Prison doors will swing open this year for some of the city's toughest mobsters.
By an odd coincidence, some of the heaviest hitters from New York's fabled Five Families all have release dates in 2009.
"You have proven earners, people who have served in upper- and middle-management roles and people with international criminal-enterprise connections," said a law-enforcement source. "That sounds like a triple threat."
The Gambino family, still reeling from the takedown of the Gottis, will see the biggest injection of experienced blood.
Perhaps most influential is Domenico "Italian Dom" Cefalu, the 61-year-old acting underboss, scheduled for release on Nov. 3. Cefalu, whose specialty is drug trafficking, is said to have been personally inducted into the family by the late "Teflon Don" John Gotti in 1991.
Another Gambino heavy out this year is George "Big Georgie" DeCicco, 79, with a Dec. 1 release date. The old John Gotti capo ran a loan-sharking operation.
DeCicco's nephew, Joseph "Joey Boy" Orlando, 59, gets sprung June 24. The Gambino soldier was reportedly caught on tape boasting of eight hits. "I've got eight under my belt, and I don't give a [expletive] who become the ninth," he allegedly said.
The Bonannos are also getting an injection of experience.
Capo Anthony Rabito, 74, who goes by the monikers "Fat Anthony" or "Mr. Fish" will be sprung June 28. He was previously convicted of drug smuggling after being swept up in the 1970s "Donnie Brasco" undercover probe.
Another Bonanno with old-school experience is Salvatore "Toto" Catalano. The 67-year-old soldier is getting out Nov. 14 after serving 29 years. He was a key player in the "Pizza Connection" case in the 1980s, when the mob was importing heroin from Sicily and using pizzerias as fronts. One source says Catalano is fearless and has leadership skills to quickly command a crew.
The Lucheses will have a top strategist back on the street.
Consigliere Joseph "Joe C." Caridi, 59, is out Nov. 28 after a 2003 conviction for extorting a Long Island seafood restaurant. Known as the "Tony Soprano of Long Island," Caridi could bounce right back into the extortion business.
Acting capo John "Johnny Sideburns" Cerrella, 68, will be sprung the same day.
The Genovese crew will see the return of some old-timers.
Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello - still a capo at a spry 88 - will be released April 3 for a 2007 racketeering and tax-evasion conviction. The decorated WWII vet is highly respected by younger Genovese crew members.
Just slightly younger is 85-year-old capo Lawrence "Little Larry" Dentico, who is getting out May 12 from a four-year sentence of running a gambling ring.
The Colombos will welcome back acting consigliere Benedetto Aloi on March 18. One source called Aloi a "time-honored figure" in the Colombo family.
Another old-timer getting out late in the year is Salvatore Lombardino, 76, who was convicted in connection with the murder of suspected informer James Randazzo.
Lombardino honored the code of omerta and never spoke to authorities, even racking up an extra contempt-of-court sentence for refusing to testify.
Thanks to Murray Weiss
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
How the Cast of The Godfather was Trained by The Real Mafia
The real Mafia played a significant—if hidden—role in the creation of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Godfather, and Mark Seal’s story in the 2009 Hollywood Issue (“The Godfather Wars”) detailed most of it. But one of the most remarkable anecdotes came to light only after the magazine was published, when the daughter of a reputed mobster told V.F. how her family befriended, tutored, and overfed the Corleones.
You always lament the ones that get away. In “The Godfather Wars,” my article in the March 2009 issue of Vanity Fair about how the actual Mafia interacted with the Hollywood cast and crew in the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film, I wrote briefly about Al Lettieri, the brooding actor who breathed fire into the part of Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, the drug-dealing gangster who sets up the hit on Don Corleone. “Lettieri hadn’t had to study the Mob to get into his part,” the article stated. “One of his relatives was a member.” As I learned from the actor’s ex-wife, Lettieri brought Marlon Brando to dinner at this relative’s house in New Jersey so that Brando, in preparation for his role as Don Corleone, could “get the flavor.”
I spent a considerable amount of time trying to track down Lettieri’s Mob-connected kin, but I was unsuccessful—until, that is, the day the magazine hit newsstands nationwide, when a woman called the offices of Vanity Fair and said that through a good friend she knew all about the dinner in New Jersey. That friend, Giovannina Bellino, whom she called “a real-life Meadow Soprano,” was the daughter of Lettieri’s relative and wanted to tell the story of how, on one incredible night in 1971, her family and the Corleones bonded over eggplant parmigiana and gallons of good red wine. Before I knew it, I had her on the phone.
