Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business by Joe Pistone

Author:Joe Pistone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Running Press
Published: 2011-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

On September 8, 1986, almost a year to the day after jury selection had begun in the still-ongoing Pizza Connection trial, the Mafia Commission Case went to trial in the same federal courthouse in Manhattan, in the courtroom right next door. It lasted nine weeks and was concluded while the Pizza Connection trial still had four more months—and two more shootings of defendants—to go.

There were no shootings during the Mafia Commission trial. There had been two deaths of indicted defendants, but they had occurred after the indictment had been handed down and before the trial began. Two weeks before Big Paul Castellano was gunned down (along with Bilotti, his right-hand man and father of nine children), the powerful Gambino underboss Neil Dellacroce died of cancer.

Those deaths meant that the Gambino family would not be represented in the Mafia Commission Case. We’d lose our star defendant, the boss of bosses, and some of the tapes from the bugs at the White House because they were relevant only as to Big Paul. John Gotti immediately took over the Gambino family, but we had no evidence against him, as he had not taken part in any of the Commission’s activity during the time of the bugs and taps or during the time that I was undercover. In fact, while I was undercover, John Gotti was a soldier, a hijacker, and a degenerate gambler who lost huge sums. He and his associates at the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club were also known for being involved in narcotics trafficking.

Prior to trial, lead prosecutor Rudy Giuliani and his appointed trial prosecutor Mike Chertoff had made the decision to drop Rusty Rastelli from the case. The Bonanno family had been kicked off the Commission when I surfaced, and Rusty was in jail during the entire time of the investigation. Therefore, Rusty’s voice was nowhere to be found on the tapes. But the main reason for dropping Rusty was the ongoing Local 814 case. That case had gone to trial in Brooklyn on May 12, 1986 and was still in trial when the Mafia Commission trial began on September 8, 1986. Rusty couldn’t be in two courtrooms at the same time.

It was a shame to lose two of the five families from the indictment. As a consequence, the Gambino and Bonanno families, at least for a while, had an orderly succession as far as leadership was concerned.

The principal predicate crime of the Commission trial, besides murder, was extortion—a crime involving something called the Concrete Club. It was an arrangement in which a Colombo soldier and union boss, Ralph Scopo, was the primary player. Ralph Scopo was the president of the New York District Council of Cement and Concrete Workers. His hobby was collecting cars, and he transacted Mafia business in them. Unbeknownst to him, bugs were in as many of his cars as were feasible to bug.

The Concrete Club was a small, secret group of seven concrete contractors who reported to Ralph Scopo and made payments to him.

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