by Dellacroce » Thu Mar 10, 2016 3:35 am
Family Feud Between The Children And Widow Of A Millionaire Wiseguy Lawyer From Brooklyn Erupts In The Sunshine State
A bitter family feud has erupted between the children and widow of a cagy, Brooklyn lawyer who made millions handling real estate deals for mobsters. For decades, the attorney, Nicholas Gravante kept a low profile while representing scores of Gambino and Luchese family wiseguys who hung out on the busy Bensonhurst street where Gravante's office was located. But he was the mob's go-to guy for all real estate transactions.
Gravante was never charged with a crime. But law enforcement sources say he was involved in many shady real estate transactions with Gambino mobsters who used James (Jimmy Brown) Failla's nearby Veterans and Friends Social Club at 1462 86th Street as their home base in the 1980s, and with Luchese wiseguys who hung out with capo Christopher (Christy Tick) Furnari at his base of operations, The 19th Hole, at 1402 86th street.
"He was the ultimate wiseguy lawyer," said one former law enforcement official. "He was the guy wiseguys would use to sell a $250,000 house for $500,000 on paper, so they could show money they made illicitly as legitimate income."
Now, a year after his death, Gravante's son Nicholas Jr., a hotshot attorney with the high-powered Manhattan law firm of Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP, is locked in a heated family feud with Gravante's 81-year-old widow, Elinor, over millions of dollars in family real estate holdings, according to Mrs. Gravante and a federal lawsuit her kids filed against her last week.
"I have papers that say I am supposed to get all the rental income, minus expenses," said Mrs. Gravante. "They're trying to take that away from me. Everybody tells me, 'How can they do this to you?' That's what I keep asking myself, 'How can they do this to their mother?'"
In their lawsuit, Nicholas Jr, his brother Richard, a real estate attorney who works from his dad's old office at 1482 86th street in Brooklyn, and their sister Christine Castellano, say those papers, even though they are dated and signed by the three children and their mother and father, "are invalid."
The family feud, as one knowledgeable insider put it yesterday, is "not about chump change, but very serious money."
The papers in dispute are four separate agreements dated July 25, 2004. They state pretty clearly that since her husband is deceased, Elinor Gravante will receive all monthly rental income — less operating costs and other expenses — from three properties in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan that generate income that "typically exceeds $50,000 a month," according to the lawsuit.
The ownership of the properties — three are owned by the three children, and one is owned by Mrs. Gravante and her son Nicholas — is not a factor in the dispute. They are worth about $15 million.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Federal Court in Orlando, the U.S. District in Florida where Mrs. Gravante has a winter home, seeks to declare the agreements — which the children have refused to honor since their father died on March 7 of last year — as "void and unenforceable."
In their complaint, the Gravante children note that none of the agreements were notarized or "recorded in the property records" of Brooklyn and Manhattan. They also argue that they should not be enforced now because they weren't while their father was alive.
"From 2004 to 2015, Nicholas Gravante, Sr. agreed and directed that the net rentals … be used to defray the cost of tuition for his grandchildren, and paid to Plaintiffs for their personal use in supporting their families and his eleven grandchildren, rather than being paid to him and Defendant Mrs. Gravante," the complaint states. The complaint was filed by three attorneys with GrayRobinson, a politically connected Orlando law firm, one of the largest in Florida.
Sources familiar with the dispute, say that the filed lawsuit was a surprise and triggered angry phone calls and emails from Mrs. Gravante's lawyer to an attorney for the children in which he accused them of "bad faith" in the long-running feud. Attorneys for her children, say the same sources, contend that Mrs. Gravante is "being unreasonable" in her demands.
Mrs. Gravante's attorney, T. Barry Kingham, declined to discuss the specifics of the suit. "This is an unfortunate family dispute that the parties have been working hard to try to resolve and I still remain hopeful that they will be able to do so," he told Gang Land.
Elinor Gravante was less restrained. She said she asserted her rights about the rental income — which she estimates at between $65-to-$85,000 a month — when her kids began to question purchases of clothes and jewelry she made, and when they fell behind on needed repairs and general upkeep of her homes in Naples, Florida and in Bay Ridge Brooklyn.
"We always said we would pay the tuition for our grandchildren," noting that three are currently in college and a fourth is slated to begin next year.
