Edward "Cousin Eddie" Garafola

Cousin Eddie Garafola is a Gambino Soldier who is doing 30 years of hard time.  The brother-in-law of Sammy the Bull, he enjoyed the life of a Mafia Czar.  How could he lose with Sammy rising to be the number two man under John Gotti.  Then Sammy flipped and Eddie was just another soldier, and worse yet, the relative of the biggest rat in Mafia history.

Cousin Eddie pleaded guilty on September 7, 2007, and at 66 years old with a 7th grade education, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

He pleaded guilty to a number of crimes.  One of them was conspiring to murder Sammy Gravano in Arizona with Peter Gotti.  Peter Gotti was visiting his brother in prison when John Gotti Sr told him on September 1996,  “that’s a bill that’s gotta be paid some day, just like every other bill, ya know what I mean, just like this Gravano and the rest of them, then that bills gonna be, thats gotta be cashed, . . . cause I gotta be able to sleep, ya know what I am saying.”

He was ordering him to kill Sammy the Bull. So in 1999 Peter Gotti gave the contract to Cousin Eddie and Thomas “Huck” Carbonaro to murder him in Arizona. Huck enlisted Salvatore Mangiavillano, a Gambino associate, to help him find Sammy the Bull in Arizona.  They obtained fake IDs and headed to Arizona. The New Jersey IDs used were in the names Henry Payne and Paul Milano.  They would make two trips out, one of which included buying firearms at a roadside flea market.  Sammy the Bull would be arrested for drugs before their last trip out.

Cousin Eddie took part in the planning in a Staten Island hotel where one of the guys dropped off pictures of Sammy the Bull’s places.   Cousin Eddie still wanted to murder Sammy the Bull after he was arrested. A number of plans were discussed including sending a letter bomb, but one of the smarter participants pointed out that it would not work because the marshals would x ray the mail.

Cousin Eddie not only conspired to murder his former brother-in-law, but he also helped murder his cousin Eddie “The Chink” Garafolo in August of 1990.  

Eddie the Chink is the father of my former friend Eddie “The Tall Guy” Garofalo who had his wife Alicia on the show Mob Wives.  

The truck lot in Staten Island where Eddie and Teddy Persico Jr ran their trucking business out of was owned by Cousin Eddie.  

That is all in the past.  Today, Cousin Eddie is unable to speak from a stroke and is wheelchair bound after an amputation.  He was just denied a release on compassionate grounds by the Feds.

Its ironic that on the other hand, Sammy the Bull is coming up for release again.  He took part in 19 murders, was locked up for that, then released.  After he was freed for the murders, he sold massive amounts of Ecstasy and was arrested again.  

Sports Betting Fuels the Mafia

Sports betting is the lifeblood of the Mafia.  Just last week, the state of NJ arrested a group of Genovese men for gambling.  The Genovese crew brought in 12 million dollars in sports betting revenue and they cashed millions more in checks.   They take down one gambling group and the next day it is business as usual because people love to bet.  This is another example of wasting our tax dollars, stopping people from providing a service the public wants. The families then use this cash to fund their other enterprises.

One Genovese soldier that was well known around Bay Ridge, Brooklyn was Andy Wilson aka Andrew Gargiulo.  Andy was a bookmaker who ran a huge online book but could be found most days at a real estate office in Bay Ridge.  

Andy was close to Fat Gigi Inglese and I had dinner with the two of them when I lived in Brooklyn.

Andy was a nice soft spoken man who dressed well, so I was surprised to see a few years ago that he was arrested for murder.  

The man he killed, Preston Geritano, was his wife’s brother and at one time was a Gambino associate.  Geritano had an ongoing feud with Bartholomew “Bobby” Boriello and Bobby had even taken shots at him on the streets of Brooklyn but had failed to kill him.

Bobby was very close to John Gotti, in fact he was a favorite driver of the boss of the Gambinos. He would later be assigned to Junior Gotti’s crew and eventually the Capo.

