Gangland News 7/1/21

[Teddy Persico]

This Week in Gang Land
By Jerry Capeci

As A Boy, Dominick Quoted Carlo Gambino; As A Man, Montiglio Helped Bring Down The Crime Family's DeMeo Crew — The Most Violent In Mafia History

Dominick MontiglioGang Land Exclusive!Dominick Montiglio, who waged war in Vietnam and then fought for his mobster uncle in Brooklyn before turning on him and his crew of wanton killers to help end one of the most violent chapters in the history of the American Mafia, died Sunday evening in his new home town near Albuquerque. He was 73.

His death came a few days after he suffered a stroke, his second in two years.

In an epic courtroom confrontation, Montiglio testified against Gambino crime family leaders who oversaw a savage crew of mobsters specializing in auto thefts who were believed to have killed up to 200 people, including many who simply strayed innocently into its path. The most prominent defendant was mob boss Paul (Big Paul) Castellano. Montiglio also testified against capo Anthony (Nino) Gaggi, the uncle who raised him and who had direct oversight of the murderous crew.

Following the dramatic midtown murder of Castellano, and the death behind bars of Gaggi — and after several crew members were either murdered or sentenced to life in prison — Montiglio dropped out of the Witness Protection Program and quietly returned to Brooklyn, where he pursued a lifelong interest in art. He had lived in New Mexico for about 15 years.

Walter MackHe was a key character in Murder Machine, co-authored by myself and Gene Mustain and published in 1992. The book detailed Montiglio's often tortured relationship with his uncle, and his dealings with members of the "DeMeo crew," which reported to Gaggi and was led by Roy DeMeo, a former butcher who choreographed the gruesome dismemberments of numerous victims they killed.

"He made the top leadership of the Gambino crime family, the group that the DeMeo crew reported to, accountable for the DeMeo crew's homicides and other egregious behavior that we proved at two trials," recalled former assistant U.S. attorney Walter Mack.

"I lost touch with Dominick over the years but I continued to admire his courage for doing what he believed was the right thing to do" said Mack, the then-Chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force in Manhattan and lead prosecutor in two lengthy trials — a seven month 1985-86 trial, and a 1988-89 trial that lasted 18 months.

Anthony GaggiThe indictment charged the DeMeo crew with 25 murders in the 1970s and 1980s. One crew member, Henry Borelli, was convicted of two murders connected to a stolen car ring the crew operated. Two members, Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter were found guilty of ten killings in a second trial.

Montiglio testified at the first trial in December 1985. But that trial was interrupted for three weeks when Castellano was assassinated. Gaggi, who was convicted of heading the DeMeo crew's stolen car ring at that trial, died of a heart attack during the second trial, before Montiglio again took the stand.

Montiglio testified that in December of 1976, two months after Castellano's brother-in-law, Carlo Gambino, died of natural causes, Big Paul was elevated to crime family boss. Castellano was anointed, Montiglio revealed, in a secret summit session with underboss Aniello (Neil) Dellacroce in his uncle Nino's home on Cropsey Avenue in Bath Beach, Brooklyn.

Montiglio said that Nino told him, as we wrote in Murder Machine, that Dellacroce, who had gotten out of prison on Thanksgiving Day, had agreed to go along with Gambino's edict to be succeeded by Castellano. But "just in case," Nino said, he had taped a gun "under the kitchen table," and told Dominick to position himself at an upstairs window and watch the comings and goings with an M-2 automatic rifle he had picked up earlier that day from DeMeo.

Roy DeMeo"If Dominick heard shooting downstairs, he was to shoot anyone who came out of the house," we wrote in Murder Machine. "If the shooting went Paul's and Nino's way, no one would be leaving. If it did not, they would be dead," so Dominick should "shoot anybody who tries to make it out the driveway. Don't let any of the cocksuckers get away alive," we wrote.

"Given his army combat experience in Vietnam," said Mack, "Dominick was, certainly in the mind of Nino, a person who would have been able to prevent any inappropriate intervention in the decision to elevate Paul as boss of the crime family."

"If Paul had been able to survive the violent mechanics of organized crime conduct," Mack continued, "I have every confidence that eventually Dominick's testimony, which was accepted by the jury, would have resulted in the conviction of Paul Castellano."

