The Mafia Encyclopedia (108 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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Page 316
In late 1986 the commission case concluded with the conviction of Fat Tony Salerno, Carmine "Junior" Persico and Tony Ducks Corallo. Even though John Gotti was acquitted in 1987 on 69 counts of federal racketeering and conspiracy charges and six of his aides were also cleared, Gotti would be nailed under RICO five years later. By then RICO had gained the stature of the atomic bomb of criminal law.
But even an activated RICO was not viewed as sufficient to stop organized crime. Sending crime leaders to prison for 30 or 40 years or longer didn't really interrupt the Mafia as long as its machinery remained intact. Some bosses continued running their organizations from prison. Legal experts agreed that the big test for RICO was the fact that it authorized seizure of illicitly obtained wealth and its proceeds. If RICO could crack that nuttake away their bars, their restaurants, their carting companies, even their casinosthe Mafia would collapse. By the late 1990s that matter was still in dispute by some who found the evidence at best anecdotal on the financial accomplishments of the law.
The catch was that RICO was being used in ways never intended by its framers, but this reflected the difficulty of fashioning a law against one group of people while immunizing most other citizens. Business spokespeople have become highly critical of RICO. Many critics had noted that in the 1980s the law was used by non-governmental forces, since it allowed for triple damages for extortion. Thus Greyhound bus lines sued the Amalgamated Transit Union for trying "to extort wages and benefits from Greyhound," even though the union was engaged in a lawful strike.
By late 1989, the Justice Department revised its RICO guidelines so that homes and businesses would not be confiscated in all cases and innocent third parties ruined by zealous enforcement. Critics agreed this helped but there were other concerns, such as the law being applied to political situations. Not surprisingly, when a federal jury in 1998 in Illinois found that people picketing abortion clinics were guilty of extortion, the anti-abortion forces claimed RICO was being used to deny free speech and equating their protest with racketeering.
Among those upset was G. Robert Blakey of the Notre Dame Law School, considered to be the father of the RICO law. He insisted that in the Illinois case, "The judge and jury are succeeding in morphing coercion into extortion." Others did not necessarily agree.
It all represented the contradictions within RICO. Such conservative voices as
Investor's Business Daily
denounced the Illinois decision. It did not criticize the jurors but simply called the decision "a defeat for free speech. And RICO is to blame."
It seems clear that more challenges to RICO are in the offing, but whether they ever aid the cause of mobsters remains to be seen.
Ride, Take for a: Underworld murder method
"Take for a ride" has long been a standard in the underworld lexicon, coined in the bootleg wars in Chicago in the early 1920s by Hymie Weiss, one of the leaders of the North Side O'Banion Gang. When Steve Wisniewski hijacked one of the mob's loaded beer trucks, Weiss was accorded the duty of exacting the proper retribution. He invited the unsuspecting Wisniewski for a drive along Lake Michigan, from which he never returned. As Weiss later explained, "We took Stevie for a ride, a one-way ride."
Weiss set the standard for other mob killers, instigating a technique identifiable to the press as "a professional job." Weiss decreed that from the back seat a hit man put a 45 to the back of the victim's neck as he sat in the front seat of the car. At the proper moment the gun was fired. As Weiss explained to fledgling hit men, it was important to make sure the bullet did not "take a course"that is, be deflected by a bone so that in an outlandish quirk the victim might survive. Even more embarrassing would be an instance in which the bullet might be deflected by the skull and slant off into the driver of the car instead.
Riesel, Victor (19141995): Journalist and Mafia victim
A nationally acclaimed journalist specializing in labor affairs, Victor Reisel, at the peak of his popularity in 1956, had his syndicated column published in 193 newspapers. In a post-midnight radio broadcast in New York on April 5, 1956, Riesel attacked the abuses of racketeering in Local 138 of the International Union of Operating Engineers on Long Island. He particularly went after William C. DeKoning Jr., the head of the local, and his father William C. DeKoning Sr., fresh out of prison after doing time for extortion. Riesel had also attacked Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, who was known in a moment of rage to have said that something had to be done about Riesel's probing columns.
After the broadcast the labor columnist dropped into Lindy's, a landmark Broadway restaurant at 51st Street. About 3
A.M.
Riesel left the restaurant. As he reached the sidewalk a young man approached him and hurled a liquid into his face and eyes. The liquid was sulphuric acid; Riesel was left permanently blind.
A federal investigation determined that the assailant was 22-year-old Abraham Telvi, who had been hired by two ex-convicts long active in garment industry rackets. Most important, authorities arrested John Dioguardi,
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Labor reporter Victor Riesel gets emergency treatment after his acid blinding.
better known as Johnny Dioa leading labor racketeer who traced back to Murder, Inc.as the mastermind of the blinding plot. A few minor associates of Dio's were convicted. Two others were prepared to testify against Dio, but after receiving death threats, they refused and Dio went free.
Some three and a half months after the acid attack on Riesel, Telvi was shot to death on the Lower East Side. After he had seen how much heat was generated by the crime, he had been demanding more pay for his role in the matter.
See also:
Dio, Johnny; Telvi, Abraham
.
