Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (110 page)

Massino’s second reputed victim in the mid-1970s was Joseph “Do Do” Pa-store, a cigarette smuggler and loan shark, to whom Massino owed $9,000. Wiping out the debt, Massino was said to have pumped two bullets into Pastore’s head and deposited the body in a garbage dumpster.

Galante’s execution was a vital crossroad in Massino’s career path. In the realignment that followed, his gangland candidate Rusty Rastelli, with the Commission’s blessing, became the official Bonanno boss, and one of his first moves was to elevate Massino to capo. Forced to rule long-distance from a prison cell, the new godfather technically appointed an older capo, Salvatore “Sally Fruits” Ferrugia as acting boss. But it was apparent to savvy Bonanno soldiers that Massino was the prime warlord, the only wiseguy with a direct link to Rastelli and the only one he regularly conferred with in Lewisburg. Agent Joe Pistone, still masquerading undercover as jewel thief Donnie Brasco, though not directly involved with Massino’s activities, surmised his soaring status from conversations with well-informed Bonanno regulars who trusted him, Benjamin “Lefty Guns” Ruggiero, a soldier, and Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano, a capo. “Lefty and Sonny classify him [Massino] as one of the top capos, top people, in the family,” the agent reported to his FBI superiors.

From Pistone’s intelligence reports, the bureau sensed that another storm was approaching the rambunctious Bonanno family despite the enthronement of Rastelli and the Commission’s “no bloodshed” edict to its feuding cliques.
The complete story of a Mafia bloodbath and Massino’s central role in it was finally revealed two decades later through eyewitness testimony and FBI debriefings of turncoats.

By early 1981, factions had formed in renewed friction over leadership posts and retaining Rastelli as an absentee commander. Two high-level sit-downs between disputant capos failed to resolve the strife. At these conferences, known as “administration meetings,” the Mafia code of honor prohibited participants from carrying weapons. The Commission had technically warned the divided parties to avoid violence as harmful to Cosa Nostra business generally, and to work out their problems by themselves. But in the treacherous Mafia world, three New York families were secretly lining up behind favorites. Rastelli’s loyalists were endorsed by the Gambino and Colombo families, and the Genoveses were encouraging a mutiny by their main candidates: Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicate, Philip “Phil Lucky” Giaccone, and Dominick “Big Trin” Trinchera, three aligned renegade captains who wanted a larger hunk of the borgata’s loot and power.

In the spring of 1981, a Colombo soldier, Carmine “Tutti” Franzese, a friend of Massino’s, brought him alarming news: his opponents—the three capos—were “loading up,” secretly arming themselves for a showdown. For guidance, Massino turned to allies on the Commission, Paul Castellano, the Gambino boss, and Carmine Persico, the Colombo godfather. “They told me, ‘You have to defend yourself. Do what you have to do,’” Massino informed Sal Vitale, his brother-in-law and sounding board. “They’re trying to rob the family from Rastelli.”

Interpreting “defend yourself” as Commission permission to eradicate the three capos before they wiped out the Rastelli faction, Massino designed a preemptive assault. Outmaneuvering his enemies, he wooed the swing vote—the mercurial Sicilian Zips—to join him and thereby share in the anticipated spoils of the new and victorious hierarchy. The Sicilians came on board and agreed to import shooters from their Montreal wing, who would be unrecognized in New York and afterward quickly return to Canada, for an ambush of the three targeted capos.

Laying out plans for the triple murder, Sonny Black Napolitano, a chief conspirator and strong Rastelli adherent, wanted to burnish the Cosa Nostra reputation of an associate in his crew—Donnie Brasco—by using him in the whackings. “I want to straighten out Donnie and want him to play a significant role,” Sonny suggested to Massino and Vitale, unknowingly praising the undercover FBI
agent. Massino instantly vetoed the suggestion. Presciently, he had earlier advised his crew members to stay clear of Brasco, forbidding them to even sit at the same table with him at weddings and social gatherings. “He might be bad,” said the suspicious Massino.

To entice the three captains into a cul-de-sac snare, Massino arranged a third administration sit-down, at a presumably neutral site, an after-hours club run by the Gambinos. (Aniello Dellacroce, the Gambino underboss, was apparently clued in on the trap and authorized John Gotti’s crew to lend a hand.) Two uncommitted Bonanno capos, Joseph “Joe Bayonne” Zicarelli and Nicholas “Nicky the Battler” DiStefano, were invited to the powwow, a stratagem intended to allay suspicion that it might be a set up. The meeting was deliberately set on a Tuesday night to bolster an alibi for Massino and his henchmen. Tuesdays were a festive time for dinner and all-night card games at Massino’s club and hangout in Maspeth; a large gathering there on the night of the planned hits could be explained afterward as a routine party if it provoked police suspicion.