Paul CastellanoAs a young boy, Montiglio met Castellano and Gambino many times when he accompanied Gaggi to meetings on days he was minding his young nephew for his sister Marie, a single mom who had split up with her husband in 1951. The young Dominick recalled the sessions as meetings with the "important men" who were close friends and business associates of his uncle.

Dominick often told his friends about the sage advice that Gambino had given him when his Uncle Nino said he was a smart boy who could run like a deer. For years he thought Gambino's words of wisdom were original thoughts — and not, as we reported in Murder Machine, "cribbed from the philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli, the Italian Renaissance statesman."

"Smart like a fox, that's good, the fox recognizes traps," the cagy Mafia boss said, and continued. "But a deer? It's better to be a lion than a deer. The lion scares away the wolves. If you are a lion and a fox, nothing defeats you."

Carlo GambinoMontiglio insisted during hundreds of hours of talks that he never intended to become a gangster when he got home from Vietnam in 1968. But he gravitated to The Life and became Gaggi's "eyes and ears" on the DeMeo crew until 1979. That's when he stole $250,000 from his uncle and decided to leave New York "for good," taking his pregnant wife, and two young children with him to California.

Less than four years later, the money ran out, and Montiglio was enticed back to New York where he was arrested for extortion on March 7, 1983 by a task force of local, state and federal mob busters headed by Mack. The Task Force was then zeroing in on Castellano and Gaggi and in search of a witness to link the Gambino crime family heavyweights to the three still living DeMeo crew members — Borelli, Testa and Senter.

On the morning of his fifth day behind bars, Montiglio, who refused to seek bail because he feared "Nino would try to kill him as soon as he made bail," rang up a guy from the old neighborhood who had given him his phone number five days earlier.

"I'm not dying for nothing," he told Frank Pergola, the NYPD detective who had arrested him.

Frank Pergola

"No reason why you should," said Pergola, who began the long-drawn out process of getting Montiglio an attorney, and arranging for him to plead guilty and cooperate. A year later, Pergola arrested Uncle Nino. And for the next 38 years maintained a friendship with Montiglio, one that ended Sunday night.

"It's funny how things work out," said Pergola, who retired in 1995, but maintained contact with Montiglio until the end. "I didn't know him, he lived a few blocks away from me. We found out later that my mother knew his father, and that they went to the same school. We went through thick and thin together, that's for sure."

Pergola told Gang Land that Montiglio, who served in Nam with the 173d Airborne Brigade and received an honorable discharge from the Army in December of 1968, will be cremated and receive a full-blown military funeral in the coming weeks.

Montiglio has been estranged from his ex-wife Denise and their two surviving children, Camarie and Dominick Jr. for many years. His youngest daughter, Marina, whom he reconnected with, died two years ago in a tragic car accident, said Ross Brodar, who shared an apartment with Montiglio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn back in 2002, and has remained a friend ever since.

Marilyn Lucht

"I knew him very well for almost 20 years, and he was one of my best friends," said Brodar, a filmmaker who made a documentary about Dominick's life that Gang Land wrote about back in 2018 — The Lynchpin of Bensonhurst. Brodar has recently revised the film and expects to re-release it soon.

"He was one hell of a guy," said Brodar. "He lived a hard life, a tragic life. He could have done anything, but he got swallowed up by the darkness and the criminal reality of his Uncle Nino."

"He grew up in a tough world and did his best to survive — with dignity," recalled former FBI agent Marilyn Lucht, a member of Mack's task force. "As a soldier in Vietnam, and then as a mafia enforcer for his uncle, he lived through events few could imagine. His cooperation, and telling his life story in court made him one of the pillars of the case against the murderous DeMeo crew."

Henry BorelliLast month, as an exclamation point on Montiglio's testimony, Manhattan Federal Judge Loretta Preska denied a motion for compassion by Borelli from the 150 year sentence that still has 62 years to run for his conviction of 15 counts of auto crime conspiracy. Borelli was also found guilty of two murders, but those convictions were reversed for technical reasons.

In her ruling, Preska noted that his trial judge, the late Kevin Duffy, stated that Borelli, now 73, had been "convicted of being what is generally called a contract killer," and that "things would have to change mightily before I could see any justification by anyone, including the parole board, to return you to any kind of access to the public."

