By Jerry Capeci
As A Boy, Dominick Quoted Carlo Gambino; As A Man, Montiglio Helped Bring Down The Crime Family's DeMeo Crew — The Most Violent In Mafia History
Dominick MontiglioGang Land Exclusive!Dominick Montiglio, who waged war in Vietnam and then fought for his mobster uncle in Brooklyn before turning on him and his crew of wanton killers to help end one of the most violent chapters in the history of the American Mafia, died Sunday evening in his new home town near Albuquerque. He was 73.
His death came a few days after he suffered a stroke, his second in two years.
In an epic courtroom confrontation, Montiglio testified against Gambino crime family leaders who oversaw a savage crew of mobsters specializing in auto thefts who were believed to have killed up to 200 people, including many who simply strayed innocently into its path. The most prominent defendant was mob boss Paul (Big Paul) Castellano. Montiglio also testified against capo Anthony (Nino) Gaggi, the uncle who raised him and who had direct oversight of the murderous crew.
Following the dramatic midtown murder of Castellano, and the death behind bars of Gaggi — and after several crew members were either murdered or sentenced to life in prison — Montiglio dropped out of the Witness Protection Program and quietly returned to Brooklyn, where he pursued a lifelong interest in art. He had lived in New Mexico for about 15 years.
Walter MackHe was a key character in Murder Machine, co-authored by myself and Gene Mustain and published in 1992. The book detailed Montiglio's often tortured relationship with his uncle, and his dealings with members of the "DeMeo crew," which reported to Gaggi and was led by Roy DeMeo, a former butcher who choreographed the gruesome dismemberments of numerous victims they killed.
"He made the top leadership of the Gambino crime family, the group that the DeMeo crew reported to, accountable for the DeMeo crew's homicides and other egregious behavior that we proved at two trials," recalled former assistant U.S. attorney Walter Mack.
"I lost touch with Dominick over the years but I continued to admire his courage for doing what he believed was the right thing to do" said Mack, the then-Chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force in Manhattan and lead prosecutor in two lengthy trials — a seven month 1985-86 trial, and a 1988-89 trial that lasted 18 months.
Anthony GaggiThe indictment charged the DeMeo crew with 25 murders in the 1970s and 1980s. One crew member, Henry Borelli, was convicted of two murders connected to a stolen car ring the crew operated. Two members, Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter were found guilty of ten killings in a second trial.
Montiglio testified at the first trial in December 1985. But that trial was interrupted for three weeks when Castellano was assassinated. Gaggi, who was convicted of heading the DeMeo crew's stolen car ring at that trial, died of a heart attack during the second trial, before Montiglio again took the stand.
Montiglio testified that in December of 1976, two months after Castellano's brother-in-law, Carlo Gambino, died of natural causes, Big Paul was elevated to crime family boss. Castellano was anointed, Montiglio revealed, in a secret summit session with underboss Aniello (Neil) Dellacroce in his uncle Nino's home on Cropsey Avenue in Bath Beach, Brooklyn.
Montiglio said that Nino told him, as we wrote in Murder Machine, that Dellacroce, who had gotten out of prison on Thanksgiving Day, had agreed to go along with Gambino's edict to be succeeded by Castellano. But "just in case," Nino said, he had taped a gun "under the kitchen table," and told Dominick to position himself at an upstairs window and watch the comings and goings with an M-2 automatic rifle he had picked up earlier that day from DeMeo.
Roy DeMeo"If Dominick heard shooting downstairs, he was to shoot anyone who came out of the house," we wrote in Murder Machine. "If the shooting went Paul's and Nino's way, no one would be leaving. If it did not, they would be dead," so Dominick should "shoot anybody who tries to make it out the driveway. Don't let any of the cocksuckers get away alive," we wrote.
"Given his army combat experience in Vietnam," said Mack, "Dominick was, certainly in the mind of Nino, a person who would have been able to prevent any inappropriate intervention in the decision to elevate Paul as boss of the crime family."
"If Paul had been able to survive the violent mechanics of organized crime conduct," Mack continued, "I have every confidence that eventually Dominick's testimony, which was accepted by the jury, would have resulted in the conviction of Paul Castellano."
Paul CastellanoAs a young boy, Montiglio met Castellano and Gambino many times when he accompanied Gaggi to meetings on days he was minding his young nephew for his sister Marie, a single mom who had split up with her husband in 1951. The young Dominick recalled the sessions as meetings with the "important men" who were close friends and business associates of his uncle.
