Manhattan Mafia Guide (24 page)

Cosmo “Gus” Fracsa, wanted for the murder of Ferdinand Boccia in 1934.
NYPD, New York City Municipal Archives
.

Victor Tramaglino was also said to be close with 1970s front boss Alphonse Frank “Funzi” Tieri, who, when still just a soldier in the late 1940s, fell ill and required medical attention. While in the hospital, Tramaglino went out of his way to ensure collections were made on behalf of his fellow gangster. Tieri would never forget that and always looked out for him.

Tramaglino was busted one last time in 1969, for running an enormously successful gambling operation out of a building at 209 West Seventy-ninth Street with partners Sonny Pinto, Hugh Mulligan (Irish), Charlie Blum (Jewish), Stanley Ackerman (Jewish) and “Spanish” Ray Marquez (Hispanic). It was allegedly Marquez’s influence that made the venue so successful because he brought in Puerto Rican gamblers from uptown who “loved to spend money,” according to one source.

Ailing sixty-eight-year-old Victor Tramaglino died of a heart attack on May 26, 1980, while on his first vacation from the city in over thirty years.

T
UMINARO
, A
NGELO

38 Hamilton Street, 1917; 152 Madison Street, 1920; 234 Cherry Street, 1930; 110 Henry Street, 1934; 24 Rutgers Street, 1950s

Alias: Tumensio, Little Angie

Born: February 22, 1910, New York City
¹²³
(b. Tumminaro, Angelo)

Died: [?]

Association: Lucchese crime family

This five-foot-two, 135-pound gangster was the second of thirteen children born to Pasquale “Patchy” Tuminaro and Maria “Mary” Venera Presinzano, Sicilian immigrants who married in New York City in 1904. “Patchy” is listed in documents as a laborer, longshoreman and Department of Sanitation worker. One of Angelo’s younger brothers (by nineteen years), Frank, would follow Angelo into organized crime.

“Little Angie” had a record dating back to 1929. He was married to a woman named Bella Stein, said to be the daughter of an influential Jewish racketeer. This relationship made Tuminaro an important liaison between Italian and Jewish criminal networks.

In November 1934, twenty-three-year-old Tuminaro was arrested, along with Frank Lisi and two other men, for holding up a restaurant at 36 Peck Slip on April 7. They made off with $1,200. That arrest came immediately after charges of vagrancy against the men were dropped following a New York City police commissioner’s pre-election order to round up known thugs in order to curb voter fraud at the polls. Though the vagrancy charges didn’t stick, the court somehow connected Tuminaro and Lisi to the seven-month-old robbery.

By the 1950s, Tuminaro was well known to authorities as an organized crime member and was considered to be a “vicious killer” who was “constantly armed” and dangerous. He was running a “Greek Rummy” game out of an apartment on Second Avenue between Eleventh and Twelfth Streets, was part owner of the Apollo Barbershop at 144 Clinton Street and was dating a woman named Joan Motto, whose father, Danny Motto, was a reputed Lower East Side loan shark.

Angelo Tuminaro was a key figure in the Ormento-Galante-Mira-Di Pietro multimillion-dollar heroin-trafficking operation that sent most of the ring to prison in 1962. The original trial was set to begin on November 14, 1960; however, Tuminaro disappeared and failed to appear, moving the start of the trial to November 21. Tuminaro probably figured that if he could lie low for the duration of the trial, he would be acquitted on the most serious charges because it would be improbable that the same legal teams, witnesses, etc., would be assembled again for a single prosecution.
¹²⁴

The first trial ended in a mistrial, but a second (minus Tuminaro, still on the run) resulted in prosecutions for most of the codefendants. Right about the time of that trial, a separate police investigation was underway that would soon implicate Tuminaro in another international narcotics trafficking and distribution operation that would be immortalized in a bestselling book and hit 1970s Hollywood blockbuster of the same name.