Roberts, Johnny (19041958): Hit-man murderer of Willie Moretti
Johnny Roberts, one of the murderers of New Jersey mob leader Willie Moretti, became a "made" member of the Mafia the hard way. He was also taken out the hard way.
Roberts, whose real name was Robilotto, was originally sponsored for membership in the Mafia by Tony Bender but was rejected because his brother was a policeman. Albert Anastasia had more muscle than Bender, and he succeeded in getting him admitted to membership. After that Roberts became a trusted Anastasia capo and expert killer.
The police came up with sufficient information, if not legal proof, that Roberts was the gangster who in 1951 brought Willie Moretti into a New Jersey restaurant. When the waitress went into the kitchen, Moretti was shot to death by Roberts and two or three other men who then fled, leaving only a couple of hats behind. One of the hats was traced by a cleaning mark to a place right across from a building where Roberts's brother lived. Waitresses tentativelybut only tentativelyidentified Roberts from a picture as the man who came in with Moretti. However, neither hat fit Roberts. Informer Joe Valachi, a close friend and frequent loan-sharking and rackets partner of Roberts, said when he asked Roberts about the hats, the latter replied, "Don't worry ... it ain't my hat ... it belonged to the other guys."
There seems little doubt that the Moretti murder was carried out on Anastasia's orders. A Mafia consensus had been reached that Moretti was talking too much
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because of illness, and had to be eliminated in a "mercy killing." Roberts was arrested for the murder, but later the charges were dropped for insufficient evidence.
Roberts stood in good mob graces as long as he served Anastasia, but when Anastasia was murdered in 1957, his situation altered. Carlo Gambino, a partner in the conspiracy to erase Anastasia, moved to take over the crime family but faced strong opposition from others who remained fiercely loyal to the memory of their departed boss. The clique was headed by Armand "Tommy" Rava, and for a time Roberts agreed to join his group. Joe Valachi went to visit Roberts to advise him not to join in
any
conspiracy, but Roberts shrugged him off, saying, "Don't worry about it, Tony [Bender] and Vito [Genovese] already spoke to me." He was staying out of it.
Roberts was caught in the shifting currents of mob loyalties. It appears, contrary to what he told Valachi, that he did join the conspiracy for a while. Later, according to Valachi, Roberts told Rava "he wanted to be counted out of it" and "they killed him because he was trying to declare himself out."
The 54-year-old Roberts turned up dead on a Brooklyn street corner with multiple gunshot wounds in the face and head. In an episode not reported in
The Valachi Papers
but occurring after Roberts's murder, Carlo Gambino's brother, Paul, visited Valachi and, according to Valachi, said, "I have a lot of respect for your opinion regardless of how other people feel. What should we do [about the conspirators]?" Valachi said he told Gambino: "Go right ahead before they pounce on you."
Chances are Valachi was coloring what really happened. Probably the Gambinos had pumped Valachi on who Roberts may have told him were in the conspiracy against them. Chances are Valachi revealed plenty to them. In
The Valachi Papers
he appears less than sanguine, saying simply, "I heard later it was true [that Roberts had been in the conspiracy], him and some other boysfifteen or twentywere going to pounce on Carlo, but he beat them to it. Well, no matter what, everyone mourned Johnny Roberts." It may well be that Valachi actually informed on Roberts and almost certainly on Rava and others. A few days after the Paul Gambino visit, Rava and his pals were located in a club in Brooklyn. A large number of shots were fired, and Rava and others were killed. It was said Rava was secretly buried. Although Rava was never found, the New York police presumed he was very much deceased.
Valachi was always considered a small-timer within the Mafia, but he showed a more finely honed instinct for survival than his pal Johnny Roberts.
See also:
Moretti, Willie
.
Robilotto, John: See Roberts, Johnny.
Ronsisvalle, Luigi (1940- ) "Hit man of honor" and informer
Before Sammy "the Bull" Gravano turned informer, one of the most important mob turncoats was Luigi Ronsisvalle, a slit-eyes mob hit man who boasted of 13 killingsfive in Sicily and eight in the United States. He was characterized as a "diabolically funny mob hit man." In a field where murderers were a dime a dozen, he cut out a unique niche for himself.
Ronsisvalle insisted to investigators that he was a "hit man of honor," one who considered himself as more moral than other killer imported by the Bonanno crime family and certainly more upstanding than his new bosses.
He always claimed to have the finest motives for his killings, such as loyalty to the family and so on. Indeed, he could have been a model for some of the mob killers fashioned by Mario Puzo in
The Godfather
. Since that book appeared just about the time of Ronsisvalle's arrival in America in 1966, it might well have been that Ronsisvalle copied his persona from the novel.
At first Ronsisvalle never dreamed of violating omerta, the code of silence. When he first came to America at the age of 26, his father gave him some sage advice: "When you see something, shut your mouth. If you see something you don't like, run around. If you hear things that don't belong to you, don't hear them. Mind your business. That's most of the rules."
