Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires (76 page)

A
jubilant John Gotti celebrated his latest judicial triumph in February 1990 by taking a winter vacation in Florida. Despite the dreary weather in New York, the FBI’s Jules Bonavolonta also had reason to celebrate. He was sitting on a carefully guarded secret: after four frustrating years of scraping for evidence against Gotti, Bruce Mouw’s Gambino Squad had finally struck a mother lode. At the start of the investigation in 1986, Mouw instructed George Gabriel, the case agent, to “figure out where Gotti is vulnerable.” Strapped for manpower, Mouw depended primarily on Gabriel, backed up by one or two agents at most, to carry out the dogged pursuit of the evasive godfather and to cultivate informers in order to locate a weakness in Gotti’s fortress. “Don’t count on a task force helping you,” Mouw cautioned Gabriel. What Mouw knew prosecutors wanted most of all was Gotti’s own recorded voice providing irrefutable and damning evidence of his supreme role as the Gambino godfather. “Locate where he is talking business, the Bergin, the Ravenite, a safe house, a restaurant,” Mouw emphasized.

Following in the footsteps of earlier city and state agency investigations, the FBI bugged the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in South Ozone Park, the office Gotti continued to visit almost daily after seizing control. The Bergin eavesdropping failed to turn up significant evidence, and eventually Gotti’s attentive
soldiers found the bureau’s secreted listening devices. By early 1988, Gabriel was convinced that the Bergin Club was of marginal interest since Gotti had moved his headquarters to the Ravenite Social Club in Little Italy, where his courtiers and capos visited him five nights a week. The windowless red-brick-faced club on the ground floor of a walk-up tenement on a grimy street became the command post for the nation’s largest, most powerful Mafia family.

Scouting for a suitable observation post from which to monitor the steel door entrance to the Ravenite, Gabriel rented a sixth-floor apartment on the northeast corner of Mulberry and Houston Street. Two blocks north or uptown of the Ravenite, the apartment had a window with an unobstructed view of the sidewalk in front of the club. It was in an expensive new building on a street that was being gentrified by young professionals, tenants who were not on guard for law-enforcement snoops like the suspicious residents of the Ravenite block. Perched inside the window, agents, using long-lens and high-tech night video lenses and still cameras, began compiling a rogue’s gallery file of everyone entering and leaving the club and their auto license-plate numbers. Gotti’s insistence that all of his capos and his important soldiers report to him at the Ravenite at least once a week provided the FBI with a Gambino family “Who’s Who.” Fifty or more of Gotti’s vassals showed up almost every day, and the photographs and videotapes elated Mouw. “It’s a bonanza for us. They’re supposed to be a secret society functioning in the underground and Gotti has all of them coming in daylight to the same location to talk to him, kiss his ass, and pass money to him.” The hugging and adulation of Gotti, he knew, could be used as circumstantial evidence to support testimony that Gotti was a Mob godfather.

Although the squad had been investigating the Gambino family for almost a decade, Mouw was surprised at the huge gaps that had existed in the bureau’s intelligence files before the Ravenite observation post was established. Agents discovered the existence of numerous previously unknown capos, soldiers, and corrupt union leaders only after their pictures were identified by turncoat informers. “We didn’t know how big the family really was. Especially the Bronx guys; that was a foreign country to us.”

The surveillance pictures were vital for the next phase of the investigation. Attached to statements from Mob informers, they gave prosecutors from Andrew Maloney’s Eastern District documentation and “probable cause” for court-authorized electronic eavesdropping at the Ravenite Club, on grounds that crimes were being discussed there. It was now up to James Kallstrom’s special-operations commandos to infiltrate the Ravenite. In the dead of a spring
night in 1988, Kallstrom’s lock pickers and technicians installed their first bug. Without any attack dogs or supersensitive burglar alarms to disturb them, the task was surprisingly easy. The bug and a transmitter were secreted in the rear of the club, near a huge round table that informers said was reserved for Gotti’s use. Going about their work, the tech agents saw on the wall above the table a symbol of Gotti’s past: a single framed photo of him and his late role model, Neil Dellacroce; both men were pictured in suits and ties, staring grimly at the world. Several hours later, about a mile away, agents at FBI headquarters in Lower Manhattan were ready to record Gotti’s precious words.

