Last Rites (11 page)

Once released, Gigi opened a restaurant in Everett. He named the restaurant Something Fishy, a sneer at local law enforcement. During this time, he and his crew also began shaking down local bookmakers along the North Shore. As Gigi grew in power, he began to diversify his criminal portfolio. His next step was to invest in the drug trade. He established a drug-selling network with “Fat” Charlie McConnell and Bobby Nogueira, an ex-con who loved drugs and violence in equal amounts. This was his crew, the men he would work with and with whom he would attempt to take over the trafficking in the Boston area. Gigi would drive around with his crew in rented Chevy Blazers. He didn't trust cars that weren't rented on the spot with no reservations. He would frisk his own friends and crew. Gigi would drive, McConnell would be in the passenger seat and Nogueira would be riding in the rear with a loaded weapon. They had a cellphone with an East Boston number, which received calls from customers around the clock. They would sell forty-dollar bags of cocaine. Charlie McConnell would have a can of soda between his legs to help him swallow the bags of coke if they were to be stopped and searched by police. In the glove box was a bottle of Ipecac to help Charlie vomit the bags up after the police left. Gigi never carried more than thirteen grams of cocaine on him, so if he was caught he couldn't be prosecuted for trafficking. At the height of his business, the crew was selling five-plus kilos a week, bringing in $20,000 a kilo. Gigi and his crew delivered coke to every bar, lounge and nightclub in Revere, East Boston, Winthrop and Chelsea. They were known as DOW: drugs on wheels.

Gigi was still having feuds with other mobsters at this time. Only now, the feuds were on a different level. One evening, Gigi was entering the tunnel in East Boston to head into Boston for a night of drinking. Another car pulled alongside his. In the car were Bobby Luisi and his son, Roman. The Luisis were well-known North End bullies. They exchanged words with Gigi, and before anyone knew what had happened, the Luisis pulled out a gun and began firing. Gigi floored his car and raced through the tunnel while trying to reach the gun under his seat. He finally reached the gun and began firing back at the Luisis. The gunfight went back and forth as the two cars barreled through the Callahan Tunnel. Neither party hit its respective target. Gigi eventually lost the father-and-son duo once they got out of the tunnel. The Luisis were later gunned down, along with two confederates, at the 99 Restaurant in Charlestown. The shooting made the front page of the
Boston Herald
. It is widely believed that the Luisis were trying to scare Gigi from encroaching on their territory in the North End.

In April 1992, Carrozza was sent to federal prison. While he was serving his time in Pennsylvania, Anthony Ciampi and Michael Romano Sr. visited him and requested permission to go to war against Salemme.

This was a period of constant reminders that the mob was ever present along the North Shore of Massachusetts. On April 2, 1993, in a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot in Everett at the corner of Route 16 and Everett Avenue, a white GMC rapidly sped into the lot. Two men exited the vehicle, leaving the doors ajar. They walked toward two cars parked in front of the GMC, and each man grabbed a driver and threw him into the back of the GMC. One of the men got back into the GMC and drove off. The passenger of the GMC then got into and drove off in one of the cars that was parked in front of the Kentucky Fried Chicken. The whole incident took approximately thirty to sixty seconds. Witnesses described the driver as a twenty-year-old male who appeared to have a gun. The passenger was wearing a DEA hat and a DEA jacket. Police searched the car that was left behind and discovered a kilo of 87 percent pure cocaine. Police quickly determined that this was an attempt to steal the drugs, but the robbers had driven off with the wrong vehicle. The GMC had been reported stolen by Romano about two hours before the kidnapping took place. Romano had rented the vehicle at National Rental Car at Logan International Airport. Police also believed that Romano was the man wearing the DEA apparel.

The KFC parking lot where drug dealers were abducted and Michael romano Jr. was killed while changing a flat tire.

Another horrific incident took place one night when Gigi, his brother Eddie and Enrico Ponzo pulled up to a convenience store on Squire Road in Revere. The three men entered the premises and began to get a few snacks. Ponzo picked up a candy bar and began eating it in the aisle. The store clerk, a big Texan cowboy type, said, “Ya have to pay for that before you eat it.” Ponzo, feeling embarrassed, went up to the counter and apologized. At the counter, he proceeded to ask the clerk how much a large metal flashlight would cost. The clerk answered his question, and Ponzo agreed to purchase the flashlight. He then asked the clerk to install the D cell batteries in it, which the clerk did and then rang up the entire purchase. Ponzo paid the clerk, and when the clerk gave him his change, Ponzo grabbed him, pulled him over the counter and began to beat him with the flashlight. Within seconds, the clerk was lying in a pool of his own blood. Eddie had to interrupt Ponzo and tell him that the cops were on the way in order to prevent him from killing the clerk. Gigi and Ponzo exited the store laughing as if they had just pulled a childish prank. That is just how quickly you can be involved in an altercation with these guys. The mob's violence does involve the public from time to time. The raw impulses that define life on the streets take over with these men, and there is only blind allegiance to the wise guy way.

Another time, Gigi and his crew needed to send a message to a person who owed him some money. Gigi came up with the idea of buying a tombstone. He placed it in the trunk of his car and drove away. Later in the evening, he took the tombstone to the man's house and proceeded to throw it through the guy's living room window. The next day, the man contacted Gigi and paid the debt in full. He had received the late payment notice loud and clear.

