Surviving the Mob (28 page)

Anticipating having to testify at trial against the Colombo men, it came as a pleasant surprise to Andrew when the four defendants made deals with prosecutors and entered guilty pleas. He and the other witnesses were off the hook. Although the convictions hadn’t been rendered by a jury, the pleas were a testament to the strength of the government’s case, which was based partly on the information he provided.

On the heels of that news, Andrew learned that the bank-robbery crew members were also negotiating pleas. That included Sal DeMeo, who was in custody after an appearance on “America’s Most Wanted.”

While these developments relieved a certain amount of Andrew’s stress, they didn’t remove it all. He was still confined with 60 other men, all of whom were government witnesses. And many of them were always looking for an opportunity to come up with incriminating information against someone that they could swap to better their own situations. The small space allotted for the witness units limited recreational activities compared to a regular prison. But the lack
of a yard large enough to play football or handball was somewhat made up for by one-man cells and television sets.

No matter the accommodations, nothing could make the inmates stop worrying about the safety of their loved ones. Would the friends of a gangster imprisoned on his testimony seek revenge by harming someone the witness held dear?

On the other side of the coin were the inmates whose families had turned on them over their decision to cooperate with the government. They received no support at all from their disgruntled kin. So everyone incarcerated in that facility had his own reason for anxiety.

For Andrew, the seemingly endless hours of debriefing by FBI agents and prosecutors seeking every detail of his involvement in or knowledge of specific crimes was emotionally draining. Reflecting back on it now, he finds that was probably the most insecure period of his life. Nothing felt certain. He was always afraid of what the future held, always wondering how many cases he’d be called to testify at after the agents and lawyers had wrung every bit of information out of him.

What would it be like when he got out of prison and had to start fresh as a brand new person who had never before existed? Andrew DiDonato, the career tough guy and criminal, would be gone. Who would replace him?

And then there was his son, whom he hadn’t seen in two years. It didn’t appear that Dina was doing anything to help him salvage a relationship with the boy. That issue was never far from his thoughts. He feared losing his son to the very life he’d just walked away from. Even today, he gets nauseous when he remembers the feelings of sadness and helplessness he experienced at that time.

Those feelings were compounded in late May when news from the organized-crime world hit the witness unit like a bolt of lightning. And it struck Andrew particularly hard: Colombo family underboss Wild Bill Cutolo had gone missing. In Andrew’s former life, that meant the man was either on
the run or dead. And there was no reason to believe that Wild Bill was on the run.

“A lot of things went through my mind,” Andrew remembers. “I thought about my old friend Billy Junior and what he must be going through. And I thought about Wild Bill. Even though we’d had our differences, I’d always respected him. I really felt bad when I remembered that last time I’d seen him on the street corner with Danny Cataia. I was pissed off that day and said things to Wild Bill I shouldn’t have. But I said what I said and there was no way to take it back.

“The theory around Wild Bill’s disappearance was that it was a repercussion from the Colombo war. Wild Bill had backed the Vic Orena faction of the family in trying to forcibly take control away from Carmine Persico. Orena lost and Persico stayed in power. It figured that Wild Bill’s disappearance was related to challenging Persico and coming out on the losing side.

“Looking at it from the outside, it seemed that Carmine probably saw Wild Bill as a threat. He was a very powerful boss with a crew and financial backing. He had a lot influence with the other crime families and Carmine probably thought he might make another try to take over.

“If Wild Bill was dead, I wondered what chance Billy Junior had to stay alive, if any. In the life, if you decide to kill somebody, it’s always advisable to take out anybody who might want to seek revenge. And there was no doubt in my mind that if Billy Junior knew or found out who made his father vanish, he’d want retribution. So I didn’t see much chance of him staying alive for very long.

“Thank God I was wrong.”

The disappearance and presumed death of Wild Bill caused Andrew to regret his words during their last heated
encounter. And his concern for the safety of his friend Billy Jr. made it a double blow. But certainly the man suffering the most over Wild Bill’s loss was Billy Jr. himself. In the following paragraphs, Billy talks about his father, the day he went missing, and the ensuing years.

