Mob Star_ The Story of John Gotti Part 9

A few months later, the FBI heard of this hijack from Source Wahoo. It was apparent then why Polisi had complained. The FBI valued the load of 5,577 mink and muskrat pelts at $100,000, but Polisi and Foxy got only $4,500 each.

In May 1972, Gotti benefited from Carmine Fatico's misfortune. Fatico was indicted in Suffolk County, Long Island, on loan-sharking charges; the authorities said he was collecting more than 200 percent in annual interest on several loans.

Carmine was already on probation due to a conspiracy conviction for his role in the 1968 murder plot against a Long Island businessman. Needing to lay low and prepare for his trial, Fatico began to avoid the Bergin. With the consent of Neil Dellacroce, Gotti filled the vacuum. At 31, he became acting captain of the Fatico crew, even though he was not a made man. It was impressive, but another ex-Brooklyn Neapolitano, Al Capone, had done better: He ruled all of Chicago at age 32.

No one at the club was surprised. Johnny Boy Gotti was aggressive and political and a more able leader than Danny Fatico. Men around him now rose in stature. For instance, Polisi said that Willie Boy Johnson began to be "treated with a great deal of respect because he was a close friend of John's."

Willie Boy's father wasn't Italian and thus he could not be inducted into the Family, but over the years Willie Boy became like Family to Gotti. He was a versatile and likable criminal and, among many other things, wound up managing his own gambling operation.

In addition to the Crazy-Foxy tip, Source Wahoo had also told the FBI about a hijack drop used by William Battista and John Carneglia. Now Wahoo filed his first report on John Gotti, post-Lewisburg, and his control agent put a note in the file.

Gotti was "a big hijacker" and Angelo and Salvatore Ruggiero worked for him. Every Sat.u.r.day, he reported to Neil Dellacroce at the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy. He would be made a member of the Family soon. As an aside, Wahoo said the Bergin crew was "starting to wonder" about Billy Battista, who was asking too many questions about a man wanted on an FBI warrant.

The visits with Dellacroce shot Gotti into the big time. A year earlier, another United States Senate committee had issued a report calling Dellacroce "the most powerful boss in New York today. His influence is enormous. His power is incredible."

The Senate committee was overstating a bit, but Gambino was slowing down and Dellacroce, born and bred in Little Italy, seemed an obvious choice as the new don don, or lord of the Family. Few outsiders knew much about the man who was emerging as another possible successor, the low-key cousin and brother-in-law, Paul Castellano.

Dellacroce's high profile was a possible disadvantage. At the time Carmine Fatico was indicted on the loan-sharking case, Dellacroce was indicted on an income-tax charge. He was accused of reporting an income of only $10,400 in 1968 when he actually made $134,150; it was a net-worth case, meaning that the government had to prove his guilt by proving how much he had spent. The prosecutor said Dellacroce "had lived the life of a professional hoodlum all his life." Dellacroce, however, was confident he could beat the charge. He had beaten so many.

John introduced Angelo and Gene to Dellacroce, who now supplanted Fatico as John's mentor. The young Bergin hoods fawned over the chief Ravenite hood. Angelo called him "uncle." When they went to sit down with him, they wore suits and ties; going into "New York" they felt sharp and looked sharp-in their own way. For John, who came from a house of hand-me-downs, it was the start of an obsession with fine clothes.

Late in 1972, after all appeals had been exhausted, Dellacroce had to go to jail for snubbing a grand jury despite having gotten immunity. More bad news broke in January. His sanguine att.i.tude about his tax case evaporated in a conviction. The evidence included testimony that Dellacroce, as "George Rizzo" in three days of gambling in a casino in Puerto Rico, had lost as much as he reported in income for the entire year. He faced five more years after his grand-jury contempt sentence expired in June.

John Gotti went about his business as best he could. As acting captain, he matched talent with tips. Early in 1973, he hooked Crazy and Foxy up with Sal Ruggiero and another hijacker so they could swipe 57,000 watches from a storage area at JFK Airport. Soon everybody at the Bergin had new watches to go with off-the-truck suits from an earlier hijacking.

Source Wahoo told the FBI about the stolen watches and said Gotti had started hanging out at another social club, the Nevermore, which was in Maspeth-still Queens, but far from the Bergin. At the club and a nearby bar, the Sportsman's, Gotti was loansharking with the son of a top official of a dirty Teamsters local.