This is where we come full circle because Bobby is another victim of the Mafia Cops.  Vic Amuso and Gaspipe Casso wanted to send a message to John Gotti Sr. So they put Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa on his tail.  They supplied information to Gaspipe who gave the contract to Frank Lasterino.  Lasterino ambushed Bobby in front of his Brooklyn home, shooting him two times in the head and five times in his torso.  The Gambino family immediately blamed Geritano who they had wanted dead.  After Bobby took his shot at Geritano, he went to his friends in the Genovese Family.  There was a sit down between the Gambinos and the Genovese family because Geritano was a Gambino associate.  The Genovese went to bat for him and a deal was struck.  The deal was that Geritano would be released to the Genovese Family and that he would drop the feud with Bobby. If Geritano ever took up the feud again, the Genovese were sworn to kill him themselves.   So when Bobby was killed everyone blamed Geritano.  John Gotti sent Junior Gotti to a sitdown with the Genovese Family.  Junior Gotti met with Barney Bellomo, the Genovese street boss, and demanded that they keep their word.

This is where Andy Garguilo comes into the picture.  Andy owned Amici’s restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Geritano came into the restaurant with a stickball bat and hit Andy with it.  The fight spilled out onto the sidewalk where they were rolling around on the sidewalk.  Geritano was stabbed five time with a hunting knife that Andy carried and was killed.  After his death it would come out that he didn't kill Bobby after all.  Andy would get 20 years for the self defense killing, I guess his luck had ran out.  He had forfeited 1.5 million when he was busted for bookmaking but this time he was really going away.  A side note: Amici’s had been owned by Sammy the Bull at one time.

The Mafia and bookmaking will continue to go on no matter how many men are busted and sent away.

Mafia Cops

Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa are referred to as the Mafia Cops.  Louis Eppolito wrote a book named “Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob in 1992.”

That was very far from the truth because Louis Eppolito was worse than any made member of any family.  Street guys, knockaround guys, never pretend to be anything but what they are in life: criminals.  Most of them take the same route to becoming made members of a crime family.

Louis Eppolito came from a mafia family, his father was a Gambino soldier and his uncle and cousin were also Gambino men until they were murdered by Nino Gaggi and Roy Demeo.

Eppolito went to great lengths in his book to proclaim his innocence. Unfortunately it was all a lie and it was worse than the Internal Affairs of the NYPD could have imagined.

The March 9, 2005 indictment of Eppolito and Caracappa says it all.  At all times relevant Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito were associates of the LCN.  It seems for years the two NYPD officers passed information to the Lucchese Family and they in turn passed it on to the other families.  They passed on information to the underboss of the Lucchese family Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso.  He would refer to them as his crystal ball and they would give him that edge.

The two NYPD officers then took part in 8 murders for the Lucchese family including the murder of Nicholas Guido.  Nicholas Guido was a hard working 26 year old telephone installer who was very proud of his new car on Christmas day 1986.  He was showing it off to his uncle when a three man hit team gunned him down on his Brooklyn street.  The problem was, it was the wrong Nicholas Guido!  The two Mafia Cops had kidnapped a Gambino associate named James Hydell because he had taken part in a failed hit on Gaspipe Casso. Gaspipe tortured Hydell until he gave up the name of those who had taken part in his shooting. Once Gaspipe learned Nicky Guido took part in his shooting he contacted his man Burton Kaplan a huge weed dealer and go between to the Mafia Cops.  Eppolito and Caracappa gave him a picture of Nicky Guido and a Brooklyn address near Court Street.  The three man hit team Frank Listerino, Georgie Zappola and Joseph Testa drove by and saw a man in a red car they thought was Nicky Guido.  They wrote down the plate number and again the Mafia Cops ran it and this time the name matched.  They were waiting outside on Christmas day when he came outside and they ambushed him. He was an innocent man and those two degenerate cops who were sworn to protect the public caused his death.  

They would retire from the NYPD but that never stopped them.  They gave up information about Sammy The Bull Gravano so the Gambinos could kill him.  

