Toronto-area shooting victim was named in Italian Mafia warrants

The victim of a brazen shooting in the parking lot of a Woodbridge, Ont. café was wanted in Italy for his links to the Mafia.

Carmine Verduci, 56, was a well-known player in organized crime groups in the Toronto area, multiple sources have told CTV Toronto.

Officers who were called to the scene on Regina Road found the body of the male victim at approximately 2 p.m. on Thursday.

York Regional Police said it was unclear whether the man was at the café or leaving the business at the time of the shooting.

Police are looking for two male suspects seen fleeing the scene of the shooting in a grey compact car that may have been a Honda Civic. One of the men is white, short and slim, and was wearing a black or grey hoodie and dark coloured baggy pants at the time of the shooting. Police have only said that the other suspect is a white male.

Authorities said there were several witnesses in the area at the time of the shooting, and asked anyone with information to contact the homicide unit at 1-866-876-5423, ext. 7865, or email homicide@yrp.ca. Witnesses can call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-222-TIPS, leave an anonymous tip online, or text YORK and a tip to 274637 (CRIMES).

Mafia ties in Ontario

The victim's identity was confirmed by a police statement, but they have not mentioned his alleged Mafia ties.

However, Verduci was one of eight Canadians named on a warrant from the Italian authorities charging him with Mafia links in March. The men were named as part of Operazione Il Crimine, or Operation Crimini.

Italian police alleged that Verduci is associated with the Calabrian mob called 'ndrangheta. The warrant said that he was heard speaking with the gang leader Giuseppe Commisso during a wiretap in 2009.

The organization is based in Siderno, in the Calabria region of Italy, and is accused of drug trafficking, extortion and money laundering.

The warrant also named seven men living in Thunder Bay, Ont.: 65-year-old Giuseppe Bruzzese, 54-year-old Cosimo Cirillo, 74-year-old Cosimo Etreni, 65-year-old Rocco Etreni, 70-year-old Antonio Minnella, 59-year-old Rocco Minnella and 61-year-old Vito Minnella.

Legally, the men cannot be extradited or deported for charges that are not offences under Canadian law.

Canadian law does not make membership to criminal organizations a crime, so prosecutors must prove a member's actions helped the organization commit an indictable offence.

Organized crime expert James Dubro says Verduci’s murder is likely tied to the sudden passing of mob kingpin Vito Rizzuto, who died in December of natural causes.

Rizzuto’s death, Dubro said, left a power vacuum, which has in turn caused a deadly turf war in Montreal’s criminal underworld.

“There’s a lot up for grabs in the old Mafia world here in Canada, which has been around for a hundred years,” Dubro told CTV News. “But we don’t really have strong leadership right now

Feds: Credit Card Fraud Boss Threatened Rival Would Be ‘Cut Into Pieces’

CHICAGO (STMW) – The alleged Chicago boss of an international credit card fraud racket has ties to organized crime in Bulgaria, kidnapped a man in Chicago and robbed him of $800,000, ordered a beating and warned a rival would be “cut into pieces,” feds say.

And Gheorgui “Mitsubishi” Martov, 39, of Schiller Park, admitted as much when he was arrested last month, prosecutors allege in a recent court filing.

Indicted alongside 16 co-defendants on March 26, Martov is charged with overseeing the U.S. wing of a massive ATM fraud scheme headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria. Prosecutors accused him last month of dishing out credit card numbers that were stolen in Europe to lower level gang members who then made hundreds of fraudulent ATM withdrawals in the Chicago area using phony duplicate cards.

But allegations contained in court papers filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office Wednesday go far beyond mere financial fraud — painting him as a figure every bit as dangerous as Chicago’s Outfit.

Martov — a playboy who gambling websites show enjoyed success in high-stakes poker games — was seen meeting during what he claims was a “family vacation” with known leaders of the Bulgarian underworld at a Sofia hotel in 2012, the papers state.

