King of the Godfathers: "Big Joey" Massino and the Fall of the Bonanno Crime Family (25 page)

“How do they recruit a witness? Do they bribe them? Do they torture them? You better believe it,” the attorney said.

Those remarks brought an instant objection from Andres, but Garaufis let Breitbart soldier on, even to the point where the defense attorney made the grandiose promise that “I am going to prove to you that the same methods being used in Iraq” were being used in the federal jails where the witnesses were kept before they began cooperating against Massino. Sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, constant surveillance, and promises of leniency on sentencing were all the techniques the government used to get the witnesses to cooperate and testify.

Breitbart’s remarks about Iraq refered to the Abu Ghraib scandal involving mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military forces, something that had recently been in the news. The reference to Abu Ghraib drew gasps from some spectators and smirks from some in the news media. The Gulf War reference seemed overblown. Breitbart was going to have to really make good on that claim.

The point Breitbart wanted to drive home was that the witnesses had committed numerous murders but that they could get special letters that might help them get light sentences.

“Is that seduction? Is that bribery? Is that torture? I most respectfully suggest it is,” he said.

The mobsters who turned on Joseph Massino, Breitbart noted, were each “a master at the lie” as shown by the fact that they had lured various victims to their deaths by lying.

“Do you think they say to Tony Mirra, ‘Tony, come with me, we are going to shoot you in the head twice,’” said Breitbart. “No, they have to be so convincing, they have keep a straight face, they have to contort themselves in a way that will convince the individual [victim] that they are going for a joyride, they are going for an important meeting, they are going for a meal, they are going for a drink.”

The bottom line for the mob witnesses, said Breitbart, was that all they had to do was say, “Joe [Massino] told me to do it,” and they could go home once the judge gave them a light sentence no matter how many murders they did.

Breitbart concluded his opening remarks by saying the seven homicide charges against his client were a sham created to make what was a gambling case into something bigger. He told the jurors they would discover that for themselves and vote to acquit Massino.

The prosecution’s first big witness was Anthony Giliberti, the former Teamster official who had been a witness against Massino, Philip Rastelli, and several other Bonanno family members and associates in their 1985 trial in the Brooklyn federal court that led to their conviction. Giliberti was the man who Massino was accused of conspiring to kill through a failed assassination attempt. According to the prosecution, Massino’s motive was to prevent Giliberti from ever testifying against him.

When Giliberti took the witness stand this time around against Massino, he was frail and had a lot of physical problems. He was questioned by Mitra Hormozi. A thin woman with a fine-boned face and eyes that bespoke of her Iranian ancestry, Hormozi brought a softer presence to the prosecution table. She had been assigned to the Massino trial team in early 2003 and was responsible for debriefing and preparing Richard Cantarella for trial.

If Andres seemed driven, edgy, and ill tempered, Hormozi was smooth, easy going, and chatty. She would take teasing about her long engagement to her boyfriend because one trial or another, seemed to push her nuptials further into the future. “He is going to leave you,” Cantarella once joked with her. Even Massino warmed up to her, telling her to eat and gain weight. When Hormozi told Massino that it was okay to be thin—just look at his svelte wife—the crime boss said Josephine had lost weight because of one thing: “stress.”

Under Hormozi’s patient questioning, Giliberti revealed in his testimony that he had a fine career as a union thug.

“We stopped a lot of nonunion people from working in the union territory,” Giliberti said. “If we couldn’t organize them, they wouldn’t cooperate, we’d burn their trucks down…or cut up their tires or do something to make it miserable for them.”

Giliberti talked about union slush funds supplied by shakedowns of moving companies. Some of the money was placed in envelopes and given to “some people I know,” said Giliberti, referring to Philip Rastelli. It turned out that Giliberti’s ties to Rastelli were more than just money. His sister, Mildred, had married Rastelli’s brother, Carmine.

Giliberti said he and Massino once had an altercation at a restaurant in Queens known as Bow Wow in which the defendant punched him and threatened to kill him. He also recounted how he was shot nine times outside his house. But at times Giliberti seemed confused and hesitant, feeling the affects of various medications.

“I feel like an old man,” Giliberti said at one point. “When I’m walking down the street and the medicine starts affecting me. I don’t know why, but it does.”

He sometimes went off on tangents, referring to Hormozi as a “nice young lady, old enough to be my daughter, I wish she was.” Queried about his love life, Giliberti said, “Sure, I had a lot of girls.”

Asked if he could pick out Massino in court, even when the defendant was asked to stand up, Giliberti said he didn’t recognize him.

“If that’s Joey Massino, he’s really changed a lot. I don’t know that guy,” Giliberti said.

