Surviving the Mob (2 page)

Sandra didn’t know it at the time, but her presence at that location accomplished two very important things. First, it saved the life of the downed man, Ralph Burzo. Second, by doing so, it prevented the other man from becoming a murderer.

Burzo’s assailant was Andrew DiDonato. He had already fired one round from his handgun into Burzo’s head. It was Burzo’s good fortune that the bullet struck a bone and splintered, causing serious, but not fatal, injuries. After his victim had fallen to the sidewalk, Andrew squatted next to him to administer a second life-ending shot. But before he could pull the trigger, he noticed Raiola watching him and fled the scene.

However, Andrew’s escape was only temporary. He was arrested a short time later and on May 17, 1988, he was indicted by a Kings County Grand Jury for one count of attempted murder in the second degree, two counts of assault in the first degree, one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, and one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree.

Samuel Karkis, the driver of the getaway car, was indicted on the same charges, plus hindering prosecution in the second degree.

The above account of events was taken primarily from that indictment and relates the facts of what took place. But it doesn’t tell the story. It doesn’t reveal the circumstances that brought Ralph Burzo, Samuel Karkis, and Andrew DiDonato to East 2
^nd
Street near Avenue P that May afternoon. And it doesn’t explain why Andrew wanted Burzo dead.

The story behind the shooting can’t be addressed in a few sentences or paragraphs. In order to truly understand what happened that day and why, we have to go back out on the streets of Brooklyn nearly a decade before Andrew pulled the trigger.

2

In 1980, Andrew DiDonato was living with his mother and stepfather on East 55
^th
Street in Brooklyn. At that time the minimum wage in the United States was $3.10 per hour. Assuming a 14- or 15-year-old boy like Andrew could get a job flipping burgers 20 hours a week after school, he’d gross $62 for his labor. Although Andrew worked when he wasn’t in school, he didn’t toil in a hamburger stand or anything similar. He did his work on the streets, and his weekly income was sometimes in the neighborhood of $1,400 cash. How did a kid his age generate that kind of money? As Andrew explains, it took hard work and nerve.

“I had two main sources of income in those days. I stole and sold car parts. And I shook down the kids selling marijuana in the neighborhood. I told them they’d either pay me a couple hundred bucks a week or I’d break their head.”

Andrew knew that if you wanted to be respected on the sidewalks of Brooklyn, you couldn’t just talk the talk. Out there, actions truly spoke louder than words and verbal threats alone weren’t enough to prove you were a force to be reckoned with. That was a lesson of the streets Andrew learned early. And he learned it well.

“The killings of my uncle and cousin devastated my family. It was the first taste of the reality of how brutal that life
can be. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was a lesson that ultimately saved my life many years later.”

Andrew’s own capacity for violence became obvious as he advanced his extortion plans.

“Shaking down the pot dealers, I began with an act of violence, like a severe beating or a few shots with a baseball bat. I let them know there was worse to come if my demands weren’t met.”

Andrew wasn’t physically imposing. He stood three inches or so under six feet and weighed around 160 pounds. Some of the dealers he wanted to move in on were bigger than he was and some were as tough, maybe even tougher. But that didn’t deter him. He was thin and athletic and to overcome deficiencies in size or strength, he used the element of surprise to get the upper hand on his victim.

“I’d sneak up behind the guy and whack him with a bat. When he went down, I’d hit him again to make my point. They knew then I had something most of them didn’t. I had the balls to do whatever it took to impose my will. So it really didn’t matter if they were bigger than me. They knew if they fucked around with me, I’d get ’em with my fists, or a bat, or a tire iron. And they’d never even know it was coming. They were afraid of me and that’s the way I wanted it.”

Did Andrew ever feel guilty about the beatings he administered?

“I knew most of these dealers from school or the neighborhood. Some of them I didn’t like and enjoyed beating up. But I wasn’t just a bully. I was liked in the neighborhood and gave respect to those who deserved it. This was business, though, and I had to rough up the ones I liked, too. I was making a statement that if you were into selling weed, I wasn’t playing favorites.”

