Paul Castellano

• 1. Introduction

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  Paul Castellano, head of the Gambino crime family of New York City, was shot dead outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan at around 5:26 pm on Monday, the 16th of December 1985. He had run the family since 1976. By any measure, he was one of the most powerful criminals in the country. Yet he liked to think of himself as a businessman, and he hated his own first name so much that he signed documents as C. Paul Castellano. The first name was Constantino. This documentary asks how a man with such a polished image ended up dead on a city sidewalk. Why did men from inside his own organization want him gone? What did the FBI learn before the end? And who was ever made to answer for it?

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• 2. A Butcher's Son

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  Paul Castellano was born in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, on the 26th of June 1915, to Italian immigrants Giuseppe and Concetta Castellano. Concetta's maiden name was Cassata. Giuseppe worked as a butcher, and he was also an early member of the Mangano crime family, the forerunner of the Gambino family. His son left school after the eighth grade. Giuseppe taught the boy two trades, butchering and collecting receipts from the numbers game.

  In July 1934-19-year-old Castellano was arrested in Hartford, Connecticut, for robbing a haberdasher, a clothing merchant. Police wanted the names of his two accomplices. He gave them nothing and served a three-month prison sentence. Refusing to break omertà, the mob's code of silence, earned him a reputation for loyalty.

  Family ties pulled him closer to the organization. In 1932, his sister Catherine had married one of their cousins, a future Mafia boss named Carlo Gambino. Five years later, in 1937, Castellano married his childhood sweetheart, Nina Manno. They had three sons and a daughter, and Nina lived until 1999. Despite claims made by the wife of the actor Richard S. Castellano from The Godfather, the two men were not related.

  In the 1940s, Castellano joined the Mangano family and rose to become a caporegime, or captain, under Gambino. In 1957, the murder of Anastasia had raised Gambino to boss. That year, Castellano attended the Apalachin meeting in Apalachin, New York, which ended before it began when the New York State Police raided it. Castellano was among 61 high-ranking mobsters arrested. He refused to answer grand jury questions about the gathering and spent a year in prison for contempt.

  On the 13th of January 1960, a judge sentenced him to five years for conspiracy to withhold information. An appeals court reversed the conviction in November 1960. The reversal left him free to build the businesses that would define his career.

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• 3. The Businessman Boss

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  Castellano's first big venture was Dial Poultry, a distribution company built on his butcher's training. At its peak, Dial supplied 300 butchers across New York City. Its customers included the supermarket chains Key Food and Waldbaum's, and Castellano used intimidation to make them buy Dial's chicken. He preferred to turn illegal enterprises into legitimate ones. Even so, his businesses and those of his sons kept benefiting from their mob connections.

  Concrete brought him far more money. His son Philip was president of Scara-Mix Concrete Corporation, which held a near monopoly on concrete supply in Staten Island. Castellano also represented Gambino interests in the Concrete Club. The Commission, the mob's ruling body, picked the contractors in this club to handle contracts worth between $2 million and $15 million. In return, each contractor paid the Commission a two-percent kickback on the contract's value. Castellano also supervised Gambino control of Teamsters Union Local 282, which supplied the workers who poured concrete at every major building project in New York and Long Island.

  The poultry trade left one grim story behind. In 1975, Castellano allegedly had Vito Borelli, his daughter's boyfriend, murdered. The reason was a rumor that Borelli had compared him to Frank Perdue, the owner and television spokesman for Perdue Farms. Court documents revealed in 2004 that Joseph Massino, a former Bonanno family boss turned government witness, had admitted killing Borelli as a favor to Castellano.

  Perdue himself appears again in 1981, when he approached Castellano for help blocking a unionization drive at one of his facilities in Virginia. According to Perdue, the two men never reached a final agreement.

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• 4. A Split Inheritance

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  On the 15th of October 1976, Carlo Gambino died of natural causes at his home. Against all expectations, he had named Castellano as his successor. The obvious heir was his underboss, Aniello "Neil" Dellacroce. Gambino seemingly believed the family would profit from Castellano's focus on white-collar business. Dellacroce could not contest the choice, because he was in prison for tax evasion.

  A meeting on the 24th of November confirmed the succession, with Dellacroce in the room. Castellano kept him on as underboss and let him run the traditional rackets directly. These included extortion, robbery and loansharking. Dellacroce accepted the arrangement, but it effectively cut the family in two. Dellacroce's faction operated from Manhattan, and Castellano's from Brooklyn.

  In 1978, the new boss allegedly approved two killings that show how he handled trouble. The first victim was Nicholas Scibetta, a Gambino associate who used cocaine and alcohol and kept getting into public fights. He had also insulted the daughter of George DeCicco. Scibetta was the brother-in-law of Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano. Castellano therefore had George's brother Frank warn Gravano before the hit. Gravano raged and threatened to kill Castellano first, but he calmed down and accepted that Scibetta had earned his fate.

  That same year, Castellano allegedly ordered the deaths of Gambino capo James Eppolito and his son, James Eppolito Jr. Eppolito Sr. had complained that another capo, Anthony Gaggi, was encroaching on his territory, and he asked permission to kill him. Castellano gave a noncommittal answer, then warned Gaggi. Gaggi and soldier Roy DeMeo murdered both Eppolitos. The cost of that choice would come due in Castellano's own indictment.

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• 5. Hired Guns

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  In February 1978, Castellano sat down with James Coonan, leader of the Westies, an Irish-American gang from Hell's Kitchen. Castellano wanted gunmen whom police could not tie directly to his family. The Westies wanted protection from the other mob families. Mickey Featherstone, a Westies gangster, recalled the boss's directive: "You guys got to stop acting like cowboys - acting wild. You're going to be with us now. If anyone is going to get killed, you have to clear it with us."