And in a secretly recorded call in 2011, Martov told a government informant that he had ordered associates in Bulgaria to attack a man who owed him money, it’s alleged. Martov even played a recording of a call in which the victim described the beating he suffered, the feds say.

In another secretly recorded 2011 call, Martov allegedly said that another victim would be “cut into pieces” the moment he got back to Bulgaria.

Then, in 2012, in a third recorded conversation, Martov told an informant that he and another defendant, Radoslav Pavlov, had kidnapped someone in Chicago and made him take him to $800,000 that had been stolen from organized crime figures, it’s alleged.

Following his arrest last month, “Martov admitted that he and Pavlov had committed the kidnapping and robbery” and that he’d met with the underworld figures in Bulgaria in 2012, the feds say.

The FBI seized 13 guns from his home and estimates that Martov was helping the gang make $200,000 a week from the credit card scam. Martov has a Vicodin addiction and was branching out into marijuana dealing at the time of his arrest, it’s alleged.

The new allegations were made by prosecutors in a successful bid to prevent Martov from being freed on bond while he awaits trial.

Martov’s attorney, Tania Dimitrova, noted on Thursday that Martov has not been charged with any violent crime, adding that the new claims were “completely inaccurate” and were not supported by any evidence.

She pointed out that the government had retracted an earlier allegation that Martov traveled overseas on another man’s passport and said Martov’s legal team “needs time” to disprove the latest allegations.

Italy’s Mob Extends Reach in Europe

By JIM YARDLEYAPRIL 24, 2014

ROME — The small businesses were sprinkled throughout the Italian capital: One restaurant was only a few blocks from the Senate. A cafe was at the edge of the upscale diplomatic district, while a gelato shop was near the Pantheon. There was even a hotel not far from the hilltop statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italy’s unification.

In a city where government and tourism are engines of the local economy, these storefront businesses seemed typical until a police crackdown exposed them as money-laundering fronts for mob organizations based in southern Italy. During January and February alone, Italian officials seized 51 million euros, or about $70 million, in mob properties and other assets in Rome, providing a small glimpse of the legal business interests that southern clans control in the capital.

The crackdown in Rome exposed just a small corner of what officials describe as a mob economy that has rapidly expanded across Europe. In an era of austerity, with Italy awash in debt and struggling to recover, organized crime groups are sitting on mountains of cash. They have taken advantage of the economic crisis to accelerate their infiltration of legitimate businesses outside their southern Italian strongholds and now control commercial interests in Rome and Milan, as well as in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, Spain and beyond.

 “For the last 20 years, they have a lot of liquidity,” said Michele Prestipino, the prosecutor who oversaw the recent crackdown and seizures in Rome. “This is a problem today. They have too much money. They can’t invest it all. It is the opposite of what happens to regular entrepreneurs.”

If Europe once thought of organized crime families as largely an Italian problem — and if many Italians thought the problem was mostly confined to the south — the breadth of their assets across the Continent is forcing a reappraisal. In February, the European Parliament passed a new directive making it easier for national authorities to confiscate criminal assets, in response to evidence that organized crime groups have gobbled up properties and companies across Europe.

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Experts say Europe must introduce tough organized crime laws, like those that already exist in Italy, and expand law enforcement efforts. Some say the same focus that is applied to fighting terrorism should be applied to confronting organized crime. Besides Italian mob groups, experts say, other criminal organizations, including ones from Albania, China and Russia, are also moving into legal business sectors in Europe.

“Democracies underestimate the fight against the Mafia,” said Giuseppe Lumia, a senator and member of Italy’s Anti-Mafia Commission. “Mafias have become global. They do business, and do money laundering, between countries. But the anti-Mafia agencies are national and local.”

