http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/vinc...ticle-1.2653218

http://www.vice.com/read/the-strange-saga-of-the-odd-father-the-mob-boss-who-faked-mental-illness

Interview with book's author.

Here's the basic article in case the link dies at some point.



Vincent ‘The Chin’ Gigante, John Gotti feud detailed in new book
BY LARRY MCSHANE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
May 29, 2016


Vincent Gigante, firmly established as the bathrobe-clad boss of the Genovese Family, was well into his mental illness scam before the Dec. 15, 1985, mob hit on fellow boss “Big Paul” Castellano of the Gambinos.

The Chin suddenly found himself facing an unexpected nemesis: John Gotti.

This excerpt from “Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mob Boss Vincent Gigante” (Kensington Books, on sale May 31), written by veteran Daily News reporter Larry McShane, recounts their testy relationship.


If the Chin was not too well versed about the outer borough thug who had just whacked his pal Castellano, Gotti was fully in the know about his Genovese family counterpart.

John and his brother Gene Gotti told a confidential informant in 1984 that Gigante was used by the Commission during the 1970s to execute Mafiosi caught violating the ban on dealing heroin.

An FBI agent summed up the Gottis’ beliefs this way: “Those apprehended and/or convicted ... normally met with individuals associated with Gigante, and these meetings were usually their last.”

The Gotti brothers specifically referred to Carmine Consalvo, tossed from the roof of a 24-story building in Fort Lee, N.J., while facing a heroin trial in 1975. His brother Frank suffered the same fate three months later after a shorter fall: Five stories from a building in Little Italy.

Gotti’s renegade crew not only feared the Chin — they respected him. Charlie Carneglia, one of Gotti’s most trusted contract killers, was caught on another bug calling Gigante “smart” for his ongoing mental health routine. (Proof of Chin’s high-quality act: Carneglia was convicted in 2009 after prosecutors said he unsuccessfully pulled the same stunt.)

To Bill Bonanno, former Bonanno family boss and son of Mafia founder Joseph Bonanno, Gotti and his ilk were hardly men of honor.

“They’re a product of ‘the opera generation’ — me, me, me,’” scoffed Bill Bonanno. “It is a different mob.”

The Chin was a padrone, taking care of local problems in a low-key fashion reminiscent of “Godfather” Don Corleone on the day of his daughter’s wedding. Gotti, in a typically showy move, hosted a massive Fourth of July party in Howard Beach — complete with illegal pyrotechnics.

The annual event was held despite Gotti’s unknown past as a draft-dodger; the Dapper Don avoided wearing olive drab by blowing off his draft board on the very day that President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Gotti, a guy from Queens, was hardly part of the mob’s upper echelon; his base of operations was in far-flung Ozone Park at the Bergin Hunt & Fish club, where the rods came equipped with silencers. Hijackings at Kennedy International Airport were their bread and butter. Gotti was hardly a subtle guy; when the threat of violence wasn’t enough, he simply turned to violence.

To a made man with Chin’s mob pedigree, Gotti was an outsider and unworthy of respect — even after the Castellano hit. Gigante was unappeased by Gotti’s public denials of the murder or his immediate “election” by Gambino captains as the family’s new leader.

Gotti’s disregard for both mob management and his late boss was captured on a particularly bilious recording made in an apartment above the Ravenite after the Castellano assassination.

“Hate, really hate Paul,” Gotti ranted. “He sold the Borgata (family) out for a construction company. He was a piece of s---. Rat, rat c---sucker. Yellow dog!”

His feelings toward Gigante, while not as colorful, were equally dismissive. Gotti sneered at the Chin’s bread and butter, the crazy act: “I would rather be doing life than be like him,” the mobster once told his son John (Junior) Gotti.

Gotti was a guy who nursed a grudge, like the one he held toward Castellano, and he cared — a lot — about making money. Gigante took a more benevolent approach to the cash generated by his illegal operations and his loyal staff.

“Chin was very well-liked by his crew because he didn’t ask for a lot of money from his capos, his soldiers,” said federal prosecutor Greg O’Connell.

