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| Paul Castellano mansion in Staten Island |
When in December 1985 Paul Castellano was shot to death on a New York City street, television and newspaper reporters scurried immediately to the exclusive Todt Hill section of Staten Island where the former head of the Gambino crime family had resided. They failed to find any neighbors with an ill word to say about Castellano. “Great neighbors,” one was quoted, “and a credit to the neighborhood.”
The local residents were particularly proud of the 17-room white-porticoed mansion at 177 Benedict Road which they referred to as “the White House.” Many felt the Castellano family added class to the neighborhood and certainly helped property values.
Such attitudes toward mafiosi by neighbors are hardly unusual. There have never been any major complaints from respectable citizens in fashionable Sands Point, Long Island, where there has long been a considerable Mafia colony. When Tommy “Three- Finger Brown” Lucchese died, he was considered in his Long Island, New York, suburb a “wonderful neighbor.” One told the press: “If he’s a gangster, I wish all of them were.”
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Even in Brooklyn in what was the turf of Crazy Joe Gallo a reporter asked a neighbor if he thought the Gallo men were gangsters. “That’s only what the papers say,” was the response.
The general rule of thumb among members of the Mafia and their allies is that they merge with their neighborhoods. Home for many years for top syndicate criminal Meyer Lansky was a three-bedroom ranch-style house in Hallandale, outside Miami. He walked his dog, described rather uncharitably by some newsmen as “the ugliest dog in the world,” and drove rented Chevrolets. Mrs. Lansky helped out image-wise by selling her used clothing in the garage of the house in a typical display of middle-class frugality.
Frank Tieri, the boss of the old Genovese crime family, was also the epitome of neighborly kinship. Around his modest two-family house in the Bath Beach section of Brooklyn, he could be counted on to guide an untended kindergartner out of the street if the child raced out after a ball.
Tony Accardo, the longtime Chicago big shot, a believer in living lavishly, might not have been quite as fondly thought of by neighbors. Often at Christmas time he would install a carillon that would send Christmas carols thundering through the otherwise placid and reserved River Forest area. Other residents probably did not appreciate the noise, but there is no record of any objection made by them. Such complaints would be un-Christian, un-Christmasy—and perhaps unhealthy.
While most neighbors think kindly of mafiosi, these neighbors can rest assured that they have had to pass muster with the mobsters. Most big mobsters have their boys run checks on all the neighbors to learn all about their habits and lifestyles. According to his daughter, Sam Giancana could inform Mrs. Giancana on all the goings-on of various neighbors.
When daughter Antoinette brought other children to the house, Sam immediately checked out their families. If he objected to something in their parents’ backgrounds—ethnicity or other faults—the children were not permitted in the Giancana household again.
It’s smart to stay on the good side of Mafia neighbors. One who did not was 51-year-old John Favara, a friend of John Gotti—known to police at the time as a capo in the Gambino family and called by the law one of the most violent mafiosi. In 1980, Favara ran over and killed Gotti’s 12-year-old son, Frank, in a traffic mishap officially declared accidental. Four months later, Favara was kidnapped as he left his job in a furniture plant; he was never seen again.
According to police, after the death of young Frank, the Favara family had received unsigned threat letters at their Howard Beach, Queens, home, and their car had been spray-painted with the word murderer. Police got reports that Favara had been chain-sawed to death, and then placed in a car that was run through a demolition machine and reduced to a one-square-foot block. Meanwhile, Favara’s wife sold their house and with her son and daughter moved far away from Howard Beach.