  A second source of killers came from New Jersey. The Cherry Hill Gambinos were Sicilian heroin importers and distributors. Castellano forged an alliance with them as well, again for use as gunmen. Between the Westies and the Cherry Hill group, he commanded a small army of capable killers.

  The violence reached into his own household in September 1980. Castellano allegedly ordered the murder of his former son-in-law, Frank Amato, who had physically abused Castellano's daughter Connie during their marriage. FBI documents say DeMeo killed Amato, cut up the body and disposed of the remains at sea. DeMeo's own turn would arrive in 1983.

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• 6. Mansion and Microphones

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  On a ridgeline in Todt Hill, Staten Island, Castellano built a 17-room mansion designed to resemble the White House in Washington, D.C. It had Carrara marble, an Olympic-size swimming pool and an English garden. He carried on an affair with his live-in maid, Gloria Olarte, who came from Colombia. As his power grew, he became a recluse. His capos had to come to the house to report and take orders. When he had no guests, he wandered the rooms in satin and silk dressing gowns and velvet slippers.

  John Gotti, a former protégé of Dellacroce, saw a boss who was isolated and greedy. Like others in the family, he disliked Castellano personally and thought the boss lacked street credibility. There was money behind the contempt. The two men had long argued over the share Gotti took from hijackings at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Gotti was also rumored to be expanding into drug dealing, which Castellano had banned under threat of death.

  In January 1983, Castellano allegedly ordered the murder of DeMeo, who was found shot to death in the trunk of his Cadillac. Two months later, the FBI obtained a warrant to bug the mansion. Agents waited until Castellano left on vacation to Florida. They drugged his watchdogs, disabled the security system and planted devices in the dining and living rooms. The recordings gave investigators a wealth of incriminating material.

  In August 1983, Gambino members Angelo Ruggiero and Gene Gotti were arrested for dealing heroin, largely on the strength of recordings from a device in Ruggiero's house. Castellano demanded transcripts of those tapes, and Ruggiero refused.

  On the 30th of March 1984, a federal indictment charged Castellano with racketeering, extortion, drug trafficking, theft and prostitution. It also charged him with the murders of Eppolito and DeMeo. He was released on $2 million bail. On the 25th of February 1985, he was among many mob bosses arrested in the case that became the Mafia Commission Trial, and he posted $3 million bail. On the 1st of July, he was indicted on loansharking and tax evasion charges, for failing to report profits from an illegal racket. He pleaded not guilty. On the 4th of November, car thief Vito Arena testified that Castellano headed the stolen-car ring that employed him, and that he was connected to five murders.

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• 7. Sparks Steak House

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  Aniello Dellacroce died of cancer on the 2nd of December 1985, and two weeks later Castellano was dead. His absence from Dellacroce's wake insulted the Manhattan faction. Castellano then made Thomas Bilotti his new underboss. Bilotti was a loyalist with little diplomatic skill. Castellano also hinted that he planned to break up John Gotti's crew.

  Gravano first proposed killing Castellano and Bilotti while they ate breakfast at a diner. Then George DeCicco passed Gotti a tip. Castellano would be meeting several other mobsters at Sparks Steak House in Manhattan on the 16th of December. Gotti and the other conspirators chose to strike there.

  Bilotti drove Castellano to the early-evening meeting. A hit team of Salvatore Scala, Vincent Artuso, Edward Lino and John Carneglia waited near the restaurant entrance. Backup shooters stood farther down the street. They were Ruggiero, Joe Watts, Iggy Alogna, Dominick Pizzonia and Tony Rampino. Across the street, Gotti and Gravano watched from a car.

  As Castellano got out at the front door, the gunmen rushed him and fired handguns and revolvers. Carneglia allegedly delivered the fatal shot to his head. Bilotti was shot as he stepped out of the driver's door. Before leaving, Gotti drove past to look at the bodies.

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• 8. Aftermath and Screen

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  Castellano was buried in Moravian Cemetery in the New Dorp section of Staten Island. The Archdiocese of New York refused him a Catholic funeral, citing the notoriety of his life and death.

  Two weeks after the murder, Gotti was elected the new boss of the Gambino family. Vincent Gigante, boss of the Genovese family, was outraged that Gotti had killed a boss without following Mafia protocol. He enlisted Lucchese family boss Anthony Corallo to arrange a hit. On the 13th of April 1986, a car bomb meant for Gotti exploded outside a social club in Bensonhurst. The only casualty was Gambino underboss Frank DeCicco.

  The FBI arrested Gotti in late 1990 on racketeering charges, and a judge denied him bail ten days later. On the 2nd of April 1992, with Gravano now a government witness, a jury convicted Gotti of numerous racketeering charges. They included the 1985 murder of Castellano. On the 23rd of June 1992, he was sentenced to life in federal prison. He died there of throat cancer in 2002. No one else was ever charged with the killing.

  Castellano has since been played by a string of actors. Gene DiNovi portrayed him in the 1994 TV film Getting Gotti, and Richard C. Sarafian played him in the 1996 HBO film Gotti. Abe Vigoda took the role in Witness to the Mob in 1998. In 2001, Sam Coppola played him in The Big Heist, and Chazz Palminteri played him in Boss of Bosses. Donald John Volpenhein appeared as Castellano in the 2018 film Gotti, based on John Gotti Jr.'s 2015 book Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father. In 2020, Netflix released the documentary Fear City: New York vs The Mafia, with Castellano as its subject.

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