During this time, Gigi and his crew began hanging around at a private club located at 151 Bennington Street in East Boston. The club was in a nondescript storefront in a heavily overcrowded area of Eastie, surrounded by other mom and pop stores and forbidding three-deckers. The street was constantly congested with traffic and pedestrians. This was the perfect location to avoid the incessant surveillance of the FBI and the state and local police. The pay phones on the corner also helped the local mobsters avoid telephone taps. The club was owned by Anthony Ciampi, a local bookmaker and loan shark who lived nearby. The club became known as the war room due to the amount of guns and ammo that was being housed at the location. Every so often, the FBI or local and state police would serve a warrant on the club and search it. Mostly they were looking for the occasional weapon or betting slips, or possible information about a hijacked truck of swag out of Logan International Airport.

Rico Ponzo, a cold-blooded psychopathic killer who is still on the run.
Courtesy of the FBI
.

The building on the right was the social club for the Russo-Carrozza faction located at 151 Bennington Street in East Boston. The pay telephone on the building across the street was where Michael Romano Sr. gunned down one of the men he believed responsible for his son's death.

One of the mobsters who hung around the East Boston club was Michael P. Romano Sr. A Suffolk Superior Court jury acquitted Romano of the 1993 killing of Penrod E. Lashod in East Boston. Lashod was shot to death on his boat, the
Irish Temper
. A co-defendant and one-time close friend of Romano's, David J. Boyd, testified that the killing was because of Lashod's refusal to pay rent to Romano. Boyd is now in witness protection. Prior to the acquittal, Romano had approached the Suffolk District Attorney's Office and offered to plead guilty to manslaughter, but the district attorney refused the plea.

Mark Spisak was an employee of the club as well as an associate of the men who hung out there. Spisak was a dealer for the card games at the club, which began on Friday nights and continued through Sunday mornings. He learned the illegal gambling business by the age of nine from his stepdad, who was a bookie. At age seventeen, he was working as a professional poker player. While working at the club, he made $200 to $400 in tips and $7.50 an hour. The club would rake in 5 percent of the first $1,300 of each hand. During the week, Spisak worked as a truck driver for Sky Chef at Logan International Airport. There he would load meals and liquor onto the planes prior to their departures. One time, Spisak drove his truck to the club and unloaded a full load of liquor into the club. During this time, there were other card games taking place in East Boston. Cadillac Frank Salemme had a game run by Bobby Luisi Jr.—the same Bobby Luisi who shot at Gigi—on Marginal Street, and there was also one run by the Rossettis in Orient Heights, a section of East Boston. Spisak worked as a dealer at all three clubs. Eventually, Spisak only worked for Ciampi due to the increasing friction between Ciampi and Salemme.

On the evening of March 31, 1994, Ciampi pulled up in his silver Lincoln and called for Spisak to come out of his apartment. In the front seat next to Ciampi was neighborhood kid Nick Patrizzi. Spisak came out and got into the rear of the Lincoln, and Ciampi began to drive around East Boston. Ciampi spotted Michael Rossetti and Richard Devlin walking on London Street and told Spisak to get out and shoot them. Spisak exited the vehicle and stalked them for a while until the men stopped and turned around. Spisak crossed the street and pretended to be looking in a bakery window. Then Spisak returned to the vehicle and they continued to follow Rossetti and Devlin. In the immediate area of Ciampi's club, Ciampi spotted and pointed out some men sitting in a Skylark parked in front of 25 Bennington Street. The men in the car were Michael Rossetti, Richard Gillis and Richard Devlin. Ciampi pulled alongside Devlin and yelled “Unload!” Ciampi fired his revolver five or six times, hitting Devlin in the head. Rossetti ducked down and escaped out the passenger side door while Gillis got out of the rear car door.

Spisak found that his window was up during the attack, so he cowered on the floor of the car until the shooting was over. As they pulled away, Stephen Rossetti fired two shots back at his would-be assassins. Ciampi drove down Bennington Street and pulled the car over in the parking lot outside his club. He questioned Spisak as to why he hadn't shot at the men. Spisak lied and told Ciampi that his gun had jammed. Ciampi took the gun from Devlin and fired a round into the ground. The men then proceeded to exit the vehicle and walk toward the house of Ciampi's brother, Robert “Puss” Ciampi, to get another car. They went to Paris Street, where Ciampi lived next door to his parents. After talking with his dad Louis “Jumbo” Ciampi, family friend Bobby Fawcett pulled up. Fawcett was an icon in the Boston Police Department, and after he retired he worked as head of security at Suffolk Downs. His wife Jackie was the personal secretary for Mr. Omalley, the owner of Sterling Suffolk Racetrack. Fawcett drove Spisak, Jumbo and Anthony Ciampi to a self-service gas station near Suffolk Downs, where they purchased two dollars' worth of gasoline so that Ciampi could follow Fawcett's advice to wash his hands with gasoline to remove any traces of gunpowder residue. Ciampi and Spisak decided to flee and go down to the Cape Cod cottage of Mark Ricupero, a dealer at Ciampi's card games. Nine days later, Spisak and Ciampi went to Florida and joined up with Ciampi's wife and kids in a preplanned trip. After the trip, they all returned to Massachusetts.