Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (46 page)

Born in Bensonhurst in 1915, Castellano’s immigrant parents baptized him Constantino Paul. Paul’s father, a butcher, supplemented his income by organizing an illegal lottery game known as the “La Rosa Wheel” in a section of their Brooklyn neighborhood. A mediocre student, Paul dropped out of school in the eighth grade and became an apprentice to his father in two trades, working both as a meat cutter and a lottery runner or seller.

His recorded criminal career began inauspiciously on the July 4th weekend in 1934 when he and two neighborhood companions held up a haberdasher in Hartford, Connecticut, at gunpoint. Their total loot was $51. Unfortunately for Castellano, a witness jotted down the license plate number of the getaway car, Castellano’s own. Arrested and identified as one of the amateurish gunmen, the
nineteen-year-old Castellano was not yet a made soldier, but he understood the fundamental Mafia principle
of omertà.
A firm refusal to finger his accomplices in exchange for a lighter sentence established his reputation as a standup guy. Pleading guilty to robbery, Castellano served three months of a one-year prison term.

Marriage and an actual family relationship to Carlo Gambino were stepping stones in Castellano’s climb to the pinnacle of the crime family. In addition to being a cousin, Gambino had married Castellano’s sister, Katherine. As Carlo advanced, Paul rose with him, serving in Carlo’s glory years as his most trusted capo. When Gambino’s health declined in the mid 1970s, Castellano materialized as Don Carlo’s alter ego and the family’s acting boss before being officially crowned a full-fledged godfather. His dominant stature in the Mafia and his imposing height of six-feet two-inches ennobled him with the complimentary nickname “Big Paul.”

A reader of the
Wall Street Journal
and financial magazines, Castellano pictured himself as a businessman and the conciliator of the family, equivalent to the CEO of a diversified corporation. His legal income for 1RS purposes came from “investments” in meat-packing and poultry firms, and in construction companies that were incorporated in the names of his sons and other relatives. The cosmetic efforts to masquerade as an erudite businessman impressed one of his underworld equals, “Fat Tony” Salerno. At a meeting with Genovese and Gambino members present, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano heard Salerno deliver a rare Mafia compliment: “Paul, you talk so beautiful. I wish I could talk like that.”

Castellano’s invisible power clearly extended into the legitimate business world, where executives were discreetly aware of the Gambino family’s hold over unions and its secret interests in the Key and Waldbaum supermarket chains in the New York area. Pasquale “Pat” or “Patsy” Conte, a Gambino capo adept in narcotics trafficking, sat on the board of directors of Key Foods, and had an overbearing voice in deciding which products were stocked in the cooperative chain. Asked by agents from a presidential commission why he favored products from Castellano’s companies, Ira Waldbaum, the principal owner of Waldbaum’s, replied that it was the responsibility of law enforcement, not businessmen, to “take action” against organized crime. “Don’t forget I have a wife and children,” Waldbaum said.

Dial Meat Purveyors, a company headed by Castellano’s sons, Paul Junior and Joseph, was the main supplier in New York of poultry and meat to more
than three hundred independent retail butchers and many supermarkets. Through secret accords with officials in the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Big Paul could interrupt deliveries and ignite labor problems in stores that did not accept his wares at the prices he dictated.

The clearest sign of the respect accorded Castellano by big business came from a national poultry supplier, Frank Perdue. Perdue, whose television commercials for his company brought him national recognition, acknowledged to the FBI in 1981 that he had directly solicited Castellano’s aid at least twice. The first occasion was to ask if Castellano could derail attempts by the Mob-tainted United Food and Commercial Workers Union to organize his main processing plant in Accomac, Virginia. A second difficulty Perdue thought Castellano could resolve was his inability to get his chickens into many of the chain supermarkets in the huge New York region.

Perdue never clarified to the FBI what help Castellano offered or provided. At first, he said, he contacted Castellano because of his expertise as an investor in beef, poultry, and wholesale food companies in the city. Pressed by Gambino Squad agent Joseph F. O’Brien as to why he had singled out Castellano rather than supermarket and meat business officials, Perdue, with a high-pitched cackle, replied, “Why? Because he’s the godfather.”

The chicken-producer later amplified to investigators from a presidential fact-finding commission that he sought Castellano’s intervention because he was known to have “long tentacles as an organized-crime figure. Yeah, the Mafia and the Mob.”