“I was 15, going on 16,” said Giovannina, who goes by Gio. Her father, Pasquale “Patsy Ryan” Eboli—“a reputed capo in the Genovese crime family,” according to The New York Times—got a call from his brother-in-law Al Lettieri. “How about if I bring some of the cast over for a nice dinner?,” Lettieri asked. Eboli said sure; after all, his brother, Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli, the head of the Genovese family, had granted permission for Lettieri to get involved with the film in the first place. So Gio’s mother, Jean (Lettieri’s sister), prepared some of her Italian specialties, set the table, and put on some music.
The doorbell rang at seven p.m. at the family house in Fort Lee, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan. “I opened the front door and there was Marlon Brando, James Caan, Morgana King [who played Don Corleone’s wife], Gianni Russo [who played Don Corleone’s son-in-law, Carlo], Al Ruddy [the film’s producer], and my uncle Al [Lettieri],” recalls Gio. “We all went downstairs into the family room, where the table was set and where we had the pool table and the bar.”
Gio was shuttling between the kitchen and the family room, serving food and wine as the cast became acquainted with the family. “Marlon Brando loved my mom’s eggplant parmigiana,” Gio says. “I remember sitting with him on the basement steps and watching this little drip of olive oil going down his chin and him telling my mother, ‘Jean, this is the best eggplant I’ve ever eaten!’ [See the food page of Gio’s Web site, sexfoodrockandroll.com, for the recipe.] It was a wonderful, relaxed, and casual evening—I danced with James Caan all night.” She laughs. “I’m sure the Fed who was parked up the block—this guy that was always tailing my father—got a big kick out of it.”
A few weeks later, Gio’s mother made linguine with clam sauce for another special guest: the impoverished young actor Al Pacino. “I remember he was very quiet, and we had to pay his cab fare,” says Gio. The role of Michael Corleone required the New York–born Pacino to speak Italian in several scenes, and he had come to the Eboli house with Lettieri to work on his Italian for the famous sequence in which Michael guns down the double-crossing Sollozzo and the crooked police captain, McCluskey, played by Sterling Hayden. “My dad and Uncle Al spoke Italian fluently,” Gio says. “They drank plenty of wine that night. My brother joked at the time, ‘How’s this kid going to get the lines down after they go through six bottles?’”
That brother, Pat Eboli, was on the set later for the pivotal scene. “Pacino was definitely struggling with the Italian,” says Pat. “I remember Hayden saying, ‘If I have to eat any more of this spaghetti, I’m going to explode.’ Eventually, they decided to rework the scene.” Michael looks over at the cop—who’s busy with his spaghetti and obviously not paying attention—before turning to Sollozzo and breaking into English to tell him: “What I want, what’s most important to me, is that I have a guarantee: no more attempts on my father’s life.”
As movie audiences all across America thrilled to the saga of the Corleone family, a real-life drama unfolded in the Eboli family. At one a.m. on July 16, 1972, four months after the premiere of The Godfather, Gio’s uncle Tommy Eboli was found dead on a Brooklyn street, having been struck by five bullets to the head and neck. The police said that he had probably been shot in or near his car and that he had staggered to the sidewalk before collapsing. “When I heard about it, I pictured the scene in The Godfather when Don Corleone got shot,” Gio says. As for her father, Patsy Eboli, he disappeared in 1976 and was never heard from again. The only trace he left behind was “a bill for long-term parking at Kennedy Airport,” where his Cadillac was found abandoned with the keys in the glove compartment. In addition to losing her father and her Uncle Tommy in the 1970s, Gio also lost her Uncle Al. The actor died of a heart attack in 1975, at age 47. Like so many of his co-stars, he contributed to the greatness of The Godfather not only with his performance but also with his connections.
