Authors: Lee Lamothe
The Sixth Family (49 page)
There was one crucial piece of the puzzle missing before the Swiss could thunder down on the jailed Rizzuto matriarch—evidence of drugs. Or, for that matter, evidence of any other crime.
“As far as the charge of participating or supporting organized crime, concrete evidence would have to be found proving that the Rizzuto family makes up a criminal organization or belongs to a criminal organization,” the Swiss prosecutor’s office concluded. “It obviously remains to be proven that the funds in question, particularly those deposited into the three bank accounts held by Luca Giammarella, are the result of illicit activities, notably narcotics trafficking.”
Because it was money, not drugs, that investigators found moving freely through Switzerland, evidence of a narcotics conspiracy would have to come from somewhere else. The Swiss authorities turned to Canada. Just as Canada had requested judicial assistance from the Swiss, leading to Libertina’s arrest in Lugano, the Swiss authorities formally issued their own “request for urgent judicial assistance” to Canadian officials, seeking their help in finishing the job that the undercover RCMP officers at the currency exchange office had started.
On December 16, 1994, with Libertina and Giammarella still in custody, Fabrizio Eggenschwiler, the assigned public prosecutor with the Public Ministry of the canton of Tessin in Switzerland, asked the Canadian government to tell them what they could about the Rizzutos. Eggenschwiler sought “anything that would demonstrate that the members of the Rizzuto family are a criminal organization or belong to such an organization,” as well as evidence of the criminal origin of the money. Details of the evidence gathered by investigators against Joe Lagana, particularly information on “all the possible connections between this procedure and the Rizzuto family,” would also be helpful.
“The assigned public prosecutor emphasizes the urgent nature of this request due to the present custody of Libertina Rizzuto and Luca Giammarella,” Eggenschwiler concluded. The Rizzutos once again turned to Jean Salois. His mandate was to gain the pair’s freedom. He was unimpressed with the materials the RCMP were feeding to the Swiss.
“Canadian authorities were impressed upon to transmit everything that concerned the Rizzutos in their files, as well as various documents and various information that were often equivocal, based on the opinions or the conclusions of the police or simply suspicions that would never be admissible in a court,” according to Salois. When he complained of this to the RCMP, officials were aghast that the Swiss had shared the Canadian submissions with the lawyer for the accused. Salois feels the RCMP were trying to take advantage of the different rules of the European judicial process to admit evidence that would not be acceptable in Canada.
“Canadian authorities were caught out at their own game,” Salois said.
MONTREAL, MARCH 1995The Swiss case against a Rizzuto—this time Libertina—like so many others mounted against the family, quickly fizzled. Libertina and Giammarella were released not long afterward. About six months after their arrest, Libertina and Giammarella were granted bail and allowed to return to Canada. The Rizzuto matriarch was met in Montreal by a relieved and welcoming family. It was an emotional greeting. The situation was sorted out in time to allow Libertina to be present, in a black dress and big jewelry, at the wedding of her grandson, Nick.
Her release, however, did not go without suspicion and controversy. In March 1995, Michel Bellehumeur, a member of Parliament with the Bloc Québécois party, rose in Canada’s Parliament and publicly questioned the government’s inability or unwillingness to help the Swiss.
“It seems their release came as a result of the half-hearted assistance the RCMP gave Swiss police authorities. Could the prime minister explain why the RCMP failed to give the Swiss authorities their full cooperation when they refused to provide information crucial to legal proceedings in Switzerland?” Bellehumeur asked. “What explanation does the prime minister have for the fact that the only officer familiar with the case involving Mrs. Rizzuto and Mr. Giammarella was on holiday when the Swiss authorities had to release these two individuals?” The government promised to look into the matter. Two weeks later, Bellehumeur asked for an update. Herb Gray, a venerable government defender who was Canada’s solicitor general, said the Bloc MP was “mistaken.”
“I have been informed that the Swiss authorities are quite satisfied with the support they received from the RCMP,” Gray assured the country. Almost three years after the arrests, on July 11, 1997, the Swiss officially ended their interest in the case, according to Salois.
