Dominick Montiglio and Nino Gaggi

What do you think about these two? Murder Machine (which relied a lot on Dominick) claimed he was in the know on a lot of family matters and of course the DeMeo crew, do you think this is accurate? Albert DeMeo says Dominick embellished a lot of his stories.
Nino Gaggi strikes me as a figure who was a stand up guy, he was disciplined, old school, he would kill you in a heart beat but wasn't a cowboy like Roy DeMeo. There are few mobsters like him today. What are your opinions on what he thought about the Castellano hit? Did he know??!!

Dom would know more about the DeMeo crew than Albert.
His father wouldnt have told him very much about that.
I believe Dom.
I think Albert knows that had his father not been killed then he would have been arrested a few months later on the word of Dom.
(Dom turned informant months after Demeo's murder)

I felt sorry for Dom, Nino obviously had a large hand in raising him to be a criminal. I wonder what became of Nino's kids?

I think his kids became sucessful white collar workers, same with DeMeo's kids. I'm not sold on Montiglios honesty, didn't he lie about his time in the military?

I'm sure Dom embellished a bit but is the best source to know more about Nino and Roy. I really believe Roy to been a good father that didn't want his children involved in his activities therefore, I believe Al only knew so much and made allot up in his book to make money off his father and the crew because lets face it its a great story and allot of people are interested. Nino wanted Dom as a son and to be like him and thats why Dom was so involved and a better source for the DeMeo crew because he dealt with them on a regular basis.

What I would give to hear an interview with Anthony Senter! Though it will never happen.

I think all informants embellish their stories from time to time especially when they are pressed by the fbi. But i think montiglio is better than henry hill. I mean he has talked a lot about roy's murders and all the info checks out. Also he was the nephew/surrogate son to a highly respected capo so i think he was involved almost as much as the made guys are. I mean his main job was to bring money to nino or to paul from the demeo crew.

the deal with his embelishment from the miltary was that capeci investigated a little bit more when he showed pics of dom to the guys he supposedly served with. none of the guys recognized him or recall him being with their outfit. all govt records are sealed about him because of his informant status. no one will ever really know the truth i guess. it dosent matter because he is single handly the most knowledgae person about the demeo/gaggi crews beside the other guys who are all now dead. albert demeo sucks. his book sucked as well.

I wouldnt say Al DeMeo or his book suck.
Al's book is one of the best I've ever read.
It shows the real side of having a gangster for a father - its not as cool as you would think.
Doms military background is the subject of dispute but as someone said his records were locked when he entered witness protection (although he has long since left the program).
Nino Gaggi used Dom. Dom was a handy gopher and it was better for the cops to clock Dom meeting with the Gemini crew than Nino himself. I alos would love to hear joey or Anthony talk but it'll never happen.

I always admired Ninno

I definitely put more weight towards Montiglio's account. Albert DeMeo's is biased by virtue of perspective. He was too close to the subject matter. He offers some terrific insight to DeMeo as a man and father, but as far as his criminal exploits...well there's a reason everybody raves about "Murder Machine".

You know the glasses Nino always wore? Like big reflective aviators? I think he had an eye condition or something, but hell, I want glasses like his. They're awesome.

Nino was a real Cosa Nostra guy.

Wanted to pull this back up because I finally read the Dominick part of "Stolen Valor," which, frankly, is not that impressive. The authors first summarize the Dom stories from "Murder Machine," then say they call Capeci...

Capeci's on deadline, curt, says he'll call back and never does.

They call Gene Mustain, however, and he's interested, listens to their doubts about Dom's story-- esp. his length of training, age in Nam etc-- and Mustain takes it from there, even flying to reunion of the LRPP ("Lurp") unit Dom said he served in. THEY don't recognize his photo, say he got the battle at Dak To all wrong etc... Okay.

So what DID Dom do in the Army and Nam? Some have taken the "Stolen Valor" schtick to mean he wasn't in the Army at all, the whole fucking thing was a ruse but I find that extremely unlikely...

While it's likely or even almost certain Dom has embellished his service record, the idea it's a complete fabrication doesn't wash.

Q: Would Walter Mack and Dept of Justice gone along with or instigated that cover up from the start?