Gambino underboss Gravano agreed: “He ain’t that interested in the money. He already had a ton of money. His biggest problem was where to hide it. He didn’t take money from most of his captains.”

Three different law enforcement sources said the murderous Gambino boss was petrified of the ruthless Chin.

“John Gotti was terrified of Gigante,” said FBI Agent Bruce Mouw, once the head of the agency’s Gambino Squad. “He knew that the Genovese were the most powerful family, very tough, a vicious family.”

“I’m sure he was,” agreed O’Connell, noting the Chin was apparently afraid of nothing.

Former Bonanno capo Michael Franzese echoed the law enforcement assessment.

“I believe everybody feared Chin, even when Fat Tony (Salerno) was the boss,” said the born-again gangster. “It was pretty much common knowledge that Chin was no fan of Gotti’s.”

While the Chin’s gambling was now limited to fixed card games with his Greenwich Village cohorts, Gotti was a wild bettor who couldn’t get out of his own way. Secretly recorded tapes found the Dapper Don bemoaning his leaden touch while betting football, including a $53,000 beating in a single weekend.

“I bet the Buffalo Bills for six dimes ($6,000), they’re getting killed 10-0,” he griped on a wiretapped Nov. 11, 1981, conversation. “I bet New England for six dimes, I’m getting killed with New England. I bet six dimes on Chicago, they’re losing. I bet three dimes on KC, they’re winning. Maybe they’ll lose, those motherf-----s.”

The Chin, despite decades of federal pursuit, was never heard discussing his multi-million business or any other matters of organized. Gotti talked his way into a life sentence after the Castellano hit.

Yet when the feds secretly planted a bug in an apartment upstairs from the Ravenite, they captured nary a bad word from Gotti about Gigante.

“All the conversations in the Ravenite, John Gotti badmouthed everybody — the Colombos, the Lucheses,” said Mouw, who listened to hours and hours of tapes. “And every time it got around to Chin, he almost lowered his voice like the old E.F. Hutton commercial — ‘Well, the Chin says ...’”

Even when alone with his most trusted Gambino associates, Gotti would never admit to any complicity in the Castellano killing. He seemed haunted by the thought that somehow, someway, word of his treachery would reach Gigante.

Gigante was “the anti-Gotti, to the extent that Gotti brought law enforcement attention, couldn’t avoid electronic surveillance, promoted people he shouldn’t and created internecine warfare,” said Ronald Goldstock, the former head of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force.

“Gigante was exactly the opposite. No matter how we tried, there was no electronic surveillance. People in the family respected him. He resolved problems, rather than fomenting them. The people surrounding him were tried and true.”

Mouw said Gotti yearned for the kind of reputation and respect accorded the Chin.

“I’m sure he was envious,” said Mouw. “The one thing John respected was power. Power and money.”

Atlantic City mobster Phil Leonetti, in a conversation with Gambino underboss Gravano, got the lowdown on the feud between the nation’s two top mobsters.

“Sammy told me that John hated the Chin,” Leonetti recalled. “But I think it was because John knew that he would never have the power that Chin had. I mean, the newspapers and the media made him ‘The Dapper Don.’ But to guys on the street, guys in the mob, they knew it was the Chin who was the real power in New York. And I think that irked Gotti, that as regal as he was, he couldn’t trump this guy in a bathrobe.”

When Gotti ascended as the new Gambino boss, Chin never regarded him an equal, a partner or a friend. Gigante viewed the interloper as a rule-breaking cop magnet and general pain in the ass.

Gigante, as he did when Philly boss Bruno was whacked in an unsanctioned hit, wasted no time in plotting his payback on the Castellano plotters. A murder contract was placed on Gotti’s head after the Chin — accompanied by his brother Ralph — ventured to the wilds of Staten Island for a sitdown with Luchese boss Anthony (Tony Ducks) Corallo.

The men, sitting in the home of “Christie Tick” Funari, agreed that Gotti had to go.

Longtime Luchese soldier Al D’Arco recalled the Chin’s initial plan was to deliberately not whack Gotti in a quick strike, the way Castellano was taken down. The fuming Gigante wanted to eradicate Gotti’s friends and fellow plotters, leaving the Gambino boss with the feeling of a noose tightening around his disrespectful throat.