The good thing is just last week a Federal Judge ruled that the City of New York can be sued for the two criminals actions.  The NYPD had a chance in 1984 when they caught Louis Eppolito passing information to Rosario “Sal” Gambino.  Sal Gambino was deeply involved in the Pizza Connection Heroin ring.  The FBI had found copies of sensitive documents in Sal’s dresser when they raided his home. They were NYPD Intelligence files and it was determined that they were copied at the 62nd Precinct in Brooklyn and they had Louis Eppolitos fingerprints on them. The NYPD cleared him of charges despite compelling evidence that he was guilty.  It was then that Eppolito started working for the Lucchese Family and over the years he and his partner would be paid over $375,000 in cash.  They sold their souls.

Reality vs. Fiction: Mob City's Mickey Cohen vs. Today's Colombo Family

Hollywood never tires of making movies about the Mafia.  The problem is they don’t know the way it works.  So they claim they are telling true stories, yet they make up the facts.  Every person from the writer to the studios has to put their spin on it, throw in their ideas of how it may have happened, yet not one of them knows a thing about the life or bothers to talk to anyone who actually does.  They do research by reading books written by people who also don’t know anything.  They “learn” by watching other poorly done movies.  Or, they might even speak to a copper, who knows very little about the whole story.  Once in awhile, they might find some old guy who was somehow “part of the life” in a farfetched stretch of reality, for example their “insider” was maybe a bartender at a watering hole a few mobsters frequented.

Reality Vs Fiction: MOBCITY

This is what they say about the show. “Mob City is a television series created by Frank Darabont for TNT. It is based on real-life accounts of the L.A.P.D. and gangsters in 1940s Los Angeles as chronicled in the book L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City by John Buntin.”  

I see billboards all over the city calling Mickey Cohen the “Godfather of LA”.  That is an incredible feat for a one-time “Never Contender” Boxer who was not part of any organization but his own.  They will continue to credit him with murders that real Gangsters from the Dragna Family, The Outfit and other families back East committed.  The Cosa Nostra Family, that at Mickey Cohen’s time was headed by Jack Dragna, was already 50 years old by the time of Cohen’s run as LA's “Newspaper Gangster.”

Mickey Cohen (the little guy) and his "bodyguard" who was also conveniently a California Highway Patrol Officer

Yes, Mickey was a tough guy and he did shoot a guy in his wire room off La Brea.  But, he never killed one guy in the Dragna Family.  During the time of his so-called reign as the Godfather of LA, the Dragna Family had over 60 inducted members.  Mickey Cohen was a Bookmaker.  The Dragna Family had huge shylock loans all over the city, they also had their own wire rooms.  Dragna himself had his office downtown in the produce area, where he imported bananas and other fruit.  He had at least two freighters that came up from South America.  Now who here thinks all they brought from South America was fruit?  

Mickey Cohen in a hospital bed after being shot by Dragna's men.  LA's first Reality TV mobster seen here talking to reporters and police.

Many others in La Cosa Nostra were also in the importing business.  They ran the garment district because Tommy Lucchese, a relative of Dragna, was huge in the Garment Unions.  The Chicago Outfit was big in LA because they ran the Unions that extorted the Studios.  

The control of Unions in Hollywood still was going on in the 1980's.  I knew a guy who was the head of the Projectionist Union and they were important because no movie could be shown at a theatre unless a Union guy was in the booth.  This all changed with Digital because there is no need to change film reels.

I love how they get cops to tell us how Mobsters act.  They only know what they hear by rumor.  They were never in a crew, never inside.  It is like those talking heads on those TV show “documentaries” on gangsters that say things like Carmine Persico was a ruthless guy who only wanted power.  Yet they never met Carmine, or any made guy for that matter.  They read about it in books written by others who did not know, from their safe office.

Los Angeles was never an "Open" city for the Cosa Nostra.  It always had a family, since before 1900.  The rules of Cosa Nostra as set forth by the formation of the Commission in 1931 are that every family is equal.  That means no family can come into another family’s area and just set up shop.  When New York came to Los Angeles, they made arrangements with Jack Dragna.  When the Chicago Outfit came and did their extortion of the Movie Studios, they gave the LA Family a piece.  They let them in on their Wire service when they brought it to Los Angeles. People have to understand how the Cosa Nostra works. Lets say guys from The Patriarca Family came to Los Angeles to open up a porn studio.  They would clear it with LA and give them a small piece.  LA would not expect a large share unless they used their people as enforcers or workers.