Determining how much cash Italy’s mob organizations turn over in a single year from illegal activities is extremely difficult, with estimates varying widely, from about €10 billion, or about $14 billion, to as high as €220 billion, or about $304 billion. One of Italy’s largest business associations, Confesercenti, has estimated that organized crime accounts for roughly €130 billion, or about $180 billion, in annual turnover — about 7 percent of Italy’s gross domestic product. Confesercenti also estimated that the organized crime groups had roughly €65 billion, or about $90 billion, in cash reserves.

 “They have amounts of money that are incredible,” said David Ellero, a specialist in Italian organized crime at Europol, the European law enforcement agency. “In some investigations, the flows of cash were so conspicuous that rather than counting it, it was being weighed on scales.”

The richest organized crime family is believed to be the ’Ndrangheta, (pronounced n-DRANG-gay-tah) a group from the Calabria region that now controls much of Europe’s cocaine trade. Analysts say the ’Ndrangheta is active in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. The other two main organizations are the Camorra, the clans based in the Naples area, which are especially powerful in southern Spain; and the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mob families depicted in “The Godfather,” which are active across Europe.

In their home regions, Italy’s organized crime groups often operate as shadow states, infiltrating local politics while controlling territory through intimidation and violence. Analysts say this local dominance explains why the organizations are heavily involved in sectors such as construction, mining, waste management and transportation, where their political influence allows them to steer government contracts to their favored firms.

In northern Italy and in other European countries, mob groups operate far less conspicuously, analysts say, especially since they lack the same level of political or territorial influence. But a report presented recently to European Union officials concluded that mob tentacles were nearly everywhere: hotels, nightclubs, real estate, gambling, construction, retail gasoline sales, wholesaling of clothing and jewelry, food processing, health care, renewable energy and more.

“They have specific preferences for certain sectors,” said Michele Riccardi, a researcher at Transcrime, the research institute in Milan that compiled the report presented to the European Union. “These are the sectors that seem more vulnerable and the regulations are looser.”

Italy has Europe’s toughest anti-mob statutes, which is one reason many organized crime families have pushed into other European countries. Germany has become an especially prominent case.

Gendarmes during a court appearance by Antonio Lo Russo, suspected of being a mob leader, in Aix-en-Provence, France. Credit Boris Horvat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Italian migrants began pouring into Germany in the 1950s, including many from Calabria, home of the ’Ndrangheta. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, analysts say wiretaps detected a mob boss in Italy ordering a lieutenant to get into East Germany immediately and “buy everything.”

This month, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel wrote about a trial in Cologne in which investigators have accused mobsters linked to the Cosa Nostra of bilking the state of millions of euros by issuing fake invoices from shell construction companies. German officials say the presence of organized crime poses a threat to the country’s building sector.

The magazine cited a confidential overview by the Federal Criminal Police Office that criticized the German government for failing to detect the assets of organized crime groups. The overview found that Italian crime groups had earned about €123 million, roughly $170 million, in Germany during the past decade, yet prosecutors had confiscated just €8 million, or about $11 million, from them.

The police report found that while the Cosa Nostra had infiltrated the construction sector, the Camorra was peddling counterfeit consumer goods and the ’Ndrangheta was selling adulterated olive oil and other foodstuffs. Mobsters controlled at least 300 pizzerias in Germany, it said, and were using these businesses to enter the legitimate economy.

While Germany and other European Union countries once denied the existence of a problem, awareness has begun to rise. In February, the Italian and German authorities carried out a joint operation against the Cosa Nostra and arrested more than a dozen suspects in both countries who are accused of stealing millions of euros in European Union farm subsidies. This month, the Italian and French police collaborated in the arrest of a Camorra boss in Nice, France.

Two years ago, the European Union set up an anti-Mafia commission, while Europol recognized in 2011 that it had an “intelligence gap” about mob activities. It commissioned a broad survey, released last year, which noted that mob groups were particularly threatening in legal business sectors because they “can afford to operate ‘at a loss,’ creating in the long run a situation of quasi-monopoly that undermines the basic principles of free market.”

