Murder of Gambino boss sparks mafia rumor mill
Mobsters
and ex-mobsters — even those who have been exiled to the Witness
Protection Program — gossip like schoolgirls. So when Gambino crime
family boss Frank Cali was shot dead Wednesday
night in front of his Staten Island home, the stunning break in decades
of relative mob peace set phones of members and alumni of La Cosa
Nostra alight with speculation as to the actors and motive behind his
murder.
“Is
it buzzing?” former Gambino captain Michael “Mikey Scars” DiLeonardo
asked rhetorically about the current state of the mobster rumor mill.
“It’s on fire!”
DiLeonardo,
63, was a powerful figure in the crime family who lived in a Staten
Island manse of his own before he testified against former associates,
including John A. "Junior" Gotti, and temporarily entered government
protection. DiLeonardo says he knew Cali when the future crime boss was
only the broke young son of a Brooklyn storeowner and “a kid who hung
around the Gambinos.”
“I
used to shylock him every week,” DiLeonardo said fondly, meaning he
gave him high-interest loans. He also took credit for Cali getting
“straightened out” — or “made” — and elevated to captain status on his
way to the crime family’s highest rungs.
Michael
DiLeonardo, right, accused of being a member of the Gambino crime
family, right, followed by his attorney Craig Gillen, left, leave the
federal building in Atlanta, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2001. With no
explanation from defense attorneys and prosecutors, testimony in the
Gold Club trial was abruptly canceled Wednesday, and the proceedings
were put on hold.
DiLeonardo,
confessed former Gambino hitman John Alite and convicted Genovese
killer Anthony Arillotta, all mobsters-turned-informants, in interviews
with USA TODAY expressed shock over Cali's murder considering he was
known as a nonviolent mob boss who ran his crime family like a
corporation.
The
ex-gangsters, each of whom have firsthand experience in responding to
mob crises, said that while authorities attempt to solve the murder,
wise guys associated with Cali are likely conducting their own
investigation. The result could be a lasting return to the violence of a
flashier, more trigger-happy era of organized crime.
“If
this is still the Mafia, that guy’s got to get killed that did the
shooting,” mused Alite, 56, who has confessed to involvement in several
murders and has since authored books including Darkest Hour II, his
second mob tell-all. “And anybody that helped them. Anybody who was
associated with this murder, whether it was mob related or not, a couple
of guys got to get killed now.”
Arillotta
— a Massachusetts gangster who confessed to two murders, testified in
New York City mob trials and spent eight years in prison — echoed
Alite’s assessment.
“It
could be a freak thing, wrong place, wrong house, wrong time,”
Arillotta said. “They'll kill that guy. Either way there’s going to be
more violence.”
Retired
FBI supervisor Bruce Mouw said that rampant speculation among mobsters
follows every hit and was likely even stronger this time because Cali’s
murder was the first rubout of a Gambino made man in decades.
Mouw
called mob-related murders “the hardest cases to investigate,” and
cautioned that the public might never learn who was behind Cali’s death,
or only after a cooperating witness comes clean about it years from
now.
“I
can’t really remember one that they solved in a traditional way in
twenty years, because nobody sees nothing, especially in Staten Island,”
Mouw said.
He
downplayed the idea that revenge was imminent and recalled advice he
used to give: “I always told my agents, don’t speculate — find out.”
The
ex-mobsters USA TODAY spoke with didn’t follow that discipline. Drawing
from spare details released in early news reports and the grist of
fellow chattering gangsters, they discussed the possibilities that the
hit was a sanctioned killing, a “personal matter” gone wrong (like an
illicit affair) or even a road rage incident completely unrelated to
Cali’s organized crime status. They also said there were rumors that
Cali was involved in the drug trade.
But
they acknowledged that each of these motives are unsatisfying in that
they clash with Cali’s reputation as a buttoned-up gangster who tried to
move the crime family away from the attention-grabbing violence of its
former patriarch, the elder John Gotti.
Cali
was reportedly shot six times, and neighbors saw a pickup truck fleeing
the scene. The ex-mobsters leaned on their expertise to deduce that the
number of vehicles involved could reveal whether this was a true
gangland hit.
“Until
I find out how many cars there were, I won’t know,” said DiLeonardo,
speculating that a true mafia murder plot would involve hitmen in
multiple vehicles.
Alite
used the same logic: “When you hit a boss there are three cars — two on
each corner and one in front,” said the former Gambino gunman. “He’s
not getting away.”
Alite
said that the fact that Cali was apparently alone and unguarded outside
of his Staten Island home was an indication of how much the mob had changed. Gone are the days when regular violence necessitated fortified compounds and armed entourages for its bosses.
DiLeonardo
partly credited Cali’s own management style for the recent peace. He
said Cali took a foothold in the family in the 1990s due to a power
vacuum created when its top figureheads, including Gotti, were
imprisoned or dead. Following Gotti’s murder conviction in 1992,
DiLeonardo said, “we didn’t have one sanctioned hit,” though “there was a
couple of sneak things” resulting in murders without official
permission.
FBI
supervisor Mouw, who said he first met Cali when the future top
mobster was a young grifter involved in an alleged calling card scheme,
took issue with the post-mortem chorus declaring him the Steve Jobs of
crime.
“He
was a mobster, pure and pure,” Mouw said. “He was Sicilian, very
smooth, a moneymaker and a good businessman, so he’s smarter than your
average mobster. But you can dress him up, buy him a nice house in
Staten Island, he’s still a mobster.”
Mouw
credited the long lull in violence not to Cali but to tougher organized
crime statutes with devastating sentences for those convicted of
mob-related murder. Mouw also stated that though multiple news outlets
have referred to Cali as the reputed boss of the family, his information
is that Cali was underboss, and the top job belongs to another Gambino,
Domenico Cefalu.
DiLeonardo
suggested that jostling at the top of the crime family could determine
the response to Cali’s killing. He said that Cali’s close confidant,
Lorenzo Mannino, will likely be handling the de facto sleuthing of what
happened to Cali. Mannino, who could not be reached for comment, was
previously sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison for racketeering
and a mob rubout that occurred in the late 1980s.
“Lorenzo’s
in the Frank Cali mold,” DiLeonardo said. “Very smart, low key. But
Lorenzo’s a killer. Where Frank wasn’t a killer, Lorenzo is a killer."
https://news.yahoo.com/apos-couple-guys-got-killed-100007168.html
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