At one point, Garaufis seemed concerned that Giliberti’s ramblings might be an indication that medical reasons might be interfering with his ability to testify and asked Hormozi if that was the case.

“Not that we’re aware of,” she said. “He has Parkinson’s disease. I also believe he’s just very nervous right now.”

“To this observer, it looks like he’s having an Alzheimer’s episode,” interjected Breitbart.

“Judge, he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s,” said Andres.

“Thank you Doctor Andres,” Breitbart said sarcastically.

“Thank you doctors all,” said Garaufis, who then indicated that he hoped that Giliberti wouldn’t have to testify much longer.

Because of his problems recalling events, his ramblings, and his gratuitous remarks, Giliberti didn’t make the greatest of impressions; in fact, he got the government’s case off to a rocky and embarrassing start. He did testify about the conflict he had with Massino and the fact that he had been shot, circumstantial evidence that might tie Massino to the assassination attempt. But he admitted he never saw anyone give the orders for the shooting, and he didn’t recognize who actually fired at him.

But if Giliberti wasn’t an impressive witness for the government, there were plenty more who would be.

CHAPTER 21

“They Thought They Might Get Killed”

Frank Lino was born in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn, went to Lafayette High School, and at the age of fifteen he started doing petty crimes. He moved up from doing stickups with the Avenue U Boys to freelancing at the age of eighteen for New York’s Mafia families. He became a member of the Bonanno family on October 30, 1977. He was twenty-seven years old.

It was at 2:45
P.M.
on May 26, 2004, that a sixty-six-year-old Lino walked into Judge Nicholas Garaufis’s courtroom. There had been a number of witnesses who preceded Lino: ex-Teamster thug Anthony Giliberti, former FBI agent Patrick Marshall, FBI supervisor Charles Rooney, and organized crime expert Kenneth McCabe. But Lino was the first of the vaunted Bonanno crime family witnesses to take the stand against Joseph Massino and the moment was clearly historic.

Dressed in a black open-necked polo shirt and tan slacks, Lino seemed to groan as he sat down in the witness chair. He had thin, gray hair and a face rounded by age and weight. He didn’t look comfortable on the stand, and he had an air of unpleasantness.

It was lead prosecutor Greg Andres who questioned Lino in his direct testimony. It would be necessary through Lino’s testimony to set the tone of the trial and for the government to show that its cooperating witnesses could bury Massino as had been promised to the jury in Robert Henoch’s opening remarks. Since Andres was the architect of the prosecution, he knew that Lino had to sound credible and hold up under David Breitbart’s reputation as an effective cross-examiner.

Like Henoch, Andres was thin and hungry-looking, his well-tailored suit draping over a slender frame in a way that denoted a comfortable upbringing. Andres was married to the daughter of noted First Amendment litigator Floyd Abrams, and was herself a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan. Andres was driven in his job. A workaholic, he would return telephone calls as late as 1:00
A.M.
He was never far from a cup of coffee or Coke, sometimes walking into a courtroom with a beverage and a nonchalance that angered the wife of one reputed Bonanno captain who happened to be in court. Andres’s brusque manner alienated some who worked with him, and he had clearly replaced colleague Ruth Nordenbrook in charge of the case.

But even if Andres was hard to work with, he had an energy and relentlessness that was so necessary to corral the many pieces of the Massino investigation. This trial was his baby and it was only natural that he handle the questioning of Lino, the first really big witness.

The initial questioning of Lino covered the usual stuff. He recounted his criminal history, which included an arrest in 1962 on charges he aided and abetted the murder of two detectives. Despite the fact that Lino said he was beaten in police custody, he refused to cooperate with the investigation of those police murders and was never charged. He admitted being involved in illegal gambling, extortions, and selling marijuana and cocaine. Lino also admitted to committing six murders.

Under Andres’s questioning, Lino identified Massino in court as the boss of the Bonanno family. He also said that it was Massino who actually changed the name of the family to that of the Massino family.

“Why was the name changed?” Andres asked.

“Well, because Joe Bonanno, he wrote a book about the Commission, they just wanted to do away with his name,” answered Lino.

“What did people think about Joe Bonanno after he the wrote the book?”

“They said he betrayed, you know, the family,” replied Lino.

Lino recounted how he learned that Massino was only to be referred to in conversations by a touch of the ear and that the defendant held court at J&S Cake Social Club and Casablanca Restaurant in Queens. He spelled out some key Mafia rules and customs: no disrespect for the wives and daughters of members, no cooperation with law enforcement, no guns were to be brought to meetings, no drug dealing, although that was ignored, and if you got in trouble the family would pay your legal fees. Massino had offered him $75,000 for legal fees once, said Lino.