The lawsuit also asks the court to validate the transfer last year of a luxurious Fairfield Connecticut home from the elder Nicholas Gravante, who was then-incapacitated by a stroke, to the three Gravante children. Christine currently lives there with her family. The complaint notes that Mrs. Gravante contends that the current deed is "invalid."
Exhibits filed along with the complaint indicate that the property — which includes a lakefront home on Candlewood Isle — was transferred by the elder Gravante in February of 2015 after Elinor Gravante, as her husband's agent, signed and approved the transfer deed on January 17, 2015.
Mrs. Gravante says that's not what she was thought she was signing last year, on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
"My son Nicholas came to visit me," she recalled. "He took me to the Capital Grill. We had a nice dinner. We went over to my house. He said, 'We want to take daddy off the breathing machine. Sign his name and you're the agent.' I said okay, and that was that."
"I didn't know I was signing away the house in Connecticut," she insisted. "I didn't see the front sheet of what I was signing. They tricked me into signing it away. They started to work on me the minute my husband was brain dead. That's when they started to work on me for the money."
Nicholas Gravante Jr.'s lawyer, Jason Zimmerman, disagreed with Gang Land's contention that the lawsuit was a nasty, low down tactic against an elderly mom.
"It's not a malicious law suit," said Zimmerman. "We're just trying to get some third party assistance in resolving this dispute. It's a family dispute that has been going on for a couple of years and everyone is tired of people saying things back and forth without a resolution."
In their court filings, the Gravante kids state that for many years, their father was "a successful attorney, real estate investor and real estate manager, who owned, in whole or in part, and managed properties located in New York, Florida and Connecticut."
Gravante was probably the only mob lawyer who never showed up in court with his clients. His only known appearance was not as a defendant, but as a defense witness for then Gambino underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano underboss in 1988, when he went to trial on tax evasion charges stemming from the 1982 murder of a Czechoslovakian businessman who was killed after he bought a Gravesend nightclub from Sammy Bull.
On the stand, Gravante testified that he had advised Gravano that he didn't have to report the hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit he made in the sale until the next calendar year. Sammy Bull, who would admit the tax charges and ordering the murder when he flipped in 1991, and his two-codefendants were each acquitted based on Gravante's testimony.
True-Blue Wiseguy Says Mob Rats Spell Doom For Cosa Nostra
There are no spectacular revelations in it. There's no hint of the excitement that Man of Honor created when legendary Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno wrote his autobiography in 1984. And some of the author's facts are clearly wrong. But Bugs, Bull, & Rats is an intriguing new book about "the last 40 years of the Mafia" by a New York wiseguy who's bummed out by "the life" he found when he hit the streets after a long prison stretch that was caused by a "wire-wearing rat."
As any true-blue mobster should, the author, using the pseudonym Frank Palmeri, says there are no good "excuses for being a rat." He writes that the decision by "the worst rat" of all, turncoat Mafia boss Joe Massino, could very well be the death knell of Cosa Nostra since associates and lowly mob soldiers can't be sure that their boss won't become a "rat."
"Why would a wiseguy follow orders when there's a real chance the boss will turn him in for murders and crimes he ordered the guy to do?" Palmeri writes.
Bugs, Bulls & Rats details the ups and downs of the leaders and turncoats of all Five Families. But much of the 202-page book focuses on the Gambinos, and "Palmeri" rips John Gotti and the man Gotti killed to take over the crime family, Paul (Big Paul) Castellano, as lousy mob bosses. Palmeri blames them, along with Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, for bringing the mob to its nadir.
"They rose fast, fell hard, and brought down a lot of people with them," Palmeri writes. "This book is about how that family went from honor and respect to no honor. It became all about money and greed. Their downfalls were the dominoes that started knocking out the mob.
"Fifteen years from now, I don't think there will be anything to talk about. The Mafia will be gone," writes Palmeri, who is most likely in his late 60s or early 70s but who gives scant details or clues about his own identity, or roots. Through his focus on Gotti & Company, the author implies he's a Gambino. But Gang Land tabs him as a Bonanno. (No self-respecting Gambino wiseguy would write that Genovese mobsters killed Albert Anastasia in 1957, as he did. As Gang Land disclosed in 2001, a Gambino crew of drug dealers from the Lower East Side did it.)
