July 21, 1997

CHIN'S WORLD, THE ENDLESS SOAP OPERA

By Jerry Capeci

S EVEN years in the making, Chin's World, which is also known as the Neverending Soap Opera, has exceeded all expectations and has become one of the hottest tickets in town since it began a five-days-a-week run in Brooklyn Federal Court last month.

With a no-nonsense executive producer - a.k.a. Judge Jack Weinstein - the racketeering and murder trial of legendary Genovese boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante has been fast paced and may reach a climactic conclusion this week.

The prosecution is to rest today - unless it tries to top last-week's attention-grabbing ploy of calling jailed and aging Genovese family underboss Venero (Benny Eggs) Mangano as a witness, like maybe flying in John Gotti (below, left) from Marion, Illinois for a cameo.

And if the defense is smart - and the team of Michael Marinaccio, James Culleton, Philip Foglia and "law man" Steven Kartagener so far has outlawyered the prosecution - it will rest without calling any witnesses.

Weinstein indicated as much Friday when he said the government's case was not a "particularly strong one." Then he essentially advised the defense not to call neurological expert Dr. Wilfred van Gorp. If the defense called van Gorp, Weinstein would allow the government to call rebuttal witnesses, who may be better than the cast of characters prosecutors have paraded through the court so far.

The defense team should convince Gigante, or, ahem, whoever is calling the shots for him, to get the case to the jury as soon as possible before the prosecution finds a witness with some first-hand evidence against Gigante. Only Peter Savino, the prosecution's final witness, has given direct testimony that actually linked Gigante to any of the crimes with which he is charged. All told, Gigante, 69, is accused of ordering seven gangland-style slayings, taking part in three unsuccessful murder plots, and labor racketeering.

But Gigante could still go down. There is enough second-hand evidence to convict if the jury is so inclined. And if his lawyers try to portray him as a man who's been crazy for the past 30 years, the government's case will only get better. At least one judge saw through his tired bathrobe act, and so will this jury, especially if it decides someone is trying to insult its collective intelligence. Then they could easily shift whatever dislike they've developed for some of the prosecution's witnesses to the defense team, and take it out on Gigante.

Gang Land - which thought before trial that Gigante was dead meat - now believes that the case is too close to call. A lot will depend on the final arguments and Weinstein's instructions to the jury, which could begin its deliberations as early as Wednesday.

We'll bring you our take on those and the jury's determination on the case of the Disheveled Don next week. Meanwhile, here are some unforgettable moments and some not-so unforgettable from the trial's 16 days of testimony.