Even within Italy, however, many people continue to regard organized crime as a southern problem. When the writer Roberto Saviano, known for his work exposing the activities of organized crime groups, used a 2010 television program to speak out about mob infiltration in the north, the Milan-based newspaper Il Giornale responded with an online petition drive against him titled, “Dear Saviano, the North is not Mafioso.”

“Criminal organizations are all in Rome and up north,” Mr. Saviano said in a recent interview. “In the south, their presence is like a military presence. In Rome and the north, it is economic presence.”

Mob groups have long been a quiet presence in Rome, with shopkeepers complaining of having to pay extortion money, known as pizzo, but the recent crackdown showed how organized crime groups are now directly investing in city businesses. Among the 23 restaurants and pizzerias seized in January was Pizza Ciro, part of one of the most popular pizza chains in the city.

“It has nothing to do with cash being in the register at the end of the day,” said Enrico Fontana, director of Libera, an umbrella group of anti-mob associations around Italy. “It is for money laundering.”

Mr. Prestipino, the prosecutor, agreed that money laundering was important but added that the crime bosses are also looking for ways to create channels of access to political leaders. He said no politician can meet directly with a mob boss, but by investing in businesses, organized crime groups can cultivate a network of white-collar entrepreneurs in Rome who can deal openly with politicians and civil servants.

“It is a system that has all advantages,” Mr. Prestipino said. “The businessman gets the economic advantages. The Mafioso doesn’t have to come to Rome. And the politician doesn’t have to get his hands dirty.

Times are so tough in Italy that Mafiosi are considering getting jobs

Michael Day

Changing attitudes and a lingering economic crisis are hitting the Mafia where it hurts, say law enforcement authorities in Palermo, where a mob boss has been secretly recorded complaining about the collapse of extortion rackets.

Video cameras have shown jailed Cosa Nostra boss Giovanni Di Giacomo, lamenting that these days his men are only able to get a “miserable”,  €5,000 to €7,000 a month from hotels and businesses that he targets. He added that with so many establishments closing down, and so many people refusing to pay and instead calling the police, it “might not be worth the bother”.

Even more remarkably, Di Giacomo, a senior figure in the powerful Porta Nuova clan, suggested the situation was so grim for mobsters seeking to earn a dishonest living that it might be better for some struggling young clan members to “get a real job” instead.

A year-long probe led by Palermo prosecutors Francesca Mazzocco and Caterina Malagoli has observed Di Giacomo, in a prison in Parma in northern Italy, continually addressing economic concerns with jailed colleagues and in written correspondence as he tries to get a grip on the organisation’s finances.

“Guaranteeing support for the families of those behind bars and their earnings had become an obsession for the bosses. It’s the only way to assert their leadership and maintain the cohesion of the organisation,” Captain Piero Iannotti, of the Palermo Carabinieri, told La Repubblica.

Di Giacomo was also caught railing against the governor of Sicily, Rosario Crocetta, and in particular his spending review for the cash-strapped island region. “Crocetta, fuck, what a disaster he’s caused. He’s cutting everywhere,” he said.

Mr Crocetta has a reputation as an ardent opponent of Cosa Nostra, unlike some of his predecessors who have been accused and, in some cases, convicted of Mafia association. “Hotels are closing, changing management, there’s no longer the work, the building sites,” the mobster was overheard telling an associate.

Di Giacomo said he was planning to ruin the business of the celebrated Palermo chef Natale Giunta, who refused to pay protection money – and whose evidence sent several mobsters to jail.  The anti-racket organisation AddioPizzo was also to be the target of “some pranks” according to the conversation overheard by investigators

His comments follow news last year that Cosa Nostra’s own “spending review” was causing serious discontent within the organisation. The axe was thought to have fallen on hand-outs to junior mobsters, family members and hangers-on.

