The Mafia, New York, and An Unexpected Murder

In the 1970s the Italian Mafia believed that they owned New York City, because well, they did. At one point the FBI had three offices working on mob related cases and could never figure out how they were pulling off these schemes.

It became so frustrating that one day agents went down to a car dealership owned by a mobster and tried making a deal with him. They said, “we know that you are committing these crimes, but we don’t know how you are getting away with it.”

They offered to look the other way when his name came up in exchange for how they were doing it. The Mobster said, “I have no idea what you are talking about, but I can get you a great deal on a new car”.

The FBI were having a rough time getting to the bosses of the families due to the structure of their organizations. In New York City there were five families in control. The , , , , and . Each family used the same structure to run their operations.

The boss was at the top, then came the under boss, the captains, and the soldiers. They mainly talked to the person above them, so a soldier would talk with a captain for example, and since soldiers were the ones getting arrested, there was no connection to the bosses.

The soldiers knew that talking to the police meant death and when one was arrested another would fill his position to keep the operation running.

FBI agents were getting frustrated that they could not get close to the Bosses, but the answer to their problem had been passed 10 years earlier, they didn’t know how to use it. The Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act, commonly known as RICO, was such a complicated law that the FBI began giving classes on what it meant and how to use it.

Until this point, officers were arresting people individually, but RICO allowed law officers to arrest one person, say a soldier in the mafia, and then gather more evidence connecting others to the same crime.

Based on the evidence, all involved would be charged with the same crime. With the families being so big, the FBI create five offices, one for each family, to gather evidence on.

To start, their plan was to find the person with the biggest mouth and then find enough evidence to allow them to bug his house. The first was Angelo Ruggiero. The FBI discovered that he was complaining about his phone service. They called his phone company and told them that they would take care of it, sent in an undercover agent as a telephone repair man, and the rest is history.

Information received from this bug was used to get court orders and bug other members of the mafia. They found that members of the family would discuss business in the back of a restaurant and bugged a hanging lamp over the table that the members sat at.

This bug was destroyed once or twice and agents had to break in again to replace it. Business was also discussed at the house of boss Paul of the family. The FBI bugged the TV which was right next to the kitchen table where they all gathered.

By Creating static on Castellano’s television the FBI was able to get an undercover agent inside the house. The undercover agent called his partner once inside and pretended to be talking to the television company.

Every time he hit the TV he gave a code word to the other agent to mess with the signal. He told the mafia member that he could fix the TV if the member would hold a flashlight for him. In some sense, the mafia member helped the FBI plant a bug in his bosses TV.

After bugging 25 different places, the FBI collected plenty of evidence to convict mafia members, but they still did not have what they needed to get to the big bosses. Even with the wire taps, members were cryptic on the phone and in person.

FBI offices had any number of agents transcribing the recording to make sure that they knew what they had. They discovered that the Mafia had rooted themselves in society and industries. They controlled judges, major Unions, and were not feared by those living in the same neighborhoods but respected.

The FBI kept coming back to the phrase “the commission” in a majority of their recordings. This is what would help bring the RICO case against all families together.

The commission was all five bosses, Fat Tony Salerno of the Genovese, Tony Ducks of the , Paul of the , Genaro of the , and Rusty of the . These men would meet in secret to do business and set up rules so that members of the five families would get along.

The Commission controlled the labor unions, but they were divvied up between the families. Families staffed them with their people to keep control over what happens in the unions. One man that got deep in to the construction union was Ralph .

was a soldier in the family. He became president of the district council of the cement and concrete workers union. In short, he controlled who worked on what jobs and this gave him an important role. This was clear when he kept making an appearance on the bug at the restaurant.

Why else would a soldier be sitting at the table with captains unless he was important to their operation?

When a job was up for bid, would make sure that one of the eight workers unions under mafia control would receive it. They targeted the jobs that would net them at least 2 million dollars. This is one of the connections that law officials used to make an arrest.

After receiving this information, Rudolph Giuliani used it to put together the Commission Case and put the Mafia in prison. As an Italian America, Giuliani hated the Mafia, seeing what they were doing to people and giving Italian immigrants a bad name.

The Commission Case was shaky at best, with most of the evidence pointing to soldiers committing murders and tax fraud. What would be the nail in the mafias coffin would be the murder of another boss. Carmine was the boss of the family in the late 1970s. While dinning at a restaurant, three men came and shot him. Because he was one of the five bosses, this could not have happened unless the other four decided to do it.

This was the connection that would take down the mafia.

One of the shooters was identified as Anthony . At first, he was ruled out when his finger prints did not match the print found on the handle of the get away car. Years later, an agent realized that the print was a palm print not a figure print and this matched .

Security footage from a nearby store showed and other members congratulating each other about an hour after the murder.

The bosses would meet in a secret location after the murder to discuss business. The FBI found out the location and got pictures of every boss coming out of a house signifying a meeting.

Now having all the evidence needed to arrest the bosses, the FBI created an operation to arrest them all at the same time, but there was a problem. The night before the operation was to go down, a member of NBC News called the FBI to inform them they found out about the raids and were going to air it on the new that night.

This cause the operation to be moved up and the arrests were carried out as the information was being reported on the news. Paul was in the back of a patrol car when he heard the news report the raid on his house from the officers radio.

That was how he found out that the FBI had bugged his home.

It would not end well for . As the boss of his family, he made it clear that no one would have anything to do with drug, either selling or using. But there were men in his family that had business in the drug trade, and they knew they were on the recordings talking about it.

The penalty for breaking a rule is death and before heard the recordings in court they decided to strike. Paul and his driver were dead in the street before the trial was over. It’s said that three men in trench coats walked up to the car and opened fire. The men ran away, down a side street.

Giuliani, along with the other members of the prosecution and the FBI, believe that got off easy and should have spent the rest of his life in prison.

All the men on trial were guilty and sentenced to 100 years in prison. This included the four bosses, the acting boss for the family, and the three shooter in the Carmine murder. The case would make Giuliani a star overnight. Later on, he would become the Mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001.