The treatment accorded Vito’s mother—having been held in jail for months in a foreign country—was distressing and upsetting for Vito, said Oreste Pagano, who, at the time of Libertina’s troubles, said he was working on the deal with Vito that went afoul in Puerto Cabello. For his mother, who had given Vito his height, his high cheekbones and downcast eyes, Vito would spare no expense in obtaining legal counsel abroad to protect her rights, argue for her innocence and push for her release. His mother’s incarceration was a constant distraction for Vito, and the Montreal boss bemoaned the situation personally to Pagano.
“At that moment he was having difficulties, that his mother was also in prison in Switzerland,” Pagano said.
Pagano also said that there was much more money at stake than the Swiss investigators, diligent as they were, discovered.
“She had gone to withdraw money from a bank in Switzerland, where there was, I believe, around $5 million, and there she was stopped and she ended up in prison in Switzerland.” And even that amount was a mere pittance compared to the $91 million that the officers laundered in Montreal at a single currency-exchange office—money, investigators say, that was from the Rizzuto organization.
Both Libertina’s visit to Switzerland and the covert Montreal operation—just two snapshots of a specific time and place—hint at the tremendous wealth and financial resources the Rizzutos have had at their disposal, offering compelling proof that they formed a sophisticated, successful and multinational organization.
What’s more, their money remained largely untouched.
If police only ever catch an estimated one-tenth of the supply of illegal drugs, surely their record on finding dirty money is even worse. If this was the supply of cash uncovered in a single probe, imagine the size of the whole pot at the Sixth Family’s command.
The few failed franchise efforts made by Manno, Ragusa, Sciortino and Zbikowski were clearly not debilitating to the organization as a whole. Even with these colleagues charged by police and their drug networks exposed, police believe there was ample product for the Sixth Family to wield. In 1997, police surveillance teams watched Nick Rizzuto meet with Gerlando Caruana, Agostino Cuntrera and Joe Renda, according to police reports. Investigators believed the meeting was called by Nick to regulate the price of cocaine. Such an ability would be one of the key advantages of owning the franchise rights. As the Sixth Family expanded its range of activities—with the flood of hashish coming into Canada along the East Coast, with heroin and cocaine coming in from South America, Florida, Texas and Italy and with its money searching for sanctuary abroad—the organization was growing beyond recognition.
It was growing beyond New York.
CHAPTER 30
QUEENS, JUNE 1991Philip “Rusty” Rastelli did not look particularly healthy even before he was ravaged by cancer, so it was a surprise to no one when the Bonanno Family rank and file received orders to show up for the wake and funeral of their boss. Over three days, starting on June 25, 1991, New York gangsters of all stripes filed through to pay their respects to the emaciated corpse of the dead Bonanno boss as he lay at a funeral home not far from Sal Vitale’s Grand Avenue social club. Cadillacs and Lincolns clogged the roadway and a stream of gangsters, almost all of them wearing white shirts, ties and dark suits, wandered into the funeral home, chatted with each other, greeted Rastelli’s family and then crept outside for a cigarette.
It was a significant sign of respect, although much of it duplicitously given by gangsters who had long been begging for the boss to move aside so that Joe Massino could salvage the sagging fortunes of the family.
“Everyone showed up,” Vitale said. Everyone also knew that Rastelli had been a mere figurehead within the family for years, and there was little question over who would replace him. After the murder of Carmine Galante and the purge of the three captains, Rastelli’s power was only as secure as Massino wanted it to be. While Rastelli was in jail, Massino ran the show, Vitale said. Even members of Rastelli’s own administration took a back seat to Massino. Nicholas “Nicky Glasses” Marangello was the underboss and Stefano “Stevie Beef” Cannone was the
consigliere
, but neither stood up to Massino.
consigliere
, but neither stood up to Massino.