Late in the afternoon of May 5, 1981, more than a dozen soldiers and wannabes from crews run by Massino and Sonny Black Napolitano assembled at the club. Most were unaware of the impending agenda. An important Zip, known as “George from Canada,” showed up with members of his outfit from Montreal. He was Gerlando Sciascia, a capo and heavy narcotics dealer, who had handpicked killers from his crew for the night’s work. “It’s a go,” Vitale heard Massino ring out after a whispered conversation with Sciascia. George had one reservation: he distrusted using a non-Italian associate Massino had assigned as a lookout against possible police interference. His name was Duane Leisenheimer, then twenty-four, universally known to Massino’s crew as “Goldie” for his thick crop of bright blond hair. Growing up in Maspeth, Goldie had latched onto Massino as a teenager. Under Massino’s tutoring, he matured into a member of Joe’s hijacking troupe, a prized “wheel man,” crafty at eluding law-enforcement surveillance, an unsurpassed auto thief, and a chop-shop specialist.

Although blue-eyed Goldie lacked Sicilian or Italian genes, Massino assured Sciascia, “He’s a good kid. Don’t worry about him.” The principal players—Massino, Sciascia, Napolitano, Vitale, and Goldie—departed for their rendezvous in three cars and a van. Extolled by his crew as an electronics virtuoso, Massino had equipped Goldie and other participants with radio-scanners, a device to listen in on police and FBI radio bands, and walkie-talkies to sound
warnings if police cruisers or suspicious-looking cars approached the Mob meeting site. As they headed for their vehicles, Goldie heard Massino declare, “Come on, let’s go. We’re going to take care of this, once and for all.”

It was 5:40 in the afternoon when the mobsters drove away from the Maspeth club. At that precise moment, Vincent Savadell, an FBI agent, was alone in his car on routine surveillance of the street outside the club. He had spent the previous hour circling the area, jotting down the license-plate numbers of vehicles parked near the hangout, a monotonous task intended to identify wiseguys and accomplices and to locate their home and business addresses. Spotting Massino driving off in a burgundy Buick, with several men as passengers, Savadell memorized the license registration. He followed the Buick but quickly lost it and the other cars in Massino’s caravan on the nearby Long Island Expressway.

Even through Savadell was in an unmarked Oldsmobile, Massino had detected him and radioed a description of a “bad car” over the walkie-talkies, his code for a law-enforcement tail and a signal to drive evasively. Savadell’s futile attempt to pursue Massino would be the FBI’s only observation of him on that eventful night.

The mobsters’ rendezvous point was in Brooklyn; the “administration meeting” was to be held in a catering hall that the Gambinos had converted into an illegal after-hours bar and gambling casino. It was in a commercial section of Bensonhurst on 13th Avenue near 67th Street. Goldie’s job was to park about two blocks from the conference site and use his walkie-talkie to warn Massino and the others if potential trouble developed outside: essentially the presence of police patrols, suspicious-appearing cars, or opposition gangsters in the vicinity. Sonny Black and four of his hoods were parked in a red van across the street from the entrance to the Gambino’s club.

Inside, on the ground floor of the two-story building, Sciascia and Massino gave last-minute instructions to some ten men gathered around them. Four were assigned as shooters, armed with a sawed-off shot gun, pistols, and a submachine gun. Three were Canadian Zips: Vito Rizzuto, Emanuel Raguso, and a gangster who Vitale and Massino knew only by his nickname, “the old man.”

A former paratrooper, Vitale got the tommy gun because Massino thought he had learned how to handle it during his army days. Checking the weapon, Vitale, who had never wielded a submachine- or rapid-fire grease gun, accidentally fired off five rounds into a wall. “I don’t want bullets flying all over the
Place,” Massino admonished him, adding that he was not to use the gun unless absolutely necessary.

Because the neutral capos, Joe Bayonne and Mike the Battler, were not intended victims at the peace parley, the shooters were given ski masks to prevent the two outsiders from identifying them. The gunmen were instructed to hide in a large coat closet, to peek out, and emerge only after a signal from Sciascia: he would run his hand through his hair. The murders would be called off if Sonny Red Indelicato failed to appear. He was the most feared and bellicose opposition capo, and he had to be eliminated for Massino’s scheme to succeed.

