King of the Godfathers: "Big Joey" Massino and the Fall of the Bonanno Crime Family (14 page)

Some of Massino’s neighbors, knowing about the FBI interest in finding him, began to call in tips, alerting the agents to activity at his homestead or Vitale’s actions they thought were suspicious, one law enforcement official said. Based sometimes on those tips, the agents continued to shadow Vitale in the hopes that he would lead them to his brother-in-law. In one instance, a team of agents trailed Vitale one evening as he picked up Massino’s wife and two daughters and took them to a house in Queens, said one former FBI agent. Covering both the front and rear exits, the agents knocked on the door and asked to come in, to which Vitale consented, the agent recalled. Massino was nowhere in sight.

Agents also suspected Josephine was visiting her spouse and made a number of attempts to follow her. But either because of her crafty driving or just the vagaries of weekend traffic over the George Washington Bridge, one agent remembered that it was impossible to tail Josephine by car. They never did find her visiting her husband and for all anybody knew she was making visits to New Jersey shopping malls.

As cagey and secretive as he was, Massino almost blew his cover in a trivial but stupid lapse of security. In a Pennsylvania drug store, Massino was caught shoplifting a bottle of aspirin by a sharp-eyed clerk. Seeing how Massino was supposed to be getting restocked with cash by Vitale, it seems strange that he would have to steal such a small, inexpensive item. The store called the police on Massino and Leisenheimer, who happened to be with him. But as luck would have it, Massino used his alias “Joe Russo” and the local police never caught on to the fact that they had a major fugitive in their midst.

Back in New York, and despite Massino’s absence, federal prosecutors opened up their showcase trial against the Bonanno crime family members who had been arrested. The centerpiece of the case was to be the testimony of Joseph Pistone in his first big test as a government witness after having spent five years in deep undercover work in the Mafia.

The trial against Benjamin “Lefty Guns” Ruggiero, Anthony “Mr. Fish” Rabito, Nicholas “Nicky” Santora, John “Boobie” Cerasani, and Antonio “Boots” Tomasulo began on July 26, 1982, in the Manhattan federal district court. It was the showcase of mob trials. Never before had a Mafia family been infiltrated by the FBI. Never before had an undercover agent taken the stand in such a fashion after having penetrated a crime family to the extent Joseph Pistone had. No matter what the outcome of the trial, Pistone had made the Bonanno crime family the laughing stock of the Mafia, further condemning it to second-class status in the eyes of all of the other mob families.

It fell to prosecutors Louis Freeh and Barbara Jones, two of the stars of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, to present the government’s case. Freeh had been an FBI agent before he became a prosecutor and Jones had cut her teeth on a number of successful mob prosecutions, including those against Teamster boss Anthony Provenzano and Pennsylvania mobster Russell Bufalino. Together, they were a formidable pair.

It was Freeh who addressed the jury of four men and eight women in the government’s opening statement and first described for the panel that the case was historic because it involved an undercover FBI agent who used the name “Donnie Brasco” and played the role of loyal mob soldier to move up the ranks of the Bonanno crime family.

“Brasco became such a trusted member of this crew,” Freeh said, referring to the cadre of Napolitano and Ruggiero, that they “promised to propose him for membership in the Bonanno family.”

Freeh and Jones believed that if Brasco’s true identity as Joseph Pistone became known, he would be endangered. According to informants, a $500,000 contract had been placed on his head, and security was a concern for the government. The prosecutors asked Judge Robert W. Sweet to allow the agent to use his undercover name when testifying as a way of further protecting him from mob retribution. But Sweet ruled that such a request would violate the rights of the defendants to confront and cross-examine their accuser. As a compromise, Sweet said that Pistone, as well as fellow agent Edgar T. Robb, didn’t have to reveal any personal information such as addresses or the names of their family members.

In his opening statement, Freeh sketched out the main allegations and told the jury the Bonanno family was led by Philip Rastelli, who survived a power struggle with Carmine Galante, the captain murdered in 1979. Most of the jurors must have known about Galante’s murder since it was front-page news all over town when it happened in 1979. But the murders that mattered in the case, Freeh said, was the May 1981 killing of the three Bonanno captains. Secret tapes made by Brasco, he said, would be crucial pieces of evidence pointing to the defendants’ alleged roles in the slayings.