In 1957 Mickey Cohen was on TV being interview by Mike Wallace.  Now what kind of Gangster would do that?  All Mickey was doing is living off his past exploits. In 1957 The Commission met in up State New York at the home of mobster Joseph Barbara in Apalachin, New York on November 14, 1957.  Over 58 Made Guys were arrested but not one from the so-called Jewish Mafia. Los Angeles was represented by the REAL BOSS Frank DeSimone and his Underboss Sam Scozzari.  Why were there no other guys from other ethnic groups?  Only Italians were inducted into families and many are related.  

Mickey Cohen died broke in a little one bedroom apartment.  The families of the LA Family owned huge garment center businesses, trucking firms, wineries, vast tracts of land in what is now Ontario California, Apartment buildings etc.

Reality TV meets real life.  Mob Wives has a new cast member Alicia DiMichele Garofalo and her claim to fame?  She is the wife of Edward Garafalo Jr aka Eddie, whose father was murdered by Sammy Gravano (because Sammy was greedy).  Eddie Garofalo Jr ran his Big R Trucking and Equipment (T&E), and another trucking business, from a truck yard in Staten Island that used to be owned by his cousin Eddie Garafola, a Made Gambino guy and a relative of Sammy Gravano.  He ran it before out of a yard in Downtown Brooklyn.  I started wearing a wire and taping Eddie when he was still at the fuel oil lot in Brooklyn.  I even drew the FBI a layout where they would talk about important things.  Eddie is a big guy.  Mostly, a fat guy.  And yes, just like all big guys he likes to push around guys who are smaller.  He would fight guys who were smaller with no skill. 

Fat Eddie and Alicia.  Eddie introduced me to people as his cousin, and you can see here why people may have believed him.

 Yesterday, Eddie was sentenced by a Federal Judge for his crimes, which included ripping off the Union for employee benefits, things like health insurance and retirement.  Alicia used to help him, so she was also charged and has plead guilty. Big R trucking was named after their child.  

Eddie also plead out to a murder conspiracy.  I was there with the wire running. Eddie egged the whole thing on and he is the one who brought it up in front of Teddy Persico Jr.  Yet when we got to Teddy’s mothers house to pick up "the gear" aka guns, Eddie had to run inside to use the bathroom. After they handed out their really crappy "gear," and all I had was a knife, Eddie told me to duck if they started shooting.  Once we were at the spot, the Cops and paramedics were also there. Then Eddie Uncle Manny drove by and stopped. Strange.  Today the headlines in the New York Daily News read:

“Mafioso husband of 'Mob Wives' star sent to prison for 7 years in extortion case.”  They called him “Reputed Colombo enforcer Edward (Tall Guy) Garofalo, Jr.”  Now that is a strech, according to a number of my friends who knew them when they were all young.  And I quote " If the Colombos needed an enforcer, Eddie Garofolo is the last guy they would call."  End Quote.  

People around him felt sorry for him because his father was killed by Sammy the Bull for no reason, and he didn’t do anything in retaliation.  Not that he could do anything.  

Now Eddie is going to be calling in on the reality show from prison.  I wonder what Teddy Persico, his Capo, thinks about that?  Just like the real mafia guys in LA would never have been on TV like Mickey Cohen, every mob guy knows mob guys don’t go on TV.  It’s a secret society.

To top it all off, according to the New York Post, Eddie’s Wife Alicia has been carrying on a 3 year affair with a married restaurateur. That is how she thanks her husband, after he plead out so that she would get no time.

Do we see a rule 35 hearing coming up in the future?

For more details on the affair, click here.

That is the real Mafia, full of honor.  

Eddie's Uncle Manny, today a free man.  He received zero jail time from the judge, even though he plead guilty and had plenty of clear evidence stacked against him.  Makes you wonder why they let him off...???

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