May 26, 1997

CATERING CONS FEAST

GUARDS GO BELLY UP

By Jerry Capeci

I T was a month before Christmas, and the wiseguys at the Brooklyn Big House were counting on eating like kings for the whole month, not just on Christmas Day.

And so, on Nov. 26, Alberto Cruz arrived two hours early for his scheduled shift as a guard at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn looking like "Santa Claus carrying a sack full of presents on his back," according to a federal complaint.

Inside the sack were six steaks, 15 pounds of eggplants, 10 pounds of choice veal cutlets, 10 pounds of chicken cutlets, five pounds of sopresatta, 10 chunks of provolone, 10 pounds of mozzarella, five pounds of olives and a few sticks of pepperoni. A few days later, Cruz brought in seven boxes of frozen manicotti, five bags of meatballs, three containers of tomato sauce and two boxes of Italian pastries.

Many Gang Land regulars, like Gambino capos Nicholas (Little Nick)Corozzo (left) and Leonard DiMaria (right) and onetime Colombo acting boss Victor (Little Vic) Orena were recipients of these yuletide wiseguy spreads. Others included Luchese capos George Conte, George (Georgie Neck) Zappolla and Frank (Frankie Bones) Papagni.

But Cruz and his fellow guards wound up with the tummy aches.

Over an 18-month period, Cruz and at least 10 other guards took bribes, ranging from $200 to $1,000 for various favors, which included, one time,

urinating in a speciman bottle for a drug-abusing inmate scheduled for a drug test. Several guards were on weekly $500 retainers and one took a $5,000 bribe to void an arrest warrant, according to the complaint.

As far as Gang Land knows, just about everything, except freedom, was for sale from the guards - whose average annual salaries are between $25,000 and $30,000 - although one allegedly wrestled with the idea of helping a drug dealer escape for a payoff in the $600,000 to $2 million range.

Another guard, Anthony Martinez, who arranged mob sitdowns and stood chicky for them, was so enamored by mobsters that he told a wired-up operative he would like to be in the mob and attend sitdowns to learn who was "going to be whacked next," according to transcripts of the tapes.

Martinez, a Bureau of Prisons employee for 11 years and a resident of Ozone Park, Queens - where John Gotti (who never spent a day in the MDC but has been in Marion Federal Penitnetiary for five years) and a few of his brothers ate well and grew to infamy - really should have known that his heritage would have never passed muster.

 
In Chin's World, the Neverending Soap Opera, the week began with Vincent (Chin) Gigante, the legendary Mafia boss who used to walk around Greenwich Village in a grubby old bathrobe, in his pajamas in a luxurious room at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

With regular visits from family members and girlfriend Olympia Esposito, and a room overlooking Central Park in full bloom, and his meals prepared by a Cordon Bleu chef, it was only a matter of time before someone would rain on Chin's World.

Mount Sinai officials say the presence of Gigante and the ever-present deputy U.S. Marshals guarding him was disrupting the hospital's clinical environment, not to mention the whispered complaints of other highbrow patients who suddenly found themselves in Chin's World.

The hospital told chief screenwriter Jack Weinstein, the Brooklyn federal judge who revoked Gigante's bail, confining him to his present digs that they want a simple script change: Out, Out, Out!

Don't do it, judge, pleaded Gigante lawyer Steven Kartagener. He didn't pick the room or the view; it's what they gave him. But, noting that since Gigante's not a big fan of the so-called special chef and has most of his meals home cooked and brought in by family members, Kartagener suggested that Chin's World could be filmed at his home, but under house arrest restrictions.

No way, said Weinstein, telling Mount Sinai to ship him, by ambulance of course, to New York Downtown, formerly known as Beekman, which has a working relationship with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and is familiar with Gigante's special needs. Beekman is where Gigante was placed when he was first hit with racketeering charges in 1990.

"We're a very egalitarian hospital," said spokesperson Ellen Karasik, who declined for privacy reasons to confirm or deny whether Gigante was there.

In another plot twist, Gigante's lawyers used the unusual (Gang Land is resisting the urge to use the word bizarre) proceeding in which neither Gigante nor the judge was present in the courtroom - Weinstein was on vacation but his voice was piped in on a speaker phone - to announce that on top of all his other ailments, Gigante may have cancer.

A CAT-scan found a suspicious nodule on his right thyroid, said Kartagener, and one of the first orders of business for New York Downtown appears to be a biopsy.

ASK ANDY

Today, Gang Land's resident expert on organized crime, tackles an unsigned query about "the past and current leaders of the St. Louis family of LCN." Since we have been receiving so many questions since beginning the feature last month, from now on, you must drop your own name along with those in your questions if you want it answered on This Week In Gang Land.

"St. Louis mafia boss Tony Giordano attracted public attention in the 1960's when Time magazine published a map showing the names of all the LCN bosses and the cities that they ruled," says Andy. "It was then estimated that the St. Louis Cosa Nostra leader had 35 soldiers in his small family.

"This did not mean, however, that Giordano was not well connected. In the early 1970's he was suspected of having a hidden interest in the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. That prompted the Nevada Gaming Commission to list Giordano in the famous "Black Book" of persons banned from all Nevada casinos. Shortly therafter, Giordano, Detroit boss, Tony Zerilli and others were convicted of receiving $250,000 a month skimmed from the Frontier, prior to it's sale to Howard Hughes in 1967. Aladena (Jimmy the Weasel) Fratianno, the second made man to break the mob vow of omerta, connected Giordano to the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas, owned at the time by Morris Shenker, a Jimmy Hoffa lawyer. Fratianno claimed Shenker paid Giordano about $50,000 a year in tribute for help in getting him a Teamsters pension fund loan to purchase the property. Giordano received a short jail term for the Frontier case and James Giammanio was reported to be the acting boss at that time.

"Unfortunately," concludes Andy, "my knowledge base of the St. Louis LCN family is very small and I am unable to update you on the present status of the family."

Gang Land also has little info about the current state of the St. Louis mob, but can report that in 1986, the family had about a dozen members headed by Matthew (Mike) Trupiano and was active in mob staples like bookmaking and loansharking, and had some legitimate interests in restaurants and entertainment.