The previous evening, May 4, 1981, several blocks from the catering hall, the trio of dissident capos had met for a tense strategy session of their own in a Bensonhurst bar owned by Frank Lino, a Bonanno soldier. Lino was in a crew headed by Indelicato’s son, Anthony Bruno, who had been promoted to captain two years earlier as a reward for whacking Carmine Galante. As Massino had been forewarned, the rebels were stocking up with heavy weaponry and had concealed the arsenal in Lino’s bar. Among themselves, the three captains agreed to abide by Cosa Nostra rules and go unarmed to the next night’s meeting with Massino’s group. Lino was commanded to accompany them, also unarmed. The capos stressed to Lino that if they failed to return from the “peace” conference, Bruno Indelicato had been delegated to use the stored firepower in the bar to retaliate against the Rastelli supporters.

At about 9:00
P.M
., on May 5, the three capos and Lino left together for the showdown. Before setting out, Alphonse Indelicato indicated his apprehension with a grim advisory: “If there’s any shooting, everybody is on their own.”

As the four men approached the club’s entrance, Goldie was seated in his lookout car, and Sonny Black Napolitano and his gunmen were in the van. “They’re here. They’re coming in now,” Goldie heard someone from the van announce over a walkie-talkie. Inside the club, the front doorbell rang and Vitale, peeking through a crack in the closet, saw Sonny Red Indelicato, Phil Lucky Giaccone, Big Trin Trinchera, and Frank Lino enter. The four men in the closet donned their ski masks. Vito Rizzuto, pistol in hand, sprung out, shouting, “This is a holdup. Everybody against the wall.” Three other gunmen spilled out after him. The plan called for Rizzuto and Raguso to mow down the intended victims, if possible by lining them against a wall. Vitale and the fourth gunman, “the old man,” were assigned to cover the front door and shoot any target trying to flee.

Although Vitale did not pull the trigger of his tommy gun, a crescendo of gunfire reverberated. Frozen with fear, Frankie Lino saw hooded men leaping into the crowded room, and watched Massino, holding Sonny Red’s arm, strike or punch him with “an object”. In the melee Vitale was certain that he saw Massino slug a different capo, Phil Giaccone. Before Vitale reached his assigned post to prevent an escape through the front door, a terrified Lino, regaining his senses, bounded over the fallen body of Big Trin Trinchera, and sped through that door. Turning around, Vitale observed George-from-Canada Sciascia lean over the sprawled Sonny Red and blast him with a bullet to the head. The barrage barely over, Vitale suddenly found himself alone with Massino and three dead men. Everyone else—their fellow conspirators and the two neutral capos—had fled through a rear door which neither Vitale nor Massino knew existed. Looking at Massino and surveying the floor splattered in blood, Vitale thought Joe was silently saying to him, “It’s a mess. Where did everybody go?”

Massino’s Sicilian allies had left without a word, carrying off one of their own, Santo Giordano, who was accidentally shot in the back during the fusillade. That night, the Zips paid $500 to an obliging physician to operate on Giordano without reporting the gunshot wound to the police, as required by law. (The wound left Giordano a paraplegic until he later died in a plane crash.)

With the deed done, Massino summoned Sonny Black Napolitano and his soldiers from their van. Assigned as backup shooters, they had ineptly neglected to station a gunman outside to block the front door and had allowed Lino to flee through the darkened streets. Now, their task was to clean up the grisly scene and “package” the bodies for removal. Using painters’ canvas drop cloths and rope, Napolitano’s men wrapped up the dead capos and scoured the crimson-stained floor to remove evidence of the massacre.

Returning alone to Massino’s club in Maspeth, Sal Vitale was greeted by hugs and kisses from other crew members, who knew without being specifically informed that a spectacular feat had been accomplished. With James “Big Louie” Tartaglione, another Massino flunky, Vitale drove back to assist in removing the corpses and clues. Tartaglione collected more than a dozen shotgun and pistol shells strewn on the floor. Rolled up in the canvas, the bodies were loaded into Sonny Black’s red van. It was past midnight, the street was desolate, and Vitale and Goldie’s cars were stationed at two intersections to stall and prevent any passing motorist from viewing the activity. Tartaglione drove
the van to Howard Beach, followed in a car by Massino, Vitale, and Goldie. Waiting on a side street were three men Vitale recognized as John Gotti’s brother Gene; Fat Ange Ruggiero, John’s bosom companion; and John Carneglia, a ferocious muscleman in the Gotti crew. It was unnecessary for Vitale to question Massino about the Gambinos’ presence. He fathomed that they were helpmates in the slayings, trying to insure that the remains of the three capos would never be found.