Authors: Lee Lamothe

The Sixth Family (2 page)

BOOK: The Sixth Family

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Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-73832-0

1. Rizzuto, Vito. 2. Bonanno family. 3. Mafia—United States—Biography. 4. Mafia—Canada—Biography. 5. Heroin industry—United States. 6. Drug traffic—United States. 7. Mafia—New York (State)—New York—History. 8. Mafia—Québec (Province)—Montréal—History.

I. Humphreys, Adrian, 1965- II. Title.

HV6452.N48L.1092 C2007-906344-6

Production Credits

Printer: Friesens

John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd.

6045 Freemont Blvd.

Mississauga, Ontario

L5R 4J3

To the memory of my mother
Elsie Mae Lamothe (December 4, 1919 - March 20, 2006)
—L.L.

To the memory of my grandfather
H.G. Humphreys (March 12, 1905 - June 19, 2001)
—A.H.

Q:
How many organized crime families are there in New York?

A:
Five.

Q:
What are the names of the five New York crime families?

A:
Lucchese, Gambino, Colombo and the Genovese.

Q:
And what’s the fifth family?

A:
Us, the Bonanno Family.

—
Testimony of Salvatore “Good-Looking Sal” Vitale, former
underboss of the Bonanno Mafia family, United States
Courthouse, Brooklyn, New York, June 28, 2004.

“For the past 25 years, Montreal has been the key that turns the lock of America. The one holding that key becomes the pinnacle. … The Rizzuto family was able to promise a transport between the Mafias of Europe and the Mafia of America. Riches were promised for all.”

—
A leading anti-Mafia investigator with the
Carabinieri
, Italy’s
federal police force, 2006.

PROLOGUE

BROOKLYN, MAY 5, 1981

“Don’t anybody move. This is a holdup.”

The words were clear despite the muffling effect of a woolen ski mask pulled down over the long, thin face of Vito Rizzuto, a 35-year-old Sicilian who called Canada’s French-speaking city of Montreal his home. Vito was slumming it in New York City this day, more accustomed as he was to receiving nods of respect in Canada and Sicily as the son of a powerful mafioso, or relaxing on the coast of Venezuela, where his family controlled massive drug-trafficking interests. On May 5, 1981, Vito found himself bursting from a closet in a rundown Brooklyn social club, waving a pistol and shouting out stick-’em-up clichés.

It was a casually dressed but powerful group of men who suddenly stopped their chatter and, startled by the sudden appearance of masked and armed men, looked up at Vito and three colleagues as they emerged from the narrow confines of the darkened closet. Gathered before them were the top men in the Bonanno Mafia Family, perhaps the most deadly and storied of New York City’s notorious Five Families, which between them control much of the continent’s underworld. The Bonanno captains, each a leader of crooks operating under the family’s banner, had been summoned to an “administrative meeting” by Joseph Massino, a senior Bonanno captain often called “Big Joey” by his mob colleagues, a nod at first to his substantial girth and later to his position of power. Officially, peace was the sole item on the meeting’s agenda, talks meant to mend an unseemly rift between factions within the family that had grown from quiet disdain to open hostility and brought it to the brink of out-and-out warfare.

Among those in the social club, feeling particularly uncomfortable, were three leading captains who formed the core of opposition to Joseph Massino within the family: Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato, Dominick “Big Trinny” Trinchera and Philip “Philly Lucky” Giaccone. Other gangsters milled about uneasily with them.

Earlier, before the guests started trickling into the private, two-story Brooklyn club, Vito Rizzuto had arrived to make dark preparations with Massino and Salvatore Vitale, a slender New York mobster known as “Good-Looking Sal.” At the time, Vitale was a mere mob associate, but he would go on to become the underboss, the second most powerful position in a Mafia family. Vito allegedly brought with him from Montreal two close mob friends of his own, Emanuele Ragusa, whose daughter would later marry Vito’s son, and a veteran gangster identified by informants only as “the old-timer,” who was likely a Rizzuto relative with ties to the New York underworld.

The club was small and simply laid out; utility was chosen over decor for such private mob moments. Visitors passed through a narrow foyer into an unadorned room with a cloakroom to one side and stairs leading up to an area that was equipped to handle catering but in fact, primarily used to host a modest gambling racket by the club’s ownership group. This group included Salvatore “Sammy Bull” Gravano, who would soon become underboss of the Gambino Family under its notorious boss John Gotti and, later, a spectacular mob turncoat.

“The minute I walked into the club, in the foyer, Vito, Emanuele and the old-timer, we were issued the weapons, told to have ski masks that we’d put [on] in a closet in a coat room,” said Vitale. Vito and Ragusa took pistols and were appointed lead shooters. Vitale was handed a heavy-duty machine gun, what he called a “grease gun” because it blasted automatic gunfire, and the old-timer suitably went old school, taking a sawed-off shotgun. Playing around with his new toy, Vitale accidentally squeezed the trigger, wildly spraying bullets around the club.

