Louie Tartaglione highlights from recorded conversations

[chin_gigante]

Thanks to thekiduknow for providing me with the transcripts. I'll post them in the FBI files section at some point soon but there's some other stuff in the document I want to get through first.

21 December 2003
Time: 9.40am
Location: Seacrest Diner

Participants:
Vincent Basciano
James Tartaglione
Anthony Urso

- Urso reintroduces Basciano and Tartaglione to each other as captains “in the Massino family”
- Later in the conversation, Basciano asks Urso if Tartaglione knows he’s on the administration:

VB: Hang on, does he know you’re acting consigliere?

AU: What?

VB: Has he met you as acting consigliere? Louie, Louie met you as acting, did you meet him as acting consigliere?

CW: No I never met him but I know he’s part of the administration.

AU: He knows.

- They discuss the previous week’s Gang Land News column and are surprised to learn that Michael Cardello is living in Texas when they all thought he was in Virginia
- Later, Tartaglione mentions he isn’t worried about Joseph DeSimone or Peter Cosoleto, but he is concerned about Cardello
- Urso is also concerned about Cardello
- Basciano talks about a law enforcement report he obtained that got a wire crossed and conflated the Frank Santoro murder and the conspiracy to murder Dominick Martino
- Tartaglione tells Basciano an electrician called Dominick involved in Petricelli Lighting is on record with the Genovese family
- Tartaglione mentions he doesn’t think Salvatore Vitale would rat on James Galante because he loved him
- Urso and Basciano believe Vitale would rat on everyone to preserve his cooperation agreement
- Basciano talks about the Gerlando Sciascia murder case against Patrick DeFilippo and John Spirito
- Basciano believes Vitale told the government about a white Blazer that belonged to Spirito and was used in the murder
- Spirito got rid of the car afterwards and this would be shown on the insurance records

VB: Johnny is a good boy. Good man. He’ll stand up. Good kid.

AU: One hundred percent.

VB: One loyal dog, Lou. Loyal, loyal dog.

AU: Like Little Anthony. The same thing.

VB: Loyal dog.

AU: From the Bronx. Same thing.

- Basciano asks if Tartaglione knows Vincent DiSario but he doesn’t
- Basciano mentions he is now responsible for Perry Criscitelli, Gino Galestro, and Joseph Torre
- Basciano wants to keep Criscitelli in the background to run his business as an earner
- Basciano doesn’t want to get involved in anything illegal with Galestro or Torre either
- Basciano seems to state he thinks he should be able to kill someone on his own as long as they’re not a member to avoid bringing heat on the organisation:

VB: I got, I gotta shot in three or four years to become a multi-millionaire, legitimately, cause I’m doing it now. I’m working harder here. I don’t have any more illegal conversations. Anything that I gotta do, personally, I don’t feel I have to tell anybody. Okay? If it justifies it and if I went to Tony, for the sake of conversation and say, “Tony, listen to me. I gotta problem with somebody” and, he has enough faith in me. And he knows I’m gonna tell the truth. And I’m not clipping a Friend, and a guy is not related to any Friends and I give you the circumstances, I don’t wanna mention anybody’s name. I don’t need anybody that anybody’s gonna give me. I got my own guys. I do it myself, it falls on me.

AU: That’s the right way to do it. That’s the way I feel too.

VB: Listen, Tony, give me four guys, give me three guys.

AU: The right way to do it.

- Basciano believes that guys who do work shouldn’t have to kick up at Christmas
- Tartaglione makes a comment similar to Massino’s about needing all kinds of meat to make a sauce:

CW: You know what I always felt? It takes a lot of good ingredients, to make a good soup.

VB: A hundred percent.

CW: You just can’t make it with one ingredient.

Basciano praises Urso’s performance in the administration:

VB: Since this guy, since this guy’s over here, we would be fucked up if he wasn’t here. Believe me when I tell you, cause I see from day to day what this guy does.

AU: Thank you, Vinny.