In the original 1969 novel,
The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy
, author Robert Moore claimed that the investigation began on October 7, 1961, when NYPD detectives Eddie Egan, Sonny Grosso and Richard Auleita suspected a mobster named Pasquale “Patsy” Fuca of dealing heroin from his diner on Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn. They were particularly suspicious of how Fuca could have afforded two cars and a housekeeper on a counterman’s salary. When the FBI was consulted, the feds told the NYPD that Fuca was the nephew of reputed gangster and fugitive narcotics trafficker Angelo Tuminaro. The local police began an investigation into Fuca, hoping to be able to track down Tuminaro, but had no idea that they were about to uncover one of the most famous smuggling operations in history.

The NYPD started out by staking out Fuca’s luncheonette and noticed several suspicious transactions taking place. Within weeks, over sixty local and federal law enforcement agents were performing twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week surveillance on Fuca and his ring, which included father Joseph, brother Tony (a longshoreman), mother Nellie (Tuminaro’s sister) and teenage wife, Barbara (whose story was told in the 1977 book
Mafia Wife
, also by Robert Moore).

After a lengthy and sometimes disappointing investigation, authorities eventually traced Fuca back to an apartment in Brooklyn, where they uncovered twenty-five pounds of heroin, a submachine gun, two rifles, a shotgun and a bayonet in the basement, stashed behind freshly plastered walls. The rest is Mafia (and Hollywood) history.

Though the iconic 1974 movie captivated audiences and made the story a legend, in context, the French Connection sting yielded just a few lower-level convictions, did little to damage the Mafia’s narcotics trafficking and distribution operations in the United States and failed to bring in alleged ringleader Angelo Tuminaro. In fact, the operation was said to continue after Fuca was arrested when Frank Tuminaro took over the operation for a short time, until he was indicted on trafficking charges, jumped bail and disappeared for a few years.

Angelo Tuminaro turned himself in to Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents in Miami, Florida, sometime in 1962 and made “an undisclosed deal” with authorities.
¹²⁵
He would only spend four years behind bars before being released in 1966, and despite the notion that he had retired by the mid-1970s, Angelo Tuminaro was ranked forty-ninth on
Forbes’s
“Top 50 Mafia Bosses” in 1986.

On August 16, 1968, Little Angie’s brother Frank turned up dead. He and associate Frank Joseph Gangi were found murdered in a rural area north of New York City; they had both been shot in the head, bound with rope and wrapped in plastic bags. An informant at the time told the FBI that Genovese soldier Charles “Chaultz” Gagliodotto, a former partner in the Tuminaro narcotics racket, was the triggerman and that the pair was lured to a Mott Street social club and murdered. Another informant backed up the story, adding that the pair was killed over a contested $17,000, and though the dispute was settled (in favor of Tuminaro and Gangi), Gagliodotto was furious and lured the two to their deaths. No one was ever charged in the murders, and Gagliodotto, perhaps in retaliation, was suffocated to death with a plastic bag on August 22.
¹²⁶

II

SOCIAL CLUBS AND HANGOUTS

A
LBERTI
B
AKING
C
OMPANY

441 East Twelfth Street, Corner of Avenue A

Mobster Andrew Alberti operated this business with his brother James in the 1940s and ’50s. It was frequented by the East Village–based Genovese crew, led by Thomas Licatta and then Gus Frasca. The FBN believed Alberti inherited his father Frank’s rackets when he passed away, though he had only one arrest on his record—a complaint for violation of narcotics laws in 1953—and that was dismissed. Today, the corner storefront hosts a coffee shop.

A
LTO
K
NIGHTS
S
OCIAL
C
LUB

247 Mulberry Street

See Ravenite Social Club.

B
ARI
R
ESTAURANT
S
UPPLY

240 Bowery Street, between Prince and East Houston Streets

On June 14, 1983, the FBI tracked mobster Sal Avellino’s car from Long Island, New York, to this location, where a secret Mafia meeting was to take place. The feds’ plan was to photograph attendees, but before they had a chance to establish surveillance positions, Paul Castellano (Gambino boss), Anthony Salerno (Genovese boss), Anthony “Ducks” Corallo (Lucchese boss) and other top-level Mafiosi fled from the building in different directions after Castellano noticed an FBI agent peering through the window. (This business still exists.)