“My name is William P. Cutolo, Junior. I’ve also been known as Billy, Junior, Bones, and Rat. That latter name is one I despise.

“My father was William P. Cutolo. By some he was called Wild Bill or Billy Fingers. And the latter name he despised. He was the number-two guy in the Colombo crime family out of Brooklyn, New York. For those who don’t know the details of such a despicable life—Mafia, Mob, organized crime—the second slot meant he was the ‘Underboss’ of the family. He was second in command to Carmine ‘The Snake’ Persico, who occupied the number-one slot.

“My father was a man larger than life. He was an extremely smart man and had the brains to be whatever in life he wanted to be. He dressed in custom-made suits and hand-painted ties. Seeing him on the street in the morning and not knowing any better, the average person would have thought he was just some white-collar guy on the way to his job in New York City.

“One of the reasons for his success was that he was a man of his word and the other four crime families in New York knew it. He was a guy who demanded respect and it came easy to him.

“My father had survived numerous attempts on his life throughout his many years on the streets. And he lived through a gangland civil war between two factions of the Colombo family in which over a dozen men were killed and numerous others went to jail with lengthy prison terms. He almost seemed invincible.

“But that all changed on May twenty-sixth, nineteen-ninety-nine. On the fateful day, he was called to a high-level
meeting with the boss of the family and the number-three guy in the chain of command, the consigliere. He never returned.

“On that day, a close friend of my father’s and I were doing our usual Wednesday routine of haircuts, manicures, and then off to our social club in Brooklyn. When my father didn’t arrive there, I immediately started asking who may have seen him. I received nothing but, ‘No, Bill, we haven’t seen him.’

“I tried to think of a legitimate reason for him to not be around. Maybe he was with someone and he couldn’t get back to me. Or if he was at a high-level meeting [where only high-ranking members of organized crime were present], all beepers and cell phones had to be checked at the door, so to speak—anything that could be considered a listening device had to be out of the room. Even so, whenever I paged him and added a ‘nine-eleven’ after the phone number, he knew it was an emergency and always got back to me within minutes. But not that day.

“As the night grew on, I sat and played cards with friends, and an unusual question was whispered in my ear.

“‘Have you spoken to your Pop today?’ That’s when it really hit me. That’s when I knew he wasn’t coming back. I bided my time the rest of that night and showed little reaction. But the next morning, I set things into action that allowed me to be alive today to tell the story.

“I knew that my father had good rapport with the other families. I did my homework and by the morning after, I knew who was responsible for my father’s disappearance and murder, but I didn’t know exactly why they wanted him dead. My father and thirteen others had been charged with multiple crimes after the so-called Colombo war. They were locked up for thirteen months before being acquitted on all charges. All was said to have been forgiven within the family after he was released from jail. But I found out that wasn’t true. And
that’s what provided the motive and set the wheels in motion leading to my father’s murder.

“My dad called a spade a spade. If he thought a guy was a rat, including a boss, he didn’t bite his tongue about it. He told it like it was. Being outspoken doesn’t set well with some people. And the powers that be were afraid of his power and his strong support. He was a true tough guy and whatever he touched turned to gold. He was the true meaning of an ‘earner’ in the life. And that in itself can get you killed. Jealousy and envy have led to a lot of deaths in the world of organized crime.

“As the next couple of days passed, all his crew came to me one at a time to express their sympathy for my loss. Not too long after, just days in fact, a guy who was supposed to be my father’s best friend came to my mother’s home in Staten Island and asked her where my father kept his financial ledgers and his stash of money. He even tapped on walls and floors thinking the money was hidden behind or under them. He came up empty. I have to say it was a bittersweet moment seeing the look on his face when I told him there was no ledger or money. It was priceless.

