Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (46 page)

In 1940, Castellano was inducted as a made member of the Mangano Crime Family, the same crime family in which his first cousin Carlo Gambino was already a captain. In fact, Castellano and Gambino were so close, Gambino even married Castellano's sister Catherine (marrying first cousins was not uncommon amongst the Sicilians).

After Mangano was knocked off in 1951 by his
Underboss, Albert Anastasia, Anastasia took control of the Mangano Family, and he changed the name to the Anastasia Family. Anastasia also bumped up Big Paul to the rank of captain. In 1957, when Anastasia was killed by rival Vito Genovese, Gambino took over the Anastasia Family. He changed the name to the Gambino Family, and he inserted his cousin Paul Castellano as one of his right-hand men.

On November 17, 1957, Genovese called for a huge summit of all the Mafia bigwigs in America
scheduled to take place in Apalachin, New York, at the home of Mafia member Joseph Barbara. There were several items on Genovese's agenda, the most important of which was to declare himself “Capo di Tutti Capi,” or “Boss of All Bosses.”

However, the wily Gambino knew that the local state police would be tipped off to the meeting, so he stayed away, and instead he sent his cousin Paul to take the heat. When the state police raided the Barbara residence, dozens of mobsters tried to e
scape by jumping out of windows and running through the woods in their expensive suits and patent leather shoes. But not Castellano. Big Paul surrendered without a fight, and he was sentenced to a year in prison for refusing to tell the police the purpose of the meeting.

After his marriage to Nina, Paul prospered in the family meat businesses, and by the 1950s, he owned several businesses, including Blue Ribbon Meats,
Ranbar Packing Inc., and The Pride Wholesale Meat and Poultry Corporation.

According to Jonathan
Kwitney's book
Vicious Circles
, “The Castellanos owned many meat stores and distributorships in Brooklyn and in Manhattan. They had a long record of welching on debts; of suffering suspicious hijackings, which can lead to insurance claims; of selling goods that were later found to have been stolen off the docks or trucks, and of cheating other firms by receiving the assets of companies about to go into bankruptcy proceedings.”

Whereas Castellano gave the airs of a successful businessman, issuing a death warrant was certainly not beneath his character. Castellano once ordered the death of an underling, because the man had the audacity to say Castellano looked like chicken magnate Frank Perdue
. (Perdue was famous for his chicken-like face splashed across the screen in his TV commercials, where he pronounced, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.”)

In the
mid 70s, Perdue was having trouble getting his chickens into the New York City weekly supermarket advertisement circulars. Someone whispered in Perdue's ear, and soon he signed a distribution deal with Dial Poultry, owned by two of Castellano's sons. From that point on, Perdue had no trouble advertising and selling his chickens in the New York market.

To show he would not allow anyone in his blood family to be abused in any way,
Castellano's son-in-law Frank Amato disappeared from the face of the earth after Castellano discovered Amato was beating Castellano's pregnant daughter Connie and cheating on her on the side. As a display of familial compassion, Castellano did wait for his daughter's divorce to become final before he gave the order to vaporize Amato.

Castellano, with the blessing of his cousin Carlo Gambino, was also heavy into the shylocking business. Unfortunately, in 1973, one of his street “lenders,” Arthur “Fat Artie” Beradelli, free on bail while appealing convictions for fraud and selling counterfeit secur
ities, was pinched by the Feds, again for fraud. The FBI, led by field agents James Kallstrom and Frank Frattolillio, put the screws to Beradelli, and they convinced him if he didn't cooperate with the Feds he would spend big time in the slammer. Beradelli, who was represented by a legal aid attorney, listened to his attorney's advice, and he became a stool-pigeon.

After giving the Feds a list of those in charge of the loansharking enterprise he was involved with, Beradelli finally agreed to wear a wire. And he did so while speaking with “Little Paul” Castellano,
the younger cousin of Big Paul and one of the chief loansharking operators who answered to Big Paul.

Even though Little Paul was fluently versed in “mob-speak” (a mob dialect when they
speak vaguely about everything and constantly refer to items called “that thing”), it was obvious from the taped conversations that Beradelli had borrowed large amounts of money from Little Paul and that Little Paul was to continue to receive his “vig payments,” even after Beradelli went to prison. Little Paul also made it clear (in mob-speak) that his older cousin Big Paul was overseeing the entire operation.