The bug was a dismal failure. Most of his conversations in the club were drowned out by the roar of a soda machine and a booming television set. Even though Kallstrom’s technicians returned surreptitiously several times to fiddle with the equipment and reposition the miniature mike, there was scant improvement. Conversations that were heard clearly usually were foul-mouthed personal chatter, meaningless as evidence of criminal wrongdoing. Mouw and his agents could only conclude that Gotti, increasingly wary about bugs, was apprehensive about speaking candidly in the Ravenite’s main room. The only morsel of Mafia lifestyle gained from the bug was Gotti leading his button men in a chorus of complaints about devoting Saturday nights to their wives. Other nights could be spent with a
goombata
, but Mafia custom required Saturdays to be reserved for wives. Gotti’s moans that Saturday evenings were his dullest nights were amusing but worthless gossip for agents.

Since Gotti routinely left the club for walk-talks in the neighborhood with Gravano and capos, Kallstrom’s magicians resorted to other high-tech gadgetry. Planting listening devices in parked vehicles, FBI technicians tried to overhear his sidewalk conversations by activating tapes with remote controls. This gambit also failed.

It took an off-handed observation by an informer to pry open the sanctuaries where Gotti spoke freely and conducted his confidential meetings. During a debriefing, the FBI spy casually mentioned to agent George Gabriel that Gotti and his lieutenants sometimes left the Ravenite through a rear door that led to the apartment building’s ground-floor hallway. Gotti and his companions always returned the same way, the informer recalled. The remark prompted Mouw and Gabriel to scrutinize transcripts of audiotapes and of time logs from the observation post two blocks away of persons entering and leaving the building. A startling fact emerged from the agents’ analysis. Sometimes, for up to an hour Gotti’s voice was curiously missing from the interior of the Ravenite. And,
during these long spells, the observation logs showed he had not exited through the Ravenite’s street door. Where did he go? Gabriel pressed informants for more details, any rumor or hunch about where Gotti went in the building. The possibilities: Gotti either talked with someone in the vestibule outside the Ravenite’s rear door, or walked upstairs to an apartment for private meetings.

One informer was fairly certain. He assured Gabriel that Gotti used an apartment occupied by Nettie Cirelli, the widow of a Gambino soldier who had been the caretaker of the Ravenite in Neil Dellacroce’s days. “Source C,” Gabriel wrote in a confidential memo, “also stated that John Gotti would continue to use the Cirelli apartment for very secretive meetings when he has something very important to discuss with someone and does not want to be seen on the street with this individual.”

With an amended Title III court order, Kallstrom’s men returned to the Ravenite building in October 1989, this time to bug the tenement’s rear hallway. The results were quickly gratifying for Mouw. There was no din from the interior club, and Gotti’s voice was clearly heard discussing family criminal matters with capos. Especially captivating for Mouw and prosecutors was a whispered conversation in the vestibule between Gotti and capo Tommy Gambino about Garment Center rackets and Gambino’s testimony before a federal grand jury in Brooklyn.

Buoyed by the hallway success, the next objective was Nettie Cirelli’s apartment, number 10 on the building’s third floor. According to an informer, when Gotti wanted to use the woman’s home, he ordered the current Ravenite caretaker, her nephew Norman Dupont, to suggest she go shopping or visit with a nearby niece for several hours. Neil Dellacroce apparently had used the same technique for meets in the apartment. As the widow of a Mob soldier, Mrs. Cirelli recognized the codified meaning of her nephew’s suggestion.

Planting a bug in the apartment would certainly yield results, but it was trickier than the hallway. Mrs. Cirelli rarely left the place, even in the daytime. Like many suspicious neighbors on the Ravenite block, she would probably not fall for the ruse of admitting technicians posing as utility company repairmen or insect exterminators into her home. Nor could Kallstrom’s men risk entering the two-room flat at night, while Mrs. Cirelli slept; the shock of seeing her apartment invaded might cause a fatal heart attack for the seventy-two-year-old widow. And a failed break-in would certainly alert Gotti that the entire building
was wired. Several bureau officials in New York thought Mouw should be content with exploiting the vestibule bug without endangering the whole operation by attempting an entry into the Cirelli apartment.

