklyn.