Found this article in the archives of gangland and though it was really interesting so thought I would share. (I searched older posts on this site but couldnt find anything on it). I wonder if Gotti and Demeo worked together on anything else?? The reason for the killing is pretty hilarious.

Murder Most Fowl



Strictly business is the mob credo when it comes to dirty deeds. But some are strictly personal.

When Paul Castellano (right) learned from his daughter that her boyfriend had insulted him royally, the powerful gangster recruited a couple of tough, eager-to-please, budding mob executives to eliminate the problem, permanently.

And so, years before John Gotti and Joseph Massino rose to the top of the Gambino and Bonanno families, sources say they got together to kill the offending boyfriend, Vito Borelli. The murder is an untold chapter of Mafia history that has stayed buried for more than 25 years, along with the whereabouts of Borelli’s body.

The boyfriend’s fatal mistake? He said out loud what Castellano’s pals were afraid to: that the Gambino family big shot, a butcher by trade, looked a lot like Frank Perdue, the resourceful businessman/self-promoter with a popular brand of chickens. For those too young to remember, this wasn’t a compliment. Perdue, starring in his own TV commercials, seemed to resemble a chicken, looking plucked and slightly beaked as he famously squawked: “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.”

The tale was told for the first time by turncoat Bonanno family underboss Salvatore Vitale, whose sister is Massino’s wife. Vitale, who will be a star witness at Massino’s upcoming trial, has told the FBI that he was called on to help Massino, Gotti and


several others dispose of Borelli’s body in 1975 after they killed him at a Manhattan cookie business that was operated by Bonanno soldier Anthony Rabito.

Vitale (right) has told the feds that he took part in nine murders with his brother-in-law, including Borelli’s. But he insists he didn’t learn about Borelli’s execution until after it happened, according to court papers.

Initially, sources say, Massino had instructed Vitale to pick up a stolen van from a cohort and leave it parked outside Rabito’s store with the keys under the seat. Later, however, Massino called him and told him to bring his own car to the location because the van wouldn’t start.

When Vitale arrived, sources said, he saw Massino outside with Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano, Rabito, Gotti, and two wiseguys who would later play huge roles in Castellano’s assassination – Angelo Ruggiero and Frank DeCicco.

Vitale said that after he backed his car against the building, the crew placed a body wrapped in a tan drop cloth into the trunk. Ruggiero and DeCicco then


got in the car and directed him to a Queens garage.

At the garage, Vitale said, several men were waiting, including one who was holding a knife. When the body was removed from the trunk, he noticed that Borelli appeared to have been shot in the face and body, and was wearing only his underwear. Years later, Vitale told the feds, he saw a newspaper photo of Roy DeMeo, (left) the notorious mob hitman whose specialty was carving up bodies like a Perdue chicken. DeMeo, he said, was one of the men waiting in the garage.

Vitale completed his duties that night by dropping off Ruggiero and DeCicco at the late Dapper Don’s Ozone Park social club, the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club. A few days later, Vitale recalled, Massino explained that Borelli had been dating Castellano’s daughter and had insulted him in front of his daughter, saying “that Paul Castellano had looked like Frank Perdue.”

The episode had a couple of eerie echoes for Castellano. One was that, as much as Paul Castellano didn’t want to look like Frank Perdue, he didn’t mind doing business with him. A year after Borelli’s murder, Castellano rose to become boss of the family with the death of his brother in law, Carlo Gambino. The step up allowed Big Paul to spread his wings, and he soon arranged for his own company, Dial Poultry, to distribute Perdue chickens. The chicken men apparently hit it off. When Perdue had union problems at a Queens restaurant he was opening in 1981, he sought Castellano’s advice about straightening things out.

The other echo occurred in 1980, when another of his daughter’s sweethearts offended him. This time, Frank Amato had already married the boss’s daughter when Castellano had him killed. The executioner, according to FBI documents, was none other than knife man Roy Demeo, who cut up Amato’s body and disposed of the remains at sea.