Mike Rizzi and Killers in the Mafia

As I’ve touched on before in this blog, contrary to Hollywood Portrayal or popular belief, there were plenty of Workers or Killers in the LA Family.  Just like every mafia family, every man would have to at least participate in a murder to become a Made man.  Nowadays, this is not so true.  Even all Associates were encouraged to kill back then.  You don’t actually have to pull the trigger, stab someone or strangle someone to participate.  You could be the getaway driver, the crash car, a lookout, or the person setting up the kill.  All those roles meet the requirement of participating in a murder prior to being made.  The only reason to kill someone is to protect the family, promote the family, protect the territory, or for some violation of the rules.  There are no unauthorized killings allowed. There is no one cleaning up after an unplanned murder, everything is planned, down to digging the grave or having a disposal site for the body in advance.  Anyone who actually pulls the trigger earns respect by the rank and file but is feared by leadership, because they always fear that they are next or that they will be challenged for leadership positions.  

Those who participate in murders are NEVER paid.  There are no killers for hire in the mafia.  Anything you read or hear in the news about the Mafia putting a 500K contract on someone’s head is bullshit.  People kill because they are told to kill or asked to kill, in order to earn respect.  Anyone who says they were hired to be a hitman by the mob is lying.  There are always eager young men looking to get noticed who are willing to kill.  

One of LA’s more notable workers was Mike Rizzatello, aka Mike Rizzi.  After Dominic Brooklier passed away, Pete Milano took over leadership of the LA family in 1984.  He inherited Capo Mike Rizzi.  Pete really had no idea what to do with Mike, because Mike Rizzi was the exact opposite of Pete.  Pete was a businessman.  Mostly a gambler, a bookmaker, successful in his businesses.  Mike Rizzatello was a strongarm guy, a worker, who had fought in the Columbo war in Brooklyn on Joey Gallo’s side.  He had done many years in prison.  Mike was a hard luck guy who could never make enough money.  So he was a short buck artist.  He would just shake someone down and take a thousand dollars, rather than thinking long term and shaking them down 500 a month for life.  

So Pete in many ways feared Mike Rizzi.  This created a rift in the family.  The young tougher guys looked up to Mike and wanted to make a harder image or a throwback to the old days, which would not work at the time.  What the family needed was to move into legitimate businesses that they could control with a monopoly, with the hammer in the background, but not so overt.  However, a lot of the young guys could not see this and wanted to act like cowboys shaking down criminals and drug dealers for quick money.   So Mike Rizzi and Anthony Fiato went to New York to meet with the Underboss of the Gambino family, Neil Dellacroce and Joe Piney Armone.  Rizzi was well liked by both of them, and other members of the Gambino family.  They authorized him to run his own family or crew in Los Angeles, separate from Pete.  They also saw Pete as weak.  In retrospect, it's clear that Pete’s leadership was the strongest path for the family to take.  

Mike Rizzi started his own family in LA and made Anthony Fiato his underboss.  He had a sizeable contingent of young, hard men who followed him over from Pete’s side.  Mike’s constant need of money, kept him in constant trouble with the law.  After a few prison terms, and finding out the news that Anthony Fiato, his former right hand man, and his brother, had worn a wire for the feds, he found himself in Orange County, California, where he reconnected with an old friend with a new name, Bill Carrol.  Bill and Rizzi had met in Chino State Prison many years before when Bill was known by his real name, which is now erased because of Witness Protection.  I’m not sure what his real name was.  

Anyways, Bill had muscled his way into Orange County’s premier strip club, the Mustang Club, located in Santa Ana, California.  The Mustang Club had been started by another convicted criminal, going by the name Jimmy Casino.  Jimmy Casino made a ton of money from the Mustang Club, but spent it all as quickly as it came in, and didn’t pay his taxes.  This was Bill Carrol’s opening.  He loaned money to Jimmy Casino, and soon it became apparent that Jimmy Casino’s flamboyant ways were going to sink the Mustang Club.  