Things are so bad that author Palmeri is currently making a "living now by legitimate means," even though he is still proud to be a wiseguy, and "always will be," he writes, since the "Mafia is more than a crime organization; it's the life you live."
In one compelling chapter, Palmeri describes, in dialogue and details that ring true to this old Brooklyn guy, the saga of a pair of tough Brooklyn gangsters who each made a fateful decision to hook up with the Dapper Don while he was based at the Bergin Hunt And Fish Club in Queens. The alliances were helpful in the short-term, Palmeri writes, but ultimately proved fatal for both.
One of them was Eddie Lino, who grew up in the Gravesend section, and "stood with a very rough crew of guys" in the 1970s and '80s. They "all sold and used drugs" and hung out "at a bar on Avenue T and West 7th Street in Brooklyn called the Wrong Number Lounge," writes Palmeri.
"They would get all juiced up, mostly on cocaine, then go out clubbing. God help you if you crossed paths with them," writes Palmeri, who identified four of Lino's buddies as Ruby Rabino, Ciro (Riccardi,) Georgie Crowbar (Adamo) and Charlie LaRocca.
"There was a disco in Manhattan where some of them would go," Palmeri writes. "I was there one night when Eddie and Ciro came in. If girls walked by the bar and the girls were good looking, Eddie or Ciro would just grab one by the arm, 'Come and have a drink with us.' They didn't care if a girl was with a guy. Both of them carried guns at all times and both were very good with their hands. So one night they grabbed a girl who was walking by with her boyfriend. When the guy opened his mouth, he got kicked and punched out the door. As the guy stood outside thinking what to do, I went out to him and said, 'I know what I am going to say is hard, but just go home; your girlfriend will be fine. I've seen this happen before. They won't hurt her, but they will hurt you. So just go home.'"
For years, the Lino crew avoided the wrath of angry neighborhood wiseguys even though they would often "go into bars in Brooklyn late at night, start fights and wreck the bars, not caring who owned them," Palmeri writes. That ended after Adamo and LaRocca "went to an after-hours club on 86th Street in Brooklyn, pulled out guns and shot them in the air" and then forced two barmaids "to strip naked and go down on each other. Everyone was in shock. They hit some of the customers, then wrecked the place and left."
"About a month later," Palmeri writes, "Georgie and Charlie were found in the back of a van wrapped up in rugs, both shot dead. Six months after that, Ciro was found beaten up bad and shot a couple of times in the head. The next one to go was Ruby Rabino. He was found dead in his car."
That's when Eddie Lino, who "had a very good relationship with" Gambino underboss Aniello (Mr. O'Neil) Dellacroce "thought it would be a good time to go on record" with the Gambinos, Palmeri writes. "That's what happened. After that, if anyone had any ideas of killing Eddie, they would have to deal with Mr. O'Neil," writes Palmeri, adding that through Dellacroce, "Eddie Lino got very close with John Gotti" and ultimately ended up in his crew.
Bartholomew (Bobby) Boriello, a Red Hook resident who ran with the Gallo brothers and later was a Genovese associate, had met Gotti in state prison but had decided not to hook up with any crime family, Palmeri writes. But when he disrespected an old time Gambino wiseguy who tried to shake down a Bensonhurst coffee shop that Borriello was running with a close friend, he sought out the Dapper Don.
"I'll take care of this," Gotti told Borriello, and he did, Palmeri writes.
A few days later, the Gambino old-timer contacted Borriello and said: "Hey listen, Bobby, it was a big misunderstanding. It won't happen again. If you need me for anything, just come up. My club is your club."
Within a few weeks, Gotti got approval from his mentor, underboss Dellacroce, he smoothed things out with the Genovese family, and Borriello was a member of the Dapper Don's crew.
Lino was shot to death on November 6, 1990. Borriello got his five months later, on April 13, 1991.
Gay Inmate Praises Wiseguy For Stopping Federal Prison Beatings
Last week, Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Sullivan received a remarkable letter from a homosexual inmate who claims he has been assaulted many times in the four years he's been behind bars. He praised a tough Genovese soldier, Salvatore (Sally KO) Larca, for putting a stop to the beatings and he asked the judge if he could re-sentence him for "good behavior."
Larca's intercession occurred, according to the letter by Thomas Keelan, after a masked inmate beat him with a broomstick, causing "injuries that others described as looking as though I was in a car crash" the morning after he refused to leave the TV room at the Fort Dix, New Jersey prison when an inmate confronted him about being gay and said "I had no right to be there."