“I don’t think Nicky Glasses and Stevie Beef really wanted the position. They didn’t want to butt heads with a strong captain, a strong individual, like Joe Massino. Anything that Joe wanted to do, Joe could do,” Vitale said. “Phil Rastelli wanted to step down the day he got home,” Vitale said of Rastelli’s release from prison in 1983. “When he got out of jail, he really wanted to retire. He wanted to give everything to Mr. Massino. He just wanted to live his life out peacefully.” The signs of Rastelli’s impotence were everywhere.
“If Mr. Rastelli would have given me an order, I would have checked it with Joe Massino before I accepted,” Vitale said. Massino was in no hurry to have the boss stand down. There was little reason for him to move against Rastelli so long as he maintained his favored status in the family; he enjoyed the insulation it afforded him from federal agents. Massino knew a family’s boss was always the government’s top target.
When Rastelli’s death was imminent, however, Massino did not leave his succession to chance. The position, while bringing huge risks, also brought immense profit. Before Rastelli died, he mapped out exactly what was to happen.
“When Phil dies, make Anthony Spero call a meeting. Elect me boss. Have someone second the motion, whether it be you, Big Louie, whoever, make me boss,” Massino said to Vitale. It happened precisely as he ordered. After the burial of Rastelli, Spero called to order a meeting of Bonanno captains at a Staten Island home.
“Regretfully, Phil Rastelli has died. But it’s now time that we elect a new boss,” Spero said to the gathering.
“Why don’t we make Joe Massino [boss]?” one of the captains said, as if it were a spur-of-the-moment idea. There was no dissent. A new era in the Bonanno Family history had begun.
“At that time, most of the people were dead. There weren’t any people to challenge,” said Frank Lino, a Bonanno captain. Massino—and federal indictments—had cleared away some potential competition, particularly from the Zips. Sal Catalano, as street boss of the Zips in New York, had once been seen as a possible contender. At one point during Rastelli’s incarceration, Catalano had been elevated to the position of acting boss of the family, a move that probably drew considerable heat from other bosses, if not officially from the entire Commission.
“They were looking to make him boss and I think they were pushing Phil Rastelli aside, but he couldn’t be [boss] because he was already made in Italy,” Vitale said. “You can’t have allegiance with two—you are either all Italy or all United States.” The issue of how Sicilian Men of Honor would fit into the American Mafia was still causing problems. The rule Vitale spoke of, however, seemed to apply only to holding the top post, as boss, because plenty of Zips in America and Canada had been inducted into the Bonanno Family as soldiers and elevated to captain. Any remaining claim Catalano might once have had evaporated when he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for his part in the Pizza Connection case in 1987. Another Zip who had ambition, street smarts and charisma, Cesare Bonventre, had been killed in 1984, on Massino’s orders, on the eve of the Pizza Connection arrests.
As for Gerlando Sciascia, he, like Catalano, had been made in Sicily, apparently precluding him from contention. After helping Massino to orchestrate the purge of the three captains and becoming wealthy through the Sixth Family’s drug trade, Sciascia had also been sidelined for five years, the time between his arrest in Canada for the drug conspiracy and his acquittal on the charges in New York in 1990. After a jurer was bribed and Sciascia walked free, however, he tried to pick up where he had left off. Six months after his acquittal, an FBI report noted: “It is believed that Sciascia continues to be an active and influential figure in the narcotics trade.”
As long as he could ply Sixth Family drugs, Sciascia seemed content to remain near the top echelons of Bonanno Family power, having the ear of Massino and Vitale, while retaining his zeal for selling narcotics. Sciascia seemed to be a key supporter of Massino’s bid to take over the Bonanno Family, suggesting that the Sixth Family approved of where New York was going. Sciascia’s place in the Bonanno Family seemed secure under the new administration. The Sixth Family’s previous deal with Massino to topple the three captains and keep the drugs flowing remained in effect.
“He was well respected,” Vitale said of Sciascia. “I liked George. George was a good man.” And yet Sciascia seemed ill at ease.
In July 1991, just weeks after Massino was named the official boss, Sciascia, along with his wife and daughter, applied for permanent resident status in Canada, sponsored by his son, Joseph, who was a Canadian citizen. Sciascia seemed to be wearing out his welcome in New York.
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