Q: Would not Nino's lawyers have seized on this if his record was an obvious fraud?

I'm not expert in searching Viet Nam era military records but I have to believe there's proof Dom served somewhere-- contemporary Brooklyn newspaper or casualty/commendation reports... the latter of which it does NOT sound like the "Stolen Valor" guys even tried to find.

dom in nam his personal pics just has green beret airborne on his uniform and medals

I'll say one thing for certain that i don't believe in his book and that's that he said to roy demeo who he believed had a rooster neck ''fuck you rooster, cock a doodle doo''

i also seen him give different versions of stories on tv..its hard to keep all your lies straight !!

Montigilio has been proven to be a fabricator by book Stolen Valor, and way he changes his stories. I thought DeMeo's son was forthcoming in his book, and id not try to say his father was an innocent victim. That has to be tough for a son to do.

fact: DonMega gets good pictures. "good" as in "pics I never seen"

lol i have my connections ahhahah

These are all doms from his dark visions dvd so maybe this will help you guys narrow it down what platoon or something he was in

Murder Machine was the first book i ever read about the mob and it was such an amazing book I ended up reading it about five or six times over the years,needless to say the first time I read it I was hooked on mob history a little more-so than even whemy father told me about my uncle when i was a younger kid. Nino Gaggi always was an admirable wiseguy to me because of his style and how he was so oldschool and just plain 110% Cosa Nostra,flat out. And I like how he never once visited Gotti at his headquarters to pay homage and respect for being the new boss of the family.

Gaggi was only out of prison for a month or 2 during Gotti's reign if im not mistaken.

You're right Gotti had Paul killed while Nino was on trial.

I also agree with others that Dom gives the best account. Much of his information was vetted by the FBI and US Atty. He could have exaggerated some in the book as well as on TV interviews but not so much in court. Defense attorneys would have eaten him alive. As far as his military service is concerned, I suspect he was a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (Because of those patches) possibly in a rear area where he would hear a lot of stories. I don't buy some of his "Combat stories. If you look at the photo of his Army memorabilia on this site, the black red and gold parachute wing background oval has two "Tic" marks along the left and right edges. This is a battalion indicator meaning that the wearer is a member of the 2nd Ranger Bn. The 2nd Ranger Bn was established in 1974- after the VN war was over so I call BS on that. How long does he claim he was in??? He claims Airborne, Ranger and Special Forces training. Boot camp is 2 months, Jump school 3 weeks, advanced Infantry training 2 months Ranger school 2 months and Special Forces training up to one year. So.... why would the army put him through Special Forces training and then assign him to the 173rd??? Not very likely at all. just my 2 cents.

It should be pretty easy to verify if he was Special Forces, no?

Dominick Montiglio is my father and one thing that I can say about him is that he did serve in Vietnam. He was a Green Beret and did one tour in Vietnam.I was there to see him go through the nightmares so please don't direspect the time he served for our country.

I read the government either sealed or pulled all Montiglio's files including his military files when he flipped.

Either way he was in the army and he was in Nam. What he did there i do not know.

There are interviews contained in the Dark Visions doc with some of the men Montiglio served with in Vietnam. If he's "lying" then they're "lying" too.

Personally, that doesn't strike me as the case because none of these other men, to my knowledge, have ever done any other Montiglio related interviews before.

According to Murder Machine, Gaggi had poor eyesight, which kept him out of WW2.

This always struck me as kind of funny when you think about what Gaggi said to Montiglio about enlisting in the Army himself.

Really? My dad was Chuckie English, Dom ever meet him?

How does anyone know if you are being truthful regarding him being your dad?

Why is it that in the book Stolen Valor they said no one who served in the unit he claimed he had been in had ever heard of him ?

He seems to have lied a lot about his time in military. He was also a long time heroin addict, so he might not have been as close to Mafia members as he claimed to be.

I think Dom is a pretty likeable guy and I believe the vast majority of what he says except for his military history. (See my remarks above on that) I know for a fact that a lot of guys embellish their military history. As one Special Forces General said "If everyone who claims he was in Special Forces really was, we would never have to recruit" I do believe he served in Viet Nam

he served he's got the 1000 mile stare

I think in Murder Machine that Montiglio embellishes his stories in that he is always twisting things to make himself look like a good guy or a victim. I don't think the stories he tells about other people are out right lies, just that he slants everything to make himself appear to be a better guy than he was.