Andrew’s tactics worked. In addition to the dealers falling into line, word circulated that a new kid out there needed to be taken seriously. In fairly short order, he had most of
the young marijuana dealers in Bergen Beach paying him a street tax.

Extorting the dealers was primarily a one-man operation for Andrew. But stealing car parts, he often worked with other neighborhood youths.

“Some of the kids I stole with were already associated with organized-crime crews and several more of us got involved later. I made many good friends back then and I thought we’d be friends for life. But shit happens and in some cases, it didn’t work out that way. And some of those I was closest with died before their time.”

In those early days, Andrew and his buddies weren’t proficient at stealing whole cars. Instead, they robbed parts.

For example, Mercedes Benz used Becker digital radios. They were a hot item. The thieves smashed in a window, ripped out the radio, and ran. Andrew’s next-door neighbor, Rocco Corozzo, nephew of Gambino capo and Andrew’s future boss Nicholas Corozzo, had a buyer for the radios who took all they brought him and paid between $150 and $200 a set.

“We were having fun and the guys in the street crews left us alone. We were just kids and they didn’t make us kick anything in to them. Whatever we made was ours. It was all coming in and nothing had to be paid out.”

But even criminals like Andrew can experience economic tough times. In the case of him and his friends, youth, inexperience, and greed were contributing factors, as well as unanticipated business interruptions.

“Sometimes when we had a lot of money in our pockets, we got a little lazy. We stopped stealing for a while and blew what we had buying stuff and partying. We were young and weren’t thinking about saving. When we realized we were almost out of cash, we got off our asses and went back to work.

“I even screwed myself by taking so much from the dealers I was shaking down that I put some of them out of business.
By the time they made their payment to me and bought product, they weren’t making enough profit to stay in business. When one of ’em went away, it might be a few weeks before someone stepped in to take his place and I could get to the new guy to explain the cost of doing business.

“And then there were supply interruptions. When the dealers didn’t have anything to sell, they weren’t making any money and they weren’t paying me. Depending on the reason for the interruption, it could last days or weeks. That meant I had to steal more to get through the dry times.

“But I learned a lot and knew I needed to make some changes. I had to work smarter and expand my criminal activities to earn more. Instead of shaking down the dealers for money, I started shaking them down for product and set up my own network of dealers. And instead of just stealing parts off a car, I took the whole thing. I wanted to get into the chop-shop business and start making some real money.”

3

Andrew was ambitious and made a commitment to advance his criminal career. He dropped out of school to allow himself more time on the streets. However, before he fully implemented his bold plans, an event took place that had unintended consequences. Although it resulted in his first arrest, it also brought him to the attention of Gambino crew boss Nicky Corozzo and catapulted him from an unaffiliated street tough into the world of organized crime.

In November 1982, Andrew and a friend learned that a couple of neighborhood boys working in a bagel shop at East 81
^st
Street and Flatlands Avenue were stealing up to $1,500 a week from the place. Andrew and his pal saw this as an opportunity to make some easy cash.

“The owners weren’t around that much, especially at night. The night-shift workers made the bagels, served customers, and handled the cash register, pocketing a lot of the money for themselves. Both were in their late teens. The word was that they had serious gambling problems and needed the money to pay off their gambling debts.

“My buddy Tommy and I figured we might as well cut ourselves in on the action. We told them we wanted four or five hundred a week or else. They said okay and didn’t resist
at all. They started making their payments right away with no problem.

“But the first sign of trouble came quick. This neighborhood guy named Mike Yannotti had a talk with Tommy and me. Mike, who was known on the streets as Mikey Y, was a couple years older than us and was already connected with Nicky Corozzo’s crew. He had a reputation as a tough guy and he was. In fact, I met a lot of dangerous guys over the years and in my opinion, Mikey Y was the most dangerous of them all.

