Anthony Casso

• 1. Introduction

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  Anthony Casso signed his letters "Tony Gaspipe." In 2006, writing to his biographer Philip Carlo from a federal cell, he made a startling statement for a man in his position. "I have always hated rats and as strange as it may sound I still do," he wrote. A rat, in his world, was an informer. Casso knew the word well, because he had been one of the highest-ranking Mafia figures ever to cooperate with the government. He had served as underboss of the Lucchese crime family, one of New York's Five Families. He confessed to somewhere between fifteen and thirty-six murders, and he admitted to trying to kill the Gambino boss John Gotti. How does a longshoreman's son from South Brooklyn climb that high? Why would federal prosecutors sign a deal with a man and then decide he was too dangerous to put in front of a jury? And what happens to a criminal brotherhood when its leaders start breaking its own oldest rules? The answers begin on the docks of Brooklyn.

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• 2. Brooklyn Apprenticeship

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  Michael and Margaret Casso already had two children when their youngest, Anthony, was born in South Brooklyn on the 21st of May 1942. Margaret's maiden name was Cuccuello. His grandparents had come to America from the Italian region of Campania in the 1890s. The boy's godfather, Salvatore Callinbrano, was a made man and captain in the Genovese crime family, which held great influence over the Brooklyn docks in those years. Anthony quit school at 16 and went to work beside his father as a longshoreman. He was already a gifted marksman. He and his friends used a rooftop as a shooting range, and he earned pocket money shooting hawks that preyed on pigeon keepers' birds.

  Casso also ran with a street gang called the South Brooklyn Boys. In 1958 he was arrested after a rumble against a rival Irish American gang. He later told Carlo that his father came to the police station and tried, without success, to frighten him into going straight. A mobster named Christopher "Christie Tick" Furnari noticed the teenager. Furnari was a Lucchese captain who led the 19th Hole Crew in Brooklyn. With his backing, Casso started a small loan sharking business, and Furnari also used him as muscle for gambling and drug rackets. Casso's second arrest came in 1961, on a charge of attempted murder. He walked free because the alleged victim refused to identify him.

  In 1974, at 32, Casso was inducted as a made man in the Lucchese family. He joined the crew of Vincent Foceri, which worked from 116th Street in Manhattan and Fourteenth Avenue in Brooklyn. Soon afterward he grew close to a fellow rising star, Victor Amuso. Their partnership would last two decades and include drug trafficking, burglary and murder. Both men's success earned them a transfer to Furnari's more prestigious 19th Hole Crew.

  There they ran a burglary ring nicknamed the Bypass Gang. It employed expert locksmiths, safecrackers and specialists in alarm systems. Authorities estimated that it stole more than $100 million from safety deposit boxes and vaults across New York City and Long Island during the 1970s and 1980s. When Furnari was promoted to consigliere, he considered Casso as his successor to lead the crew. Casso said no and recommended Amuso instead. It was the first of several times that he would step aside so that Amuso could hold the title.

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• 3. The Gotti Bomb

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  In December 1985, a Gambino captain named Frank DeCicco came to Casso with a proposal. John Gotti and other Gambino captains planned to kill their own boss, Paul Castellano, whom they considered too weak to lead. They wanted support from the other families, which were all struggling under the ongoing Mafia Commission Trial. Sammy Gravano, another conspirator, said DeCicco returned from that meeting reporting that Casso had pledged his unconditional support. Casso told a different story. He said DeCicco argued that Castellano had been careless enough to let his own house be bugged, and that this alone justified killing him.

  Casso told Carlo that he urged DeCicco to ask permission from the Commission, the Mafia's governing body. Without it, he warned, the murder would break a cardinal rule and every participant would be killed by the other families. Castellano was murdered on the 16th of December 1985 regardless. Casso later called Gotti's act "the beginning of the end of our thing."

  His prediction proved correct. Lucchese boss Anthony Corallo and Genovese boss Vincent Gigante resolved to kill Gotti, DeCicco and every other conspirator. They gave the job to Amuso and Casso, with instructions to use a car bomb. The idea was to point suspicion at Sicilian mobsters, nicknamed Zips, who were related to Castellano. New York mafiosi had long been forbidden from using bombs because of the danger to bystanders. Sicilian gangsters and the Cleveland crime family had a reputation for using them.