VB: I get very very close to him. I’m with him three or four times a week, and I see what he does. He’s got the right personality, and he’s got the chemistry for it. But now he’s got no malice in him, so if somebody like Tony comes and says listen to me, I want to do this, what happened, bro, listen to me, there’s gonna be a situation with this guy over here I think we should take care of it. Tony, is this guy related to a Friend? No. Do you know what you’re doing? It’s not personal? No. Let him do it, we don’t want to know who.

- Basciano, Tartaglione, and Urso criticise Salvatore Vitale for letting everyone in the family know who did work
- Urso warned Massino a year and a half prior that Vitale was treacherous
- Urso claims Vitale tried to get him killed twice
- Urso once accompanied Vitale to visit Massino in prison
- During the visit, Massino told Vitale to close the social club on Maspeth
- After this visit, Vitale told Urso that Massino didn’t want him (Urso) coming to visit him anymore
- Vitale said Massino wanted to see Louis Restivo instead, even though Restivo wasn’t on the visiting list
- When Massino came home from prison, he met Urso at 2am in Howard Beach and asked why he stopped coming to visit him in prison
- Urso believed Vitale lied to him about the visits because he was jealous
- Vitale also kept the club open after being told to close it, and wouldn’t want Urso there to contradict him in front of Massino
- Vitale hated everyone who had Massino’s ear
- Anthony Navarra didn’t want to be part of the life and was pushed into it by his father
- Anthony Navarra is completely legitimate and under Urso
- Urso leaves Navarra alone
- Associates have to be on record for eight years prior to induction, but Basciano straightened Anthony Aiello out after knowing him for a year
- Basciano got around this because Baldassare Amato and Anthony Indelicato knew Aiello for many years
- Basciano got Aiello to do “a couple of minor things”
- On Dominick Cicale being Basciano’s acting captain:

VB: I got an acting in my de gina [sic.] his name is Dominick Cicale. He’s only been straightened out maybe about a year. Dominick’s about a year.

CW: Who?

VB: Eight months, Dominick, how long did we straighten him out?

AU: Uh, not even, less than that, seven months, six months.

VB: He did 11 years in the can. He’s a hoodlum. It’s a lot easier to train a hoodlum. He’s with me 24/7. He knows everybody in my de gina. He knows what he’s gotta give for Christmas. He knows how I talk, how I, how, how I act. He knows I don’t bend from anybody. So he’s got on-the-job training. I make him my acting. Can’t make Bruno because Bruno’s on parole, you know what I’m saying.

- Massino still holds the power to approve guys moving up into vacant slots from prison, but Basciano feels the captains should have more say since they can feel the pulse of the street
- Thomas Gioeli met with Urso the day prior and told him the Colombo family is being run by the captains because they don’t know what is going to happen to Joel Cacace
- Urso believes Massino would have made Tartaglione the acting boss when he got arrested if he didn’t have his own legal problems
- Urso also states Massino may have put Joseph DeSimone in a position
- Urso and Tartaglione agree that DeSimone is a good guy
- Tartaglione has his decina back and it includes John Palazzolo, Generoso Barbieri, Bari Mascitti, and Vincenzo D’Antoni
- D’Antoni is acting for Tartaglione because he doesn’t have any felonies so they can meet while Tartaglione’s on paper
- Tartaglione likes Barbieri and would have made him acting captain again if he was able to talk to him
- Barbieri’s only problem is he’s a degenerate gambler
- Emanuel Guaragna is an acting captain
- Basciano was upset with Guaragna because he kept calling him directly on his cell phone
- Basciano told Guaragna to contact him through a Jewish associate called Larry
- On Louis Attanasio:

VB: Louie HaHa, they were gonna put with me. Cause he was with the administration. They were gonna put Louie HaHa with me. But from what I understand he’s, he’s in the Bahamas or Margarita Island or something.

