Manhattan Mafia Guide (20 page)

On November 15, 1909, authorities swept down on the store and made several arrests. Morello and Lupo were tracked down and arrested a few days later. The entire operation unraveled after the East Ninety-seventh Street raid and subsequent raids on gang member apartments, businesses and the upstate farmhouse where the fake bills were being produced. On February 19, 1910, Giuseppe Morello, Ignazio Lupo and six associates were convicted after a brief trial and sentenced to terms ranging from fifteen to thirty years.

When several attempts to free Giuseppe Morello over the next few years failed, Nicolo Terranova assumed control of the family. He held the position until 1916—when he was murdered during a war between the Corleones and their Neapolitan rivals, who began to muscle in on Sicilian territory, perhaps taking advantage of the fact that their feared leader was behind bars serving a thirty-year sentence.

The once mighty Morello outfit yielded to more powerful gangs for a few years until Giuseppe Masseria restored the family’s position in the Italian underworld in the 1920s.

P
ETILLO
, D
AVID
S
ILVIO

63 Mott Street, 1908; 15 Madison Street, 1930; 246 West Forty-eighth Street, 1958; 351 West Forty-second Street, 1960s; 30 Park Avenue, Apartment 16G, 1971

Alias: Little Davie, Anthony Ferrara, David Rosa, David Betillo, James J. Pilone

Born: March 20, 1908, New York City

Died: December 28, 1983, Spain (natural causes)

Association: Genovese crime family capo

With a criminal career spanning over half a century, Petillo is another relatively unknown yet influential Mafioso who is often overlooked in the history books. By the 1930s, “Little Davie” was one of the mob’s most feared hit men, believed by authorities to have been Charlie Luciano’s “number one agent.” According to the FBI, as a contract killer, Petillo was involved in twenty to thirty murders in four cities by 1936—often with Petillo dressed as a woman.

The block where David Petillo grew up, Mott Street, circa 1900.
Library of Congress
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David Petillo was born the fifth of six children to father Antonio Petillo, a street sweeper for the Department of Sanitation, and mother Michelina (“Maria”) Loberti,
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who arrived in New York City in 1885. He grew up at 63 Mott Street and occasionally attended PS 114 on James Street until officially dropping out at age fourteen.

While one of Petillo’s brothers grew up to become an Italian police officer and another an IRS agent, young David was in and out of trouble from the time he was eleven, when he was first arrested for juvenile delinquency. At sixteen, Petillo spent his first term behind bars—sixty days for “jostling.” Between 1931 and 1958, Petillo racked up at least nine adult convictions in New York City alone (under seven different aliases), for various offenses including armed robbery, compulsory prostitution, opium possession, larceny, extortion, racketeering, loan-sharking, gambling and murder. Between 1936 and 1972, Petillo would only enjoy about three years of freedom.

David Silvio Petillo was initiated into the Luciano (Genovese) organization by 1931 and, along with partner Charles “Chalutz” Gagliodoto, contracted to carry out murders for the bosses of the Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago Mafia organizations, including allegedly working for Al Capone in Chicago. It was during this time that “Little Davie” earned the reputation as the “cross-dressing killer,” as he often dressed in drag in order to get close to unsuspecting victims.

Petillo had made a few trips to Italy in the early 1930s, accompanying Charlie Luciano on at least one voyage. Authorities considered Petillo to be Luciano’s “right-hand man” by the time district attorney Thomas East Dewey had both men arrested on February 1, 1936. Witnesses claimed it was David Petillo who oversaw the $12-million-a-year alleged prostitution ring that led to the imprisonment and eventual deportation of Charlie “Lucky.” It was said to be the largest sex trade operation in the country, with over three thousand prostitutes working at over two hundred brothels.

Supreme Court justice Philip McCook scolded Petillo during the sentencing, saying, “As Luciano’s chief and most ruthless aide, you deserve no consideration from this court,” before sentencing him to twenty-five to forty years behind bars.
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After two decades in Sing Sing prison, Petillo was paroled in April 1955 at age forty-eight. The game had changed during his years behind bars. His old friend Vito Genovese was on the verge of a hostile takeover of the family, and the main racket on the streets was narcotics. Petillo allegedly began trafficking heroin through various mob-backed after-hours clubs and bars but also became a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs and Warehouse Union Local 209—claiming to be employed at the William Abel Tailor Shop at 40 East Fifty-second Street for sixty-one dollars a week.

On June 29, 1958, Petillo was arrested for violating parole (a “misunderstanding”) and was sent back to prison until 1967. By July of that year, Little Davie had moved into room 1805 of the Holland Hotel at 351 West Forty-second Street, where he was under constant surveillance by the FBI. In 1969, the feds even followed the ex-con on a trip to Italy, where the Petillo family owned an olive grove in Sierro di Acciaroli, Salerno.

Despite being pressed by authorities, Petillo became partners in several semi-legitimate after-hours nightclubs and adult cabarets, like the one he ran with Angelo Tuminaro at 11 East Sixteenth Street, where he spent most of his time. He also had an interest in one of the largest producers of hardcore porn at the time, called Arrow Film Labs, with its office at 75 Spring Street.