  Amuso and Casso made a single attempt. They planted a bomb in DeCicco's car for the 13th of April 1986, when he and Gotti were due at a social club. Gotti cancelled at the last minute. The blast killed DeCicco and injured a passenger whom the killers had mistaken for Gotti. The man they wanted was still alive.

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• 4. Money and Muscle

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  By November 1986, Anthony Corallo feared that the Commission Trial would end in convictions that sent the whole Lucchese leadership to die in prison. He wanted the family to keep its half-century habit of passing power smoothly. So he summoned Casso and Amuso to Furnari's home on Staten Island. Casso once again declined the top job and proposed Amuso. Amuso formally became boss in 1987, and Casso replaced Furnari as consigliere. In 1989 he became underboss, after Mariano Macaluso retired.

  The two men split enormous sums. Extorting Long Island delivery and carting companies paid $15,000 to $20,000 a month. Eight air freight carriers in the New York area paid $75,000 a month so that their workers would not strike over poor benefits. Unlicensed video game machines in friendly businesses brought $20,000 a week, and a family-owned concrete supplier yielded $245,000 a year. Garment District protection rackets gave them more than $200,000 annually, plus a share of what every soldier earned.

  Other families paid for Casso's help. The Colombo family gave him and Amuso $800,000 after he helped them steal steel from a construction site on the West Side Highway. The Gambino family paid $600,000 for permission to take over a contractor on a Coney Island housing project that the Lucchese family had protected.

  His most unusual partnership was in Brighton Beach. Russian mob boss Marat Balagula ran a gasoline bootlegging scam worth billions of dollars there. When Colombo captain Michael Franzese began shaking down his crew, Balagula asked Furnari for a sit-down at the 19th Hole Crew's headquarters. Furnari told him, "Here there's enough for everybody to be happy." He announced that Balagula and his people now belonged to the Lucchese family, and that Casso would handle any trouble. The street tax from Balagula's operation became the Five Families' biggest earner after drug trafficking.

  Carlo wrote that the Russian underworld soon heard that Balagula was paying off the Italians, and that he was weak. A rival immigrant named Vladimir Reznikov took advantage. He fired an AK-47 at Balagula's office building in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, killing a close associate and wounding several secretaries. On the 12th of June 1986, Reznikov walked into the Rasputin nightclub and pressed a 9mm Beretta to Balagula's head. He demanded $600,000 and a share of all his business, and he threatened Balagula's family.

  Balagula then suffered a massive heart attack, and insisted on being treated at his Brighton Beach home, where he felt safer. Casso arrived, listened, and became enraged. In his mind, he told Carlo, Reznikov had insulted the entire Mafia. He told Balagula to send word that the money was ready. "We'll take care of the rest," he promised. He asked for a photograph of Reznikov and a description of his car. Furnari approved the killing.

  The next day Reznikov came to the club to collect, found no Balagula, and stormed out cursing to the parking lot. There Joseph Testa, a veteran of the DeMeo crew, walked up behind him and shot him dead. Testa leapt into a car driven by Anthony Senter. Casso summed up the result: "After that, Marat didn't have any problems with other Russians."

  The boldest of the family's earners was a Greek-American crime boss named George Kalikatas. Casso controlled him, and in 1990 alone Kalikatas paid $683,000 in protection money for his loan sharking, extortion and gambling organization in Astoria, Queens.

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• 5. Breaking the Code

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  Paul Vario died in federal prison in 1988, and Amuso gave his old crew to Alphonse D'Arco. Two years later, Amuso chose D'Arco to organize a construction panel. The panel was made up of Lucchese members and supervised the family's hold on labor unions and construction companies. D'Arco later described himself as the man Amuso and Casso picked whenever something unpleasant needed doing.

  One such job was the notorious "whack Jersey order." Caporegime Anthony Accetturo refused a direct order to increase the family's share of his crew's profits. In response, Amuso and Casso ordered D'Arco and the Vario crew to kill the entire Lucchese Jersey Crew. They also ordered the death of Accetturo's wife, which enraged him most of all. Casso told Carlo that Accetturo had involved her in running the crew, and so was to blame for the contract on her. Accetturo saw a violation of the Mafia's rule against harming relatives of mobsters who are not involved in the life, and he became a federal informant.

  In January 1991, a secret source in law enforcement warned Casso about a coming federal indictment. Before he and Amuso went into hiding, he met D'Arco at the Rodman gun in John Paul Jones Park. He handed over a list of phone booth numbers and secret addresses and named D'Arco acting boss. Soon afterward the two bosses ordered the murder of Peter Chiodo, a captain and fellow defendant in the Windows Case. Chiodo had pleaded guilty without asking their permission.