Thanks to Mark Seal
You always lament the ones that get away. In “The Godfather Wars,” my article in the March 2009 issue of Vanity Fair about how the actual Mafia interacted with the Hollywood cast and crew in the making of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film, I wrote briefly about Al Lettieri, the brooding actor who breathed fire into the part of Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, the drug-dealing gangster who sets up the hit on Don Corleone. “Lettieri hadn’t had to study the Mob to get into his part,” the article stated. “One of his relatives was a member.” As I learned from the actor’s ex-wife, Lettieri brought Marlon Brando to dinner at this relative’s house in New Jersey so that Brando, in preparation for his role as Don Corleone, could “get the flavor.”
I spent a considerable amount of time trying to track down Lettieri’s Mob-connected kin, but I was unsuccessful—until, that is, the day the magazine hit newsstands nationwide, when a woman called the offices of Vanity Fair and said that through a good friend she knew all about the dinner in New Jersey. That friend, Giovannina Bellino, whom she called “a real-life Meadow Soprano,” was the daughter of Lettieri’s relative and wanted to tell the story of how, on one incredible night in 1971, her family and the Corleones bonded over eggplant parmigiana and gallons of good red wine. Before I knew it, I had her on the phone.
“I was 15, going on 16,” said Giovannina, who goes by Gio. Her father, Pasquale “Patsy Ryan” Eboli—“a reputed capo in the Genovese crime family,” according to The New York Times—got a call from his brother-in-law Al Lettieri. “How about if I bring some of the cast over for a nice dinner?,” Lettieri asked. Eboli said sure; after all, his brother, Thomas “Tommy Ryan” Eboli, the head of the Genovese family, had granted permission for Lettieri to get involved with the film in the first place. So Gio’s mother, Jean (Lettieri’s sister), prepared some of her Italian specialties, set the table, and put on some music.
The doorbell rang at seven p.m. at the family house in Fort Lee, New Jersey, right across the Hudson River from Manhattan. “I opened the front door and there was Marlon Brando, James Caan, Morgana King [who played Don Corleone’s wife], Gianni Russo [who played Don Corleone’s son-in-law, Carlo], Al Ruddy [the film’s producer], and my uncle Al [Lettieri],” recalls Gio. “We all went downstairs into the family room, where the table was set and where we had the pool table and the bar.”
Gio was shuttling between the kitchen and the family room, serving food and wine as the cast became acquainted with the family. “Marlon Brando loved my mom’s eggplant parmigiana,” Gio says. “I remember sitting with him on the basement steps and watching this little drip of olive oil going down his chin and him telling my mother, ‘Jean, this is the best eggplant I’ve ever eaten!’ [See the food page of Gio’s Web site, sexfoodrockandroll.com, for the recipe.] It was a wonderful, relaxed, and casual evening—I danced with James Caan all night.” She laughs. “I’m sure the Fed who was parked up the block—this guy that was always tailing my father—got a big kick out of it.”
A few weeks later, Gio’s mother made linguine with clam sauce for another special guest: the impoverished young actor Al Pacino. “I remember he was very quiet, and we had to pay his cab fare,” says Gio. The role of Michael Corleone required the New York–born Pacino to speak Italian in several scenes, and he had come to the Eboli house with Lettieri to work on his Italian for the famous sequence in which Michael guns down the double-crossing Sollozzo and the crooked police captain, McCluskey, played by Sterling Hayden. “My dad and Uncle Al spoke Italian fluently,” Gio says. “They drank plenty of wine that night. My brother joked at the time, ‘How’s this kid going to get the lines down after they go through six bottles?’”
That brother, Pat Eboli, was on the set later for the pivotal scene. “Pacino was definitely struggling with the Italian,” says Pat. “I remember Hayden saying, ‘If I have to eat any more of this spaghetti, I’m going to explode.’ Eventually, they decided to rework the scene.” Michael looks over at the cop—who’s busy with his spaghetti and obviously not paying attention—before turning to Sollozzo and breaking into English to tell him: “What I want, what’s most important to me, is that I have a guarantee: no more attempts on my father’s life.”