One night, Jimmy Casino and his girlfriend came home and were ambushed by a couple of men who killed him and raped his girlfriend.  Bill Carrol stepped right up and took over the club.  This left the door open for Mike Rizzi, who was always looking for income, to get his hands in the club through his friendship with Bill.  Joseph Grosso, a limo company owner, controlled the lingerie sales inside of the club.  The club also had a bouncer named Big George Udavitch (big is an understatement for this massive man), who also happened to be relocated through witness protection, for testifying against Joe Piney and the Gambino family.  Soon it became apparent that Bill Carrol was not going to share the wealth with his prison friend Mike Rizzi.  

So one night, Bill Carrol, Joseph Grosso and Mike Rizzi went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Santa Ana.  After dinner, they asked Bill Carrol to drop them off at Mike Rizzi’s car in a parking garage near South Coast Plaza.  As soon as they pulled to a stop in the garage, Mike Rizzi reached his large arm around Bill Carrol’s neck and Joseph threw himself around Bill’s legs.  Mike placed a pistol with a silencer on it to the back of Bill’s head.  He snarled, “This is for not letting us eat.”  He fired three times.  Carrol jerked and blood splattered everywhere.  They released Carrol’s now lifeless body and exited the car, their ears ringing.  They got into Joseph’s car, and drove away.  At dawn, a bloody, but somehow still alive, Bill Carrol, stumbled out of the parking garage where he startled security guards who called police and paramedics.  At first, Bill Carrol refused to name the person who shot him.  Big George Utavitch bragged that he had disposed of the bloody clothes and weapon.  A few days later, Big George Utavitch, who was gathering cash to head back to New York, received a call in his hotel room at El Toro California.  He was told that someone would meet him and bring him cash at a nearby Irvine parking lot.  When Big George arrived, someone got into the passenger seat of his car, and fired two bullets into his head.  He was able to get out of the car and walk around toward the trunk, where he got shot again, this time he was killed.  As a side note, this location was close to Fat Bobby Paduano’s mortgage business.  Fat Bobby is a long time LA mafia Associate.  Bill Carrol was hidden away by the Feds where he recovered from being shot but was blind as a result.  When the Feds agreed to drop some federal charges against him, he fingered Mike Rizzi as the shooter and Joe Grosso as his accomplice.  Everyone always wonders why Mike at his age, and his high rank, would take part in a murder, and use an untested associate.  Mike Rizzi, in his 60’s and sick with emphysema, was once again desperate for cash, and could not do hits alone because of medical issues.  Mike was put on trial, and was convicted.  He went away to the highest security prison in the state of California until he became sicker and was moved to a Medical prison.  He was released a few weeks before he passed away in Cathedral City (near Palm Springs).  At his funeral there were no members of the LA Family.

Bill Carrol dissapeared into witness protection once again.

Pete Milano lived a long and prosperous life and died in Westlake California in 2012 a free man.

Read more about the recent guilty conviction in the murder case of Jimmy Casino here:

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/01/local/la-me-ln-casino-murder-conviction-20130501

If you want to read more about Mike RIzzi, read Anthony Fiato’s blog:

mafiaslugger.blogspot.com/‎

The Los Angeles Mafia

LA Gangland 1950’s & LCN Tradition

Nick Licata would rule the Los Angeles Family for seven years. He continued working with many of the Eastern Cosa Nostra Families.  He had great connections with the Detroit family.  Nick's son Carlo, a made man in the LA Family, had married Detroit Family Capo Black Bill Tocco's

daughter.   

After Frank DiSimone died, Nick stepped in the top spot easily because he was the Underboss.

Nick was now in a whole different game.   He would no longer be the guy who operated from the shadows.  He was very low key and did not attract much attention until he held the alibi party for Jimmy Frattiano on the night he killed the Two Tony's.  After that he was always a blip on the radar of the LAPD and the FBI.

