King of the Godfathers: "Big Joey" Massino and the Fall of the Bonanno Crime Family (30 page)

CHAPTER 27

Endgame

When they want to hide things from prying eyes on the sixth floor of the courthouse in Brooklyn, the metal fire doors get closed. When the black doors are shut, there is simply no way to see who enters and leaves the courtroom where Judge Nicholas Garaufis presided.

It was sometime late in the afternoon of July 30, after the jury had come down with its second verdict giving the federal government over $10 million of Joseph Massino’s assets, that court officials closed the fire doors. The hallway was sealed for privacy.

Just before the doors were shut, a federal marshal had walked into Garaufis’s chambers and had a word with one of the judge’s staff. Federal judges have a number of support staff working for them. Schedules need to be arranged, problems solved, and paper work handled and for that the jurists have a bevy of clerks, assistants, and other aides. Practically speaking, judges are helpless without them, particularly when the unexpected happens.

On the afternoon of July 30, the unexpected happened. One of Garaufis’s staffers came into his chambers to say that Joseph Massino wanted a word with him.

The judge’s private office faced Adams Street, the main venue for the Brooklyn Bridge and in the late afternoon of July 30, Joseph Massino stood before Garaufis as the traffic went by and the sun was reflecting off the apartment buildings across the boulevard. A court stenographer was the only other person in the room.

Massino had a straightforward but monumental request of Garaufis: the convicted mobster wanted a new lawyer appointed for him so that he could explore possible cooperation with the government. The meeting was short and after Massino was taken back to the holding cell, Garaufis told Greg Andres about what had happened. The judge needed a list of lawyers the government was comfortable with in the role of “shadow counsel” for Massino. Of course, David Breitbart and Flora Edwards were not to be told of this backroom maneuver.

So it was that one of the most seismic events in law enforcement’s long struggle against organized crime got underway. Massino was a beaten man. He faced not only the certainty of life in prison and the loss of every tainted penny he had ever made but also the prospect that he could be executed if convicted—a strong likelihood—in the next year’s trial for the murder of Gerlando Sciascia. It seemed clear to Massino that he had one card left to play and that was go to with Team America. In all likelihood, this was not a spur of the moment panicked decision by Massino. He had seen the progress of the trial and that the various witnesses were unshakeable in their testimony. The verdict shouldn’t have surprised him.

Everybody else had become a rat, so with his own life at stake Massino must have figured an endgame strategy for himself long before the verdict. As a mobster, Massino had a tendency to figure ways of running from trouble. He went on the lam in 1982. When FBI agents paid him a visit in 1984, Massino seemed so spooked that he ran out the back door of his social club. He was a man who had always tried to have an escape plan. He had played the mob game like the good old man he was. But reality now was not in some emotional notion of blood loyalty spawned in Sicilian culture. No, reality was now the fact that in a coffin was the only way Massino would get out of prison. There had to be another way.

From the government’s list of lawyers Garaufis appointed Edward C. McDonald as Massino’s shadow counsel. The use of attorneys as “cooperating” lawyers has been criticized by some in the legal community as an anathema to the traditional role and function of a defense attorney. For some, it left a bad taste in that an attorney became involved in a legally approved subterfuge on the trial attorney who had zealously defended someone like Massino but yet didn’t know the client had changed sides. However, the use of shadow counsel is legal and used regularly.

McDonald had been head of the old Brooklyn Organized Crime Strike Force in the 1980s, ironically the unit that had prosecuted Massino in the 1985 Teamsters case. Leaving government service, McDonald became a partner in a Manhattan law firm, specializing in criminal defense work.

Massino didn’t start cooperating with the government right away. There were initial proffer sessions to go through before any agreement could be signed. The government was in the driver’s seat and had to be convinced he could help law enforcement. Massino’s initial approaches to the FBI were met with skepticism and he was rebuffed, said one law enforcement official.