As movie audiences all across America thrilled to the saga of the Corleone family, a real-life drama unfolded in the Eboli family. At one a.m. on July 16, 1972, four months after the premiere of The Godfather, Gio’s uncle Tommy Eboli was found dead on a Brooklyn street, having been struck by five bullets to the head and neck. The police said that he had probably been shot in or near his car and that he had staggered to the sidewalk before collapsing. “When I heard about it, I pictured the scene in The Godfather when Don Corleone got shot,” Gio says. As for her father, Patsy Eboli, he disappeared in 1976 and was never heard from again. The only trace he left behind was “a bill for long-term parking at Kennedy Airport,” where his Cadillac was found abandoned with the keys in the glove compartment. In addition to losing her father and her Uncle Tommy in the 1970s, Gio also lost her Uncle Al. The actor died of a heart attack in 1975, at age 47. Like so many of his co-stars, he contributed to the greatness of The Godfather not only with his performance but also with his connections.
Thanks to Mark Seal
Monday, March 09, 2009
Pension Laws Allow "Mafia Cops" to Keep Tax-Free Income Despite Convictions
A side door swung open, and the two retired police detectives, dressed in shapeless prison scrubs, walked into the courtroom. They looked as if they had been shipwrecked.
Nearly three years ago, the two men, Stephen Caracappa and Louis J. Eppolito, were convicted of serving as assassins and spies for the Mafia while they were employed as detectives for the Police Department.
A case of outsize horrors and drastic turns — plus celebrity lawyers, three books, and a conviction reversed, then restored — came to its reckoning Friday afternoon on the 10th floor of the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. By day’s end, it would provide one more twist from its store of the absurd.
“These two defendants have committed what amounts to treason against the people of the City of New York and their fellow police officers,” said Judge Jack B. Weinstein of United States District Court.
He sentenced Mr. Eppolito to life plus 100 years, and fined him $4.75 million; Mr. Caracappa got life plus 80 years, and a fine of $4.25 million. The judge said both men were likely to have “hidden assets” from their crimes.
Yet one asset — in plain sight — might not be seized to pay their debts.
Both men have been drawing tax-free disability pensions from the city since they left the Police Department, according to city records. Mr. Caracappa, who retired in 1992 as a first-grade detective, receives $5,313 a month. Mr. Eppolito, who retired in 1990 as a second-grade detective, is paid $3,896 a month. Because they retired before they were accused of crimes, their pensions will continue.
Moreover, the pensions are not subject to seizure for payment of the fines, said Joseph A. Bondy, the lawyer for Mr. Caracappa. “I fought the government for Peter Gotti when they tried to garnish a disability pension, and we won,” said Mr. Bondy, who defended Mr. Gotti on murder and racketeering charges in 2004.
Under state law, public pensions are treated as property held in trust for the employees, and periodic efforts to make their forfeiture a penalty for corrupt public employees have failed. The Daily News reported last year that 450 corrupt former officials, judges and police officers were receiving pensions.
While both men have families, the two are likely to have little use in prison for the tax-free bounty that, in theory, they earned during the years that, a jury found, they were also killing for the Mafia, setting up informants for death or exposure, and poring through confidential police computers in service of the organized crime figures who were providing them with regular payoffs.
At 67, Mr. Caracappa has grown gaunt, the color so vanished from his face that it was hard to say where a scraggly gray beard met his pallid skin; Mr. Eppolito, 60, appeared to have lost weight behind bars, but remained a round, burly figure whose face reddened as a son and a daughter of two victims stood to describe their losses.
Their trial in 2006 lasted three weeks
, and was built on testimony from Burton Kaplan, a wholesale garment dealer who had gone into multiple schemes with organized crime figures. He was the subject of “The Good Rat: A True Story” (Ecco, 2008), a pitch-perfect account by Jimmy Breslin, who described how Mr. Caracappa helped a Mafia patron hunt for a Nicholas Guido by using a police computer. But the detective provided the address of a different man, a young telephone installer with the same name as the hitmen’s prey. He was killed in front of his home in Park Slope.
The first reports of the detectives’ corruption were made in 1979, and they were implicated a number of times through the 1980s but were never charged, and managed to continue their rise within the police ranks, according to Greg B. Smith’s “Mob Cops” (Berkley, 2006).
In the courtroom on Friday afternoon
, a son from one family, then a daughter from another stood to speak for murdered fathers. A man framed by the ex-detectives told them he hoped that they would suffer in prison for the rest of their lives, as he had for 19 years.
Both Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito protested their innocence on Friday. “You will never take my will to prove how innocent I am,” Mr. Caracappa said.