From day one as Gambino boss, Castellano gloried in his executive skills. In 1976 he had negotiated with his own underboss, Aniello Dellacroce, the control and division of the gang’s income. All white-collar crimes—bid-rigging, union corruption, political bribes, financial frauds—remained in Big Paul’s sphere. Dellacroce retained the more traditional and violent rackets of loan-sharking, gambling, and hijackings. But Castellano, as supreme boss, greedily demanded his cut from the loot collected by Dellacroce’s crews.

There was a brutal, blood-drenched side to Castellano’s glowing self-portrait of himself. Before expanding into white-collar ventures, Castellano had organized hugely profitable gambling, loan-sharking, car theft, and extortion activities. And, of course, as boss he collected the largest share from these enterprises, even if he no longer had a significant role in running them. He also handpicked accomplished killers inside and outside the family for necessary dirty work, contract hits, to maintain his control. Probably his most feared hit
man was Roy DeMeo, who in the 1970s and early ‘80s captained a squad that federal and city authorities said killed at least seventy-five people. Gene Mustain and Jerry Capeci in their book,
Murder Machine
, placed the body count at more than two hundred.

Most of DeMeo’s victims were never found. His crew’s grizzly style, according to informants, was to use a Brooklyn apartment as an abattoir where the bodies were bled dry in a bathtub, disemboweled in the living room, and packaged in cardboard boxes. Private garbage trucks then dumped the body parts in landfills. Similar to the Cosa Nostra’s earlier use of Jewish executioners in Murder Inc., Castellano saw the camouflage value in hiring killers who would not be identified as mafiosi. One death squad that he recruited was a gang of ethnic Irish psychopaths from the Hell’s Kitchen area. Labeled “the Westies” by a detective, these sadists specialized in hacking victims to death and disposing of them through a sewage-treatment plant on Wards Island in the East River.

Castellano sealed a coldhearted business deal with the Westies leader, Jimmy Coonan, in February 1978, in a private dining room at Tommaso’s Restaurant, in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section. The get-together was arranged by DeMeo, a friend of Coonan’s and an admirer of his homicidal skills. Francis “Mickey” Featherstone, a Westie who accompanied Coonan to the meeting, later disclosed to investigators and T.J. English, a writer, that Castellano was disturbed that the Westies murder wave in Manhattan had included two important loan sharks working for the Mafia.

English befriended Featherstone after he defected and entered the Federal Witness Protection Program, and Featherstone gave him an account of Castellano’s pact with the Westies. “All right, Jimmy, this is our position,” Featherstone recalled Castellano saying. “From now on, you boys are going to be with us. Which means you got to stop acting like cowboys, like wild men. If anybody is to be removed, you have to clear it with my people.
Capish?”
The quid pro quo for the Westies was Castellano’s permission for them to use the Gambino name as an intimidating weapon in extortions, loan-sharking, and labor racketeering on Manhattan’s West Side. “But whatever monies you make, you will cut us in 10 percent,” Featherstone quoted Big Paul.

Among the well-informed in New York’s crime families, the tale of Castellano’s son-in-law, Frank Amato, was a reminder of his unremitting wrath. A two-bit hoodlum and hijacker, Amato stepped up in the world by marrying Castellano’s only daughter, Connie. The generous Big Paul handed the bridegroom a well-paid job at Dial Poultry, the wholesale company operated by
Castellano’s relatives. Amato repaid Castellano by proving himself to be a reckless philander and a wife beater; the couple divorced in 1973. Soon afterward, the former son-in-law vanished without a trace. The Mob gossip mill provided a rational explanation for his disappearance. He was “clipped” on orders from Castellano, who was outraged at his physical and mental abuse of Connie.

The ability to handle both the savage and sophisticated elements of the Gambino empire made Castellano a multimillionaire and he lived like one. He built a seventeen-room mansion on one of the highest points in New York, the wooded crest of a hill in the ritzy Todt Hill section of Staten Island, offering a panoramic view of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge arching over New York’s Upper Bay. Castellano’s neo-Federal creation dwarfed all others along Benedict Road, where homes were valued at a minimum of $1 million. The interior featured beautifully paneled walls and floors laid with Carrara marble. There were four master suites, eight baths, guest apartments, a wine cellar, staff quarters, and a solarium. Even the simplest meals were served on porcelain plates and Waterford crystal. For outdoor amusement Big Paul, the lord of the manor, constructed an Olympic-sized swimming pool, an English garden, and a manicured bocci court. A long circular driveway led to its white-colonnaded portico entrance. Befitting his assumed status as a national Mafia leader, Castellano thought it proper to model the exterior of the mansion on that of the nation’s president and to call his home “the White House.” Completed in 1981, the house was valued at $3 million, although Castellano probably got generous discounts from obliging building contractors.