- Peter Calabrese wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be in the administration
- His son, Bonanno member Anthony Calabrese, suffers from MS and was in a wheelchair and had a relapse
- Because of his son’s health problems, Calabrese was failing to give Urso war chest money every two months as he was supposed to
- Calabrese figured he could give the money at the end of the year
- Urso told Calabrese if he didn’t want to be part of the administration he’d take him down
- Calabrese is still servicing his decina
- Attanasio is going to be put with Calabrese
- Vitale and Sciascia pushed for Patrick DeFilippo to be made a captain
- Massino didn’t really know DeFilippo
- Vitale brought DeFilippo in to grow his own power base
- Basciano and Urso suspected Vitale had been a rat for several years, but Tartaglione believes if that was true Massino would have been arrested a lot sooner
- Vitale wanted to be the boss and wanted to “walk up and down the street like John [Gotti]” 

===

18 January 2004
Time: 9.30am

Participants:
James Tartaglione
Anthony Urso
Joseph Cammarano Sr
Vincent Basciano

- Tartaglione asks Basciano about Richard Musumeci, but Basciano doesn’t know him
- Tartaglione tells him Musumeci is a member and “Little Charlie” sponsored him
- DeCavalcante member Anthony Mannarino grabbed Tartaglione the other day and warned him Musumeci might go bad

CW: Anthony Marshmallow turns around and grabs me the other day and says to me, Louie, word is that he might be a…

AU: (UI)

CW: So if you could find out, but honestly I haven’t, I haven’t spoken to him in six years.

- Musumeci used to be under Tartaglione and then ended up being with Anthony Graziano
- Graziano was taking care of everything in Florida at the time
- Tartaglione was at Musumeci’s induction ceremony
- Musumeci showed up from Florida with a moustache and was made to shave it off before they straightened him out
- Urso remembered who Musumeci was when Tartaglione told the moustache story

VB: But who’s he with now?

AU: Yeah, well, that’s (UI) they split that other guy (UI)

- Tartaglione saw Matthew Ianniello at Matteo’s last week but didn’t speak to him because he doesn’t know him
- Tartaglione and Basciano were surprised that Frank Lino flipped

[chin_gigante]

Basciano introducing Urso as acting consigliere would back up Massino's testimony that Urso never actually served as acting boss (though he was clearly the one in charge on the street at the time).

It might be worth generally revisiting some of the acting administration titles we have assigned to members over past decades. Some examples that we know of just in the Bonanno family:

- Gabriel Infanti misidentified as acting underboss in the 1980s when he was a captain on the committee
- Anthony Spero and Salvatore Vitale both misidentified by differing sources as acting boss in the late 1980s/ early 1990s when they were consigliere and captain, respectively, on the committee
- Louis Attanasio misidentified as acting underboss in the late 1980s when he was a captain on the committee
- James Tartaglione misidentified as acting consigliere in the mid-1990s when he was a captain on the committee
- Anthony Graziano misidentified as acting consigliere when he was a captain on the committee
- Richard Cantarella misidentified as acting underboss when he was a captain on the committee
- Anthony Urso misidentified as acting boss from 2003-2004 when he was acting consigliere and on the committee

[SonnyBlackstein]

Great stuff Chin.


Name: ANTHONY URSO
Register Number: 04109-748
Age: 86
Race: White
Sex: Male
Released On: 06/25/2021

He's old, love to know whether he's semi active. Wonder what his relationship with Mancuso is.

[chin_gigante]

A couple of other interesting things that stuck out to me about terms:

- The borgata is referred to as the Massino family in the introductions as opposed to the Bonanno family
- Peter Lovaglio testified something similar that when he was inducted it was the Massino family
- This isn't anything new but it contradicts Massino's testimony about not changing the family's name
- Interestingly though, these are all introductions within the family and in Massino's testimony he talked about telling members something like, "This is the Massino name but if you talk to somebody else you say Bonanno"
- It could be they were referring it to the Massino family internally and the Bonanno family when doing introductions with members of other families
- Basciano frequently uses decina to refer to his crew and the term caporegime pops up a few times in the transcript
- Vitale testified that he introduced Massino as "official rappresentante" to Allie Persico in 1999, so we know the family was still using terms like rappresentante and decina around the turn of the century, and we know caporegime is still widely used to this day

[B.]

