To Blow Up an Irishman (Ray Ferrito: Part II)

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that gangsters from the past were a different breed. Gangsters today are just not cut from the same cloth. Young guys coming up no are no longer willing to put the time into being a gangster.  If we were talking about success in any other field I would defer to the book Outliers which promotes the thesis that in order to become successful in any field one has to put in 10,000 hours doing what they want to succeed. It is not just the 10,000 hours, it is practising the craft.

Ray and his friends had put in the time and they had become a traveling crew of top rate burglars that hit places all over the country. They were able to hit businesses and crack their safes as if they owned the places.  Ray and his friends soon bought an apartment building in the San Fernando Valley just over the hill from Los Angeles.

Jimmy Frattiano wrote about staying at Rays apartment and the guys there like Julius Petro using it as a base of operations.

A large bookie in Santa Monica named Sparky Monica asked Ray to murder Juli Petro because he kept shaking him down.  Sparky offered Ray 20k and half his book to handle the murder.  Ray agreed and after failing to blow him up with a bomb, he drove him to the airport and when a plane was taking off shot him in the head.

Buffalino

Sparky, being like a lot of bookies, decided that he didn't have to pay Ray for the hit or give him anything from the book.  When Ray called, he invoked the name Tony Plate, a made member of the Gambino family living in Florida.  This is the way of Organized Crime, bookies like to try and play both sides, Sparky thought by partnering up with Tony Plate he could get out of paying Ray.  He would pay.

Ray was not only a burglar and a hitman, he was also a gambling genius who had clubs in Erie including The City Squier Club and The Calabrese Club.

The early 1970's is when Ray went to Russel Buffalino with the idea of putting together a massive sports betting empire that would use tips right from the locker rooms of professional sports teams.  This made it possible to play with the odds and lay off what they needed to.  Russel Buffalino and his friends each put in 200k and they were off and running.  They settled on a code name for the business "Ameche13" and it would soon span 12 states.

Things started to change in Cleveland when the longtime boss Jack Scalish died during an operation on his heart.  Scalish had been at war with a rogue band of criminals including the self proclaimed Celtic Warrior Danny Geene.  Scalish had been content with his family and had not made any new guys in the family, so they didn't have the same manpower as those families in Chicago or New York.  The new Boss James "Jack White" Licavoli would send numerous hit teams after Danny Greene, but he truly had the luck of the Irish.  Danny had dodged 8 attempted hits by the Cleveland Combination when Jack White took over.  Danny Greene had orchestrated the disappearance of Leo "Lips" Moceri the Underboss of the Combination. Leo was a close associate of the Los Angeles Family and Jimmy Frattiano.  The war in the streets of Cleveland raged on and they finally were able to murder Danny's partner Union Boss John Nardi.  They found out that Nardi parked his car in the same spot day after day, so they parked a car rigged with a directional bomb and when he walked to his car they detonated the bomb killing Nardi instantly.

Greene Dead

The bosses from Murray Hill finally called in Ray at the urging of Jimmy Frattiano and they made Ray an offer.  Ray rejected their offer and asked for 25% of the rackets in Warren and Youngstown.  At first they balked and then they came around.  They bugged Danny Greene's phone and they soon learned that Danny, like many gangsters, was playing both sides.  Danny was an FBI Informant and this would explain all his bravado.  Ray and his team planted a remote controlled bomb outside an apartment building where Danny frequented, but on the day of the hit there were a number of elderly people sitting nearby so Ray called it off. The wiretap soon picked up Danny making a dental appointment and they knew that was where they could get him.  The Cleveland guys supplied Ray with two cars. One was tne was the bomb car and the other was the getaway car.  Ray had them registered to a fictitious person in Pennsylvania to take some of the heat away from Cleveland.  Ray and his confederates soon wielded a steel "Bomb Box" that would direct the blast right at Danny from the door of the bomb car.  It would be like a huge Claymore mine spewing death in one direction.   Ray waited nearby and as soon as they spotted Danny about to get into his car he detonated the bomb, right when he touched the door handle.  This time Danny was blown to bits.

A short time later in Cleveland, Ray was summoned to a secret location where Jack White and the Administration of the Combination held a ceremony to induct Ray into the family.  They had the pistol and the knife, the saint card and Jack White rattled off the words to Ray.  Jimmy Frattiano was also present during the Ceremony and in his book he would claim that it had been so long since the family had inducted anyone they forgot how!  

Ray was happy and with good reason.  Every street hood knows that being a made guy is the highest honor.  They used to be held in high regard and they were highly respected.  

Ray had no idea at the time that these men of honor actually met hours before the ceremony and had voted to kill him as soon as the heat died down.  The ceremony was just to pacify him until they could kill him.  It was pure greed, because Ray had been a loyal soldier for years. Jimmy Frattiano, who was an informant at the time, also agreed that Ray should be killed. He had been locked up with many of them and he put in the work, yet they decided to kill him.

If you look at the things that happened next it also looks like they tried to hedge their bets by setting Ray up at the same time.

The first clue came from a young couple who just happened to be driving by after the explosion.  They claimed that they saw the fleeing bombers and the woman just happened to be a police sketch artist.  All they saw was a car leaving the area, they did not see Ray holding the remote.  Lets look at this statement, a bomb explodes if you are in the area what do you do?  Stay there or flee.  All you have to do is watch video from any explosion or shooting and watch people run in every direction.  So the women showed the sketch to her father who just happened to be a Detective and he had investigated Ray.  The Feds were soon after Ray and he found out at the same time that Cleveland had put out a contract on him.  