It was reported that only the big Mafia bosses were being spared the mob social security cuts. Those worst affected have been the relatives of jailed mobsters, prompting their wives and girlfriends to lead the backlash.

At the start of the recession it was predicted that organised crime in Italy might prosper from the economic downturn, with the likelihood that businesses caught in the credit crunch would be forced to accept offers of finance from underworld sources.

These developments, however, and claims of collapsing extortion rackets, suggest mobsters relying on old-school methods of making money are being hit hard by the drawn-out recession.

Reputed mob associate, cattle rancher to be sentenced

A reputed New England mob associate who lived as a cattle rancher in Idaho under an alias for more than a decade before he was caught and convicted of several crimes should spend 40 years in prison, federal prosecutors said in a sentencing recommendation.

Enrico Ponzo, 45, is scheduled to be sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston after his conviction in November on a string of federal charges, including the attempted murder of a man who became the boss of the New England Mafia.

Ponzo was an active participant in the violent Mafia power struggles during the 1980s and 1990s, prosecutors said.

“The reign of terror imposed on the city of Boston by Ponzo, his confederates, and their enemies during the shooting war impacted the lives of everyone who lived here,” and was motivated by greed for status, power and money, prosecutors wrote, according to The Boston Globe.

They described Ponzo as a “vicious, violent, cold-blooded criminal.”

Ponzo, representing himself, requested a sentence of 15 years or fewer. He said he lived a “hardworking, selfless life in Idaho from 2000 through 2011 as a stay-at-home dad, cattle rancher, and elected community volunteer.”

A jury found Ponzo responsible for the attempted murder in June 1989 of Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, who was shot by masked men outside a suburban Boston pancake house. Salemme survived and later became head of the New England mob. Ponzo was acquitted of some charges, including two killings and four other attempted murders.

Ponzo fled Boston to Arizona in 1994 and wasn’t captured until 2011, when authorities found him in Marsing, Idaho, where he ran a small ranch and used an alias.

Russian businessman sues nonprofit for including him in Mafia card deck

BY BARBARA ROSS

A wealthy Russian entrepreneur is accusing a Manhattan nonprofit research organization of defaming him by including him in a deck of cards that features Russian mobsters.

Victor Remsha, CEO and founder of Finam, a Moscow-based investment conglomerate, says the Institute for Russian Research was wrong to make him their queen of spades and to accuse him on the card of laundering money for Russian gangsters, according to his Manhattan Supreme Court suit.

The cards were sold on Amazon and posted on a website called RussianMafiaCards.com.

The cards contained pictures and brief descriptions of alleged gangsters.

The Mob In Connecticut: Grasso's Reign Of Terror

By EDMUND H. MAHONY, emahony@courant.comThe Hartford Courant

HARTFORD — Not many people would consider a 10-year prison sentence a solid career move. But William P. Grasso wasn't like most people.

In 1968 he was running dice games and hustling street loans for Ralph "Whitey" Tropiano, a mafia soldier from New York who had returned to his old hometown, New Haven. They bought a garbage truck and planned to corner the suburban trash market.

Always angry, even then, Grasso gathered together members of the Bridgeport Independent Refuse Collectors Association and, according to prosecution evidence, laid down the law: If you compete, we will "equip trucks with enough muscle and send them into Bridgeport." There will be "arms broke" and bodies "in the river," the independent haulers were told.Gambino Crime Family . Grasso was indicted for extortion and conspiracy. For the first and only time in his life, at 40, he was convicted of a crime that carried a prison sentence. He was shuttled off to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta for 10 years.His cellmate was Raymond L.S. Patriarca, the snarling, Depression-era bootlegger who built his Patriarca crime family into the most powerful criminal organization in New England.

"Best thing that ever happened to me," Grasso later told an associate, "was when they sent me to Atlanta."