Mouw decided it was worth the risk and on November 19, 1989, a serendipitous opportunity arose. Agents in the observation post saw Mrs. Cirelli leave the building, carrying a suitcase, then being driven off by relatives. That night her telephone rang without being answered. More than likely, she had left for a Thanksgiving holiday and the apartment was temporarily vacant. Without waiting any longer, in the early morning hours Kallstrom’s special-operations savants picked the door lock to Mrs. Cirelli’s apartment. Her tiny living room contained a couch, two easy chairs, a wooden coffee table, two planters, and a TV set, and it was as neat as a pin. Kallstrom never revealed where the microphone was planted. “It was a small room, an easy job, and it went off perfectly,” he confided.

The next ten days were torturous for Mouw and Gabriel. Gotti appeared at the Ravenite but he did not step into the Cirelli apartment. Had something gone wrong? Mouw wondered. Were the informers misinformed? Did a vigilant neighbor spot the FBI entry into the apartment? Did some sixth-sense warn Gotti that the apartment had become dangerous?

At 8:00
P.M
., on November 30, 1989, the suspense ended. At the recording room at FBI headquarters, a bored agent was suddenly all ears. For the first time, sounds were coming from the Cirelli apartment. The apartment door creaked open and the voices of John Gotti, his consigliere Salvatore Gravano, and underboss Frank Locascio could be heard distinctly.

Listening to that evening’s conversation through headphones the next day, Mouw’s spirits soared. “As they started talking, Frankie Locascio turned on the radio in the apartment,” Mouw recalled. “John said, ‘It’s too loud; turn it down.’” Locascio, taking a routine step used by mobsters to foil law-enforcement bugs, had turned the radio on full volume. But Gotti was hard of hearing in one ear, and Mouw realized that was the reason he wanted the radio off. “It was a big, lucky thing for us,” Mouw added. “There was no background noise, no ambient sound, and John wanted everyone to talk loud.”

Part of the discussion was Gotti’s praise of himself, how his takeover of the Gambinos had been welcomed by the other Mob families. He related a conversation with Joseph “Jo Jo” Corozzo, a Gambino capo.

G
OTTI
: “… You know what Jo Jo told me outside in the car, today? We were standing about fifteen, twenty blocks from the other guy. He says to me, ‘You know, John,’ he says, let me tell you,’ he says, ‘I never was so proud, so happy in my whole life,’ he says. ‘I knew,’ he said, ‘I was talking with a few skippers [capos] from another family.’ He says, ‘Since youse are here, this is the first time that they could remember, in years, that the families ain’t arguing.’ Nobody’s arguing.” (clapping sound).

G
RAVANO
: “Right.”

G
OTTI
: “None of the families are arguing with nobody… . Everybody’s sedate.”

The discussion then turned to Paul Castellano’s murder. Gotti talked about Castellano’s incessant demands to hear the government tapes that implicated Angelo Ruggiero and Gene Gotti in narcotics trafficking. Gotti’s words seemingly supported the FBI theory of the motive behind Castellano’s murder: that Gotti feared Big Paul planned to “hit” him because of Ruggiero’s refusal to let Castellano hear the incriminating tapes.

G
OTTI
: “He [Castellano] couldn’t succeed because, Sam, he felt, and you know what we heard, ‘He felt he hadda hit me first.’ But, if he hits me first, he blows the guy who really led the [narcotics trafficking] ring, Angelo and them. Supposedly. That’s the guy on the tapes.”

G
RAVANO
: “I think he would’ve hit Angelo and not you.”

G
OTTI
: “Nah!”

Gotti’s hatred of the dead boss was evident. He denounced Castellano as a “rat motherfucker” who had divided the family. His final comment about Castellano’s murder mystified agents who were certain he had masterminded the assassination. “But, anyway, here’s a guy, whoever done it, probably the cops done it to this fuckin’ guy. Whoever killed this cocksucker, probably the cops killed this Paul. But whoever killed him … he deserved it.”

On the evening of December 12, Gotti was alone in the apartment with Locascio. To agents Gotti’s words that night were better than a signed confession. He described himself as a Mafia “boss,” and reviewed some payoffs that he got as a godfather. And most damaging to himself, he admitted authorizing at least three murders.

The first murder that he discussed was that of Robert DiB DiBernardo, an original member of the Fist, the select group that had conspired to eliminate
Paul Castellano. Gotti outlined to Locascio that while he was in detention, awaiting trial in the Brooklyn RICO case in 1986, he was told “a story” that DiBernardo was criticizing him to other wiseguys. However, he was now dubious about his lieutenants’ claims that DiBernardo was “subversive” and had bad-mouthed him.