By the early 1980s, Castellano grew aloof, a sovereign remote in his mansion, seeing only a coterie of confidants, rarely visiting his battalions in their neighborhood clubs. Capos were expected to pay him homage by delivering or sending his portion of their booty to the White House. Conferences were on a by-appointment-only basis, and Big Paul scheduled the meetings. His demands for larger and larger percentages of the borgata’s income and his disdainful attitude toward most soldiers brought Castellano a new, and derogatory, nickname, “the Pope.”

Ever since the formation of the Gambino Squad in 1981, FBI agents had searched for a vulnerability that would allow them to listen in on Castellano’s secrets. One possibility was exploiting a shuttle service employed by Castellano to receive mafiosi visitors. For security reasons, most mobsters, even when summoned to the Hill, were barred from driving directly to the White House front door. They parked their cars on nearby Benedict Road and were picked up by a
member of Castellano’s palace guard, who chauffeured them into the gated compound. Frank DeCicco, a Staten Island capo, frequently took care of the shuttle chores, ferrying visitors to the White House and back to their autos. Several agents believed they would get “dynamite leads” bugging DeCicco’s car and eavesdropping on his passengers’ conversations minutes after the talks with Castellano were concluded.

G. Bruce Mouw, the supervisor of the Gambino Squad, toyed with the idea but decided it was a tangential approach. “Let’s go for the big guy,” he instructed his squad, meaning, “Let’s bug Castellano’s home.”

From their surveillance and from tips
from paid informers
, Gambino Squad agents knew that there was no social club, no favorite restaurant that would serve their needs. A home-telephone wiretap was installed under a court order but it proved to be unproductive. Like all cautious mafiosi, Castellano had for decades avoided compromising himself on phone calls. The most reliable reports from informers indicated that the one place where Castellano routinely received reports and issued orders was a
makeshift
den, a dining alcove near the kitchen in his home.

Obtaining court authorization to wire Castellano’s privileged sanctum was relatively easy. Previous bugs and telephone taps of Gambino soldiers gave the FBI abundant “probable causes” that Castellano was using his home for Mafia conferences. The difficult chore was penetrating the Castellano White House itself. The home was
never empty
; when Castellano and his minions were away, his wife, Nina, or their housekeeper and Big Paul’s mistress, Gloria Olarte, were always there. The challenge of breaking into the house was herculean. Guarding against government intruders and the possibility of assassins, Castellano was prepared to thwart all invaders. An eight-foot-high brick fence encircled the grounds, and the main building was laced with electronic sensors and interior and
rooftop
burglar alarms. A private security company monitored the alarm system and closed-circuit video cameras around the clock. At night,
floodlights
illuminated the approaches to the house and its exterior. Two Doberman pinschers prowled night and day to intercept uninvited strangers.

Rather than a tricky high-tech scheme to overcome Castellano’s barriers, the FBI’s Special Operations Unit decided on a simpler course. Someone would walk right through his front door. Even if Castellano were present, a bug would be placed in his private quarters by a lone agent.

FBI officials, citing the need for security in future black-bag operations, never fully reveal specific details of any bugging operation. But it is known that
the daring plan to penetrate the mansion worked to perfection. In March 1983, two creative FBI black-bag practitioners, John Kravec and Joseph Cantamesa, tinkered with the television cable lines leading to Castellano’s set near his den. Instead of a cable company repairman, agent Cantamesa showed up in mufti to restore service while Kravec, on the outside, made sure the TV problem was not corrected until Cantamesa had figured out where to install his bugs and transmission lines. The affable Cantamesa established a rapport with members of the household and volunteered to return and repair a malfunctioning telephone near the kitchen. Accustomed to perquisites everywhere he went, Castellano gladly accepted the free services, which would prove costly in the end. After several invited visits to the house, Cantamesa solved all of the household’s television and phone-line snafus, and completed his own special assignment. The obliging “repairman” used the opportunity to install miniature microphones and hard wires in the baseboards that would transmit conversations from the alcove to an FBI listening plant.