When it came time for their opening statements, however, the attorneys for the defendants told jurors that it was actually a man not in the courtroom—“Joseph Messina”—whom they described as a rival captain, who had ordered the killings in the case. Massino could hide in Pennsylvania, but that didn’t mean his name would stay out of the case.

Joseph Pistone would be the marquee witness in what was at that time the biggest Mafia trial to hit New York City in years. But one of the first crucial government witnesses to take the stand would turn out to be none other than Joseph Massino’s old hijacking associate: Raymond Wean. Life hadn’t been good to the fifty-one-year-old Wean. After bouncing around with Massino and getting the short end of the stick when it came to sharing the loot from their days as truck thieves, Wean told the jury how after “roughly 200 crimes” and numerous convictions that he needed a break. After a felony charge in Nassau County, Wean decided to cooperate with the FBI and become an informant, he stated.

After he decided to cooperate with the government, Wean hung around Dominick Napolitano’s club on Graham Avenue in Brooklyn and related that he saw and heard a lot of things. He mentioned how Massino and Napolitano came up with the audacious plan to rob the Manhattan home of Princess Ashraf Pahlevi, a sister of the late Shah of Iran, in June 1980. The gangsters believed jewelry, art work, and the contents of safes in the house at 29 Beekman Place in Manhattan would be a mother lode of valuables.

“It seemed like a piece of cake to us,” Wean said of the robbery plan, which he told the jury also involved John Cerasani, one of the six men on trial in the courtroom.

It may have seemed like a piece of cake, but the planned heist didn’t go off well. Wean testified that he and Cerasani were let into the townhouse by posing as delivery men carrying a case containing an air conditioner. A gullible security guard let the pair in and Wean said he suddenly drew out a pistol.

“Don’t move!” Wean shouted out.

The startled guard threw up his hand and in the process jarred the gun’s trigger. A shot was fired, wounding Wean in the hand. A panicky Wean said his group of robbers thought the guard had been shot (he had not) and fled through the streets of the East Side.

Judge Sweet would only allow Wean, who by then was in the federal witness protection program, to testify in limited fashion about the disappearance of Napolitano. Outside of the presence of the jury, Wean recalled that after Napolitano disappeared in August 1981 that even in the Motion Lounge, which had been the missing captain’s headquarters, no one would mention his name. Then something more ominous happened, a sure sign that Napolitano was dead, said Wean. The pigeon coop, long Napolitano’s refuge and the focus of his sport of bird racing, was dismantled. The birds were individually strangled by hand, informants later told the FBI. To Wean, the destruction of the pigeon coop was a clear sign that Napolitano was “no longer alive.”

With the jury present, Wean referred to Napolitano’s disappearence and his pigeon coop being taken down off the roof of the Motion Lounge. Though he said he never saw Napolitano again, Wean didn’t say he thought the man was dead. Wean recounted that it was John Cerasani who appeared to take over the Bonanno crew that had been run by Napolitano.

It wasn’t just with Massino and Napolitano that Wean got close to the Bonanno family. While he was imprisoned in the federal jail in lower Manhattan after his 1976 hijacking conviction, he earned the job of trustee from correctional officials. Selected because of their good behavior, trustees are able to perform tasks and leave the jail under supervision to carry out manual tasks such as picking up mail and provisions. While in the Manhattan detention facility in 1978, Wean said he met Carmine Galante, who happened to be incarcerated for an alleged parole violation. Wean took care of the Bonanno captain.

“Cigars, booze, cigarettes, or anything he wanted,” Wean smuggled in to the facility for Galante.

The long-awaited testimony of Joseph Pistone finally began on August 3, 1982. An athletically trim man with thinning hair, Pistone was the center of attention as he walked through a rear entrance into Judge Sweet’s courtroom. At last, the man who had infiltrated the Mafia in one of the most daring assignments in FBI history was getting his day in court. His appearance would not be disappointing.

For five days Pistone testified about his life with the Bonanno crime family and the way he infiltrated it. After setting the table with preliminaries, Pistone was then guided by prosecutor Jones through the events that surrounded the killing of the three captains, the main racketeering charge facing Rabito, Ruggiero, and Santora. It became clear from his testimony that Pistone had no direct knowledge of the killings, nor was he involved in any of the planning discussions. Instead, using his recollection and audio recordings he secretly made with Ruggiero and the missing Napolitano, Pistone told the jury how he learned why the men were killed. In so doing, he implicated Ruggiero, Napolitano, and Santora, as well as the fugitive Massino, in the slaughter.

