Authors: Lee Lamothe
The Sixth Family (68 page)
If Coppa’s action was the opening trickle, Vitale’s decision to join him opened the floodgates. Bonanno members and associates, suddenly facing substantial prison terms, began to fear they would be the ones caught out. No one wanted to be the sad gangster left to face the full wrath of the courts without a cooperation agreement and with the fingers of their former colleagues-in-arms—men who were equally guilty or, in some cases, substantially more so—all pointing at them in court. With news or rumors of each new turncoat, Bonanno mobsters quietly cataloged in their minds what that person might have on them, and then weighed the danger they faced of being incriminated. When the odds looked particularly grim, they were increasingly switching sides.
Confirmation of Vitale’s defection, although not really taking the Bonanno leadership by surprise after Massino’s public musings, hit the gangsters hard. Frank Lino found it deeply distressing, for he knew that Vitale would considerably bolster the case against him for the Sonny Black murder by corroborating the expected testimony from his old friend Frank Coppa. Worse, Vitale could pin other murders on him.
Throughout his Mafia career, Lino proved time and again that he had an uncanny instinct for self-preservation. Escaping what was meant to be certain death in 1981, when the three captains were massacred in front of him, was perhaps the most dramatic example of his unnatural longevity. His quick willingness to set his loyalty to Sonny Red aside—once it was clear Massino was winning the power struggle—was another. Likewise, in early 2003, with life imprisonment hovering over him, Lino did it again, this time abandoning his oath of
omertà
. It was not just his crime family he needed to turn against, however. As a lifelong criminal and longtime underworld player, he was required by the government to catalog all of his past crimes, who he committed them with and to list all of the made members of the mob and its associates that he was aware of. This meant turning in his son, Joseph, who was also a made man in the Bonanno Family, and other relatives. Even Duane “Goldie” Leisenheimer, Massino’s loyal acolyte, who had gone to prison in the past to protect the boss, turned on the mob and became yet another cooperating witness for the government. The array and rank of Bonanno informants climbing onboard surprised investigators.
omertà
. It was not just his crime family he needed to turn against, however. As a lifelong criminal and longtime underworld player, he was required by the government to catalog all of his past crimes, who he committed them with and to list all of the made members of the mob and its associates that he was aware of. This meant turning in his son, Joseph, who was also a made man in the Bonanno Family, and other relatives. Even Duane “Goldie” Leisenheimer, Massino’s loyal acolyte, who had gone to prison in the past to protect the boss, turned on the mob and became yet another cooperating witness for the government. The array and rank of Bonanno informants climbing onboard surprised investigators.
“The number of so-called ‘made members’ of the Bonanno Family who have abandoned the oath of
omertà
and cooperated actively with the investigation, and who have indicated a desire to cooperate, is truly unprecedented,” said the FBI’s Pat D’Amuro. “Instead of beating people up, they are beating down our doors in an effort to cooperate.”
omertà
and cooperated actively with the investigation, and who have indicated a desire to cooperate, is truly unprecedented,” said the FBI’s Pat D’Amuro. “Instead of beating people up, they are beating down our doors in an effort to cooperate.”
Some of the informants, including Joseph “Joey Mook” D’Amico and James “Big Louie” Tartaglione agreed to wear wires when they met with fellow gangsters, secretly recording their conversations, another first in the government’s assault against the Bonannos. The government would record veteran gangsters discussing serious underworld business, including family administration meetings and sitdowns with members of three of New York’s Five Families: the Gambino, Colombo and Genovese families. In one recording, made during a meeting in September 2003, when the Bonanno Family was really feeling the heat from news of the informants, Anthony Urso, the acting boss at the time, was heard suggesting one way to stem the flood of rats.
“You gotta throw somebody in the streets—this has got to stop. Fuck it, he can do it, I can do it. This is how they should have played and they might have done this before: [if] you turned [informant], we wipe your family out,” he said. “How would Sal feel if I killed one of his kids?” Urso asked Big Louie. “Why should the rat’s kids be happy where my kids or your kids should suffer because I’m away for life? If you take one kid—I hate to say it—and do what you gotta do, they’ll fuckin’ think twice.”