In 1971 or 1972, Petillo made capo and inherited the Genovese family’s storied Little Italy crew, whose base of operations was a members-only club at 121 Mulberry Street. However, he suffered a heart attack and stroke soon after and went underground. The FBI lost contact with Petillo for a short time but found him in 1974 living in Brick Township, New Jersey (501 North Lake Shore Drive), in the house of Newark police chief Anthony Barres, who claimed he did not know about Petillo’s criminal background.
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Believing the veteran gangster was in poor health, suffering from memory loss and retired from organized crime, authorities dropped their day-to-day surveillance of Petillo until 1981, when he was implicated in the February 1980 murder of ex–business partner Edward Vassallo (known as “Charles Talbot”).

In October 1980, a mob informer agreed to wear a listening device, which helped the FBI record several conversations with Petillo over an eighteen-month period, ultimately leading to his indictment for the murder. However, before facing trial, Petillo fled to Mexico and eventually wound up in Malaga, Spain, where he died of natural causes in 1983 at the age of seventy-five, under the name James J. Pilone.

P
OLIZZANO
, R
ALPH

36 East Fourth Street, Apartment 2, 1950s

Alias: n/a

Born: May 16, 1922, New York City

Died: [?]

Association: Genovese crime family

By the mid-1950s, Ralph Polizzano, brother Carmine and fellow mobsters Joseph Di Palermo, John Ormento and Natale Evola were allegedly organizing a multimillion-dollar international heroin-trafficking operation under Vito Genovese. The ring was based out of Ralph Polizzano’s ground-floor apartment at 36 East Fourth Street, which was where the crew was said to “cut” and package heroin imported from Cuba, Mexico and Puerto Rico for street distribution in North America.

36 East Fourth Street, the site of Ralph Polizzano’s apartment and alleged narcotics plant, today.

When a distributor for the ring named Salvatore Marino was busted in July 1957, he confessed to couriering drugs for the outfit and gave up the names and addresses of his contacts. When Polizzano was arrested, the gangster chose to cooperate after a rough interrogation and led narcotics detectives to a stash of heroin and cocaine above his kitchen cabinet, as well as to equipment used for weighing and packaging in a separate room.

During the trial, several witnesses corroborated Marino’s story. One man named Nelson Silva Cantellops testified that he witnessed Ralph Polizzano diluting the drugs himself and was paid directly by the Polizzano brothers on several occasions to transport packages throughout the United States. In one case, he alleged that he picked up a suitcase from Carmine Polizzano in Key West, Florida, and delivered it via train to Ralph Polizzano (on East Fourth Street), who in turn paid him $600 (and tipped him an ounce of heroin).
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Polizzano petitioned for a mistrial on the grounds that certain evidence was coerced, but the judge did not buy it—he was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

P
RESINZANO
, F
RANK

236 Cherry Street, 1920; 167 Mott Street, 1950s

Alias: Pardini

Born: August 2, 1902, New York City

Died: [?]

Association: Bonanno crime family

Though his official title of employment was “fish loader,” the five-foot, three-inch Presinzano was a highly regarded Mafioso who used violence and intimidation as a “boss” of the Fulton Fish Market racket.

Frank was the first of six children born to immigrant parents Salvatore and Rosa Presinzano. In a 1920 census, eighteen-year-old Frank is listed as being in the “trucking business”; however, by that time, he had already run into trouble with the law and was charged as an adult.

Between 1919 and the 1950s, Presinzano was arrested for a variety of infractions, from assault and robbery to weapons violations and petty larceny. By the 1950s, he was suspected of engaging in heroin trafficking with his brother Angelo Presinzano and Carmine Galante, and he had at least one narcotics-related conviction during that time.

Q
UARTIERO
, L
AWRENCE

145 West End Avenue, 1920; 410 West Fifty-fourth Street, 1950s

Alias: Larry

Born: May 24, 1923, New York City

Died: [?]

Association: Genovese and Lucchese crime families

Quartiero was an influential West Side racketeer, convicted narcotics trafficker and, according to the FBN, an “expert jewelery and fur thief and fence.”

Born to Michael Quartiero, a laborer, and Restitula (Rosetta) Catugna, young Larry’s first arrest came in 1940, at age seventeen. Following was a string of arrests—including felonious assault, gambling, burglary and petty larceny—spanning four decades.

As early as 1949, Larry Quartiero was allegedly involved in large-scale narcotics trafficking. On April 23, 1956, he was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a ring that included Joe Valachi. The ring was said to smuggle large quantities of heroin by boat from France, Italy and South America. His co-conspirator, Lucchese gang member Giacomo Reina, son of former family boss Gaetano Reina, was also sent to prison, along with two others, but somehow Valachi’s conviction was reversed in 1957.
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After prison, Quartiero continued to build his influence in the union rackets of the shipping yards and warehouses along the West Side of Manhattan, but he pretty much stayed under the radar until 1983, when the sixty-year-old was arrested, along with three others, for a scheme to fix races at Roosevelt and Yonkers racetracks by drugging certain horses and betting against them. A horse groomer named James Veno assisted in the ring.