With Dellacroce behind bars and Carmine Fatico laying low, Gotti began seeing Carlo Gambino himself. FBI agents saw him-on several occasions-entering and leaving Gambino's apartment on Ocean Parkway in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood.

John took great pleasure in pa.s.sing along Carlo's orders. For instance, early in 1973, John told the troops that the old man wanted them to lay off trucks connected to companies a.s.sociated with various Families; he wanted them to avoid committing certain crimes: counterfeiting, stock and bond fraud, drug dealing, and the kidnapping of other criminals.

All these crimes are violations of federal laws; Gambino was well aware that federal agencies had been granted sweeping new powers to attack the Families; he knew the federal law bureaucracy was less corruptible than the state's. He had banned kidnapping other criminals for an additional, personal reason. His 29-year-old nephew Emanuel Gambino, who operated his own version of the Bergin's beer-and-peanuts business, had been grabbed off a Manhattan street the previous May.

Given all the criminal opportunities in New York, it's a wonder crooks should choose to kidnap other crooks, especially a nephew of a powerful crime boss. But at the time, at least two gangs of kidnappers specializing in bookmakers and loan sharks were prowling around card games and after-hours bars.

Emanuel Gambino's kidnappers contacted his wife and demanded $350,000. She collected about $100,000 from relatives, turned it over to an unknown person, and waited for her husband to come home. He never did. On January 26, 1973, he was excavated from the grounds of a federal ammunition depot in New Jersey, a bullet in his head.

James McBratney, age 32, was not a part of the Gambino kidnap scheme, though some people may have believed it. He was a large, ruddy man who belonged to another gang; unlike the first gang, whose members were all Irish, McBratney's gang cut across ethnic lines. It had recently kidnapped a Staten Island loan shark and gotten $21,000. But some neighborhood kids saw the s.n.a.t.c.h and pa.s.sed along a license-plate number to neighborhood Family members.

McBratney and his partners soon learned they were wanted, but not by the police. One partner was Edward Maloney, who ran away from an orphanage to begin a New York crime career at 15. He would have a bad night in Gotti country a decade later, but now he fled the city. McBratney put a machine gun in his car and stayed put on Staten Island. A bad mistake.

11.

MAKING HIS BONES AT SNOOPE'S BAR ABOUT 11 P.M. ON MAY 22, 1973, John Gotti, Angelo Ruggiero, and another Gambino aspirer, Ralph Galione, entered a homespun tavern on Staten Island called Snoope's Bar & Grill.

The barmaid, Miriam Arnold, age 26, a part-time student, later said Snoope's was so well-lit that it was possible to read a book and so she recognized the trio instantly. She remembered that they were in the bar a month earlier, and that they looked around, acted suspiciously, and left without having a drink, although the one she later learned was John used the men's room.

This night, they were preceded by a few minutes by a large, fair-skinned man who sat at the bar next to a regular customer, Lawrence Davis, age 29, a mechanic. The barmaid didn't know Jimmy McBratney, who had left his machine gun outside, but when he ordered his drink she said it sounded like he had a bad cold.

McBratney sat quietly sipping his 65-cent creme de menthe on the rocks as John, Angelo, and Galione came in and strode to the rear of the bar, past a half-dozen or so tipplers. Miriam Arnold, who was serving three friends celebrating a birthday, remembers sensing danger when the trio of men turned and walked back toward the big Irishman.

Quickly they surrounded him: Angelo on his left, Galione on his right, and John behind; Galione had a gun; Angelo had a pair of handcuffs. All began pulling McBratney up and away from the bar.

"You're under arrest," Galione said to McBratney, who was trying to pull away. "You've been this route before; don't give us any trouble."

"Hey, who are you?" a patron named Red McMa.n.u.s yelled.

"We're police," Galione said.

"Let's see a badge."

Galione fired a shot into the ceiling, ending further requests for identification. Two customers fled the bar; two darted into a cellar. Galion ordered the others to stand against a wall, but Miriam Arnold, keeping her cool, had already slipped to the end of the bar-and onto a pay telephone.

McBratney was off the bar stool now, struggling to free himself from Angelo and John. But the Bergin buddies had Lewisburg muscles and McBratney, though he, too, was strong and actually managed to drag all of them several feet toward the end of the bar, couldn't get free.