He's always complaining about nino and while nino is not a nice person by any stretch, nino never really gets in dom's way and is rather lenient with him given that dominick doesn't act very responsibly at any point while living there. He acts like things are supposed to be handed to him (always complaining about how much nino pays him) and never really does anything on his own or when he does he blows it on coke and booze. Nino never tells him not to earn, just to stay way from the demeo's. Instead dominick didn't earn and did hang out with that crew

On his Dark Visions documentary Montiglio seemed to imply he was a sniper. He talked a little about his sniper rifle that he said had a large sound suppressor. But i don't recall him actually coming out and saying he was a sniper. He did talk about being in Nam on the part of the documntary that i saw.

He said he was the light weapons specialist. He would be handling non-crew served weapons(heavy machine guns/mortars) systems like rifles/handguns etc.

Is that what it was?....ok thanks Iceman.

Well according to Montiglio, Nino did force his father out of the house after refusing to participate in some bit of auto fraud Nino had devised. That and forbidding Montiglio to ever see his or talk to his father gain. Then you have Nino putting the kibosh on Montiglio's attempt to get made as well.

As for not doing anything, well he was Nino's bagman, not to mention the Vinny Mook and Dellacroce/Gotti stuff.

Assuming Albert was not connected, what kind of info could he provide, which would be worthy of a book?

Was it the usual, "Waiters treated us with respect, scary looking men visited the home, dad carried a gun, I had great toys, Uncle Nino bought me ice cream, Little League umps never called strike 3 when dad was watching, etc..."

In one picture Dominic is in Vietnam sitting around with some soldiers smoking and drinking, on his left arm is a tattoo, and on another photo when Dominic is home in USA he has the same tattoo on his left arm, i dont think he faked that.

Ya its not a question of wheather or not he actually was in vietnam, people are questioning if he was really in the special forces like he claimed, i wouldnt be surprised if he was lying about. In all the docs that hes in(and hes in a lot of them) he seems to like to take a lot of liberties with truth especially with the extent of his involvement with the demeo crew. Plus you can never really trust an addict.

According to Montiglio he was never involved with the DeMeo crew per se, although he did say he worked some protection rackets with Henry Borelli. Montiglio did say that DeMeo offered to get him into his porno rackets, but Gaggi told him no way.

The thing with dom's father is a big deal, no disagreement there.
I don't remember nino preventing dom from getting made.

In that life nobody gives you anything and everyone tries to take everything. Nino didn't do anything for anybody and he was helping dom by giving him a deal on rent, paying him to be his eyes, introducing him to important people as someone under his wing. He tried to set up dom in an ice cream business and a taxi business. He gave dom the world compared to other people. nino didn't do half that much for demeo and demeo did far more to help nino than dom ever did.

In the book that slant comes through as the way dom see's the world he seems to think he's owed something and is upset that he's not being valued when he can't see how much value nino actually placed in him compared to how nino treated everyone else. dom never seems to acknowledge that.

in several of Montiglio's documentaries he mentions that Gaggi was preventing him from being made cause he didnt want to lose Dom to Big Paul, bc he said after he was made, Big Paul was gonna make him his driver. thats just what ive seen montiglio claim several times.

In Murder Machine Montiglio says Castellano put him up for membership and wanted him as his driver, but Gaggi nixed it because he wanted to keep Montiglio working exclusively for him.

Montiglio also said he took Castellano to Studio 54 so he could see what the big deal was. One can only imagine the look on Castellano's face when he saw for himself.

ok thanks. I didn't remember that part in mm, but I did remember early on dom having a conversation with nino that nino was going to propose him to get straightened out. His motives for changing his mind make sense.

Montiglio was an admitted long time heroin addict, that right there would prevent him from ever being made. He tesifeid that he often took trips to Paul Castrellano's home. I can't belive that, Castelllano did not even have made members coming unless they were captains or close to him for a long time. Dom Montiglio is a man who says he served in a unit in Vietnam, a unit in which not one former member of it can remember having ever seen or met him. That was revealed in a book by some veterans called Stolen Valor, about people who lie about their military service.