The Mafia Encyclopedia (41 page)

Read The Mafia Encyclopedia Online

Authors: Carl Sifakis

Tags: #True Crime, #Organized Crime, #test

BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
2.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Page 109
Angelo "Gyp" DeCarlo was maudlin about the Mafia. Based on FBI tapes made from illegal bugging of DeCarlo's office from 1961 to 1965, some startling sentiments were revealed. Released under court order, portions of the transcripts appeared in the press. As reporter Fred Graham noted, "reputations collapsed throughout New Jersey as racketeers were quoted as swapping favors with police chiefs, prosecutors, judges, and political chieftains."
Among those who saw their political fortunes wrecked were Hudson County political boss John J. Kenny and Newark mayor Hugh Addonizio. Congressman Peter Rodino escaped censure by the public by explaining away satisfactorily the kind of things said about him. Singer Frank Sinatra got another heavy dose of the constant linking of him with mob figures.
Equally important was the picture painted of DeCarlo himself, especially in view of the kindly treatment he was to receive later from a national administration. DeCarlo spoke glowingly of the old days in the "combination" and his self-approval of his role as a thug and murderous bruteú At one point Harold "Kayo" Konigsberg, a notorious mob enforcer, asked him: ''Will you tell me why everybody loves you so?"
DeCarlo's reply was honest if perhaps not totally responsive. "I'm a hoodlum," he announced proudlyú "I don't want to be a legitimate guy. All these other racket guys who get a few bucks want to become legitimate."
The tapes, typical of many mob conversations, turned to discussions of past murders, which, whatever embellishments or contradiction with known facts, were reflective of the characters involvedú DeCarlo had to observe rather philosophically to other mobsters that victims "as little as they are, they struggle."
He seemed most happy reminiscing about one victim to whom he said,
"Let me hit you clean." ... So the guy went for it ... we took the guy out in the woods, and I said, "Now listen ... You gotta go. Why not let me hit you right in the heart, and you won't feel a thing?" He said, "I'm innocent ... but if you've gotta do it ..." So I hit him in the heart, and it went right through him
.
DeCarlo almost certainly had a financial mystery man named Louis Saperstein poisoned with arsenic, but when DeCarlo and an aide were sent to prison in 1970 for 12 years, it was for extortion, not murder, in the Saperstein case.
DeCarlo was back on the front pages just 19 months later when President Nixon mysteriously commuted his sentence and let him out of prison, only one of four acts of clemency Nixon granted that year out of hundreds of applications.
Coming out of prison on a stretcher, New Jersey
mafioso Gyp DeCarlo was said to have enjoyed
special pull when he won a lightning-fast
presidential pardon in 1970. Although suffering
from cancer, he was well enough to carry on mob
rule for a time.
What made the clemency so unusual was the odd way it came about. DeCarlo petitioned for his release, claiming he was suffering from cancer; he had made that claim for yearsú Normally such a request would automatically be routed to the Newark prosecutor's office and then through Criminal Division in Washington for recommendations, before reaching the attorney generalú This particular petition simply zipped straight to Attorney General Richard Kleindienst who approved it and shot it on to White House Special Counsel John Dean. President Nixon's signature came through so that DeCarlo could be released two days before Christmas, 1972, a touching reward for a kindly hit man who
Page 110
popped a victim straight through the heart to save him pain, especially from an outspoken remember-the crime-victim administration.
Naturally the tale churned through the Washington gossip mill. There were reports that, through Vice President Spiro Agnew, the clemency had been arranged by singer Sinatrawhose smiling picture graced DeCarlo's office wall and whom DeCarlo, on tape, praised lavishly. There was also talk that DeCarlo had contributed handsomely to Nixon's reelection campaign, which would be a stirring example of citizenship for a man behind bars. Denials and no-comments filled the air and Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox even conducted an investigation into the irregular events. Nothing came of the probe.
DeCarlo had returned home on a stretcher and then seemed well enough to pick up his mob rule. But 10 months later he succumbed to cancer. His death revealed an added bit of irony. DeCarlo had been hit with a $20,000 fine when he was sentenced, and he was told that if he did not pay the fine by October 25, 1973, he would be returned to prison. DeCarlo died on October 20, his debt still unpaid. To the very end DeCarlo managed to live by his stated credo: "I don't want to be a legitimate guy."
See also:
Laundering
.
Decavalcante Tapes, The: FBI eavesdropping
Some of the most enlightening and, happily for some tabloids, the juiciest reading about the Mafia was released in 1969 in the 2,300-page FBI eavesdropping log of the DeCavalcante Tapes. The text, based on recordings made in a plumbing supply shop run by Samuel Rizzo "the Plumber" DeCavalcante, the boss of a 60-man Mafia family in New Jersey, was transcribed in newspapers, magazines and two paperback books. The
New York Times
for days allocated as much or more space to the DeCavalcante conversations as to the Ecumenical Council in Rome. While the tapes revealed much of DeCavalcante's romantic interests, they did serve a greater purpose.