“He didn’t know it, but my mother had been told by my father years earlier that if anything ever happened to him, she was to give them [his criminal associates] nothing. That’s exactly what we did—gave them nothing. It was a victory, but it didn’t bring my father home or his killers to justice.

“I love my family. But let’s face it, when it came to my father’s disappearance, what were they gonna do about it? They didn’t know what to do. None of them did. They were scared. They were in shock. They weren’t in the streets every day like me. I wanted to save them. I wanted to be the one that brought my father home. Home to have a proper burial like he and our family deserved. But most of all for him. I mean dogs, cats, even birds all get buried by their loved ones. Granted they’re pets, but I hope you get my point. I knew I
was the only person in a position to do anything. My knowledge of the players and how the game is played gave me the means to catch the girls [a derogatory reference regarding the manhood of the killers] responsible for my father’s death. So I vowed I would not rest until he was found.

“Literally two days later, I received a visit at my father’s home from two law-enforcement officials. I wasn’t under any obligation to report my father’s disappearance to the FBI or the police, so I ignored them at first. They left business cards from both the FBI and the NYPD.

“But after a while, I reached out to a detective and an agent I knew. I’d been in the company of the detective before, even though we were on opposite sides. I’d also gotten to know the agent over the years and he was a straight shooter. They knew my father was missing and presumed he was dead. They offered their condolences and warned me about the possible repercussions if I took vengeance on my own. After that they asked me, ‘Do you want to know what happened to your father? Would you like to aid in the investigation?’

“Up until then, my only friend was a silent one. It was a friend without a conscience. It held fifteen in a clip and one in the chamber. And I wanted the blood of the men who killed my father so bad. I wanted their families to feel the pain of losing a father, a grandfather, and a husband like we had to endure. For me, killing those responsible would have been easy. Refraining from killing them would be much harder. But I forced myself to think. My father had warned me that if you kill one, two come at you. You put two down and four are coming, and so on. I knew he was right. And I had a wife and a son of my own to worry about. So I decided to break the cycle. To save spilling their blood and hit them another way.

“And so I did. In the next few seconds, my whole life changed. I became a member of the guys in the white hats and was no longer an outlaw in black. Now my anger was
channeled and fueled with fire. I hit them and hit them hard. For almost two years, I secretly aided in the investigation. I caused havoc amongst the hierarchy of the Colombo family.

“The men I knew were responsible for my father sent for me on numerous occasions and I ignored them. When they sent two morons to threaten me if I didn’t go where they wanted to take me, I introduced them to my silent friend and his sixteen buddies. They quickly left, saying only, ‘Okay, Billy. We brought you the message.’ I told them not to come back unless they thought they could carry me out. That if they were really my friends, they wouldn’t have come with the message they did.

“At that point, I had no time in my schedule for pussies like them. I considered myself a man’s man as I’d been taught by my father. At one time, nobody had more respect for the life than I did. But that went away with my father. Now my only loyalty was to him and the promise I’d made to him.

“Each time I went out to get information for the investigation, it was a rush and the more cocky I got. I was daring them to do something to me. But it never came. Call it what you will, but I say my father was looking down on me and kept me safe. He’d fed me the paranoia that still lives in me today. He always told me, ‘Paranoia is good. It keeps you sharp.’ It worked for me. My mind remained keen and I stayed alive.

“Right to this day, some people are still mad at me for not going out with guns blazing. That doesn’t bother me. I’d do it all over again if I had to. My only regret is that I couldn’t tell my family what I was doing. I wanted to, but I was warned that it wouldn’t be a good idea. So I had to keep them in the dark.

“I delivered for the law, too. Even without finding his body, after eight years the government charged and convicted two men for my father’s murder. So my cooperation and a few years in Witness Protection paid off.

“And then in early October of 2008, nine years after he went missing, I was out eating at Emeril’s restaurant when the news came across the AP wire. It wasn’t yet confirmed, but the authorities were pretty sure they’d found the location of my father’s remains. I rushed out to get to a computer to monitor the news sites. I had mixed emotions. Was it really going to be over after all those years?