Dominick often told his friends about the sage advice that Gambino had given him when his Uncle Nino said he was a smart boy who could run like a deer. For years he thought Gambino's words of wisdom were original thoughts — and not, as we reported in Murder Machine, "cribbed from the philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli, the Italian Renaissance statesman."
"Smart like a fox, that's good, the fox recognizes traps," the cagy Mafia boss said, and continued. "But a deer? It's better to be a lion than a deer. The lion scares away the wolves. If you are a lion and a fox, nothing defeats you."
Carlo GambinoMontiglio insisted during hundreds of hours of talks that he never intended to become a gangster when he got home from Vietnam in 1968. But he gravitated to The Life and became Gaggi's "eyes and ears" on the DeMeo crew until 1979. That's when he stole $250,000 from his uncle and decided to leave New York "for good," taking his pregnant wife, and two young children with him to California.
Less than four years later, the money ran out, and Montiglio was enticed back to New York where he was arrested for extortion on March 7, 1983 by a task force of local, state and federal mob busters headed by Mack. The Task Force was then zeroing in on Castellano and Gaggi and in search of a witness to link the Gambino crime family heavyweights to the three still living DeMeo crew members — Borelli, Testa and Senter.
On the morning of his fifth day behind bars, Montiglio, who refused to seek bail because he feared "Nino would try to kill him as soon as he made bail," rang up a guy from the old neighborhood who had given him his phone number five days earlier.
"I'm not dying for nothing," he told Frank Pergola, the NYPD detective who had arrested him.
Frank Pergola"No reason why you should," said Pergola, who began the long-drawn out process of getting Montiglio an attorney, and arranging for him to plead guilty and cooperate. A year later, Pergola arrested Uncle Nino. And for the next 38 years maintained a friendship with Montiglio, one that ended Sunday night.
"It's funny how things work out," said Pergola, who retired in 1995, but maintained contact with Montiglio until the end. "I didn't know him, he lived a few blocks away from me. We found out later that my mother knew his father, and that they went to the same school. We went through thick and thin together, that's for sure."
Pergola told Gang Land that Montiglio, who served in Nam with the 173d Airborne Brigade and received an honorable discharge from the Army in December of 1968, will be cremated and receive a full-blown military funeral in the coming weeks.
Montiglio has been estranged from his ex-wife Denise and their two surviving children, Camarie and Dominick Jr. for many years. His youngest daughter, Marina, whom he reconnected with, died two years ago in a tragic car accident, said Ross Brodar, who shared an apartment with Montiglio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn back in 2002, and has remained a friend ever since.
Marilyn Lucht"I knew him very well for almost 20 years, and he was one of my best friends," said Brodar, a filmmaker who made a documentary about Dominick's life that Gang Land wrote about back in 2018 — The Lynchpin of Bensonhurst. Brodar has recently revised the film and expects to re-release it soon.
"He was one hell of a guy," said Brodar. "He lived a hard life, a tragic life. He could have done anything, but he got swallowed up by the darkness and the criminal reality of his Uncle Nino."
"He grew up in a tough world and did his best to survive — with dignity," recalled former FBI agent Marilyn Lucht, a member of Mack's task force. "As a soldier in Vietnam, and then as a mafia enforcer for his uncle, he lived through events few could imagine. His cooperation, and telling his life story in court made him one of the pillars of the case against the murderous DeMeo crew."
Henry BorelliLast month, as an exclamation point on Montiglio's testimony, Manhattan Federal Judge Loretta Preska denied a motion for compassion by Borelli from the 150 year sentence that still has 62 years to run for his conviction of 15 counts of auto crime conspiracy. Borelli was also found guilty of two murders, but those convictions were reversed for technical reasons.
In her ruling, Preska noted that his trial judge, the late Kevin Duffy, stated that Borelli, now 73, had been "convicted of being what is generally called a contract killer," and that "things would have to change mightily before I could see any justification by anyone, including the parole board, to return you to any kind of access to the public."
Since the reversal of his murder convictions "was premised only on the Government's failure to prove that (Borelli's) victims were U.S. citizens," Preska wrote, "Judge Duffy's analysis" of Borelli's conduct "retains its force" and his motion for a companionate release "is DENIED."