It was defendant Nicholas Santora, Pistone testified, who told him how Dominick Trinchera was blasted apart by a shotgun.

“Nicky said you should have seen when they shot him—fifty pounds of his stomach went flying,” Pistone said.

Ruggiero had also said that Trinchera’s body was so heavy—he weighed close to 300 pounds—that it took a stronger Cerasani to move it, according to Pistone.

“He was surprised how strong Boobie [Cerasani] was because he moved it,” testified Pistone.

Though he was in Florida when the killings took place, Pistone recalled that Napolitano had called him to come to a meeting back in Brooklyn at the Motion Lounge. After flying back to LaGuardia on May 14, nine days after the murders, Pistone said he wired himself up with a small transmitting device and went directly to the club, which was also known as “Charlie’s Lounge.”

Once inside the club, Pistone said, he went into a backroom with Napolitano, where the Bonanno captain sat down with him at a card table and spoke to him.

“Sonny and I sat down at the card table and Sonny said to me, ‘We took care of those three guys, they’re gone,’ and he asked me if I knew anything about Miami and I said ‘Yeah,’ and I asked why,” Pistone recalled.

“‘Because Bruno got away,’” Napolitano replied.

Napolitano was talking about Bruno Indelicato, the son of the slain Alphonse Indelicato. The younger Indelicato was widely reputed to have a big cocaine habit and traveling in the Miami area.

“So I asked him, you know, ‘What do you want me to do down there?’” Pistone said, referring to Miami.

Napolitano’s response was direct.

“And he said, ‘I want you to go down and look for him, and if you find him, hit him.’ And he said, ‘Be careful, because when he’s coked up, he’s crazy.’”

Earlier, Pistone told the jury that it was Ruggiero who had told him that the Mafia Commission as far back as April 1981 had assured the Bonanno family that Rastelli would be recognized as the boss. An earlier attempt to assassinate Indelicato, which had been called off, had been arranged by Napolitano and Massino.

“At one point in the conversation Lefty said that the thing that had happened the prior week [attempted assassination], put together by Sonny Black and Joey Messina—Because of what they put together, the Commission had assured them that Rusty Rastelli would be the absolute boss of the family.”

The Sicilians, or Zips, Pistone said, were according to Ruggiero to come over to the side of Massino.

Ruggiero also had some unkind words about Massino because of the fact that Indelicato’s body had surfaced shortly after the murders.

“That was a screw-up,” Ruggiero said. “Joey Messina was supposed to get rid of that body.”

The effect of Pistone’s testimony about the murders was to implicate Massino, Napolitano, and Ruggiero in the killings through circumstantial evidence. There was of course more evidence he gave as the prosecution attempted to tie the defendants into narcotics distribution and gambling. For instance, Pistone said that on May 15, 1981, he arranged with Napolitano and Cerasani to purchase some Quaaludes for distribution in Florida. Samples were given to him, Pistone said, by Santora and Cerasani at a local car service run by Tomasulo up the street from the Motion Lounge. Pistone took the samples and delivered them to fellow agent Patrick Colgan. Ruggiero was picked up on a wiretap about a week later talking with Pistone about the quality and price of the pills, telling Pistone to let him know when he was ready for a larger sale.

Evidence about gambling was also presented to the jury and included Pistone relating how he brought $2,500 up from Florida at the request of Napolitano to cover losses suffered during a tough weekend of sports betting. Tomasulo, said Pistone, had been introduced to him as being a partner in Napolitano’s gambling ring. Ray Wean also testified that he had seen Tomasulo reviewing bets with Santora and Cerasani a number of times. Coded conversations between Tomasulo and Santora that had been intercepted by the FBI were analyzed by prosecution experts who said they showed both men were involved in a numbers operation.

The defense attorneys had their turn with Pistone and attempted to discredit him by showing he was involved in drug dealing and had once proposed a murder of a mobster. It was Robert Koppelman, who was representing Ruggieo, who tried to show wrongdoing on Pistone’s part when he was playing his undercover role. In what struck trial observers as polite responses, Pistone parried each of Koppelman’s insinuations with denials and explanations.