The 46-year-old Bronx-based Genovese mobster "never threatened anyone" to end the assaults, wrote Keelan, a 155-pound, former high school English teacher at a Miami Beach Hebrew school. "He simply used his gravitas to insist that I be left alone. I have been," wrote Keelan, noting that Larca had no idea he was writing Judge Sullivan about his good deed. Larca, who is serving nine and a half years for drug trafficking, is slated for release in June of 2020. His selfless good deed is not likely to win him any time off.
"Larca, who had previously in passing talked about how much he hated bullies in general, in his inimitable New York-Italian way," wrote Keelan, "described what had happened (to me) as a 'bitch move.' He insisted that I deserved to be judged on my actions, not on what someone thought I was, or may have or may not have done."
"I should not have to tell you what that meant after all I have been through in prison," wrote Keelan, who stated that he was "raped while in protective custody" at his prior facility. "I am part of a hated and abused minority, and Larca stood for me simply because it was right."
Keelan, 57, according to the Bureau of Prisons, was transferred to Fort Dix in August of 2014. He was convicted in Miami Federal Court of having sex with a minor in 2012 and sentenced to 16 years and eight months. According to a ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals last year, Keelan seduced a troubled 15-year-old student to engage in sexual activity with him from 2009 to 2011, and had sex with the boy the following year after Keelan got a new job in Virginia.
They engaged in "oral and anal sex at Keelan's apartment" even after the boy "transferred to another high school," the court wrote. "Upon Keelan's suggestion, they integrated sex toys, bondage, pornography, and sadomasochism into the relationship. Keelan (also) blindfolded, tied, spanked, and whipped" the boy, the court wrote in affirming a $104,886 order of restitution that Keelan was ordered to pay for mental health and other medical costs borne by the boy's family.
In the 10 days since Keelan wrote his letter, sources say Larca has learned about it, and the details of Keelan's conviction, and discussed his actions with friends. "He thought he was helping a completely defenseless person," said one source. "If Sally had known he was a pedophile he would have minded his own business."
Family Feud Between The Children And Widow Of A Millionaire Wiseguy Lawyer From Brooklyn Erupts In The Sunshine State
A bitter family feud has erupted between the children and widow of a cagy, Brooklyn lawyer who made millions handling real estate deals for mobsters. For decades, the attorney, Nicholas Gravante kept a low profile while representing scores of Gambino and Luchese family wiseguys who hung out on the busy Bensonhurst street where Gravante's office was located. But he was the mob's go-to guy for all real estate transactions.
Gravante was never charged with a crime. But law enforcement sources say he was involved in many shady real estate transactions with Gambino mobsters who used James (Jimmy Brown) Failla's nearby Veterans and Friends Social Club at 1462 86th Street as their home base in the 1980s, and with Luchese wiseguys who hung out with capo Christopher (Christy Tick) Furnari at his base of operations, The 19th Hole, at 1402 86th street.
"He was the ultimate wiseguy lawyer," said one former law enforcement official. "He was the guy wiseguys would use to sell a $250,000 house for $500,000 on paper, so they could show money they made illicitly as legitimate income."
Now, a year after his death, Gravante's son Nicholas Jr., a hotshot attorney with the high-powered Manhattan law firm of Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP, is locked in a heated family feud with Gravante's 81-year-old widow, Elinor, over millions of dollars in family real estate holdings, according to Mrs. Gravante and a federal lawsuit her kids filed against her last week.
"I have papers that say I am supposed to get all the rental income, minus expenses," said Mrs. Gravante. "They're trying to take that away from me. Everybody tells me, 'How can they do this to you?' That's what I keep asking myself, 'How can they do this to their mother?'"
In their lawsuit, Nicholas Jr, his brother Richard, a real estate attorney who works from his dad's old office at 1482 86th street in Brooklyn, and their sister Christine Castellano, say those papers, even though they are dated and signed by the three children and their mother and father, "are invalid."
The family feud, as one knowledgeable insider put it yesterday, is "not about chump change, but very serious money."
The papers in dispute are four separate agreements dated July 25, 2004. They state pretty clearly that since her husband is deceased, Elinor Gravante will receive all monthly rental income — less operating costs and other expenses — from three properties in Brooklyn and one in Manhattan that generate income that "typically exceeds $50,000 a month," according to the lawsuit.