The tapes, covering a period from 1961 to 1965, confirmed much of what informer Joe Valachi had revealed. They effectively demonstrated that, in the New York Mafia's five families, there existed the same formalized structure of the boss, underboss, consigliere, capos and soldiers. The tapes also confirmed that there was an organ called the commission supposedly designed to monitor crime family activities around the country. What the recorded conversations did not do is establish that the commission was an effective body; in fact many of its own members paid it little attention.
Sam "the Plumber" DeCavalcante, boss of a 60-man
crime family in New Jersey, had his office bugged
for Four years by the FBI, an operation that confirmed
much of Joe Valachi's revelations about the Mafia,
or Cosa Nostra.
The DeCavalcante Tapes revealed much of the struggle the New York families were having controlling the ambitious Brooklyn boss Joe Bonanno as well as much of the intrigues leading up to the Banana War. They indicated that the commission and many mafiosi regarded Bonanno's son, whom the father was trying to position as his successor, "a bedbug."
Some felt the tapes had value in explaining the social organization of the Mafia as DeCavalcante arranged for his crime family to pick up the tab for the wedding of his underboss's daughter or sought to help resolve the affairs of the son of his organization whose marriage was on the rocks. Sam the Plumber considered failed marriage a blot on his crime family's good name. It was intriguing to hear a man deeply involved in nefarious practices just as deeply concerned with the intricacies of the seating arrangements at a mob wedding.
Page 111
DeCavalcante's own behavior might have left something to be desired. The recordings revealed he was having an affair with his secretary, Harriet, the sister of Sam's partner in the plumbing supply business and with whom DeCavalcante could converse in passable Yiddish. Married man DeCavalcante was not only cheating with Harriet but also cheating on her with a number of other women. Some readers of the tape transcripts got their biggest kick out of Sam talking to Harriet's husband on one telephone while whispering words of endearment to Harriet on another.
DeCavalcante was hardly an important Mafia godfather, although he played his role to the hilt. Really a sort of gofer for the commission in its efforts to tame Bonanno, DeCavalcante was noted to feel frustrated by his status. He also felt nothing could be done about resolving the Bonanno crisis, which he felt could explode into ''World War III."
The release of the tapes did DeCavalcante no good. He was convicted on an extortion-conspiracy charge and sentenced to 15 years. After serving his term in Atlanta, DeCavalcante retired to Florida and, in the 1980s, was linked to a secret plan to invest in three casinos in Miami if the voters approved legal gambling. The voters rejected the move by a two-to-one margin. It may have been a bigger disappointment to DeCavalcante than the revelations of the tapes.
Dellacroce, Aniello "Mr. Neil" (19141985): Gambino crime family underboss
In many respects, Aniello "Mr. Neil" Dellacroce was the model of the mythic Mafia don. His name in Italian meant "little lamb of the cross,'' and the underworld is rife with tales of the pleasure he took in killing people. A federal agent once said of him, "He likes to peer into a victim's face, like some kind of dark angel, at the moment of death." Sometimes he even traveled about the country on mob business done up as Father O'Neill, a play on his first name. On other occasions he was Timothy O'Neil. He also sought to confuse his enemies on both sides of the law by occasionally having a lookalike pose as him in public.
Dellacroce spent decades in the Mafia and was a faithful follower of the murderous Albert Anastasia and, later, Carlo Gambino. Gambino had conspired in Anastasia's 1957 assassination but there is no accurate information on whether Dellacroce was involved or whether he believed a boss ever should be deposed. When Gambino took over the Anastasia crime family, Dellacroce stepped up to the position of underboss and seemed to be in line eventually to succeed Gambino. He had all the prerequisites, including the cool toughness and mercilessness the job required.
However, when Gambino was dying in 1976, he tapped his brother-in-law Paul Castellano as his successor. Gambino was smart enough to realize that if the tough Dellacroce wanted to fight, he could probably crush the less-than-imposing Castellano. To placate Dellacroce he offered him essential control of all the family's lucrative Manhattan activities. It was not an offer Dellacroce could refuse, and for a time it defused the harsh feelings by the Dellacroce and Castellano factions.
Compromises seldom stay glued in the Mafia; it figured that power would sooner or later shift to the stronger side of the Gambino family. Except for the fact that Dellacroce was in ill health, it seemed he would eventually take over. Certainly the Young Turks aligned with Dellacroce favored expansion into more violent types of crime, such as armored car robberies and hijackings as well as narcotics. Castellano laid greater emphasis on loan-sharking, union construction shakedowns and relatively easy crimes, such as car theft on a wholesale level.
Police experts indicated that only Dellacroce could hold the Young Turks back, especially John Gotti, a dapper though deadly capo in the organization,
Gambino crime Family underboss Aniello "Mr. Nail"
Dellacroce was said to take extreme pleasure in killing:
"He likes to peer into a victim's Face, like some kind of dark angel,
at the moment of death."

Other books

Paradime by Alan Glynn
Azazel by Nameless
The Sound of Things Falling by Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Dublinesque by Enrique Vila-Matas
Wicked Fantasy by Nina Bangs
Super-sized Slugger by Cal Ripken Jr.
Entice by Jones, Carrie
Lynnia by Ellie Keys