The first glimmer the FBI had a new mob mole came in early October 2004. At an overgrown lot in the Lindenwood section of Queens, abutting the border with Brooklyn, federal agents and city police began digging. The place had seen excavation nearly twenty-three years earlier after Alphonse Indelicato’s body began rising through the soil. Immediately, word leaked out that the FBI Bonanno squad was involved in the dig in a search for the remains of the still missing three captains murder victims. Agents Jeffrey Sallet and Kimberly McCaffrey, dressed in their FBI raid jackets and accompanied by agency evidence collection agents, watched as the excavators brought in heavy equipment to tear up the ground and concrete at the site.

It wasn’t a total surprise that the FBI would start digging again at the Ruby Street lot. One body had already been found there and immediate speculation centered on a new confidential informant having identified the location as a burial ground where other victims could be found. Some thought Salvatore Vitale, who had already told the FBI that Massino had said the three captains had been disposed of together, might have been the source. But according to one law enforcement official, Massino, in an informal effort at cooperation that didn’t cost him much, had told the FBI that police had not looked hard enough when they first found Indelicato’s body.

The digging went on for about three weeks and after some false alarms the forensic team recovered human bones. It took over two months for the medical examiner to make DNA comparisons, but it seemed like the dig had been productive. A credit card belonging to Dominick Trinchera and a watch traced to Philip Giaccone had been unearthed. On December 20, 2004, the FBI announced that the human remains found at Ruby Street were those of Trinchera and Giaccone.

Massino’s secret dealings with the government, though still tentative and with no cooperation agreement signed, continued through the fall. He had not told his family what he was doing but there were hints Massino dropped that he was feeling abandoned by his crime family brethren. When it was announced in court that prosecutors would not be seeking the death penalty against his two codefendants in the Sciascia murder case, John Spirito and Patrick DeFilippo, Massino became depressed over the exultation shown, said a source familiar with the events. Massino was still on the hook for death and after the way his top lieutenants had turned on him he had become very bitter and felt abandoned, the source said.

With McDonald as his advisor, Massino continued his secret talks with the government. This was all done with his regular lawyer, Flora Edwards, kept in the dark while she gamely went on representing Massino in the upcoming death penalty case. In fact, Massino had asked Edwards to stay on the case after it became clear that David Breitbart would not be able to continue.

Just before Thanksgiving word leaked out that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft intended to seek the death penalty against Massino for the Sciascia murder. The ruling was formally announced in court by prosecutors Greg Andres and Nicolas Bourtin on November 12. The Ashcroft decision was another part of the government squeeze play on Massino.

Another move by the feds came on November 23, when Massino appeared in court to answer charges to a superseding indictment in the Sciascia murder case. This time the government added two more defendants, acting street boss Vincent Basciano and reputed Bonanno soldier Anthony Donato, accusing them of racketeering acts unrelated to Sciascia. Both in court and in the holding cells, Massino had a chance to chat with Basciano as they all entered not guilty pleas. Massino’s machinations with the government remained a closely guarded secret.

On November 29, things took a curious turn. According to a letter filed in court by attorney Flora Edwards, Massino received a copy in the mail of a
Newsday
story about the fact that Garaufis had required closer monitoring of his health status. The article was confiscated and Massino was moved into a segregated housing unit (SHU) and no longer in the general population of the Brooklyn federal jail, said Edwards. Massino told his family of the move into solitary and the fact that the newspaper article had been confiscated.

Edwards said Massino’s movement into the SHU made it difficult for him to prepare for trial, all because of a critical newspaper story. On December 22, said Edwards, prosecutor Andres told her that he had recommended that Massino be prohibited from attending codefendant meetings but wouldn’t explain why, saying Garaufis was “fully aware of the facts and circumstances.” Edwards said she pressed Andres for an explanation but that he stated the movement of Massino into solitary confinement had to do with Bureau of Prison policy regarding inmates on “death penalty” cases. Edwards continued to ask Garaufis to intervene. Little did she know the real story and the fact that the system was playing with her.