Really cool stuff, thanks for sharing.

- I remember Massino saying something along the lines of all the Families are called the Massino Family, Gotti Family, etc. based on the current boss. This is closer to how it always was, where pre-1960s they would just refer to whoever the current boss is by his first name or nickname if it needed to be said at all.

- Terms like Bonanno are government terms and we know they took them on but Massino might have felt it was improper to actually take on the FBI's terms within their own Family. He didn't seem to push back on the idea that they called it the Massino Family at times, just made it a point to say he didn't "change" it. I think I understand his thinking, where it was never truly called the Bonannos in the first place so what's to officially change? That's not how it works and these Families don't have official names just like the mafia as a whole isn't supposed to.

- The acting consigliere being the most powerful guy fits a lot of examples/descriptions we have of the consigliere: https://theblackhand.club/forum/viewtop ... =29&t=7031

It might be worth generally revisiting some of the acting administration titles we have assigned to members over past decades. Some examples that we know of just in the Bonanno family:

- Gabriel Infanti misidentified as acting underboss in the 1980s when he was a captain on the committee
- Anthony Spero and Salvatore Vitale both misidentified by differing sources as acting boss in the late 1980s/ early 1990s when they were consigliere and captain, respectively, on the committee
- Louis Attanasio misidentified as acting underboss in the late 1980s when he was a captain on the committee
- James Tartaglione misidentified as acting consigliere in the mid-1990s when he was a captain on the committee
- Anthony Graziano misidentified as acting consigliere when he was a captain on the committee
- Richard Cantarella misidentified as acting underboss when he was a captain on the committee
- Anthony Urso misidentified as acting boss from 2003-2004 when he was acting consigliere and on the committee

This is what we seem to be seeing with the old consiglio too. It seems like whenever there is a council or panel / committee in Families it leads to a lot of confusion and misidentification of people's actual rank.

[chin_gigante]

This is what we seem to be seeing with the old consiglio too. It seems like whenever there is a council or panel / committee in Families it leads to a lot of confusion and misidentification of people's actual rank.

I'm sure as time goes on we'll find more examples of this. Like Junior Gotti being frequently referred to as acting boss of the Gambinos (while it's true he held that de facto power) when according to DiLeonardo he never actually held the position.

Another instance I suspect of this could be Ralph Lombardo in the early 2000s. Capeci identified him as acting consigliere while Joel Cacace was street boss, but this seems to be the only instance I could find where he's given that title. We know the family used a panel for a while following Allie Persico's arrest and into the 2000s, and when Lombardo was indicted he was only referred to as a captain.

I'm also wondering if Bartolomeo Vernace was ever actually consigliere of the Gambino family. Again, we know the family was run by a committee at that time (and Vernace was identified in his indictment as a member of it). Again, Gang Land is the only place I can find anyone identifying him as consigliere, with Capeci acknowledging that it differed from the indictment's description of Vernace's position. It's also important to keep in mind that Capeci has fallen into the committee/ administration trap quite a few times (Graziano as consigliere, Cantarella as acting underboss, etc.)

[thekiduknow]

- I remember Massino saying something along the lines of all the Families are called the Massino Family, Gotti Family, etc. based on the current boss. This is closer to how it always was, where pre-1960s they would just refer to whoever the current boss is by his first name or nickname if it needed to be said at all.

- Terms like Bonanno are government terms and we know they took them on but Massino might have felt it was improper to actually take on the FBI's terms within their own Family. He didn't seem to push back on the idea that they called it the Massino Family at times, just made it a point to say he didn't "change" it. I think I understand his thinking, where it was never truly called the Bonannos in the first place so what's to officially change? That's not how it works and these Families don't have official names just like the mafia as a whole isn't supposed to.