The ownership of the properties — three are owned by the three children, and one is owned by Mrs. Gravante and her son Nicholas — is not a factor in the dispute. They are worth about $15 million.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Federal Court in Orlando, the U.S. District in Florida where Mrs. Gravante has a winter home, seeks to declare the agreements — which the children have refused to honor since their father died on March 7 of last year — as "void and unenforceable."
In their complaint, the Gravante children note that none of the agreements were notarized or "recorded in the property records" of Brooklyn and Manhattan. They also argue that they should not be enforced now because they weren't while their father was alive.
"From 2004 to 2015, Nicholas Gravante, Sr. agreed and directed that the net rentals … be used to defray the cost of tuition for his grandchildren, and paid to Plaintiffs for their personal use in supporting their families and his eleven grandchildren, rather than being paid to him and Defendant Mrs. Gravante," the complaint states. The complaint was filed by three attorneys with GrayRobinson, a politically connected Orlando law firm, one of the largest in Florida.
Sources familiar with the dispute, say that the filed lawsuit was a surprise and triggered angry phone calls and emails from Mrs. Gravante's lawyer to an attorney for the children in which he accused them of "bad faith" in the long-running feud. Attorneys for her children, say the same sources, contend that Mrs. Gravante is "being unreasonable" in her demands.
Mrs. Gravante's attorney, T. Barry Kingham, declined to discuss the specifics of the suit. "This is an unfortunate family dispute that the parties have been working hard to try to resolve and I still remain hopeful that they will be able to do so," he told Gang Land.
Elinor Gravante was less restrained. She said she asserted her rights about the rental income — which she estimates at between $65-to-$85,000 a month — when her kids began to question purchases of clothes and jewelry she made, and when they fell behind on needed repairs and general upkeep of her homes in Naples, Florida and in Bay Ridge Brooklyn.
"We always said we would pay the tuition for our grandchildren," noting that three are currently in college and a fourth is slated to begin next year.
The lawsuit also asks the court to validate the transfer last year of a luxurious Fairfield Connecticut home from the elder Nicholas Gravante, who was then-incapacitated by a stroke, to the three Gravante children. Christine currently lives there with her family. The complaint notes that Mrs. Gravante contends that the current deed is "invalid."
Exhibits filed along with the complaint indicate that the property — which includes a lakefront home on Candlewood Isle — was transferred by the elder Gravante in February of 2015 after Elinor Gravante, as her husband's agent, signed and approved the transfer deed on January 17, 2015.
Mrs. Gravante says that's not what she was thought she was signing last year, on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
"My son Nicholas came to visit me," she recalled. "He took me to the Capital Grill. We had a nice dinner. We went over to my house. He said, 'We want to take daddy off the breathing machine. Sign his name and you're the agent.' I said okay, and that was that."
"I didn't know I was signing away the house in Connecticut," she insisted. "I didn't see the front sheet of what I was signing. They tricked me into signing it away. They started to work on me the minute my husband was brain dead. That's when they started to work on me for the money."
Nicholas Gravante Jr.'s lawyer, Jason Zimmerman, disagreed with Gang Land's contention that the lawsuit was a nasty, low down tactic against an elderly mom.
"It's not a malicious law suit," said Zimmerman. "We're just trying to get some third party assistance in resolving this dispute. It's a family dispute that has been going on for a couple of years and everyone is tired of people saying things back and forth without a resolution."
In their court filings, the Gravante kids state that for many years, their father was "a successful attorney, real estate investor and real estate manager, who owned, in whole or in part, and managed properties located in New York, Florida and Connecticut."
Gravante was probably the only mob lawyer who never showed up in court with his clients. His only known appearance was not as a defendant, but as a defense witness for then Gambino underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano underboss in 1988, when he went to trial on tax evasion charges stemming from the 1982 murder of a Czechoslovakian businessman who was killed after he bought a Gravesend nightclub from Sammy Bull.
On the stand, Gravante testified that he had advised Gravano that he didn't have to report the hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit he made in the sale until the next calendar year. Sammy Bull, who would admit the tax charges and ordering the murder when he flipped in 1991, and his two-codefendants were each acquitted based on Gravante's testimony.