With hindsight, the movement of Massino into the SHU and the government recommendation that he be kept from meeting with codefendants Basciano, Donato, DeFillipo, and Spirito should have been a red flag. But a red flag about what? Never before had a crime family boss become a cooperating witness. Government explanations, which can now be viewed as cover stories, seemed plausible. Perhaps Massino had been plotting more crimes or was using codefendant meetings to pass messages to his underlings?

Massino’s wife and daughters were also getting strange vibes. Before his move into solitary, he seemed more embittered to them, family sources said. He had lost about twenty-five pounds and in visits after he was placed in solitary he seemed distracted. Massino had said he was angry with the fact that there had been talk about a plot to kill Andres and said it all indicated that the Mafia had degenerated into a pack of animals, said one family source. From his rhetoric, Massino seemed to signal to his wife and daughters that he was considering becoming a cooperating witness. If you do, his family told him, you are on your own.

It was on the night of January 26 that Massino’s immediate family learned that they shouldn’t try to see him at the Brooklyn federal jail. He had been moved to the Manhattan federal jail, a sign that he was cooperating they were told.

The next day in the Brooklyn federal court another indictment was filed against acting street boss Vincent Basciano for the December 2004 murder of Bonanno associate Randolph Pizzolo. The court papers indicated that a cooperating witness relayed comments Basciano had made in a courthouse holding cell in November about the homicide. The indictment alleged that the cooperating witness also stated that Basciano had proposed the murder of prosecutor Andres, something Massino had alluded to in talking to his immediate family. Astonishingly, the incriminating comments had actually been tape recorded by the witness. Who was this “cooperating witness”? The indictment didn’t say, but in a matter of minutes after the court papers were filed word leaked out: the new witness was none other than Joseph Massino. At the jail Massino met one final time with Edwards. He avoided eye contact with her. She left in a few minutes.

On Eighty-fourth Street in Howard Beach, the news that Massino had become a government informant and had taped his loyal surrogate Vincent Basciano was first disseminated over the all-news radio stations and was another in a long series of enormous emotional jolts. Josephine Massino stayed in seclusion, attended to by a close female friend who had sat with her throughout most of the trial. Quick-tempered daughter Joanne railed against her father and in a blast of anger said, “I am done with him, I am ashamed that he’s my father.”

In an e-mail interview with
Newsday,
Massino’s daughter, Adeline, portrayed her father as embittered and having lost the support of his family with his decision to become an informant.

“My mother, my sister and I [have] no reason why he is doing this and probably never will,” Adeline said. “Maybe he himself doesn’t know that answer.”

At least to his daughters, Massino’s decision was a betrayal of the code of loyalty to friends he had always preached to them. They also felt betrayed because they supported him throughout his trial, even in the face of embarrassing disclosures about his infidelity. They also feared that their father’s actions could endanger themselves and their own families, a not unreasonable sentiment in the dog-eat-dog life that now characterized the Mafia. Adeline said that her mother in particular had been hurt by Massino’s actions during his married life and that she could no longer support him. There were hints that a divorce might even be in the cards.

Massino’s turning was not officially acknowledged for some months. But the indications he had become a star government witness were plentiful. The clearest signal was the disclosure in May 2005 that the Department of Justice, led by Ashcroft’s successor Alberto Gonzales, had decided to reverse itself and not seek the death penalty against Massino. It was an indication that Massino had done some significant cooperating and was catching a break.

Speculation abounded about what damage Massino could do to his Mafia brethren. By any measure, it was believed that he could hurt a lot of people. Basciano aside, Massino could also be expected to testify against other Bonanno defendants, including reputed Canadian crime boss Vito Rizzuto, who also faced charges stemming from the murder of the three captains and other allegations of racketeering. Rizzuto was fighting extradition from Canada after U.S. officials had disclosed in a letter filed with the Canadian courts the evidence against him in the three captains case.

Massino also had information about the Gambino crime family and he could prove troublesome for some of its members, including John “Junior” Gotti, the son of the late boss. Massino’s information about the killing of the three captains could also be used to bring additional charges, if prosecutors wanted to go that route, against the late John Gotti’s brother, Eugene, who was already in prison.