He did say when guys were made, they were told they were with the Massino family, but he did say that when they were made introductions to refer to it as the “Bonanno family” to avoid his name being mentioned on a bug. Interesting they used “Massino Family” here.

I think you’re right in that when he said guys were made into the “Massino Family”, he was just referring to himself as the boss and they were with him, rather than it was a instituted change where he proclaimed “We are now the Massino Family” if that makes sense.


Btw, thanks Chin for making these notes. You have a great eye for details.

[Amershire_Ed]

This is great stuff, thanks for posting.

Basciano’s infamous line “…and plus I didn’t even do it” happened at one of these meetings. Truly a top 5 comedic moment in modern mob history.

[aray22]

This is great stuff, thanks for posting.

Basciano’s infamous line “…and plus I didn’t even do it” happened at one of these meetings. Truly a top 5 comedic moment in modern mob history.

Do you have the full quote?

[Browniety86]

This is what we seem to be seeing with the old consiglio too. It seems like whenever there is a council or panel / committee in Families it leads to a lot of confusion and misidentification of people's actual rank.

I'm sure as time goes on we'll find more examples of this. Like Junior Gotti being frequently referred to as acting boss of the Gambinos (while it's true he held that de facto power) when according to DiLeonardo he never actually held the position.

Another instance I suspect of this could be Ralph Lombardo in the early 2000s. Capeci identified him as acting consigliere while Joel Cacace was street boss, but this seems to be the only instance I could find where he's given that title. We know the family used a panel for a while following Allie Persico's arrest and into the 2000s, and when Lombardo was indicted he was only referred to as a captain.

I'm also wondering if Bartolomeo Vernace was ever actually consigliere of the Gambino family. Again, we know the family was run by a committee at that time (and Vernace was identified in his indictment as a member of it). Again, Gang Land is the only place I can find anyone identifying him as consigliere, with Capeci acknowledging that it differed from the indictment's description of Vernace's position. It's also important to keep in mind that Capeci has fallen into the committee/ administration trap quite a few times (Graziano as consigliere, Cantarella as acting underboss, etc.)

Do you think JoJo was consigliere and Bobby was a captain?

[felice]

Great doc, thank you for sharing it

[chin_gigante]

Do you think JoJo was consigliere and Bobby was a captain?

Right now I'd say I'm just keeping my mind open to it and trying to keep the sources clear in my head. At the time, the FBI said Corozzo was consigliere and Vernace a captain on the committee. Capeci says Vernace was consigliere. My gut would be to go with the FBI but I can't say with any degree of certainty.

[Amershire_Ed]

This is great stuff, thanks for posting.

Basciano’s infamous line “…and plus I didn’t even do it” happened at one of these meetings. Truly a top 5 comedic moment in modern mob history.

Do you have the full quote?

Yeah this happened at the January 18th 2004 meeting, I believe. It was at the Seacrest Diner in Westbury, Long Island.

Tartaglione had a phony 302 that showed Vitale implicating Basciano in the Santoro murder. The 302 said Basciano admitted to Vitale that he clipped Santoro. Basciano started reading the document in disbelief saying the he never talked with Vitale about anything illegal. The more he read the document the more incredulous he got.

“It’s gonna be tough to pinch me on this. You wanna know why? They’ve got no forensics, they have no guns, they have no nothing……forget about the fact that I didn’t do it anyway. Ok? I had nothing to do with it. But if I did, there’s no guns, there’s no cars, there’s no eye witnesses, there’s no rats. How are they gonna pinch me on this??”

Just an all timer from Basciano.

[moneyman]

Who is Little Anthony from the Bronx? I assume it's not Anthony Aiello or Anthony Pipitone given that they are both from Queens.

[SonnyBlackstein]

Who is Little Anthony from the Bronx? I assume it's not Anthony Aiello or Anthony Pipitone given that they are both from Queens.

Believe it was Seccafico, who was clipped.