“Vincent Gigante wanted John Gotti,” said D’Arco, who would eventually become boss of the Lucheses. “He just didn’t want him killed first.”

One of the things that Gigante most despised about Gotti actually kept the Gambino boss alive: Johnny Boy’s constant attention from the FBI and the press wrapped him in a security blanket, making it hard to hit the new boss. The storefront Ravenite in Little Italy was tucked amid cramped and crowded streets that made a mob killing almost impossible in the neighborhood.

Gotti survived the Chin’s assorted murder plots, although he couldn’t escape arrest.

When his son John Jr. assumed command after the Teflon Don was busted on Dec. 11, 1990, the Genovese hierarchy — in a final slap at the elder Gotti — refused to even meet with the Mafia novice.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/vinc...ticle-1.2653218

So... nothing new.

What I thought.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Didn't extract anything I didn't already know from that excerpt.

Even the writing style is derivative.

The fued with Gotti is one of the more documented things about Chin. And I imagine the writer chose that because of Gotti’s notoriety. Hopefully there will be less known info available elsewhere in the book.

Yea, I hope this book is about Chin more so than Gotti. Judging from this excerpt, my hopes aren't very high.

Don't know anything about this family or the people that publish the book or wrote it but I do know they printed Michael Franzese as a Bonanno skipper in that paragraph .

Lol, that's a terrible mistake. I think I'm going to pass on this book until I hear some reviews on it.

What I dont understand is the commission use gigante for kill mobster that sell heroin ?
For me this is strange because the next year that the Consalvo Bros died Matthew Madonna get 30 y for selling heroin.
So they killed only the mobster that fear could flip ?
And seems strange that nobody in genovese family was selling drugs before and during gigante reign.

In another place is said that d'arco will be the Luccheses boss while was only for a short time acting boss.

furio there was people dealing before and during gigantes era the chin probably knew they were dealing the westside like most of the familys rule on drugs was that it was allowed as long as you did not get caught. If you believe no one in the whole genovese family was dealing drugs then i really dont know what to say i would say over half at one point were dealing drugs they might have not been full time drug dealers but from time to time they would have done drug deals no doubt about Gigante himself was a ex drug dealer

I know that but how gigante know where dealers must be kill and where are trusted men ? And there was another cases like the Consalvos ?

seen a little excerp on amazon the author has a sit down interview with the priest brother were he says vito genovese made his brother a boss might check it on my kindle tonight only 11 bucks fuck it i will and give a review soon.

Franzese was a Colombo - who did the fact-checking during the edit??

@Furio

It's never as simple as simply "he's selling drugs" there's almost always some mob politic angle being played here. It's like the families making money off dope, are always looking at bans from the families not as entrenched in the trade. Like Gigante gets out and all of a sudden (him being the victim of perhaps a huge frame) he is very anti-narcotics, even though he was cell mates with the BOSS of the family, who's obsession was narcotics.

Take those Consalvo murders you mentioned.......(From Gansters Inc)

A few blocks to the north-west, 80th Street, runs between 10th and 11th Avenues. Here, on this narrow, one-way road, lined by neat, red-bricked houses, with orderly front yards, the sidewalks lined with maple trees, a van was parked, sometime between the evening of Monday October 6th and Tuesday, 7th 1975 . When police came to investigate what seemed to be an abandoned vehicle, they found inside, the bodies of two men, each wrapped in a blanket, secured by a cord. Each victim had been shot in the head, and according to the medical examiner, had been dead at least 24 hours.

The van had been reported stolen from the Bath Beach area the previous weekend.

The men were identified as George Adamo, aged 33, of Brooklyn, and Charles LaRocca, aged 28, of Jackson Heights, Queens. They were both associates of the Gambino family, and known narcotic traffickers.





They may well have been the victims of a complex mob message sent to Galante by a man he apparently hated and feared-Annielo Delacroce- the underboss of the Gambino crime family, using the boss of another family to get the point home.