True-Blue Wiseguy Says Mob Rats Spell Doom For Cosa Nostra
There are no spectacular revelations in it. There's no hint of the excitement that Man of Honor created when legendary Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno wrote his autobiography in 1984. And some of the author's facts are clearly wrong. But Bugs, Bull, & Rats is an intriguing new book about "the last 40 years of the Mafia" by a New York wiseguy who's bummed out by "the life" he found when he hit the streets after a long prison stretch that was caused by a "wire-wearing rat."
As any true-blue mobster should, the author, using the pseudonym Frank Palmeri, says there are no good "excuses for being a rat." He writes that the decision by "the worst rat" of all, turncoat Mafia boss Joe Massino, could very well be the death knell of Cosa Nostra since associates and lowly mob soldiers can't be sure that their boss won't become a "rat."
"Why would a wiseguy follow orders when there's a real chance the boss will turn him in for murders and crimes he ordered the guy to do?" Palmeri writes.
Bugs, Bulls & Rats details the ups and downs of the leaders and turncoats of all Five Families. But much of the 202-page book focuses on the Gambinos, and "Palmeri" rips John Gotti and the man Gotti killed to take over the crime family, Paul (Big Paul) Castellano, as lousy mob bosses. Palmeri blames them, along with Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, for bringing the mob to its nadir.
"They rose fast, fell hard, and brought down a lot of people with them," Palmeri writes. "This book is about how that family went from honor and respect to no honor. It became all about money and greed. Their downfalls were the dominoes that started knocking out the mob.
"Fifteen years from now, I don't think there will be anything to talk about. The Mafia will be gone," writes Palmeri, who is most likely in his late 60s or early 70s but who gives scant details or clues about his own identity, or roots. Through his focus on Gotti & Company, the author implies he's a Gambino. But Gang Land tabs him as a Bonanno. (No self-respecting Gambino wiseguy would write that Genovese mobsters killed Albert Anastasia in 1957, as he did. As Gang Land disclosed in 2001, a Gambino crew of drug dealers from the Lower East Side did it.)
Things are so bad that author Palmeri is currently making a "living now by legitimate means," even though he is still proud to be a wiseguy, and "always will be," he writes, since the "Mafia is more than a crime organization; it's the life you live."
In one compelling chapter, Palmeri describes, in dialogue and details that ring true to this old Brooklyn guy, the saga of a pair of tough Brooklyn gangsters who each made a fateful decision to hook up with the Dapper Don while he was based at the Bergin Hunt And Fish Club in Queens. The alliances were helpful in the short-term, Palmeri writes, but ultimately proved fatal for both.
One of them was Eddie Lino, who grew up in the Gravesend section, and "stood with a very rough crew of guys" in the 1970s and '80s. They "all sold and used drugs" and hung out "at a bar on Avenue T and West 7th Street in Brooklyn called the Wrong Number Lounge," writes Palmeri.
"They would get all juiced up, mostly on cocaine, then go out clubbing. God help you if you crossed paths with them," writes Palmeri, who identified four of Lino's buddies as Ruby Rabino, Ciro (Riccardi,) Georgie Crowbar (Adamo) and Charlie LaRocca.
"There was a disco in Manhattan where some of them would go," Palmeri writes. "I was there one night when Eddie and Ciro came in. If girls walked by the bar and the girls were good looking, Eddie or Ciro would just grab one by the arm, 'Come and have a drink with us.' They didn't care if a girl was with a guy. Both of them carried guns at all times and both were very good with their hands. So one night they grabbed a girl who was walking by with her boyfriend. When the guy opened his mouth, he got kicked and punched out the door. As the guy stood outside thinking what to do, I went out to him and said, 'I know what I am going to say is hard, but just go home; your girlfriend will be fine. I've seen this happen before. They won't hurt her, but they will hurt you. So just go home.'"
For years, the Lino crew avoided the wrath of angry neighborhood wiseguys even though they would often "go into bars in Brooklyn late at night, start fights and wreck the bars, not caring who owned them," Palmeri writes. That ended after Adamo and LaRocca "went to an after-hours club on 86th Street in Brooklyn, pulled out guns and shot them in the air" and then forced two barmaids "to strip naked and go down on each other. Everyone was in shock. They hit some of the customers, then wrecked the place and left."