In March 1975, Beradelli wore a wire while speaking with Big Paul Castellano. But Big Paul was
excellent in mob-speak himself. Even though everything that was captured on tape was consistent with the notion that Big Paul Castellano was indeed the big cheese in the loansharking operation, Big Paul said nothing on tape that could conclusively connect him to any wrongdoings; at least nothing the Feds could take Big Paul to court with.

While Beradelli was wearing a wire and speaking to friends
, Beradelli's wife found out that her husband was also speaking to the Feds. Beradelli's wife was a Gambino cousin (isn't everyone?), and she immediately berated her husband; calling him a “rat.” This left Beradelli no choice but to refuse to testify in court against any mob figures that might be indicted in the loansharking case.

Beradelli later said, “If I had gone against her, I would have lost her and the children forever.”

As a result of his failure to see the deal though until the end, instead of getting no prison time, Beradelli was sentenced to two years in prison on the original fraud charges. Because he did garner some very important information on the tapes he did make, the second fraud charge against Beradelli was dropped.

On June 30, 1975,
the Feds indicted nine alleged organized crime figures for loansharking. These men included Big Paul Castellano, Little Paul Castellano, and another cousin Joseph Castellano. Before the trial began, Little Paul Castellano pleaded guilty. Because he was a relatively small fish in a big pond, Little Paul got only four months in the slammer and a $5,000 fine. The government tried to force Beradelli to testify at the trial, which included their intended target, the Big Fish himself: Big Paul Castellano, but Beradelli refused. Judge Bartels then ordered Beradelli to testify, giving him immunity from prosecution. Beradelli still refused, and as a result of Beradelli's non-cooperation, all the defendants walked scot-free, including Big Paul Castellano. Judge Bartels then threw the book at Beradelli, sentencing him to five years in prison for contempt-of-court.

But at least
Beradelli still had his faithful wife and lovely children to visit him in prison.

By 1975, Carlo Gambino was obviously very ill from a severe heart condition. When Gambino died, the favorite on the streets to take over the Gambino Family was Aniello Dellacroce, a hardened criminal and Gambino's second-in-command. Dellacroce was a respected man in the mob,
and had allegedly taken part in several “pieces of work,” or murders. And according to Mafia rules, Dellacroce was, in fact, supposed to be promoted to boss instead of Castellano. Dellacroce had the backing of all the major Gambino street crews, including Carmine Fatico's men at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club in Queens.

However, Gambino wanted to keep things in the family, and to the consternation of many, he anointed Paul Castellano to be his successor as the head of the Gambino Family. As a result, there was outrage
amongst the street soldiers, who saw Castellano as nothing more than a greedy snob who thought he was stratospherically above the common street soldiers who were kicking up all the money to the bosses on top. Whereas most captains demanded 10 percent of the street soldier's take, Castellano wanted 15 percent of any schemes his men were involved with.

Things came to a head,
when on October 15, 1976, Carlo Gambino finally died and Castellano was officially inducted as the Gambino boss. Street men, like tough John Gotti, bristled at the choice and were hardly placated when Dellacroce, as a consolation prize, was given control of all the lucrative Manhattan Gambino street rackets. Dellacroce, an old school Mafioso, who went by the credo that a boss’s word should never be challenged, was the only person who kept his crew from a devastating and bloody mutiny against Castellano and his allies.

Whereby Gambino had lived in an inconspicuous house in Brooklyn, Castellano built himself a mansion on
the trendy Todt Hill on Staten Island. Todt Hill (which in Dutch meant “Death Hill”) was the highest track of land in the entire borough of Staten Island. The 17-room house was built with stone and stucco, and was painted entirely white, with two white columns majestically standing out front, looking suspiciously like the White House in Washington, D.C. (The Gambino street crews snidely referred to Castellano's home as “The White House.”) The house was completely surrounded by tall wrought-iron fences and armed with the most sophisticated burglar alarms. If this wasn't enough to discourage intruders, Castellano had ferocious Dobermans patrolling inside the perimeter, viciously leaping at the fences if anyone, including the mailman, came near the house.