John and Angelo, with McBratney wedged between them, ended up in front of Miriam Arnold, on the phone with a 911 operator. "I realized I was in a rather bad position, if something was going to happen," she recalled. "So I moved away."

"Where do you think you're going?" demanded Galione, who now had the rest of the bar under his control.

"The h.e.l.l out of your way. I don't want anybody to get hurt."

Too late for that. Galione walked toward McBratney, a standing duck between John and Angelo, and fired three times at close range, producing in the smoky air streams of a fine pink mist. McBratney would kidnap no more.

A few Family men have said an a.s.sociate will not be made until he partic.i.p.ates in a murder. This frustrates infiltration by undercover agents. The rite of pa.s.sage was once described as "making your bones." Gotti, then 32 years old, was making the best of his bones. The victim was a Family menace.

Even so, it was a sloppy murder. Why not wait for McBratney to leave the bar? Why not attempt to conceal faces? Who would buy the cop charade without a badge to display?

In July, two of McBratney's killers, Angelo and Galione, were picked out of a police photo spread by Miriam Arnold and Lawrence Davis. They were quickly arrested, but the police had no idea who the third man was. They probably never would have if Gotti hadn't succ.u.mbed to the common habit among criminals of boasting about their crimes.

A month after Angelo and Galione were arrested, Source Wahoo heard Gotti bragging about the McBratney hit and Carmine Fatico vainly advising him to lay low. The FBI tipped the NYPD, which showed a photo of Gotti to the witnesses, and on October 17, a few days before his thirty-third birthday, a state grand jury indicted him on a murder charge. This time he listened to Carmine Fatico and went into hiding. He left Victoria and the kids, but not the Crime Capital.

The police called on an FBI hijack squad to help search for the fugitive. The FBI called on Source Wahoo, who "was given a specific a.s.signment to locate John Gotti and set him up for apprehension." Nearly a year after the murder, Wahoo reported in. He said Gotti avoided the Bergin, but "on a daily basis" was at the Sportsman's Bar or the nearby Nevermore Social Club in Maspeth "with the exception of weekends when he goes off with his wife." He was driving a Mark IV Lincoln registered to an Ozone Park restaurant. He got messages from a pay phone across the street and regular visits from his brother Gene and Foxy the hijacker and cocaine dealer. He was often in the company of Tony Roach Rampino, the heroin dealer, Bergin hijacker, and "John's man."

"Source stated Gotti, to his knowledge, is not carrying a gun and will not resist apprehension," an FBI memo said.

On June 3, 1974, as Gotti and Rampino chatted in the Nevermore, FBI agents arrived, arrested the murder suspect and turned him over to the NYPD. Wahoo "was the sole basis for the apprehension of Gotti, who is a bonafide organized crime figure under Carmine Fatico and Dellacroce," an FBI agent wrote in support of a $600 payment to the source.

Gotti was held on $150,000 bail until his parents and his inlaws-who had helpfully provided a job cover after his release from Lewisburg-put up their houses to secure a bond.

His in-laws were already doing a lot for Gotti, their daughter Victoria, and their grandchildren. They had recently purchased a house for them in Howard Beach, directly south of Ozone Park on Jamaica Bay. Finally, Gotti had made it out of Brooklyn apartments and into a Cape Cod house in a suburb by the sea. He hoped he wouldn't have to go off to prison too long.

The Gotti house was white with black trim. It had five rooms on the first floor and three bedrooms upstairs. This was plenty of room even though Victoria was pregnant and soon expected to give birth to another boy, who they would call Peter. The house was on Eighty-fifth Street in the Rockwood Park section of Howard Beach, an area containing about 3,000 single-family homes built in the early 1950s on filled-in marshland.

Howard Beach lies directly beneath the airplane approach to Runway 31-L at JFK Airport, but most residents don't even notice the big jets anymore. Generally, they are more prosperous and professional than their neighbors in Ozone Park; but they share the same community attachment, the sense of having escaped the madness of the metropolis, of live-and-let-live, and of minding your own business.

In midday traffic, the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club was now a six-minute drive from Gotti's home.