Jack White

Ray walked into the Pittsburgh FBI office and gave himself up. He spent a few hours there under heavy guard until the agents let Ray listen to wiretaps they had on the Combination.  Ray heard with his own ears the bosses and Jimmy Frattiano casually talking about his fate.  That was all Ray had to hear and then he decided to cooperate with the FBI.  He would take down the whole Family in Cleveland and Jimmy Frattiano.  Ray’s cooperation would destroy the Cleveland Combination and decimate the LA Family and even topple a boss in New York. All because of these greedy old men.

Ray would leave WITSEC and continue to work the Ameche 13 gambling organization until 1993!  This would be the first that I heard of a guy getting out of WITSEC and picking up where he left off.  Sammy The Bull tried it and failed, but look at him.  I know that many people still talk to me so I know Ray did it.

The best part of this story?  Ray retired to Florida where he lived out his last days a free man with his loving wife.  On May 9th, 2004 Ray was too weak to get up but he whispered to his wife " I beat'em, didn’t I honey?"  Ray had beat them all, and died a free man in his home.

If you would like to read Ray's whole story in detail please pick up a copy of Ferritto: An assassin scorned.

Ferrito: An Assassin scorned

Ray Ferrito

This week I thought I would tell a story about a person you may know only from a short, explosive roll in a movie.  On April 8th 1929 Remo Ferretti was born on the West Side of Erie Pennsylvania.

The Ferretti family changed their last name to Ferritto and Remo was Americanized to Raymond and so he became known as Ray Ferritto.  Many know him simply as the guy who blew up Danny Greene in Cleveland in the movie “To Kill An Irishman.”

Ray was much more than a guy who detonated a bomb.  I touched on his story when I was writing about Jimmy Frattiano in the Los Angeles family.

Ray Ferrito

Ray began his criminal career in the Little Italy neighborhood of Erie by learning the art of burglary, not of houses, but of businesses.  Once he was caught in action and was beaten by a beat copper who had Ray remove his shoes so that he could beat the bottoms of his feet with a nightstick.  This very painful episode pushed Ray to the next level instead deterring him.  He waited and waited and when the incident was no longer fresh in the officer’s mind,  he pounced on him from behind while he was walking down the street.  The brass knuckles Ray was wearing made quick work of the copper who curled up in the fetal position only to be kicked repeatedly. He was away from his beat for months after the attack.  This incident made its way around underworld circles until it reached a local crime boss named Serafino Romeo.  Serafino was Ray’s cousin’s stepfather but he chose to bring Ray into his business because he was tough and smart. Serafino was big in the vending machine rackets, so Ray quickly learned the game and soon he was off dealing with the customers.  He received a draft notice and joined the Marines but because of an earlier foot injury he was Honorably discharged.

Once back on the street, Ray quickly picked up where he left off with Serafino, collecting cash and busting heads.  Serafino saw that Ray was a capable guy so when he was meeting with crime boss Russel Buffalino and a problem needed to be taken care of, he lobbied for Ray to handle it.  Buffalino was against it at first, but after listening to Serafino talk about young Ray he gave the okay.  Ray went away for the weekend and took care of the problem.  He did it without a hitch, but because he was the type of man who kept things to himself it would bother him for years.  

Ray was on his way up in the Italian Underworld and soon he was putting together his own crew of like-minded young guys. Soon Ray and his fellow crew member Anthony "Cy" Sciotti were pulling down scores.  They had learned how to bypass alarms and even crack safes. Things went well for the crew until someone dropped a dime on them one night and they were caught in the act.  Ray was sentenced to 3 years in Rockview Penitentiary and this turned out to be a good thing, kind of like going away to college.  Ray was locked up with many of the guys who would play great roles in his life. There were guys from the Cleveland Combination, Warren-Youngstown all run from Murray Hill in Cleveland.   Ronnie "The Crab" Carabbia, Allie Calabrese, Frank "Skinny" Vellotta  and many others.  After he was released he made the trip to Murray Hill and met with Jack White Licavoli and John Scalish.  The Cleveland bosses made a call to Russell Buffalino, who let them know know Ray was a capable guy.

They soon were pulling down large scores from jewelry stores and markets, bypassing the alarms and cracking the safes.  

Danny Greene

Ray then proved how capable he was to bosses.  Jack White had been ripped off for 75k from a deadbeat who was hiding out inside his home which was a fortress.  Ray dressed up like a priest and the man’s wife let him inside along with Julius Petro.  Once inside, they grabbed the wife and found the deadbeat who begged for his life.  The man then made another stupid move as if he was going for a pistol.  Ray quickly shot him twice, one to the chest and the other in the head.  The widow quickly showed them where they kept the cash so they tied her up and left with the cash.  This made Ray in Cleveland because he did the work and brought back the cash.  

Ray was never one to sit idle so when a former engraver from the US mint came to him with a proposition he jumped on it.  The guy could make perfect plates for 20's and 100's and soon they were moving it all the way in Las Vegas.  Thanks to some Chicago Outfit connections they were able to pass a lot of the cash in the count rooms of casinos for the next two years. Then, like all criminal enterprises, it had to end and he moved on to other rackets.

Ray came up just like most Mafia Associates except he was able to put in the work when asked.  It is a falsehood that all Mafia men are killers.  Many take part in murders as a driver or back up shooter but few can pull the trigger. So Ray was special, much like his friend Jimmy Frattiano, who was also a killer.  

Bosses love to use guys like Ray and Jimmy but when they are not being useful they are being feared.

Next week I will show you just how much honor the Mafia really has for its men.  They use everyone and then they discard them, and this is why they are in so much trouble today.

Please read

An Assassin Scorned -This book is great!