In late 1978, Castellano further infuriated the men who were loyal to Dellacroce when he set up a meeting between himself, his
top captains, and the two bosses of the violent Irish “Westies” gang from Manhattan's Hell’s Kitchen: Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone. The intermediary who arranged the meeting was Roy DeMeo, the most proficient killer under the flag of Gambino captain Anthony “Nino” Gaggi.

The meeting took place at Tommaso's, a Bay Ridge eatery frequented by a veritable who's-who of the mob. When Coonan and Featherstone were escorted by DeMeo into the private back room of Tommaso's, they could hardly believe their eyes. Seated at a horseshoe-shaped table were Nino Gaggi, Carmine Lambardozzi, Joseph N. Gallo, Aniello Dellacroce, and Funzi Tieri. Seated at the head of the table was the sire of the Staten Island “White House”: Big Paul Castellano himself.

At this point, Coonan and Featherstone thought they had a very big problem and were going to leave the restaurant in body bags. It seemed that just a few weeks earlier, Coonan had taken part in the murder of Castellano's top bookie/shylock Ruby Stein. Coonan had owed Stein $70,000 in gambling debts, and Coonan figured it made more economic sense to kill Stein rather than to pay Stein. So that he did, in a Hell's Kitchen bar, along with a few of Coonan’s accomplices, all of whom Coonan made shoot Stein as a sign of solidarity after Stein was already dead. After the deed was done, they cut Stein up into little pieces, and they deposited Stein's body parts into several garbage bags and threw them into the waters near Ward's Island.

The only problem was, Coonan forgot to slit open Stein's torso to let out all the gases, and Stein's torso was soon found floating in the waters near Rockaway Beach in Queens.

After Castellano made a few inquiries, he found out the last man Stein had been seen with alive was Jimmy Coonan.

In addition, there was the slight problem of Ruby Stein's little black book, which contained the names and the exact figures of the money out on the streets owed to Stein, and thereby owed to Castellano and his captains. Coonan had taken that black book off Stein's dead body, but at this particular time he didn't know exactly
what to do with it. If he commenced making collections, Castellano would have known for sure who had killed his very valuable asset – Ruby Stein.

According to T.J. English's book –
The Westies
, Coonan, as a sign of good will, presented Castellano with a box of the finest Cuban cigars. After Castellano passed the box around the table so his captains could see the value of the present, the men began eating with a vengeance; first the salads, then the dishes of seafood with pasta, then some of the best lasagna known to man. After the last morsel had been devoured, and the men were waiting for their espresso and Anisette, Tieri whispered something into Castellano's ear.

Big Paul cleared his throat,
and then he said directly to Coonan, “Jimmy,” then he hesitated and said, “You don't mind if I call you Jimmy?”

Coonan had a huge frog in his throat. “No, of course not.”

Castellano went into a dissertation as to why Ruby Stein was such a valuable member of his organization and why Stein’s death was such a terrible blow to all the men seated at this table. Then Castellano looked right into Coonan's eyes and said, “Jimmy, did you or any of your people have anything to do with this terrible thing; this murder of our good friend Ruby Stein?”

Coonan tried to look sincere.

“No,” he quickly said. “We didn't have nuthin' to do with that.”

“Are you sure?” Castellano said.

“Yes sir, without a doubt.”

Castellano then got to the meat of the conversation. He asked Coonan if he knew the whereabouts of Stein's little black book.

Coonan said, “I don't even know what youse are talking about.”

Castellano raised his voice just a bit.

He said, “That book has millions of dollars’ worth of loans in it; shylock loans. There are people here who need that book.”

Coonan shrugged, “Wish I could help you, Mr. Castellano. But I don't know
nuthin' about Ruby's death, or no black book.”

Coonan then heard from Castellano's lips what he had dreamed about for years. “Alright
Jimmy, this is our position. 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 us.
Capisch
? Everything goes through Nino or Roy. You have our permission to use our family name in your business dealings on the West Side. But whatever monies you make, you will cut us in 10 percent.”

After dinner, Castellano and his crew took Coonan and Featherstone to the nearby Vets and
Friends Social Club. There Castellano told them the real reason he wanted their alliance.

“If you are ever called to Brooklyn, you come, no questions asked,” Castellano told them.

