Manhattan Mafia Guide (30 page)

Maranzano sensed that dissent was growing and decided to make a preemptive strike against the person he thought posed the greatest threat to his throne: Charlie Luciano.

Thinking one step ahead, Luciano sent four men disguised as police detectives to Maranzano’s office on the ninth floor of this address on September 10, 1931. The four men overpowered the fiesty Maranzano, who fought back but ultimately fell to multiple knife and gunshot wounds. The killers actually passed the man hired to kill Luciano in the hallway on the way out. It was Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, who was told that there had been a raid and fled.

M
ASSERIA
, G
IUSEPPE

82 Second Avenue

On the morning of August 8, 1922, rising boss Giuseppe Masseria was ambushed by two gunmen while leaving his home at 80 Second Avenue. The first few shots barely missed the wiry gang leader, who fled into a shop at this location before returning fire. With bullets depleted, the gunmen ran across Second Avenue to a waiting getaway car on the corner of East Fifth Street.

As the car sped East toward the Bowery, the would-be assassins met a blockade of International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union members, who were just let out of a meeting. The speeding car plowed through the crowd and shot randomly as people panicked. Six people were hit, and two were killed. The gunmen sped away.

Investigating police found Masseria in his apartment totally unscathed, except for two bullet holes through his straw hat.

M
ORELLO
, G
IUSEPPE

352 East 116
^th
Street

Sentenced to a twenty-five-year prison term in 1910 for counterfeiting, La Cosa Nostra patriarch Giuseppe Morello’s term was commuted, and he was released only a decade later, in 1920. Morello looked to reestablish his position at the top of the Mafia food chain. However, by this time, the game had changed dramatically, and those in power had no intention of turning over their operations. Eventually, Morello may have decided that if he couldn’t beat them, he would join them, and he allied himself with Giuseppe Masseria.

352 East 116
^th
Street today.
Courtesy of Shirley Dluginski
.

On August 15, 1930, Morello, now going by the name “Peter,” became one of the first victims of the Castellammarese War. Masseria’s new adviser was gunned down in his office on the second floor of this address when two unidentified men burst through the door. He was shot five times and died on the scene. Associate Joseph Perriano leaped out the window with a bullet wound to the chest and died before paramedics could arrive. Another man, Gaspari Pollaro, survived the attack but was in critical condition. The killers were never identified.

P
ERSICO
, A
LPHONSE

320 East Seventy-ninth Street

On April 11, 1972, just four days after the murder of “Crazy” Joey Gallo, Alphonse “Little Allie” Persico (older brother of Colombo family boss Carmine Persico), his son and a bodyguard stepped into the former Neapolitan Noodle restaurant at this address for a meal. While the party waited at the bar for a table, a man in a shoulder-length black wig walked in behind them, ordered a scotch and water and threw a ten-dollar bill on the bar.

After a few sips, the man pulled out two pistols, sprung around and began firing in the direction of where Persico had been standing—only by that time, two innocent businessmen named Sheldon Epstein and Max Tekelch had taken the gangster’s place. They were both killed in a hail of nine bullets, while Persico and his party were safely seated in the back dining room. The gunman escaped in a getaway car.

This was at least the fifteenth gangland slaying in New York City in the fourteen months since Joe Colombo was shot in Columbus Circle.

S
CHIFF
, I
RWIN

1452 Second Avenue, between 75
^th
and 76
^th
Streets

On the evening of August 8, 1987, 350-pound multimillionaire businessman Irwin “Fat Man” Schiff was dining with a group of twenty friends at the Bravo Sergio Restaurant at this address, when a man in a dark suit casually walked in through a side door and approached Fat Man, firing two bullets into the victim’s head before fleeing from the scene. Speculation about a mob connection immediately grew, though investigators initially had a tough time even figuring out who Schiff was.

As the case developed, a story unfolded that grabbed headlines for several weeks. It turned out that the fifty-year-old victim, who had no verifiable income, led quite an extravagant life. He drove antique Rolls-Royces, owned a $500,000 speedboat, lived in a $13,000-a-month penthouse at 415 East Fifty-fourth Street, dated beautiful models and mingled with celebrities at the finest restaurants, casinos, hotels and nightclubs in the world.

On paper, Schiff was the president of the Queens-based Construction Coordinators Corporation. However, that company had neither a telephone number nor an office. It was incorporated in 1984 using a post office box.
¹⁴²

Authorities eventually linked Schiff to $70 million in illegal financial transactions. He was convicted of writing fraudulent checks in 1962 and pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 1977. As witnesses came forward and tips began to pour in, speculation grew about Schiff being a mob loan shark. Eventually, a link was established between Schiff and mob boss Louis “Bobby” Manna, who allegedly ran a New Jersey–based Genovese crime family at the time.

Only two days after the murder, FBI surveillance at Casella’s Restaurant in Hoboken, New Jersey—former headquarters of the Manna crew—picked up a conversation between retired Hoboken police officer Frank “Dipsy” Daniello and Martin Casella, restaurant owner and Manna lieutenant. In the tapes, the pair was overheard discussing the murder. Daniello said of the gunman, “It takes guts though to do it like that. This kid is a—” Casella interrupted, “Stone killer.”
¹⁴³

Three days before the murder, another conversation was recorded between two unidentified patrons of Casella’s Italian Restaurant. One man asked, “You wanna hit him?” A second man replied, “We’ll do him good at night. Bobby Manna didn’t like CC.” According to the government, “CC” was the mob’s code name for Irwin Schiff.