Free on bail, Gotti was hopeful his lawyers could work something out. He had more than the usual reasons for wanting to avoid prison. Carlo Gambino was growing old, Dellacroce was in jail, consigliere consigliere Joe N. Gallo was laid up with a heart attack, and Carmine Fatico had just been indicted on another loan-shark charge. The new case was instructive: Fatico was accused of collecting usurious interest from ten businessmen on loans of five hundred to several thousand dollars. When debtors fall behind on such loans is when underground bankers acquire part of seemingly legitimate enterprises as well as a way to wash illegitimate money. Joe N. Gallo was laid up with a heart attack, and Carmine Fatico had just been indicted on another loan-shark charge. The new case was instructive: Fatico was accused of collecting usurious interest from ten businessmen on loans of five hundred to several thousand dollars. When debtors fall behind on such loans is when underground bankers acquire part of seemingly legitimate enterprises as well as a way to wash illegitimate money.

Gotti had a few enterprises to tend to. Back at the Bergin after a few years in Florida, Matthew Traynor was told Gotti had acquired a piece of a motel and a Chinese restaurant. Source Wahoo said Gotti was the hidden owner of a Queens disco and that he ran a c.r.a.p game with Carmine Fatico's money in a second-floor loft on Church Avenue in Brooklyn.

Gotti now kept a private office at the Bergin, "which could not be entered without an appropriate reason," an FBI agent wrote after interviewing Traynor, who said it was clear that "John was the boss." Angelo was John's top aide and in their absence Gene was in charge.

At day's end, Traynor hung around with crew members in the 101 Bar, another establishment he was told Gotti had gotten a hook into. Source Wahoo was getting expense money from the FBI to hang out in such joints, and he kept delivering. His tip led to the recovery of a load of Canon calculators and cameras from a Gambino Family drop in New Jersey.

At the time, Wahoo's control agent was Special Agent Martin J. Boland, then stationed at an FBI office in New Jersey. Boland debriefed Wahoo on the phone or met him at quiet places in Brooklyn and Queens; he occasionally summed up for his superiors how valuable Wahoo was: "Source converted to top-echelon criminal informant [in] February, 1971. Since then [source has been] responsible for solving numerous FBI cases which resulted in arrests of Cosa Nostra figures and recovery of over $300,000 in stolen property, national publicity in [a Luchese Family fraud] case and the arrest of Sal Polisi in a bank robbery."

Informants whose value depends on maintaining criminal credibility can be troublesome. They test the patience and resourcefulness of agents, as Special Agent Boland noted: "Case agent has handled this informant single-handedly; has had to contend with the informant being arrested [for] counterfeiting, ... receiving stolen property ... and armed robbery ... the above arrests and informant's activity within the underworld has presented problems which Agent Boland has handled efficiently without recourse to higher bureau authority. It is noted Agent Boland received a letter of commendation in [a fraud case] for handling liaison with the Brooklyn District Attorney."

Matthew Traynor acted as a wheelman in several hijackings pulled by the Bergin crew after his return from Florida. One of his drinking companions was Tony Roach Rampino, a gangly man with sinister eyes, hollow cheeks, and pockmarked skin who favored sharkskin suits and gaudy ties.

Rampino was a worker bee in the Bergin gambling games; he also collected loan-shark debts. He boasted that his menacing appearance accounted for his successful collection rate. He told Traynor that Gotti helped kill "the Irish guy" for "the little big man, Carlo," and that everyone in the crew benefited.

"We're going to take over everything some day," John's man added.

Rampino advised Traynor to tell businessmen who needed money to see John Gotti, as the acting Bergin boss wished to go "legitimate." This was after Rampino returned from Canada with money he collected for Gotti from the "Greco brothers." Rampino wanted to get close to the brothers.

"They're big dope guys," John's man said.

Many years later, Angelo would get close to one of the Greco brothers; it was on a big heroin deal that caused grave problems for the Family within the Family.

Traynor was told by another Bergin a.s.sociate that Gene Gotti might be dead had it not been for John. Gene had gotten into a dispute in a Manhattan bar and slapped around a relative of a Gambino captain, who threatened mayhem. John stepped in and restored everyone's dignity with negotiated regrets about the misunderstanding.

The older hoods liked the younger hood-he was capable and respectful, even if sometimes a little too outspoken and aggressive. "Dellacroce will sponsor Gotti to Cosa Nostra members.h.i.+p when Gambino opens the books. Gotti is a well-respected hoodlum and has gained much stature since the killing of McBratney," Boland wrote after another Wahoo chat.