One of those who spoke was Yael Perlman, the daughter of a gem dealer, Israel Greenwald, whose business dealings with Mr. Kaplan went sour. He was pulled off a highway by the two detectives in 1986, killed and buried under an auto repair shop. She was 7 years old then, and it was not until 2005 that his remains were found. The lack of a body “prevented us from receiving the small material respite of life insurance,” Ms. Perlman said.
Told later that both men would continue to receive their police pensions, she said, “That’s sick.”
Thanks to Jim Dwyer
Nearly three years ago, the two men, Stephen Caracappa and Louis J. Eppolito, were convicted of serving as assassins and spies for the Mafia while they were employed as detectives for the Police Department.
A case of outsize horrors and drastic turns — plus celebrity lawyers, three books, and a conviction reversed, then restored — came to its reckoning Friday afternoon on the 10th floor of the federal courthouse in Brooklyn. By day’s end, it would provide one more twist from its store of the absurd.
“These two defendants have committed what amounts to treason against the people of the City of New York and their fellow police officers,” said Judge Jack B. Weinstein of United States District Court.
He sentenced Mr. Eppolito to life plus 100 years, and fined him $4.75 million; Mr. Caracappa got life plus 80 years, and a fine of $4.25 million. The judge said both men were likely to have “hidden assets” from their crimes.
Yet one asset — in plain sight — might not be seized to pay their debts.
Both men have been drawing tax-free disability pensions from the city since they left the Police Department, according to city records. Mr. Caracappa, who retired in 1992 as a first-grade detective, receives $5,313 a month. Mr. Eppolito, who retired in 1990 as a second-grade detective, is paid $3,896 a month. Because they retired before they were accused of crimes, their pensions will continue.
Moreover, the pensions are not subject to seizure for payment of the fines, said Joseph A. Bondy, the lawyer for Mr. Caracappa. “I fought the government for Peter Gotti when they tried to garnish a disability pension, and we won,” said Mr. Bondy, who defended Mr. Gotti on murder and racketeering charges in 2004.
Under state law, public pensions are treated as property held in trust for the employees, and periodic efforts to make their forfeiture a penalty for corrupt public employees have failed. The Daily News reported last year that 450 corrupt former officials, judges and police officers were receiving pensions.
While both men have families, the two are likely to have little use in prison for the tax-free bounty that, in theory, they earned during the years that, a jury found, they were also killing for the Mafia, setting up informants for death or exposure, and poring through confidential police computers in service of the organized crime figures who were providing them with regular payoffs.
At 67, Mr. Caracappa has grown gaunt, the color so vanished from his face that it was hard to say where a scraggly gray beard met his pallid skin; Mr. Eppolito, 60, appeared to have lost weight behind bars, but remained a round, burly figure whose face reddened as a son and a daughter of two victims stood to describe their losses.
Their trial in 2006 lasted three weeks
, and was built on testimony from Burton Kaplan, a wholesale garment dealer who had gone into multiple schemes with organized crime figures. He was the subject of “The Good Rat: A True Story” (Ecco, 2008), a pitch-perfect account by Jimmy Breslin, who described how Mr. Caracappa helped a Mafia patron hunt for a Nicholas Guido by using a police computer. But the detective provided the address of a different man, a young telephone installer with the same name as the hitmen’s prey. He was killed in front of his home in Park Slope.The first reports of the detectives’ corruption were made in 1979, and they were implicated a number of times through the 1980s but were never charged, and managed to continue their rise within the police ranks, according to Greg B. Smith’s “Mob Cops” (Berkley, 2006).
In the courtroom on Friday afternoon
, a son from one family, then a daughter from another stood to speak for murdered fathers. A man framed by the ex-detectives told them he hoped that they would suffer in prison for the rest of their lives, as he had for 19 years.Both Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito protested their innocence on Friday. “You will never take my will to prove how innocent I am,” Mr. Caracappa said.
One of those who spoke was Yael Perlman, the daughter of a gem dealer, Israel Greenwald, whose business dealings with Mr. Kaplan went sour. He was pulled off a highway by the two detectives in 1986, killed and buried under an auto repair shop. She was 7 years old then, and it was not until 2005 that his remains were found. The lack of a body “prevented us from receiving the small material respite of life insurance,” Ms. Perlman said.
Told later that both men would continue to receive their police pensions, she said, “That’s sick.”
Thanks to Jim Dwyer
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