It would be a reprehensible thing for anyone to suggest, let alone a family man such as Urso. In a bid to aid Urso in obtaining a release on bail after he too was arrested, his own son, Steven Craig Urso, an associate professor at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York, wrote to the judge: “I would like you to know that my father is a kind and considerate man. … My dad has also taught me so much—honesty, respect and the value of hard work. … Despite his many challenges and his physical injuries, he has always maintained a healthy and modest lifestyle. He also taught me how to respect both my mind and body and how to meet life’s challenges with both courage and dignity.” The elder Urso himself seemed to have a change of heart—or at least told the judge he had—when he renounced his life in the Mafia.
“I still battle with my demons over this young man’s death almost every day of my life. I wish there had been something I could have done to save him,” he wrote to Judge Nicholas Garaufis of the Bonanno associate he had killed. “I have made some bad choices in life, but sometimes by the time you realize that you made a mistake, it’s too late to walk away. Now that I am finally free of that life of crime, all I can hope and pray for is the opportunity to live out the last years of my life in peace with my loved ones.”
Although Urso was dissuaded from going after the family of “rats” by his fellow gangsters, it suggested the desperation the Bonanno gangsters were feeling. It also highlighted the potential danger of becoming a government informant. This was underscored by Lino, who said informants like him faced a death sentence on the streets: “If I was not cooperating, I would be killing the witnesses,” Lino said.
Along with fear of the turncoats, conversations among the senior members of the Bonanno administration—the men chosen to fill in while Massino was incarcerated—reveal their attempts at protecting the remaining Bonanno assets. With “Big Louie” Tartaglione, a veteran Bonanno captain, secretly recording the conversations for the government, the senior New York mobsters refer to “them up there,” according to transcripts of the recordings. “Up there” is code for Canada, Tartaglione later said.
“When he’s got a case going, he don’t wanna show them, like now, [that] we got Canada too,” Joseph “Joe Saunders” Cammarano said during one conversation. Tartaglione later decoded the chat; Joe Massino did not want his men discussing New York’s relationship with Montreal while the FBI was all over them.
“They don’t want [people] saying… ‘Canada this and that.’ Leave it alone so maybe you don’t let the cat out of the bag,” Tartaglione explained. After Cammarano said they all needed to protect the Canadian contingent, Anthony Urso said it was likely too late. The rats, he said, will have already blabbed.
“You think he didn’t say he was out there with me, with all those people?” Urso said, a reference to Urso’s trip to Montreal with Vitale a few years earlier, when they met Vito and some of his men.
The Bonanno mobsters who remained unindicted grew increasingly resigned to the outcome of the demise of
omertà
within their ranks
.
In a frank assessment, Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano predicted how it would turn out.
omertà
within their ranks
.
In a frank assessment, Vincent “Vinny Gorgeous” Basciano predicted how it would turn out.
“At the end of the day, we’re all gonna be in jail,” he said.
It was not long after those words were spoken that Vito Rizzuto and his New York colleagues were arrested.
On February 13, 2004, Vito’s co-defendants—those who had been arrested on the same day as him in the sweep through New York—got their first tangible look at the strength of the government’s case against them. The first installment of the government’s evidence was turned over to defense lawyers, in accordance with the rules of disclosure. Included in that early batch were 250 exhibits and more than 70 audio recordings—the result of the informants’ having secretly worn wires while striking up conversations with associates.
“Additional discovery will follow,” Greg Andres, the prosecutor, added dryly. The volume and extent of the evidence proffered from so many informants, each adding a layer of corroboration to the other, presents a daunting challenge for any defendant. A jury could easily turn away in disgust from one unsavory turncoat, or, under clever cross-examination, two of them could be made to appear too unreliable to base a conviction on. But six or more cooperating informants sticking largely to the same story would be considerably persuasive.