FBI surveillance also picked up a conversation between Casella and Manna himself, plotting to kill Gambino boss John Gotti Sr. and his brother, Gene Gotti. “You know, this should be good and fast if it’s John Gotti,” Manna was heard saying.
¹⁴⁴

The feds allegedly warned Gotti of the assassination plot and eventually rounded up Manna (who had an apartment at 130 West Houston Street), Casella and four associates, charging them with extortion, loan-sharking, labor racketeering and murder.

Michael Chertoff, then first assistant United States attorney for New Jersey, claimed that Manna, who was described as the third-ranking member of the Genovese crime family, planned the killing of Irwin Schiff, and associate Richard “Bocci” DeSciscio was the man who pulled the trigger.

A lengthy fifteen-week trial began on March 7, 1989. On April 17, a legal secretary who lived above the Bravo Sergio Restaurant bravely picked forty-two-year-old DeSciscio out from the witness stand and placed him at the scene of the murder. Over the next two months, several witnesses took the stand, including Genovese soldier turned state’s witness Vincent “Fish” Cafaro and the thirty-three-year-old blond model with whom Schiff was dining on the night of the murder.

On June 26, 1989, Mana, Casella and DeSciscio were convicted of murder and the conspiracy to assassinate the Gotti brothers. Three others were convicted of various racketeering and conspiracy charges. On September 26, 1989, Manna and Casella were sentenced to eighty years behind bars, while DeSciscio received a seventy-five-year sentence—essentially life in prison, since none of the defendants is eligible for parole until 2049.

During the trial, it was discovered that Schiff had received at least $10 million in payments from the Luis Electric Contracting Corporation of Long Island City, Queens, which had secured more than $50 million in sweetheart public contracts in just a decade—including a $10 million deal to wire the new Jacob Javits Convention Center (655 West Thirty-fourth Street) in the late 1970s.

An exact motive for the killing of Irwin “Fat Man” Schiff is unclear to this day, though in August 1987, federal law enforcement officials claimed that Schiff was leading a double life by working as an FBI informant.
¹⁴⁵

S
LIWA
, C
URTIS

113 Avenue A

In the early morning of June 19, 1992, the high-profile leader of the Guardian Angels was on his way to work at WABC radio in Midtown, where he hosted a talk show, when he exited Ray’s Candy Store at this address and jumped into the backseat of a cab. As the taxi began to speed off, a man hiding in the front seat popped up and opened fire on Sliwa, who managed to tumble out of the moving vehicle about a block away with bullet wounds to his leg and groin.

This brazen attack on Curtis Sliwa (March 26, 1954– ) was the second in as many months. A cast from the thirty-eight-year-old’s broken wrist had just been removed; the wrist injury was sustained in a baseball bat assault on April 23 at the same location.

A turncoat Gambino soldier named Joseph D’Angelo later confessed to being the driver of the cab and implicated that John Gotti Jr. was behind the assault; however, three separate juries were unable to find Gotti guilty, and he was acquitted.

As of this writing, John Gotti Jr. is involved in the production of a movie based on his famous family, and Curtis Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels citizen patrol group in 1979, has a new battle on his hands. The veteran crime fighter is protesting the making of the Gotti movie.

T
ERRANOVA
, V
INCENZO

2
^nd
Avenue and 116
^th
Street

The youngest Terranova brother met his end at this location on May 8, 1922, when a shotgun blast from a moving vehicle left the veteran gangster in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. Terranova managed to fire several shots at his assassins as they sped away before dying of his injuries at the scene.

It is believed that Rocco Valenti was responsible for the murder, which kicked off a bloody three-month war between the D’Aquila and Masseria clans.

T
RESCA
, C
ARLO

Fifth Avenue at West Sixteenth Street (Lower West Side)

Carlo Tresca was the editor of a popular Italian-language, anti-Fascist newspaper called
Il Martello
(The Hammer), which was published at 208 East Twelfth Street.

On January 11, 1943, at 9:40 p.m., Tresca was walking near this intersection when an unidentified man approached and shot him to death. The assailant jumped into a Ford sedan (New York license plate number 1C9272, for the record), where two other men were waiting, and fled the scene.

Several theories surrounding this unsolved murder lead back to Carmine Galante, though none could ever be proven. One theory claims that Vito Genovese hired Frank Garafolo to arrange the assassination as a favor to Italian dictator Umberto Mussolini. Another theory suggests that Tresca offended Garafolo at a dinner event on September 10, 1942, and ordered the hit himself.

Galante was initially connected to the crime because he visited his parole officer the same day Tresca was killed—in the same automobile the murderers used in their getaway. He was arrested three days later, but lack of evidence prevented his prosecution.

V
ALENTI
, U
MBERTO
“R
OCCO
”

East Twelfth Street at Second Avenue

On August 11, 1922, just three days after a failed hit on Giuseppe Masseria outside 82 Second Avenue, Valenti was invited to a “sidewalk meeting” on the busy corner of East Twelfth Street and Second Avenue, just steps from John’s Restaurant, under the veil of a peace talk.

When Valenti arrived at the meeting with two bodyguards at about 11:45 a.m., he was greeted by a half dozen gunmen. Under a barrage of bullets, an eight-year-old girl and a street cleaner were wounded. As Valenti tried to jump onto a moving taxi to escape, he was shot and killed. Gangland legend says the gunman was future crime boss Charlie Luciano.

V
ERRAZANO
, G
IUSEPPE

341 Broome Street

On October 5, 1916, two men walked into the Italian Garden Restaurant located on the first floor of this address and opened fire on Morello gang member Giuseppe Verrazano. Another gunman stood guard at the door in case their victim tried to flee, but it was not necessary. Verrazano was killed at his table.