Since the reversal of his murder convictions "was premised only on the Government's failure to prove that (Borelli's) victims were U.S. citizens," Preska wrote, "Judge Duffy's analysis" of Borelli's conduct "retains its force" and his motion for a companionate release "is DENIED."

Judge Raises The Water Level For Joe Fish Marra
Joseph Marra

Things went from bad to worse to even worse, if not the worst, this week for Colombo gangster Joseph (Joe Fish) Marra. He was busted on fraud charges stemming from a broken toilet bowl in 2019 because lovesick capo Joseph Amato had placed a GPS monitor on his girlfriend's car. But those charges were dropped last year when Marra agreed to cop a plea deal to loansharking.

But Joe Fish wasn't out of the deep water yet.

Brooklyn Federal Judge Brian Cogan just informed the 60-year-old Marra that he is thinking of imposing a sentence that is greater than the three year prison term that Joe Fish agreed to take when he pleaded guilty to charges involving six loanshark customers between 2013 and 2019.

On Tuesday, Cogan told Marra, whose sentencing is currently scheduled for later this month, that he "may consider an upwards variance from the Guidelines Range" of 30-to-37 months. Cogan explained that the lower penalty range "may not adequately reflect (Marra's) criminal history or the need for specific deterrence" in the future.

Judge Brian CoganThe judge didn't spell out Joe Fish's "criminal history" in his brief note. But as Gang Land reported last year, Marra, who had his first brush with the law in 1980, when he was sentenced to 18-to-54 months for armed robbery, cut his gangster teeth more than 40 years ago under the double-dealing Colombo mobster-FBI top-echelon informer Gregory Scarpa.

Marra escaped any jail time for two arrests for drug dealing and one for auto theft between 1984 and 1990 while hanging out at Scarpa's Wimpy Boys Social Club in Bensonhurst. But his luck ran out in 1995 when Marra was nailed for racketeering and drug dealing as a member of Gregory Scarpa Jr.'s crew and sentenced to 19 years in prison.

And in 2011, while Joe Fish was completing his sentence in a halfway house, he was charged with extortion for getting two Colombo mobsters to collect an old $8000 debt, which landed him two more years in stir.

Thomas ScorciaThe FBI did find loansharking records and $43,000 in funds in a search of Marra's home, so he is responsible for his current problems.

But that would not have occurred if Amato hadn't placed a GPS monitor on his girlfriend's car. And if the feds hadn't tapped mobster Thomas (The Plumber) Scorcia's phone. And if Joe Fish hadn't called him in need of a plumber to fix an overflowing toilet bowl on the second floor of a Brooklyn home that Marra owned. And if the feds hadn't wrongly believed that Joe Fish and The Plumber were involved in a $650 fraud against Marra's home insurance company.

None of that sad but true story is likely to cut any ice with Judge Cogan when Joe Fish has to face the music for loansharking charges involving six loanshark victims. But Marra's lawyer has asked the Judge to put off the sentencing for a number of reasons, not to mention the Judge's stated decision to consider giving his client more than 37 months in prison.

The signed plea agreement between Marra and the government gives Joe Fish the right to appeal a prison term that is greater than 46 months, but it does not give him the right to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial for any reason.

Judge Sees No Harm, No Foul, No Prison For Wiseguys In Building Safety Scams
George Campos

George Campos and James Ciaccia are both inducted mobsters in the Gambino crime family crew that pulled off a $1.5 million labor racketeering scam. But that's no reason why they should go to prison since their only crimes are for fraudulently obtaining Department of Labor safety cards that enabled them to work on major building projects.

That's what Brooklyn Federal Judge Ann Donnelly decided in giving no-jail sentences to two members of the crew headed by Gambino capo Andrew Campos who was the driving force behind the bribery and bid-rigging scheme that ripped off the IRS and five construction companies.

The duo were not charged with being part of the racketeering conspiracy with Andrew Campos. But prosecutors Keith Edelman and Kayla Bensing asked that the Gambino wiseguys — George Campos was inducted in 2007 and Ciaccia got his button in 2016, according to FBI records — receive prison terms up to six months and be hit with fines up to $9500.