“Mike told us that the bagel-shop guys we were shaking down owed Nicky Corozzo a lot of money from gambling. If we continued making them pay us, they couldn’t pay him too. We better back off.

“After that conversation, Tommy and I had to make a decision. We were a little pissed off that we were told to stop the shakedown without being offered some other way to replace that income. We said to hell with Nicky Corozzo; we weren’t backing down.”

That decision would probably have led to another less friendly visit from Mike Yannotti. But something else happened first.

A couple of weeks later, one of the teens got caught by the owners of the bagel shop with his hand in the register. He told his boss that Tommy and Andrew had forced him into stealing the money and giving it to them. The owners called the cops, then headed across the street to the park where Tommy and Andrew hung out to confront them.

“At that time we carried brass knuckles. When the brothers grabbed us, the knuckles came out and the fight was on. We beat one of them up pretty good. I think he ended up needing about a hundred stitches in his head. During the heat of things, a cop grabbed me from behind and spun me around. Tommy and I threw the brass knuckles, but the cops found one set of them. We were arrested, taken to the station,
and charged with assault. We were never charged or even questioned about the extortion scheme.”

Andrew hired a lawyer who argued that the owners initiated the fight. In fact, Andrew and Tommy pressed assault charges against them and the whole thing ended up in a draw. All charges were dropped and everyone walked away clean.

After that, Andrew started spending more time with Mikey Y and some other guys in Corozzo’s crew. Even though he wasn’t part of them yet, they did a lot of stealing and some other things. They all made money, some of which went to Nicky.

A couple of months later in early 1983, Andrew met Nicky in person. At that time Nicky hadn’t been made an official capo yet. He was an acting capo. Nicky and his friend Leonard DiMaria ran the crew together as co-captains. Andrew already knew Lenny. He’d taken his daughter to the high-school prom and hung around with his nephew. But he’d never met Nicky before.

“They used to hold meetings at a private social club every Tuesday and Saturday. The meetings started around eleven in the morning and went until four or five in the afternoon. The crew members and others they did business with attended.

“One Saturday morning, I was riding in a car with some of the crew. I knew they had to go to the meeting, so I told them to drop me off and I’d see ’em later. One of the guys said that Nicky mentioned they should bring me along. So I went.

“When we got to the club, I was introduced around. Everybody socialized while Nicky conducted business in another room. He called in his people one at a time. In private he told them what he wanted done; they let him know if they needed something from him. If he had a job that involved more than one guy or the entire crew, he called them all in at once.

“Nicky approached me around mid-afternoon and took me into the other room. He said he’d heard a lot about me and knew I was acquainted with his nephews. I was doing some good things. ‘You’ve got a friend here,’ he said.

“Then he told me that if I ever needed anything to come to him. If I needed stolen merchandise disposed of, come to him. If somebody was giving me trouble, come to him. Whatever I needed, come to him.

“After that he told me about the Tuesday and Saturday meetings. I’ll never forget what he said. ‘These meetings are important. You’ll meet a lot of people and make a lot of friends. Some of them may need your help sometime. Think of it as going to school. You’ll learn valuable lessons here, so don’t miss. If you miss, you’re not being a good friend.’

“When I left the social club that day, I was officially part of Nicky’s crew. I was an associate of the Gambino organized-crime family.”

Who were these men whom Andrew describes as co-captains of his Gambino family crew? The following is a brief look at their backgrounds and status around the time Andrew became affiliated with them.

Nicholas “Nicky” Corozzo was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 17, 1940. His brother Joseph “Jo Jo” Corozzo joined Nick in his affiliation with the Gambino family and rose to be the criminal organization’s consigliere. Nicky’s son-in-law, Vincent Dragonetti, also reputedly became a Gambino associate. And his nephew, Joseph Corozzo Jr., later became involved with the family as a high-profile defense attorney. In the early 1980s, Nick was a chief rival to John Gotti and the two men despised each other. The politics of the situation prevented Nick’s official advancement to capo.