“Don’t shoot unless you have to,” Massino scolded him. “I don’t want bullets flying all over the place.” Even mobsters get the jitters.

“We were in the closet, we all had our weapons loaded. We sat there and waited for the doorbell to ring,” said Vitale. “We left the door open a smidge to look out.”

The ringing of the bell at the club’s entrance signaled the arrival of the first of the invited guests.

Vito crouched low, peeking out from his vantage point. Through the swelling crowd and loud chatter from tough men all accustomed to having their say, Vito kept his eyes on one man, Gerlando Sciascia, a fellow Sicilian who was a long-time Rizzuto family friend. Sciascia was easy to pick out because of his thick, silver hair, brushed back off his forehead in a bouffant hairdo that any aging Hollywood hunk would envy. Everyone in the room knew Sciascia; the Americans called him “George from Canada” because he was Montreal’s representative in New York, while the Canadians stuck simply with “George.”

Breathing deeply beneath his mask, Vito watched for the secret signal that would draw him from the closet, a signal that came when Sciascia slowly ran the fingers of his lean, right hand through the silver hair on the side of his head.

That simple act of preening brought mayhem to the social club and radically changed the balance of power. This was not about robbery, despite Vito’s words when he confronted the gangsters. Nothing would be taken but three lives and the rights to an underworld throne.

“Vito led the way,” said Vitale, who was the last to scramble out of the closet. While Vito and Ragusa pointed their guns, Vitale and the old-timer jogged past them to block the club’s exit.

Big Trinny, one of the rebellious captains, seemed the first to realize they had been set up. Bellowing loudly, he threw his full 300 pounds headlong at Vito, who reacted by firing his pistol, making Big Trinny the first to die, although his flab-fueled momentum kept his body hurtling forward while other bullets pounded into him. Philly Lucky appeared to surrender, placing himself against a wall, his hands out-stretched. His submission was in vain. Peppered with bullets, he slid to the floor, dying from multiple bullet wounds to his head and chest.

Sonny Red turned on the heels of his brown cowboy boots and made a go at fleeing. In his bright orange T-shirt, however, he was an easy target. A shot to the back sliced through his backbone and burst out his chest. A second bullet hit him in his left side and whistled under the skin across the length of his rib cage before breaking through the flesh on his other flank; with its momentum suddenly sapped, the battered .38-caliber slug could not even pierce the fabric of his shirt a second time, falling instead into its blood-soaked folds. Sonny Red stumbled to the ground. Sciascia, anxious to join the fray, pulled out a pistol he had tucked in the back of his pants, pointed it down at the struggling gangster and fired it once into his left ear. The bullet tore downward through Sonny’s head, whipped out through his right cheek and grazed his right shoulder before slamming into the floor. The rebellion was over.

When the gunfire stopped, all the survivors except Massino and Vitale raced out of the club.

“The only one standing in the room other than the three dead bodies was Joseph Massino,” an amazed Vitale said, recalling the scene. “Everybody else was gone.”

Time has not been kind to those involved in the murder of the three captains, an act that has since become a rich part of popular lore, forming the core of a multitude of trials and police investigations, and being colorfully re-created and immortalized on film in the Hollywood movie
Donnie Brasco
.

Several of the notorious men involved would later be imprisoned, likely for the rest of their lives. Others would go on to shatter their oath of
omertà
, the Mafia’s vow of silence, and cooperate with government agents to far-reaching effect. Still others would, themselves, be killed in the continuing gangland intrigue; one would die in a plane crash and another under even more unusual circumstances—hanging, face-to-face with his son, both officially declared to have committed suicide. One by one, each of them would fall—at the wrong end of a gun, through life imprisonment or in a freak incident. All but one.

Vito Rizzuto is the last man standing.

“The significant factor surrounding these murders is that Vito Rizzuto, Nick Rizzuto’s son, is suspected of being involved,” concludes a confidential FBI report from 1985—almost prescient as it was written 20 years before there were informants filling in the extensive blanks of what authorities knew of the mysterious murders. The same report outlines with some amazement the Rizzuto family’s central role as a hub for extensive criminal interests in America, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, France and Switzerland, noting Vito’s and his father’s relationships with some of the world’s most significant drug barons. More recent investigations would add China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Haiti, Belize, Bahamas, Aruba, Dominican Republic and Panama to the list of the family’s international interests. Two decades ago, FBI special agents wrote with a growing sense of alarm that Vito, a shadowy mob figure based in Canada, was not only trusted to carry out this most sensitive bit of internal Bonanno business but also operated with seeming autonomy and impunity around the world. Compared to what New York-based authorities were used to looking at, largely homegrown gangsters lording it over turf they could drive across in a leisurely afternoon, the breadth of geography and intertwining connections of the Rizzuto organization surprised even seasoned investigators.

Within the blood-splattered walls of the Brooklyn social club, the Sixth Family had emerged with a deafening crescendo. The Canadian connection had been made.

The New York mob had gotten a taste of a gangster who would eventually eclipse them all.