Gotti no doubt was disappointed that Gambino had closed the members.h.i.+p "book" and was making men only when members pa.s.sed away. Carlo was worried about adding men affiliated with Dellacroce, who would surely want to take over once Carlo was gone. He also wanted to keep the Family a manageable size and was wary of initiating an informer or anyone connected to drugs. At the time, the Family was said to include 500 made men and 1,000 more a.s.sociates, making it far and away the nation's largest.

Although Carlo was keeping Gotti waiting, FBI informers were saying that around the Bergin the acting captain would refer coyly and mysteriously to special favors that the old man had called upon him to provide.

"He didn't get specific about the favors," an FBI agent said. "He let them use their imaginations."

A story going around in Queens bars that the FBI later heard had Gotti killing a man and chopping off the victim's head and storing it in a hatbox in a refrigerator. Gotti "got credit, in the minds of some crew members, for hits he did not do. But a story like that, even if it isn't true, embellishes a guy's reputation," the agent said. "It helps build a mystique."

The police and the FBI were not always able to sort out all the details, but at the end of some tales about Gotti and his crew they found dead bodies. Such was the case with Sally Crazy Polisi's hijack buddy, Foxy, who pa.s.sed away on December 18, 1974, the victim of three .38-caliber slugs, two to the head.

Four years after the fact, Traynor talked to the FBI and to Queens detective John Daly about Foxy's murder. He said the Gotti brothers were angry at Foxy for skimming hijacking proceeds and he was asked to drive two Bergin a.s.sociates to Foxy's apartment in nearby Howard Beach and wait in the car while they went inside. They returned in a few minutes.

"I guess we'll have to go to Foxy's funeral," one said.

Traynor had heard no shots, and the man didn't elaborate, but three days later Traynor was in his Cadillac with Richard Gotti, driving to Foxy's funeral. During the funeral, Traynor heard Gene Gotti ask Foxy's sister to turn over to him a boat her brother had. She later did.

Traynor said crew members decided to concoct a story and pin the murder on one Tommy DiSimone, yet another hijacker who preyed on the JFK Airport as a member of a gang a.s.sociated with a Luchese Family capo, Paul Vario.

Traynor would give this version of Foxy's death to federal agents again-essentially the same way-in 1986. In between the two stories, Sources Wahoo and BQ insisted to the FBI that Tommy DiSimone, aided by his brother-in-law, did in fact kill Foxy over a girl, not money. The girl would not talk to the police about it, but she did tell Gotti, and he swore revenge.

Sally Crazy heard of Foxy's demise as he began an eight-year stretch in Lewisburg federal prison. Angelo was then on a return visit to Lewisburg for another hijacking-a fellow inmate was convicted hijacker John Carneglia-and he told Polisi that Foxy was killed by Tommy DiSimone.

"Well, then, I will kill Tommy," Polisi responded.

"You can't kill Tommy. John and I are going to take care of Tommy," Angelo retorted.

In January 1979, not long after he got out of prison, not long after he was suspected of taking part in a stunning armed robbery-the theft of nearly $6 million in untraceable dollars from a Lufthansa German Airlines vault at the airport-Tommy DiSimone, who had gotten over the girl who fell for Foxy and married the daughter of a Gotti crew member, disappeared and was not seen again. His brother-in-law, Joseph Spione, had disappeared earlier.

Source BQ gave a chilling description of how Spione was dispatched. He said Spione was beaten with bats and dismembered by four crew members in the back room of the Bergin. The pieces were placed in several plastic bags and dumped in the ocean.

With regard to DiSimone, BQ gave a chilling account of Gotti's use of his power. He said Gotti ordered DiSimone's father-in-law, crew member Sal DeVita, to set up his son-in-law by bringing him to a street corner where two other crew members were waiting in ambush. The two gunmen were John's man, Tony Roach Rampino, and Michael Roccoforte, an eventual cocaine dealer.

Source BQ said Rampino and Roccoforte waited for five hours before deciding that Sal and Tommy weren't coming. Later at the Bergin, BQ saw DeVita crying and asking Gotti not to be angry with him, but he just couldn't set up his daughter's husband.

"Tommy will be killed," John Gotti said, according to BQ.

Four days later, Gene Gotti told BQ that Sal DeVita would not have to worry about setting up Tommy anymore; Tommy was gone. Source Wahoo said Tommy was taken on a sea voyage, weighted down, and thrown overboard, thus joining his brother-in-law in the Jamaica Bay cemetery off Howard Beach.