InCamelot wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 1:23 pm
Sorry this is no longer 60s stuff, but there's an interesting thing about this thread here in relation to this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=29&t=47&hilit=ricca+gigante
Its contemplated in the thread which Mulberry St crew Mario could have possibly been a part of, and didn't come to a conclusion other than Mario probably remained with Greenwich Village.
Its also mentioned in this thread that Mario took over a social club uptown that was later owned by Rudy Santobello.
Santobello acted for Ardito when he went to prison, so if Ardito took over Celano's operations in Manhattan (Lower Manhattan, I'm assuming because he partially succeeded Miranda), then its possible Mario Gigante's Mulberry St crew was the Ardito crew.
In the 1970s, Mario ran his operations in Yonkers, Westchester, Rockland, etc., almost as an independent operator. By 1980, Ardito had already moved on from Lower Manhattan, so if Mario belonged to a different captain than Canterino, it's likely not Ardito because there's a discrepancy with the HQ location.
I have it that Mario was a capo in the early 1980s, then he went to prison, and by 1989 he was IDd as a capo again. Then in 1993, he inherited a chunk out of the defunct Greenwich Village Crew. Then he got in trouble again, got sentenced, got out of prison, and became a messenger/acting boss/committee member for his imprisoned brother. Mario was still IDd as a capo in the early 00s while the FBI probed the Ardito Crew.
All other stuff aside, there's absolutely no clear reason for Mario to get transferred to another crew. He spent decades with the Greenwich Village Crew. That's where Mario made his bones and was the guy who introduced his younger brothers to the organization. By the 1970s, he had more to do with the crew than Chin did. The only possibility I can see is that the bosses moved Mario after Chin's demotion in the early 1970s, but this demotion alone is too speculative in itself. Based on the reports I've read, I'm leaning towards the opinion that Mario stayed with the Greenwich Village Crew until his promotion.