Coonan and Featherstone correctly understood this to mean that they and their Irish crew from Hell's Kitchen would be a secret hit-squad for Castellano; especially when non-Italian shooters were needed. Again, this did not go over well with Dellacroce, who was old-school enough to know that Italian Mafiosi do not associate with Irish criminals, whom they felt were overly violent and not trustworthy. The man Dellacroce was grooming for further advancement in his crew, John Gotti, did not like this Irish liaison too much, either.

In 1979, 35-year-old Columbian Gloria Olarte went to work for the Castellanos as a housemaid. At the time, P
aul Castellano was 64-years-old and his wife Nina was a very attractive 60-years-old. But that didn't stop Paul Castellano from having roving eyes. Soon, he started an affair with Olarte right in front of his wife's eyes and also in front of his daughter Connie who was living nearby. Whenever his wife and Connie went out shopping, Castellano made sure they had enough cash to spend so that they wouldn't return home anytime soon.

At first, Castellano's advances were just petting and simple kissing, and soon Olarte began to wonder why Big Paul had not consummated their relationship. It seemed that at the time Olarte made her way into the Castellano household, Castellano
, due to a diabetes condition, had not had an erection in four years. That problem was taken care of when Castellano had “the operation”: a penile implant that would make him able to have intercourse with his young housemaid.

His affections for Olarte were obvious to the crew members who visited Castellano for business
meetings and were also obvious to his wife. Gambino family members began talking about Castellano behind his back; about how he was disgracing his wife by prancing his young housemaid in front of them at their “White House” meetings.

The FBI had wanted to plant a bug in Castellano's house for many years. Through conversations they overhead from bugs planted in other mob hangouts, the FBI had ascertained that when men came to visit Castellano to discuss family business, these meetings always took place in a little dining nook in the kitchen. There is some dispute as to whether Olarte herself, realizing that Castellano's affections for her were waning, told the FBI where to plant the
bug. But on March 17, 1983, while Castellano was on a Florida vacation with Olarte and his trusted aide Tommy Bilotti, the FBI decided the time was ripe to plant the bug. The only problem was, Castellano's wife was still on the premises.

When Nina Castellano finally left the house
at around 5 p.m., a team of FBI agents disguised as gardeners, sanitation workers, and telephone installers went to work.

The “gardeners” drugged the Dobermans who were standing guard inside the fence, by throwing drugs-infested steaks over the fence for the dogs to consume. Then FBI “techies” disabled the burglar alarm, allowing three more “
techies” to pick the door locks and then enter the Castellano residence. Two Sanitation trucks blocked the entrance to the street, and the FBI agents in the trucks disguised as sanitation workers were under orders to stop Nina Castellano, by any means necessary, from returning to the house until the bug was planted and the FBI agents were safely out of the house.

Once inside the house, the agents went directly to the kitchen nook. By the
kitchen table sat a chrome lamp near Castellano's high-backed chair, which he always sat in during mob meetings. The agents removed the base of the lamp, and replaced it with an identical base that contained a microphone and a power pack. They placed the lamp back in its original position and quickly exited the house. Their stay inside the Castellano residence lasted only 12 minutes. Once safely outside, the FBI “techies” re-activated the burglar alarm, so that when she returned to her home, Nina Castellano would be none the wiser.

This bug
became a treasure trove of information for the FBI.

(The FBI was, under law, supposed to stop listening when the conversations being recorded involved inane personal matters. But that was not always the case.)

Within a few days, the Feds heard Castellano boasting to one of his associates, “No one comes to Staten Island unless I say so.”

For many years, the FBI suspected that the Gambino Crime Family had their greedy tentacles deep into labor racketeering, especially in the construction business. Castellano confirmed this fact when he was recorded saying to one of his captains, “Our job is to run the unions.”

However, the most incriminating conversation was recorded when Castellano was at a sit-down with his chauffeur and right-hand man Tommy Bilotti, and Gambino “collection agent” Alphonse “Funzi” Mosca. Gloria Olarte could be heard hovering in the background, certainly listening, and sometimes interjecting innocent remarks into the conversation. According to the book
Mafia Dynasty
, by John H. Davis, the conversation went like this:

Castellano: He gotta pay. And he gotta be clued in. Over two, forget about it. He sits out. That's club. Under a deuce, we talk. Maybe he gets some. But he pays the two points. First. None of this “you'll have it in a few days” bullshit.