http://bitterqueen.typepad.com/friends_o...lo-gambino.html(The FBI files on Thomas "Tommy Ryan" Eboli indicate that the Genovese acting boss never could stand Gambino, and an informant told the FBI in the early 1960s that Eboli characterized the Gambino crime family as "full of degenerates" after learning one of its soldiers was whacked for having an affair with his mother-in-law.)
The FBI planted a bug in the long-married couple's hotel room during their March 1962 vacation to Miami, FL where they stayed at the Golden Gate, and Carlo gloated about his days at the track and Catherine complained about the Jews. Apparently Mrs. Gambino had an anti-Semitic streak: "She also stated that there were too many Jews there and she says she feels these Jews drink too much. She stated that she feels she is better than they are." As the wife of a bootlegger Mrs. Gambino apparently missed the irony in complaining about "these Jews" who "drink too much" but, of course, self-delusion is the first refuge of a mob wife.
The marriage sounded thoroughly loveless with endless bickering based on the FBI eavesdropping of the Gambino hotel room. Carlo on one occasion called Catherine a "shrew" with "a sharp tongue," and on another occasion cursed at her and "then told his wife that she talked too much and if she did not shut up, he would cut her tongue off."
Carlo Gambino had been conveniently saved from justice by his bad heart on numerous occasions. The mob boss had been a target for deportation by the INS since the 1957 Apalachin Meeting, and his ticker always flared up right before he was due to appear before immigration hearings or court proceedings on the matter. On May 13, 1969 an FBI agent approached Gambino at a lower Manhattan eatery on Walker Street in the city's then textile manufacturing district as the mob boss was having breakfast -- a grapefruit, English Muffin and coffee -- and while counting out the 30 pills he had to take daily for his degenerate heart repeatedly said "I'm a sick, sick, very sick man."