  On the 8th of May 1991, two Lucchese gunmen ambushed Chiodo at a Staten Island gas station. He took twelve bullets in his arms, legs and torso but survived. Doctors credited his obesity, since no round struck a vital organ or artery. He suffered abdominal wounds and lasting damage to his right arm. Casso then sent a message through Chiodo's lawyer. If Chiodo testified, his wife would be killed. Chiodo had angrily refused every earlier offer to cooperate. The threat to his family changed his mind.

  D'Arco, whom the bosses blamed for the failed hit, became certain he was marked for death. In July 1991 the bosses replaced him as acting boss with a panel of four captains. Then, on the 29th of July 1991, a tip from an unidentified Lucchese insider led to Amuso's arrest, and Casso became de facto boss. Some speculated that Casso himself leaked Amuso's location. Carlo rejects this, writing that Casso hunted for the traitor, sent $250,000 owed to Amuso's wife in a shoe box, and tried to arrange Amuso's escape. Amuso refused to leave prison, fearing for his life. The captains then asked Casso to take over, and he reluctantly agreed.

  On the 21st of September 1991, D'Arco phoned FBI Agent Robert Marston at his Connecticut home. He said Casso had begun killing the whole families of suspected informers, which had never been allowed. That night D'Arco and his family entered witness protection.

  The violence reached Chiodo's relatives. On the 10th of March 1992, Lucchese enforcer Michael Spinelli shot Chiodo's sister, Patricia Capozallo, as she drove in Bensonhurst. She survived wounds to her arm, back and neck. In 1993, Casso also ordered George Zappola, Frank "Bones" Papagni and consigliere Frank Lastorino to kill Steven Crea, the family's Bronx captain.

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• 6. Paper Trail and Pariah

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  Investigators from the Brooklyn District Attorney's office were experimenting with new technology that could trace cell phones. They noticed that Frank Lastorino kept calling a phone near Budd Lake, New Jersey. They told FBI Agent Richard Rudolph, who obtained a federal warrant to tap Lastorino's phone. Agents listening in recognized Casso's voice. On the 19th of January 1993, they arrested him as he stepped out of the shower in Mount Olive, New Jersey. He was sharing the house with his mistress, Rosemarie Billotti.

  The search turned up a rifle and $340,000 in cash. It also produced a stack of FBI reports that had been supplied to Amuso's defense lawyers. Casso had kept meticulous records of how the Lucchese family worked. There were monthly tallies of what he and Amuso earned from each racket, and a list of the Christmas tribute paid by every crew. A neatly typed list of proposed new made men was disguised as wedding guests.

  Held at New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center, Casso kept ordering hits from inside. He also planned his escape. One attempt almost worked, when a bribed guard cleared him through security and he nearly walked out of the jail. Another guard spotted him at the last minute. His next ideas were to arrange an ambush of the prison bus and to assassinate the presiding judge, Eugene Nickerson, to buy time.

  On the 2nd of February 1993, the body of Frank Signorino, Peter Chiodo's uncle, was found in the trunk of a car in East New York. It was frozen solid. He had been shot several times in the head, which was wrapped in a black plastic bag. On the 12th of February, the Lucchese family burned down the garage belonging to Annette Signorino, Chiodo's 95-year-old grandmother, in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Chiodo later told the FBI that he "couldn't believe someone would try to harm an old woman."

  Then Casso's own side turned on him. Amuso had long been puzzled that Casso never used his law enforcement contacts to find out who betrayed him. He finally decided Casso had done it himself to seize control. Amuso stripped him of the underboss title and declared him a pariah to all Lucchese mafiosi.

  Prosecutors Charles Rose and Gregory O'Connell told journalist Jerry Capeci they had hoped to use Sammy Gravano against Casso. Gravano refused, apparently fearing Casso would go after his extended family. D'Arco, by contrast, was eager. FBI Agent Lucien Gandolfo said D'Arco believed he stood for what was right, and for old values the mob had abandoned.

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• 7. The Informant

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  Facing a trial at which D'Arco, Accetturo and Chiodo would all be star witnesses, Casso contacted FBI Agent Richard Rudolph and offered to cooperate. He was flown to the federal prison at La Tuna, near El Paso, Texas, and housed in the famous "Valachi Suite" while he was debriefed. At the first session he joked, "Every time I stepped out of the house I committed a crime. You expect me to remember all of them?" The agents asked him to start with his "crystal ball."