It’s likely these two men had been dealing drugs with ‘Lilo,’and Carlo Gambino, a close friend of ‘Funzi’ Tieri, head of the Genovese family, finding out, had arranged with him to have the men killed by some of Tieri’s top killers. These men were part of a New Jersey based crew of the Genovese family, that had shifted its power base over to Brooklyn, following the death of it’s capo, notorious and legendary Mafioso, Angelo ‘Gyp’ DeCarlo. The new skipper, Frank Casina, was very close to Tieri, and another soldier in this crew was Tommy Lombardi.

‘Funzi’ Tieri, it’s believed, contacted Angelo Presinzano, using Tommy Lombardi as a go-between, and gave him a message to deliver to his cousin :

‘Tell ‘Lilo’ if he has anything coming, let him come round and see me.’

Whatever else he was, Galante certainly was not a fool, and never bothered to try and recover whatever was outstanding. Alphonse Tieri, slight in stature, well into his sixties, was not only the boss of probably the biggest Cosa Nostra family in America, he also had a reputation for unbridled ferocity. A man who dressed in $1000 suits and sported mountains of expensive jewellery, he could turn a monster hoodlum into a puppy with a well-chosen word or even just the right look.

The two dead men had been close to Carmine Consalvo, another underworld drug dealer, a major cocaine trafficker, who had taken a dive off his condominium in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a month earlier, to be followed later in the year by his brother Frances, better known as Frank, who went free-fall from the fifth floor of a high rise in Little Italy, Manhattan. Underworld sources claimed the men were killed by members of Vincent Gigante’s crew. The authorities came to dub these two killings, ‘The Murder of the Flying Consalvos.’ Frank had been a driver for Dellacroce in the early ‘70’s, and both men were thought to be associates of the Gambino family.

These four killings in 1975, may have been only part of a series of underworld hits that went down following Galante’s release from prison, as he fought to re-establish his power base on the streets of New York, and other mobsters like Dellacroce and Alphonse Tieri went out of their way to make it difficult for him to do so.


All these bans are really just mechanisms for control, but it never worked cause never at one time were all the bosses on the same page with it, going back to the 40s probably....
I'm about halfway through this book, you guys aren't missing much, but I'll let Pmac give a proper review.....

Also side question;

So Gyp DeCarlos crew moved over to Brooklyn after he died?

I bought the book, during the introduction it says Chin became boss in 1980-81. So I don't know what part Louis says that, Louis also makes a "confession" during the intro in which he finally admits that his brother was the boss of the Genovese Crime Family.

Im about 1/3 threa the book its ok i kinda red this stuff before. Except the interview wit fther gigante who likes to hook his own horn. Im starting to lean towards chin was framed after he won the costello shooting trial so they put him in vitos frame up on drugs. They were making to much money with all the other rackets. Ok book so far i was tlking bout tht part were the priest is talking bout vito.

Sinatra great quote buddy I found the stuff w Father Gigante acknowledging his brother ran Greenwich and the Genovese interesting.

For what its worth I finished the book in 3 days and loved it..there's alot of great info in it and really details how much influence, respect, and power Chin had..im sure more knowledgeable NY/north Jersey posters were more aware of some of the stuff in tbe book, but for someone from outside Philly and an admitted mob novice I found the book fascinating, highly recommend it

The real rule was don't deal unless you have the permission from the boss. The Cherry Hill Gambinos and Patsy Conte were big into drugs and everyone knew it. Castellano had no problem with it. Barney Bellomo was caught up in that drug case with Ralph Tutino. He still became street boss a few years later. Amuso and Casso were both known drug dealers and still got promoted.

I'm reading it now and it's pretty good. The article posted here isn't actually an excerpt from the book, it's pretty informative and the periodic insight from Louis Gigante is interesting.

The Barney Bellomo who was caught up selling drugs with Ralph Tutino, was the COUSIN of the Barney Bellomo your thinking of. Check your facts. He the older cousin. Same Name but 2 years older.

Bellomo's real first name is Liborio... So they not only have the same name, but also the same nickname Barney?

yes...Liborio was their grandfathers name. Barney (who you are talking about, the younger) has a son with the exact same name. All 3 use the nickname Barney.