B
US
S
TOP
L
UNCHEONETTE

115 Madison Street, between Market and Catherine Streets

In the 1970s, this was a diner run by Bonanno soldier Anthony Mirra. It is the place where he first became friendly with Detective Joseph Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco. A Chinese restaurant has occupied this location for several years.

C
AFFE
D
ANTE

81 McDougal Street, between West Houston and Bleecker Streets

This is one of the few twentieth-century mob hangouts that still exists and retains much of the social club atmosphere once experienced by Genovese crime family members like Vincent “Chin” Gigante.

C
AFFE
P
ALERMO

148 Mulberry Street, between Hester and Grand Streets

This popular pasticceria, which still serves up some of the best cannolis around, was home base to suspected Gambino mobster Anthony DeLutro (who also allegedly ran an after-hours club called Sewer at 11 East Sixth Street), until he was sentenced to twenty years in prison in December 1975.

C
AFFE
R
OMA

385 Broome Street, Corner of Mulberry Street

This pasticceria, a neighborhood staple since 1891, was part owned by mobsters Eli Zeccardi and Benedetto Cinquegrana in the 1950s. It was a regular haunt for Apalachin Conference attendee Carmine Lombardozzi.

C
AMELOT
S
UPPER
C
LUB

158 East Forty-ninth Street

The Camelot, described by entertainer Clay Cole as a “tourist-trap with a hefty cover charge,”
¹²⁷
was a popular and convenient spot for mobsters to rub elbows (and do business) with celebrities in the 1950s and ’60s. In its heyday, the likes of the Ronnetts and the Capris performed for its well-connected audience, which included patrons like Liberace, Anne Margret and Merv Griffin. The club was operated by nightlife impresario “Joe the Wop” Cataldo and was the unofficial headquarters for the William Morris Agency’s top booking agent, George Wood.

C
ARMELLO
’
S

1638 York Ave, between East Eighty-sixth and East Eighty-seventh Streets

This former dive bar and eatery was a popular hotspot for local wiseguys and was where “Donnie Brasco” got friendly with the mob by slowly injecting himself into backgammon games with the regulars under the guise of a jewel thief. The ground floor currently hosts a bagel store.

C
ELANO
’
S
G
ARDEN

36 Kenmare Street, Corner of Elizabeth Street

This former unassuming restaurant on the corner of Kenmare and Elizabeth Streets was said to be the early 1930s headquarters for Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, who was accused of operating from this address the multimillion-dollar prostitution ring that earned him thirty to fifty years in prison and eventual deportation. The building has since been demolished.

CIA C
LUB

72 Forsyth Street, between Hester and Grand Streets

In the 1950s and ’60s, this former mob bar, which overlooks Sara D. Roosevelt Park, was partially owned by Gaetano Lisi and was popular with guys like Frank Mari and Carli Di Pietro. Today, the address hosts a pair of Chinese goods wholesalers.

C
LUB
82

82 East Fourth Street, between Bowery Street and Second Avenue

Club 82, which is is featured in such films as
The Rose
, starring Bette Midler, and
Torch Song Trilogy
, with Harvey Fierstein, was one of New York City’s most famous gay supper clubs, opened in 1953 by Genovese crime family associate Stephen Franse, a front for the mob in several mid-century New York City nightclubs. When Franse’s Club 181 closed at 181 Second Avenue, he reopened at this location with the same management—which included boss Vito Genovese’s own wife, Anna. Franse’s job was to watch over Anna, who was divorcing Vito, but he may not have done a good enough job. On June 19, 1953, Franse was found dead in front of 164 East Thirty-seventh Street. Today, the building hosts a restaurant and sports bar.

C
OPACABANA

10 East Sixtieth Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues

The legendary “Copa” was the hottest nightclub in New York City during the 1940s and ’50s and hosted the biggest names in show business—Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr., Marvin Gaye and The Supremes, to name just a few. There was a time when an artist did not make it in show business unless he was successful at the Copa. A man named Monte Prosner was the owner and operator of the world-famous venue—on paper. However, it was widely known who was actually behind the club: mob kingpin Frank Costello. Prosner was also recruited for the same scheme at the Piping Rock in Saratoga, New York, an upscale supper club/resort just a few hours upstate from the city that shielded a massive gambling operation run by Meyer Lansky.