  He answered with a bombshell. Two decorated NYPD detectives, Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, had been on his payroll. He said they had carried out eight murders on his orders. Both had also served on the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force, and they had leaked the names of police and FBI informants, leading to more killings. Rose and O'Connell flew from New York to Texas as the sessions continued. Casso named scores of fellow conspirators, including Vincent Gigante. He admitted sending hitmen to Rose's own home, and plotting to assassinate Judge Nickerson to delay his trial.

  His story began to fray. Casso first confessed to twelve murders, then admitted to a further twenty-four when pressed for details. He lied about how much money he had, and he denied any part in the Signorino killing or the arson at the grandmother's garage. When agents made him take a lie detector test, he failed it.

  The decisive moment came inside the Valachi Suite. O'Connell recalled that Casso laughed with apparent delight as he described burying a young drug smuggling associate alive in the Florida Everglades. The two prosecutors read each other's thoughts. A jury would not accept this witness. "It gets to a point where somebody is just too evil to put on the stand," O'Connell told Capeci.

  A plea agreement was finalized at a hearing on the 1st of March 1994. Casso pleaded guilty to 70 crimes, including racketeering, extortion and 15 murders. O'Connell said it left him "tied up six ways to Sunday." Casso entered witness protection while still in prison. According to Carlo, he enraged the government by accusing Gravano of buying large quantities of cocaine, heroin and marijuana from him over two decades. Gravano had denied ever dealing drugs. In 2000, Gravano pleaded guilty to running a massive narcotics ring.

  By then Casso's own deal had collapsed. Prosecutors accused him of infractions in 1997, including bribing guards, assaulting other inmates and making false statements about Gravano and D'Arco. He was removed from the program in 1998. His lawyer asked Judge Frederic Block to overrule the prosecutors in July of that year, and Block declined. Soon after, Block sentenced him to 455 years without parole, the maximum the guidelines allowed.

  Casso told New York Times reporter Selwyn Raab that he had been weighing an offer with the chance of parole after 22 years. "I help them and I get life without parole," he complained. He lost two appeals. In his 2006 letter to Carlo, he wrote that the government rewards only those who give prejudiced testimony to win convictions.

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• 8. Wives and Walls

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  On the 4th of May 1968, Anthony Casso married Lillian Delduca, a fellow South Brooklyn native. They had a daughter and a son. Before the wedding, he had been seriously involved with another neighborhood girl, Rosemarie Billotti, whose parents hoped he would marry her. After the wedding, Casso secretly kept Billotti as his mistress for decades, in the house in Mount Olive. He had other affairs as well. Casso told Carlo that men in his world all had girlfriends, but only a "cafone" treated a mistress better than a wife. "I never loved any woman but Lillian," he insisted.

  Lillian learned the truth when the FBI found him in that house in 1993. Carlo reports that she was incensed and felt betrayed and used. She eventually agreed to visit her husband in federal prison. Even so, for the rest of her life, Carlo writes, she could not understand how he could be so deceitful. In his 2006 letter, Casso wrote that his decision to cooperate had probably contributed to her sudden death. They had been together for more than 35 years.

  His sentence began at the supermax prison ADX Florence in Colorado. In March 2009 he was moved to the Federal Medical Center at Butner, North Carolina, for treatment of prostate cancer, and he returned to Florence that July. In 2013 he was transferred to the Federal Residential Reentry Management Office in Minneapolis. That is an administrative designation for inmates assigned to home confinement, halfway houses, or state and county facilities rather than a prison.

  By May 2018 he was at the medical center for federal prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. He later moved to USP Terre Haute, and from the 25th of March 2020 he served at USP Tucson, a high security prison in Arizona. His health had declined. He suffered from complications of prostate cancer, coronary artery disease, kidney disease, hypertension, bladder disease and lung problems from years of smoking.

  On the 5th of November 2020, Casso tested positive for COVID-19 and was placed in medical isolation. On the 9th he was taken to a local hospital with respiratory distress, and on the 17th he was put on a ventilator. His lawyers asked for compassionate release, but the motion was rejected on the 28th. Anthony Casso died of complications from COVID-19 on the 15th of December 2020. He was 78 years old.

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