To all outward appearances, Joe Massino is hardly a charismatic Mafia don. By looks he could be said to resemble the murderous Luca Brasi, the dull-witted enforcer of The Godfather, but Massino is by no means a dullard. By the turn of the 21st century, Massino was regarded by both federal investigators and Mafia wise guys of the five New York families as the toughest, meanest and most resourceful of the mafiosi still at large after the far-flung prosecutions by federal authorities.
By then the leaders of the other four families, from John Gotti on down, were safely incarcerated and hardly likely ever to return to their positions of power on the outside. But Massino seemed to be untouchable. The head of the long-dormant Bonanno crime family, he took over the leadership in the late 1980s and seemed to function as little more than a vassal under Gotti’s control of the powerful Gambino family.
There is no record of Massino ever contradicting any of the acts of Gotti, although he undoubtedly felt Gotti frequently went off on birdbrain tangents. Certainly Massino must have bridled under Gotti’s insane policy of constantly ordering his wise guys to show up at Gambino headquarters on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. The FBI’s cameras grinded away nonstop, and thanks to Gotti the agency built up a fabulous rogues gallery to identify wise guys.
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Massino could not offend Gotti by not showing up himself and was therefore present as government bugs picked up an overblown Gotti assuring him that if “they would leave us alone for another year, we will be so set up they can never take us apart.” All Massino could do was listen silently and contribute nothing to the conversation. Gotti of course would be proved wrong, and his empire would soon destruct—even self-destruct.
From early on in his career Massino moved up steadily because of his penchant for secrecy and guarding himself and his allies from surveillance by the law. Now as the head of a fairly ineffective crime group, Massino needed Gotti’s sponsorship, and Gotti in turn needed Massino. By rehabilitating the Bonannos from the purgatory of nonrecognition by the other three families, Gotti worked to restore them to membership in the Commission so that he always would have a second vote and be that much closer to actual control of the entire Commission.
By 1992 Gotti was put away by the feds, something which was close to a godsend for Massino. He turned the Bonannos into the powerhouse it had not been since the early part of the reign of the legendary Joe Bananas. Massino set up a wall of secrecy that challenged the FBI. Meetings by the family’s top brass often involved the renting of five or so trucks from various legitimate rental outfits, and the boys would be picked up with, say, four of the trucks and all transferred to the fifth, which would go on to the final destination.
Since all the vehicle outlets were clean, there was no way the feds could bug them in advance. Massino also came up with the idea of holding mob meetings far outside New York, as far away as Mexico, France or England. Then a few of the boys would sojourn on to Sicily to check out possible talent for import to the States.
Massino also became “king of the ‘uh,’” never saying anything on the phone for fear of wiretaps. If the speaker always simply said “uh,” in response to other mobsters, it would be much harder to convict him of involvement in a criminal enterprise. Other mafiosi tried that as well but seldom with the same success. The late crime boss, Carmine Galante, was one of the most prudent phone users in the Mafia, and the FBI seldom got more than a simple “uh” out of him. His legal defenders claimed he was simply expressing his disinterest in the entire subject. Once in a while Galante might slip, but it does not appear that Massino ever did.
The transformation of the Bonannos under Massino was stunning. When he took over in 1986, the Bonannos were in total disrepair. Their activities seemed to be home video pornography, pizza parlors (with a fillip as an ideal way to hide illegal aliens), espresso cafés, restaurants and a major narcotics trade over which the bosses had by then started to lose control to rogue members. Massino led a determined operation to bring the outfit to bay.
Jockeying with the approval of Gotti, Massino built up a force of about 100 active wise guys and while crackdowns were going on elsewhere, no major figure in the Bonanno family was under indictment. By 1998 the family had grown so much in stature that it was rivaling the Gambinos and was close to being the second most powerful outfit in the East. Chagrined law officials shifted the main efforts to getting Massino and the Bonannos.
Further sticking in the craw of the law was the fact that Bonanno wise guys had become so enamored with Massino that they started calling the family the Massino crime family— although the law and the Mafia itself have long sought to restrict the naming of crime families to the leadership power in force in the early 1960s.
By 2004 the prosecutors were ready to bring Massino up on a number of murder charges, the cases all built around defecting members facing prosecution. For Massino to be convicted it was clear a strong case against him would have to be made by independent evidence, especially since federal prosecutors revealed they were considering seeking the death penalty—a first for any godfather.
Part of the reason for this move obviously was pressure about death sentences handed down to blacks and Hispanics for committing relatively few murders while ignoring the Mafia godfathers who ordered the murders of foes by the scores if not hundreds. Even so, the approval was less than enthusiastic, and the suspicion would not die down that the law was going after Massino simply because he had been such an embarrassment for so long.
The outcome of the death sentence strategy was unclear by 2004, and some legal observers insisted the government would drop execution for a guilty plea from Massino, also not considered a sure thing. Massino in any event represented a part of a wiser, tougher and, above all, meaner new leadership for the American Mafia. Whatever his own fate, it seemed obvious that others will adopt his tactics in rebuilding a stronger era of mobdom.
Massino was convicted of ordering seven murders. Witnesses included six inducted Bonanno wise guys, the first ever to testify against the family. Massino was due to get life without parole. However, one charge remained, and the government said it would seek the death penalty in that case.
Within legal circles, there was a strong objection to the ploy. Detractors said the charge should have been linked to the other seven. Even the judge on the case offered strong criticism of outgoing attorney general John Ashcroft. Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis said, “Mr. Ashcroft’s choice to make such a sobering and potentially life-ending decision now, after several delays, and only after tendering his resignation to the president and announcing to the country that he no longer wishes to preside over the Department of Justice, is deeply troubling to this court.”
The judge agreed that Ashcroft was within his rights but urged Ashcroft’s successor to reach an “independent assessment.” The judge clearly indicated it might be a year or longer before the case would come before his court.
Some suspected that the actual motive behind the decision was simply to get Massino “to rat out,” something no top Mafia boss had ever done. Then came another bombshell: Joe M. was singing about family secrets and offering even more. Within and without the mob the revelation was doubted as an effort to sow panic. Leaks of this sort are not at all unusual.
There were leaks that big shots in the Gambino crime family, including tough and mean Aniello Dellacroce, John Gotti’s mentor, had spied for the FBI and that Gotti himself was about to go for a deal. Clearly, again here the ploy was meant to cause the Gambinos to self-destruct. It never happened. The mobsters wouldn’t buy it. In Massino’s case, his fate may be of little consequence. The accepted theory is that the main thrust was an attempt to get the mobsters suspicious of one another until finally “the wheels would come off.”
Early reports were that the plan, if there was one, was not working. The mob still held Massino in high regard. Mafia beliefs die hard. Time will tell if such respect is viable in the mob.