"About a month later," Palmeri writes, "Georgie and Charlie were found in the back of a van wrapped up in rugs, both shot dead. Six months after that, Ciro was found beaten up bad and shot a couple of times in the head. The next one to go was Ruby Rabino. He was found dead in his car."
That's when Eddie Lino, who "had a very good relationship with" Gambino underboss Aniello (Mr. O'Neil) Dellacroce "thought it would be a good time to go on record" with the Gambinos, Palmeri writes. "That's what happened. After that, if anyone had any ideas of killing Eddie, they would have to deal with Mr. O'Neil," writes Palmeri, adding that through Dellacroce, "Eddie Lino got very close with John Gotti" and ultimately ended up in his crew.
Bartholomew (Bobby) Boriello, a Red Hook resident who ran with the Gallo brothers and later was a Genovese associate, had met Gotti in state prison but had decided not to hook up with any crime family, Palmeri writes. But when he disrespected an old time Gambino wiseguy who tried to shake down a Bensonhurst coffee shop that Borriello was running with a close friend, he sought out the Dapper Don.
"I'll take care of this," Gotti told Borriello, and he did, Palmeri writes.
A few days later, the Gambino old-timer contacted Borriello and said: "Hey listen, Bobby, it was a big misunderstanding. It won't happen again. If you need me for anything, just come up. My club is your club."
Within a few weeks, Gotti got approval from his mentor, underboss Dellacroce, he smoothed things out with the Genovese family, and Borriello was a member of the Dapper Don's crew.
Lino was shot to death on November 6, 1990. Borriello got his five months later, on April 13, 1991.
Gay Inmate Praises Wiseguy For Stopping Federal Prison Beatings
Last week, Manhattan Federal Judge Richard Sullivan received a remarkable letter from a homosexual inmate who claims he has been assaulted many times in the four years he's been behind bars. He praised a tough Genovese soldier, Salvatore (Sally KO) Larca, for putting a stop to the beatings and he asked the judge if he could re-sentence him for "good behavior."
Larca's intercession occurred, according to the letter by Thomas Keelan, after a masked inmate beat him with a broomstick, causing "injuries that others described as looking as though I was in a car crash" the morning after he refused to leave the TV room at the Fort Dix, New Jersey prison when an inmate confronted him about being gay and said "I had no right to be there."
The 46-year-old Bronx-based Genovese mobster "never threatened anyone" to end the assaults, wrote Keelan, a 155-pound, former high school English teacher at a Miami Beach Hebrew school. "He simply used his gravitas to insist that I be left alone. I have been," wrote Keelan, noting that Larca had no idea he was writing Judge Sullivan about his good deed. Larca, who is serving nine and a half years for drug trafficking, is slated for release in June of 2020. His selfless good deed is not likely to win him any time off.
"Larca, who had previously in passing talked about how much he hated bullies in general, in his inimitable New York-Italian way," wrote Keelan, "described what had happened (to me) as a 'bitch move.' He insisted that I deserved to be judged on my actions, not on what someone thought I was, or may have or may not have done."
"I should not have to tell you what that meant after all I have been through in prison," wrote Keelan, who stated that he was "raped while in protective custody" at his prior facility. "I am part of a hated and abused minority, and Larca stood for me simply because it was right."
Keelan, 57, according to the Bureau of Prisons, was transferred to Fort Dix in August of 2014. He was convicted in Miami Federal Court of having sex with a minor in 2012 and sentenced to 16 years and eight months. According to a ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals last year, Keelan seduced a troubled 15-year-old student to engage in sexual activity with him from 2009 to 2011, and had sex with the boy the following year after Keelan got a new job in Virginia.
They engaged in "oral and anal sex at Keelan's apartment" even after the boy "transferred to another high school," the court wrote. "Upon Keelan's suggestion, they integrated sex toys, bondage, pornography, and sadomasochism into the relationship. Keelan (also) blindfolded, tied, spanked, and whipped" the boy, the court wrote in affirming a $104,886 order of restitution that Keelan was ordered to pay for mental health and other medical costs borne by the boy's family.
In the 10 days since Keelan wrote his letter, sources say Larca has learned about it, and the details of Keelan's conviction, and discussed his actions with friends. "He thought he was helping a completely defenseless person," said one source. "If Sally had known he was a pedophile he would have minded his own business."