Ronsisvalle honed the persona of an honorable hit man and considered many of his killings most ethical. Some examples include
A gambler who could not cover his last bet in a poker game and desperately put up his wife. He lost the hand and took the other two card players home to enjoy the sexual favors of his wife. Later she tearfully complained to her brother, who took up a collection to buy a murder contract on the husband for $2,000. Ronsisvalle thought it a most moral endeavor and waked outside the man's house until he emerged early one morning to go fishing. He whacked him out with several shots. Ronsisvalle was annoyed when asked the name of the victim. "I don't know his name," he said simply.
In a hit that would have done the fictional Don Corleone proud, a man came to the Mafia to complain that a cook who worked in a Brooklyn restaurant had raped his 14-year-old niece. Ronsisvalle cornered the cook in his kitchen and put him down permanently with five shots.

 

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Ronsisvalle considered himself blameless in any of his killings. "In a sense, the way I believe it," he explained, "you give me thirty thousand dollars, and I am sent to kill a person. You kill him, not me."
It saddened him that the rest of the mob did not match his highmindedness. There was no honor among them, he found. Once Ronsisvalle helped a fence and three associates from the Gambino family rob a diamond dealer on New York's West 47th Street. The associates stiffed Ronsisvalle out of most of his share. When he complained, the fence tried to set him up with a woman in a hotel room and murder him. Ronsisvalle threatened violence and the loot was divided at a highlevel sit-down involving the Bonanno and Gambino families. Ronsisvalle still felt he had not gotten all he was entitled to. Gambino boss Castellano walked away from the meeting with a $10,000 diamond in tribute for himself.
The highminded hit man was further disillusioned about the honor in the mob. Michele Sindona, a notorious Italian banker with close ties to the Mafia in both Italy and the United States, tried to recruit Ronsisvalle to murder the government attorney in New York who was prosecuting him. Sindona offered $100,000 for the job. The offer frightened the hit man because he knew that unlike the custom in Sicily, the mobs in America never killed law enforcement people.
Sindona's plot fell through. Shortly thereafter Ronsisvalle was arrested for a petty crime and contacted Sindona for bail money. The rogue banker felt Ronsisvalle was seeking to extort blackmail and would simply keep the bond money, so he refused the demand. Ronsisvalle, however, was not bluffing and was consumed by a feeling that the bail money refusal was an "affront" to old country Mafia rules. Thus the incident became the catalyst for him to flip and admit all to the authorities, including his record of 13 murders. Ronsisvalle was simply done with the Mafia's so-called ethics.
He said he was tired of the rackets, especially of drug dealing. He proved a key government witness, one of the most valued underworld turncoats since Joe Valachi about two decades earlier. Ronsisvalle eventually went into the witness protection program.
See also:
Sindona, Micbele
.
Room of Death: Palermo torture and murder chamber
The Mafia, both in the United States and Italy, has traditionally established "murder houses" where wholesale killings could take place without the troublesome need to keep moving around. One such place in Brooklyn was bossed by the notorious Roy DeMeo, butcher for Paul Castellano and the Gambino family. An even more brutal operation was run in a decrepit storehouse near Brancaccio, a rundown section of Palermo, Sicily. Some of the Brancaccio victims died for their knowledge about Italian Mafia matters, but perhaps an equal number were silenced to stop leaks about the "Sicilian connection,'' the heroin pipeline from the island to the United States. Victims were seldom dispatched quickly but tortured to ascertain what smuggling secrets they might have revealed to authorities. Undoubtedly, some of the victims cleared themselves under the tortures but were too far gone to survive. Still the local mafiosi were not unhappy about such miscalculations since the horrors of the Palermo "room of death" remained a valuable lesson to cohorts considering defecting.
New inductees to the Mafia were sometimes taken to the room of death to witness the slow, painful killing of a suspected informer. As the victim, finally, gratefully, expired before an inductee's eyes, he was informed, "That's how you could die."
During the massive arrests against the Italian Mafia in the 19805, the bosses of the Cupolathe ruling Sicilian Commissionfound it wise to shut down the murder room. The boss or bosses overseeing the deadly acts there were assassinated. This spirit of mob tidiness is hardly unusual. The same fate awaited Roy DeMeo when his operation got too hot. Undoubtedly, his erasure was approved by Gambino boss Castellano, even though DeMeo had always been one of Big Paul's most ardent supporters and a most willing executioner.
See also:
DeMeo, Roy
.
Rope Trick: See Italian Rope Trick.
Roselli, John (19051976): Chicago Outfit figure and Las Vegas power
Although technically Johnny Roselli was a mere soldier in the Chicago Outfit, he was one of its most potent powerhouses, serving as the mob'sand Sam Giancana'srepresentative in Las Vegas. All the family's business there had to be coordinated by Roselli. It was he who looked after Chicago's portion of the skim and decided when a Las Vegas offense required a "hit." This was true even though Roselli always followed the Chicago (and other mobs') doctrine: Kills had to take place outside Nevada or, at the very least, a corpse had to be dumped beyond state lines so there would be no heat.
Roselli was born Filippo Sacco in Esteria, Italy, and came to America in 1911 with his mother. They settled in East Boston where his father, who had gone ahead, was working. His father died suddenly, and Johnny's mother remarried. His stepfather, Roselli maintained, turned him to a life of crime by talking him into burning down the family home. The stepfather then decamped

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