But Donnelly thought not. On Tuesday, the judge fined George Campos $1000 and sentenced him to "time served," that being the few hours he spent being processed on December 5, 2019 when he was arrested for making false statements to obtain a DOL OSHA card that he never used. Campos's lawyer called that a "ridiculous misjudgment" that was "done more on a lark than anything else."

In other words, a mere peccadillo, as WC Fields might have said.

Jame Ciaccia"George was retired from construction, and he had no interest in continuing direct, hands-on, work in that field," wrote attorney Florian Miedel. "Agreeing to get OSHA certified without attending classes," Miedel wrote, was "a way to stay connected to the work, hang around his son's construction company, (and) spend time with his former colleagues."

In seeking a prison term up to six months and a fine of $9500, prosecutors Edelman and Bensing countered that Campos's actions were not a "singular instance of 'ridiculous misjudgment'" but were actions that took place over many months in 2018 and 2019 by a Gambino family "soldier" who took part in a "scheme to defraud the government" with other mobsters.

At his sentencing, Donnelly decided in favor of Campos, who has two prior convictions, both for illegal gambling. The judge also declined to sentence the mobster to a term of probation, and rejected a government request to order him to steer clear of any organized crime figures in the future, stating that she didn't think that was necessary.

For his part, Campos apologized for his actions and stated he was looking forward to spending time with his 14 grandchildren in the coming months.

Last week, Donnelly was a bit tougher with Ciaccia when he appeared for sentencing. She gave Ciaccia, who has no prior convictions, one year of probation and fined him $3000. She also ordered the 52-year-old mobster to refrain from meeting with any members or associates of any organized crime groups during that time.

[Shellackhead]

Thanks for posting

I wonder what information/stories were left out of the Murder Machine book that Montiglio talked about

[JohnnyS]

Thank you!

[Ivan]

Thanks for posting

I wonder what information/stories were left out of the Murder Machine book that Montiglio talked about

There are a fair few hits and crew members listed here that aren't brought up in Murder Machine:
https://lcnbios.blogspot.com/2018/05/de ... rders.html

[TommyGambino]

George Campos was made in 2007 then, not long after Andrew?

[JohnnyS]

He was made in 2003. I wonder who was George's sponsor. Andy Campos would've been in prison then.

[Shellackhead]

Thanks for posting

I wonder what information/stories were left out of the Murder Machine book that Montiglio talked about

There are a fair few hits and crew members listed here that aren't brought up in Murder Machine:
https://lcnbios.blogspot.com/2018/05/de ... rders.html

Nice thanks, The Patrick Presinzano kid wasn’t mentioned in the book, I wonder what was his story

[Ivan]

Thanks for posting

I wonder what information/stories were left out of the Murder Machine book that Montiglio talked about

There are a fair few hits and crew members listed here that aren't brought up in Murder Machine:
https://lcnbios.blogspot.com/2018/05/de ... rders.html

Nice thanks, The Patrick Presinzano kid wasn’t mentioned in the book, I wonder what was his story

No idea, I'm still trying to get answers on this: viewtopic.php?f=29&t=7746

[Dapper_Don]

Thanks for posting

[Chopper]

Thanks for the post

[Manf]

"I lost touch with Dominick over the years but I continued to admire his courage for doing what he believed was the right thing to do" said Mack, the then-Chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force in Manhattan and lead prosecutor in two lengthy trials — a seven month 1985-86 trial, and a 1988-89 trial that lasted 18 months.

Nauseating

[Adam]

"I lost touch with Dominick over the years but I continued to admire his courage for doing what he believed was the right thing to do" said Mack, the then-Chief of the Organized Crime Strike Force in Manhattan and lead prosecutor in two lengthy trials — a seven month 1985-86 trial, and a 1988-89 trial that lasted 18 months.

Nauseating

Yeah that's some rewriting of history. Wasn't Montiglio more of a loser druggie who coasted on his uncle's name, was involved in murder, was a thief, fled to California, ran out of money, came back, got busted, and because he didn't want to go to jail turned on his own family? Which is all well and good and I don't judge that too much because he helped put really bad people away, but let's not pretend he testified out of the goodness of his heart.

[Jbravo]

Bigger question... How does Campos get made with a spanish last name ?

[Shellackhead]

Bigger question... How does Campos get made with a spanish last name ?

He’s Italian

[Jbravo]

Dont believe Campos is italian...what about Souza ?