For Vito, however, his judicial prospects would only get worse—potentially much worse—when another unexpected and almost inconceivable informant stepped out from the shadows.
CHAPTER 39
BROOKLYN, JULY 30, 2004After nine weeks of spirited trial, the foreman of an anonymous 12-member jury stood before Judge Nicholas Garaufis and announced their findings. Joseph Massino, then 61 and the boss of the Bonanno Family, was found guilty of ordering seven gangland murders. It left him facing a mandatory life sentence. Among the murders he was found to have orchestrated were the May 5, 1981, ambush of the three captains, as well as the slayings of Sonny Black and Anthony Mirra for letting Donnie Brasco near the family. At the trial, Greg Andres and his assistant attorneys, Robert Henoch and Mitra Hormozi, had led six former Bonanno underlings of Massino’s to the stand to point their finger incriminatingly at the boss.
“For the first time in the history of organized crime prosecution, members of the Bonanno Family who once took the oath of
omertà
took the oath of a witness,” a U.S. Department of Justice official said, after the convictions.
omertà
took the oath of a witness,” a U.S. Department of Justice official said, after the convictions.
The government’s record against the Bonannos was now unparalleled. Joe Massino brought to 30 the number of Bonanno defendants convicted after trial or pleading guilty to federal indictments. That total included the boss, the underboss, the
consigliere
, four members of the family’s ruling committee, 10 captains or acting captains and seven made members who were soldiers. Further, 33 additional members and associates were under indictment and facing justice, including Vito Rizzuto.
consigliere
, four members of the family’s ruling committee, 10 captains or acting captains and seven made members who were soldiers. Further, 33 additional members and associates were under indictment and facing justice, including Vito Rizzuto.
The U.S. government lost little time in noting one measure of its achievement: the official bosses of all Five Families of New York were now behind bars serving substantial prison sentences. Massino’s troubles were not over; he still faced a second indictment—this one for ordering the execution of Gerlando “George from Canada” Sciascia.
This charge was different from the others for one ominous reason—the murder had taken place in 1999, five years after the death penalty for a racketeering murder was placed on the books. The law had been passed despite quiet, behind-the-scenes lobbying of politicians by gangsters. The gangsters’ fear was well placed. The Massino case proved that the government would not flinch from sending a mob boss to face execution. This case against Massino was now a matter of life or death.
In November 2004, prosecutors made it official: if Massino was convicted, they would seek to execute him for ordering Sciascia’s death. The announcement, however, was attacked by Judge Garaufis, the trial judge, as being an uncalled for parting shot from John Ashcroft, the U.S. Attorney General, who had already announced his retirement from office when he issued the call for the mob boss’s execution.
“While it is apparent that the outgoing Attorney General has the authority to render the decision announced here in open court today, Mr. Ashcroft’s choice to make such a sobering and potentially life-ending decision now, after several delays, and only after tendering his resignation to the President and announcing to the country that he no longer wishes to preside over the Department of Justice, is deeply troubling to this court,” Judge Garaufis said from the bench. “It is my hope and expectation that the incoming Attorney General, presumably Judge Alberto R. Gonzales, will, upon taking office, conduct a careful review of Mr. Ashcroft’s decision in the final moments of his tenure.”
John Nowacki, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, defended the prerogative of the Attorney General to seek to have Massino executed: “The death penalty is the law of the land, provided for as the ultimate punishment for heinous crimes, and this administration is committed to the fair implementation of justice.”
The tactic against Massino, however controversial, worked wonders. Massino now faced almost certain death. With the crime family he had worked tirelessly to rebuild and rejuvenate—even rebranding it under his own name—falling again into tatters; after facing betrayal after betrayal as he sat in the courtroom staring at his former associates testifying against him; after having his personal family torn asunder by the cooperation of Sal Vitale, his own brother-in-law; and after being handed a life sentence and now facing possible execution, Joseph Massino did something he would never have thought possible. He offered his own cooperation to the government.
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