• The battle of the wheelchairs. From his, Lucchese capo Peter (Fat Pete) Chiodo testified that he never met Gigante but had driven his bosses to a 1988 Commission meeting that Gigante attended and that they had told him that Gigante was the boss of the Genovese family, and a sane one, at that. From his, Gigante sat, looking around, seemingly uninterested and unaware of what was happening.
• The Sullivan Street Surveillance Shed. That's the one that detectives built on a Greenwich Village rooftop in the mid 1980s to better watch Gigante and his cohorts in the vicinity of his base of operations - the Triangle Social Club. The first day, the detectives saw Baldy Dom Canterino gesture to Gigante and point up at the shed. Next day, the detectives found the shed shattered on the sidewalk below.
• "It's our water." That's what smiling assistant U.S. attorney George Stamboulidis mouthed to FBI agents Matty Tricorico and Frank Spero as he carried a water pitcher to the witness stand seconds before superstar witness Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano arrived and began his testimony, as a way of assuring the very protective agents that no one was going to poison Gravano on their watch.
• Bulging Veins on Four FBI Red Necks. The ones that belonged to Tricorico, Spero, and agents George Gabriel and their supervisor, Bruce Mouw (left) - members of the squad that had turned Gravano in 1991 and convinced him to testify against Gigante even though he did not have to. This occurred at the end of Gravano's cross examination by the defense. After Gravano was made to listen to a psychological evaluation that ripped him as manipulative, egotistical and deceitful, assistant U.S. attorney Andrew Weissmann - who hadn't warned Gravano that the defense had obtained it - failed to request a short break so Gravano could compose himself. A few minutes later, as Gravano left the courtroom, and Gang Land could see more than the backs of the agents' necks, it was apparent that if looks could kill, Weissmann would have fallen down dead. That would have made him No. 20, or something like that - for Gravano, and No. 1, for the four FBI guys who had the same look in their eyes as Gravano.
• The Disingenuous Daughters. Karen and Laura Garofalo and Cindy DiBernardo, daughters of two murder victims killed on John Gotti's orders, sitting in the first row of the spectator section assigned to the members of the Gigante family right next to the Rev. Louis Gigante (right) as Gravano took the witness stand. They have nothing against Gotti, but they hate Gravano, who wrote a book about his life of crime and has earned money they believe they deserve.
• Dear Sammy. The salutation from author Peter Maas on a letter introduced into evidence along with other documents that put the lie to Maas' claims that he never gave Gravano (below, right) any money for his help in writing "Underboss," the book about Gravano's life. The men shared $850,000, and, according to the documents, Maas's literary agent funnelled Gravano his share.
• Hard Boiled Benny Eggs. "What do you want to do? Shoot me? Shoot me, but I'm not going to answer any questions. I'm tired of these charades," said 76-year old Genovese underboss Benny Eggs Mangano when he was called as a prosecution witness on Friday. In those and other pretty explicit terms, Mangano, who still has nine more years to serve for a 1991 extortion conviction, told prosecutors to shove it when they gave him immunity and tried to force him to testify against Gigante. Mangano, from the old school, refused even to concede his nickname, which he got because his mother owned an egg store around the turn of the century.

ASK ANDY

THIS week, Andy answers a query from Afshin David Youssefyeh, who wants to know, "What is the famous commission case?"

"The 'famous Commission Case,' was one of the most significant legal blows against La Cosa Nostra in the nearly 100 years it has existed in the United States," says Andy. "This success was made possible when Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) in 1970 - legislation which gave the authorities a tool to really attack La Cosa Nostra.

"In very basic terms, in a RICO case, the government has to prove there was a criminal organization (enterprise) and that persons associated with this organization were engaged in a "pattern of racketeering activity," that is, they committed at least two serious crimes within a 15 year period. One crime must be within five years of the filing of the indictment. (In the ongoing Gigante trial, for example, for the government to win a conviction, it must prove that Gigante committed at least one of several crimes - called "predicate acts" - that he is accused of committing between June, 1988 and June, 1993, when the latest of two racketeering indictments was filed. The second predicate act can be anytime from 1978 to 1993.) The boss of this "enterprise" could thus be convicted of directing a criminal organization even though he did not directly participate in any of the crimes. The RICO statute stripped away the layers of insulation that had formerly protected the hierarchy of the families.

"The Commission was a type of board of directors of LCN. It came into existence in 1931 and its main function was to set policy and arbitrate disputes that arose between the more than 20 LCN families across the country. In the early 1980's, federal prosecutors decided to attack family leaders for their participation in the activities of the Commission. On February 26, 1985 the authorities unsealed the Commission indictment. The defendants included the bosses of the Bonanno, Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese and Colombo crime families. In addition, three underbosses and a consigliere were included for representing their respective families at Commission meetings. A capo and a soldier were charged for carrying out Commission orders.

"All of the family leaders - save Paul Castellano, (right) who had been killed a year earlier and Bonanno boss Philip (Rusty) Rastelli, who was severed from the case - were found guilty in November of 1986 and later sentenced to 100 year prison terms. A Bonanno soldier convicted of killing former Bonanno boss Carmine Galante for the Commission, got 40 years. Combined with the assaults on the families, this case was disastrous for La Cosa Nostra. It created a power vacuum which led to a serious breakdown in discipline, open warfare and many turncoats. While not the only factor in the successful attack on La Cosa Nostra, the Commission Trial was certainly a milestone.

"For those interested in a much more detailed look at these events I strongly recommend the book "BUSTING THE MOB" by Jacobs."

This Week in Gang Land will be published next on Tuesday, July 29, assuming that the Gigante trial has concluded by then.

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