When he was arrested in January 2003, Lino said the crime family had about 12 key captains, 100 soldiers, and somewhere between 200 to 500 associates. But since the defense had already conceded that Massino was involved in the Bonanno family and scores of photographs had been shown of Massino and others meeting together, the importance of Lino’s testimony lay not so much in the structure of the crime family but on whether he would be able to tie Massino into the murders that were at the center of the case. For that, Lino’s words were spellbinding.

It was around 1981 that the Bonanno family factional infighting had developed. Three captains, Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato, Philip “Lucky” Giaccone, and Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera had been vying for control of the family and the fight had split the Bonanno family, as well as the other New York Mafia clans. Some in the Genovese family supported the three captains, while John Gotti backed Massino and Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano, said Lino.

Two meetings had already taken place, one at Ferncliffe Manor in Brooklyn and another at the Embassy Terrace, also in Brooklyn, when yet a third sit down was called to resolve the disputes within the family. The three captains had already been suspicious of such meetings and had hidden some guns at a bar Lino owned near the Embassy just in case.

“They says that if they don’t come back we should retaliate,” said Lino, referring to the three captains.

Lino explained that he didn’t think there would be trouble because a parade had been planned in Brooklyn for the return of American hostages from Iran. In fact, the Embassy meeting was peaceful, even though it didn’t resolve anything, said Lino. A third meeting was called, this time at a social club on Thirteenth Avenue and Sixty-seventh Street in Brooklyn run by Salvatore Gravano of the Gambino family. The three captains were still suspicious and wanted Lino to come along but decided that Indelicato’s son, Bruno, should stay away.

“They thought they might get killed,” explained Lino, “so they says if I would go with them.”

“Why didn’t they want Bruno to go,” asked Andres.

“Because if we got killed he would retaliate,” said Lino.

The three captains and Lino met some other Bonanno associates after 7:00 P.M. at the Sage Diner on Queens Boulevard. Though Lino didn’t know it, FBI agent Vincent Savadel had by this time already seen Massino and others leave the J&S Cake Social Club in Maspeth in a hurry. After being driven to Brooklyn, the three captains and Lino left their cars at Nathan’s Restaurant on Eighty-sixth Street and Twelfth Avenue and were taken by other cars to the Thirteenth Avenue social club.

Lino said he and the three captains walked into the downstairs area of the club that looked like a storage area. There were several others in the room, including Massino, “George [Sciascia] from Canada, Anthony Giordano, another couple of Italian guys.” Giordano left to go upstairs to see if the meeting room was ready. Giaccone was chatting with Joseph “Joe Bayonne” Zicarelli. Lino said he and Trinchera were talking with Sciascia and Zicarelli. He noticed that Indelicato was conversing with Massino, with Indelicato “holding on to Joe’s arm.”

Lino remembered that Giordano came downstairs with two guys wearing hoods.

“With hoods?” Andres asked.

“They came down with hoods and shotguns,” said Lino.

The recollection was now just too painful. Lino choked up. His eyes squinted and for an instant it looked like he would burst into tears.

“Big Trinny went to charge them and”—Lino again choked up but was finally able to say—“he got killed.”

Trinchera had charged at the hooded assailants but was immediately shot dead, dropping right where he was hit, said Lino. Giaccone was up against a wall waiting to be shot. Lino testified that Massino hit Indelicato with “an object.”

As Lino turned to flee out the door, he said he saw Giaccone get killed. Lino fled so quickly that no one was able to stop him.

The courtroom was quiet enough to hear a heart beat. Lino’s dramatic testimony was the first full eyewitness testimony to ever come out about the murders in such detail. Not only did he place Sciascia, Zicarelli, Giordano, and others at the scene but Lino also testified that Joseph Massino was indeed in the room and had actually assaulted Indelicato. It was direct evidence that was damaging to Massino even though the defendant had not been observed firing any shots. What followed next in Lino’s testimony was even worse.

Running for his life, Lino ran up the block on Sixty-eighth Street, jumping over fences and finally coming to a home where the occupants let him make a telephone call to his son, Frank Lino Jr., who drove out to Brooklyn to pick up his father. Lino said he then was driven to the home of his sister in Staten Island, where Frank Coppa, who had already been alerted by Lino in another telephone call, arrived to talk things over. Coppa took Lino to his home, where Lino’s cousin, Eddie Lino, a member of the Gambino crime family, called to ask for a meeting.