Nick was in poor health and had to spend six months locked up after he was given immunity by a grand jury in Los Angeles.  Nick appointed Joe Dippolito, a well liked member of the family, as his underboss. Joe Dip was a serious landowner in the inland empire and he had wineries.  He also took part in a couple of murders, so he had the respect of the family.  Joe Dippolito died 9 months before Nick died.   Nick then appointed the loyal Jimmy Regace aka Dominic Brooklier as his underboss.  Dominic was well liked by the white collar members of the family, but he had also taken part in some killings, including the attempted hit on Mickey Cohen in front of Sherry's.  They would make a lot of members that were capable.  The goal of being made or inducted into the Cosa Nostra used to be the highest honor a criminal could obtain.  Today that is no longer a main motivating factor in the life.

Being Made

Jimmy Frattiano described being made in his book The Last Mafioso. You can tell by his words that even when he told the story more than 40 years later, he was excited.  He was brought to a winery in LA where he was escorted into a room by Johnny Roselli.  Once inside, he joined fifty men already seated around the large fermentation room.  The family had all come together to induct five new members.  Three would move on to become bosses and another would be underboss in the future.  They had a dagger and a pistol on the table.  They would prick the inductee’s trigger finger and then recite the oath.  Then the men were Amico Nostra, “A friend of ours.”

The years would take their toll on the Family.  The FBI would record the New England Families Ceremony, and from that point on it would no longer be a secret ceremony.

I know that Pete J Milano aka Shakes was made by Brooklier, but I do not know how it went down.  Jimmy also wrote in his book about making Mike Rizzi.  They were in Murrietta, California on June 6, 1976.  It was Mike Rizzi, Frank Bomp, Louie Dragna and Jimmy in a car.  Jimmy would explain what Bomp was saying as he recited the words in Sicilian.  They would do the whole thing in the car at the end of a dirt road.  They had no pistol or knife, but Dragna had a pin that they used to prick Mike's trigger finger.

Jimmy Caci many years later would tell me a little about his experience.  He told me that they all played golf in Palm Springs.  Pete Milano was boss. Carmen Milano was underboss and after dinner they went back to a hotel room.  That is where Jimmy was made into the family.  He told me it was not what he thought it would be, and that he wished he never did it.  He would tell me later that he had wasted his life, that it all just fell apart.  It was sad when Jimmy told me that.  We were sitting at a restaurant in Ontario after we left the Auto Mart in 2003.  He was telling me about how good the old days were and then how it all went downhill.

Some years later I would be in New York and a former Colombo guy would tell me about his big day.  He wore a suit.  He was picked up by his Capo and driven to a home in Long Island.  He was waiting upstairs with a guy named Joe Baudanza and he was called downstairs.  The

acting boss and the Underboss were down there with a number of Capos.  They had a pistol and a dagger on the table. They did the ceremony in English and he was made.  Next, they brought down Joe and made him.

Later Joe would sit on the panel that ruled the family and he would be one of those that gave the okay to shoot my friend.  They failed but it goes to show you how far the Cosa Nostra had fallen. So we sat in a Midtown restaurant on a rainy day talking about it.  He told me that none of it was worth it.  That the whole thing was wrecked it was not what he thought.  He told me that his Capo had taken him aside and told him not to get into the life.  I asked him if he knew anyone in the life who lived a happy life.

The two of us could not think of one person.

The LA Family was big in gambling in LA, San Diego, Tijuana and Palm Springs.  The Sica brothers worked with them running action up to Northern California and the new boss formerly Jimmy Regace, now Brooklier was close to them.  Once Dominic became boss he would make Pete Milano which was a smart move because Pete’s father was the underboss of the Cleveland family and his uncle had been boss.  He started sending word to other families that he was the boss.  He then appointed a very well connected Sam Sciortino as his underboss to help him get the family in shape.  Sam was a smart choice because he was related to the under boss of the San Francisco Family, he was also related to a Capo in the New Orleans family.  He had deep connections in the garment center in Los Angeles and Dallas. He was also big into trucking.  

These guys could have led the family into a new era of prosperity but the heat was on.

More next week!