Driving back to his sister’s house, Lino said he met with Eddie Lino and several key members of the Gambino crime family: underboss Aniello Dellacroce, soldiers Gene Gotti, Angelo Ruggiero, and Frank DeCicco. The appearance of the Gambino crew showed the range of the alliance that Massino and Napolitano had forged with the other families in carrying out the murder of the three captains. During the meeting, Dellacroce told Lino he was never a target of the murder plot but that he couldn’t be told in advance because the plotters thought he might tip off the targets. Dellacroce then told Ruggiero and DeCicco to make sure others disposed of the bodies of the three captains.

On May 6, 1981, Lino said he was called to a meeting at Massino’s home on Eighty-fourth Street in Howard Beach. Inside were Napolitano, Sciascia, Zicarelli, Salvatore Ferrugia, as well as Massino. During the meeting, Ferrugia, the nominal street boss of the Bonanno family, said the war was over and that Lino would remain as an acting captain if he “could bring everybody in,” meaning convince any members of the three captains’ crews to lay down their arms and not cause trouble.

A few days later, Lino recalled, he brought Coppa and Jerry Chilli to Massino’s home. It was there, said Lino, that Massino told the men that “everything was over with” and that Coppa’s $25,000 loan-sharking debt to the now dead Giaccone was to be paid to Massino. The only two allies of the three captains who didn’t come in to meet Massino and the other victorious captains were Bruno Indelicato (Alphonse’s son) and Thomas “Karate” Pitera, a Bonanno soldier who specialized in murder. Bruno Indelicato was reputed to be a cocaine abuser and wild with a gun, two qualities that led Napolitano to farm out a hit contract to undercover agent Joseph Pistone to preemptively kill the dead captain’s son.

The spate of meetings at Massino’s house, as described by Lino, showed that the defendant had benefited from the three captains murder and was active in consolidating the gains for his side. It was another piece of evidence tying Massino to the triple homicide.

When Andres finished leading Lino through the events of the three captains murder, he quickly shifted to August 1981 and the murder of Napolitano. Lino said that he first got wind that something was in the works when his cousin, Eddie Lino, told him that if he wanted to show his faithfulness to the victorious regime in the Bonanno family that he should take part in an upcoming “contract” for a murder.

Lino said he wasn’t told of the intended victim, only that Massino and Sciascia said they needed a place for a killing. Lino testified he responded by taking the two men, along with Frank Coppa, to the Staten Island home of Ernest “Kippy” Filocomo, the father of Bonanno associate Ronald Filocomo. It was decided that the killing would take place in the basement.

Three or four days before this murder, said Lino, Massino told him that the victim was to be Napolitano. Massino said that it was going to be Lino’s job to drive Napolitano and Bonanno captain Steven “Stevie Beef” Cannone from the Hamilton House, a restaurant once popular in Bay Ridge, to Filocomo’s home.

The day of the killing, Lino said he picked up Napolitano and Cannone as planned at the restaurant’s parking lot and drove over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge to Staten Island. At the intersection of Victory Boulevard and Richmond Avenue, Lino noticed Massino and Sciascia waiting in a van, which followed at a distance the car that was carrying Napolitano.

“When you got to Kippy’s house, what happened?” Andres asked.

“Sonny Black and Stevie Beef got out of the car with me,” said Lino. “We went to Kippy’s house, Frank Coppa was at the door.”

“I asked him where’s everybody, he says they are downstairs,” continued Lino. “I started to walk with Sonny Black who is behind me. As we start going down the steps, the door, somebody slammed the door, shut it. I threw him down the steps. He got killed.”

“Who did you throw down the steps,” inquired Andres.

“Sonny Black,” said Lino.

Under more questioning, Lino explained that Napolitano sensed something was wrong when he heard the door slam and that Lino had to grab him by the shoulder and toss him down five cellar steps.

“He fell to the floor,” remembered Lino. “Then he, Ronnie Filocomo walked over, shot him…my cousin Bobbie, he shot him, then the gun jammed. Ronnie came over, shot him two more times.”

Lino added that when one of the guns jammed on the second or third shot, Napolitano uttered the final words, “Hit me one more time and make it good.”

After the killing, Lino said that Coppa asked him to get Napolitano’s car keys so that his car could be commandeered.

“What did you do with the keys to Sonny Black’s car?” Andres asked.

“I went outside, gave them to Joe,” Lino explained, referring to Massino, who was sitting in the van with Sciascia and a few other men.

At the van, Massino asked if everything was all right and Lino said he responded by saying “yeah.” Lino then returned to the house where the others were wrapping Napolitano’s body in a body bag Lino said he had received from a friend who worked in a funeral parlor. Napolitano’s corpse was to be placed in a grave that had already been dug in a wooded area. But after driving to the site at about 9:00
P.M.
Lino said the hole couldn’t be found so the body was placed in a wooded area near a stream.