Grasso arrived in Atlanta as just another wiseguy from New England. He left as protégé and successor to one of the country's most powerful criminals. Unwittingly, the Department of Justice made allies of two remarkably successful, reflexively brutal criminals, one at the top and one on the way up. For a time, the alliance would change the face of crime in Connecticut.

Patriarca had been a force across New England for years. Through his army of killers he controlled everything illegal — and a lot that was legal — from New Haven to Bangor.

Listening in the early 1960s through an illegal microphone planted in Patriarca's Providence office, FBI agents heard talk of the crime boss and former Gov. John Notte sharing bribes from parties trying to add race dates at Rhode Island's horse tracks. They learned that Patriarca was charging recording industry executives for airtime on New England radio stations. Insurance executives complained to "the Office" about auto theft.

And the agents heard Patriarca resolve routine problems.

"Put 'em in the hospital," he snarled. Over and over.

Grasso had always been a sputtering, spitting, seething cauldron of rage himself. His nickname was "The Wild Guy." Police records show his first arrest, in 1951, was for a petty assault. But it wasn't until his release from Atlanta in 1973 that he broke out of the limited role of rough New Haven thug. Terrifying long-established criminals, he seized big chunks of Connecticut and pushed into Western Massachusetts for the Patriarca family.

When Patriarca died of a heart attack in 1984, he was succeeded by his son, Raymond "Junior" Patriarca. Grasso, established as a criminal force of his own, became the family underboss, or second in command. But, FBI agents and mob associates regarded Grasso as the de facto boss, eclipsing the weak and retiring younger Patriarca.

Grasso operated in Boston and Providence through subordinates. But he was a hands-on boss on his own turf in Connecticut — until his own men, broken financially by his greed and terrified he would one day come gunning for them, turned on him.

But between his release from prison and his death in what became a civil war within the crime family, Grasso's elusiveness, his secrecy and his ability to shed surveillance made him an obsession of the FBI. The bureau never got him.

Studiously Understated

Only one photograph of Grasso is generally available. He was born on Jan. 6, 1927. He was he was 5-foot-8, weighed 185 pounds, had black hair, brown eyes and what the FBI called an "olive complexion."

He was studiously understated. He lived in a modest ranch on a quiet cul-de-sac in New Haven. He bought clothing at Kmart. A smart aleck said his shoes looked as if they were made of cardboard.

He regularly drove 50 miles to make a telephone call. It was always a local call, from a pay phone, to thwart FBI wiretaps. Driving from his home in New Haven to Hartford, he often pulled off the highway and parked for extended periods, just to see who might be following.

He once tossed a copy of The Courant, with an article about his counter-surveillance techniques, at one of his underlings and, according to the underling, crowed, "See? They can't catch me."

In Hartford, those who recognized Grasso could see him in the Italian restaurants and cafes that once lined Franklin Avenue. He opened his own, Franco's, for his girlfriend. When Grasso had the place, it was the best restaurant in town. The cook, for whom the restaurant was named, once was jailed for lying to a grand jury investigating Patriarca family activities in Hartford.

Wherever he was, associates of Grasso said he dominated those around him with his fury. He terrorized and petrified his mob underlings.

They hated his greed, yet handed over half of whatever they made from running card and dice games, putting loans on the street at exorbitant rates, from insurance scams or simply from stealing. To do otherwise could be fatal, according to John F. "Sonny" Castagna, a Hartford gangster who died in September in Florida, where he had been relocated under the Justice Department's witness relocation program.

Grasso used to kill time at Castagna's apartment on Adelaide Street in Hartford on Sunday afternoons. The two would sit in silence and stare at televised football games because Grasso refused to discuss business indoors for fear of hidden government microphones.

"He'd ruin my whole day and make me miserable," Castagna told The Courant last year. "Cause you couldn't smoke when he was around, you couldn't eat when you wanted to eat, couldn't have a drink if you wanted to have a drink cause he was a health fanatic. Anyway, that's the way it went with him for like two years with him every Sunday."

Sometimes, Castagna said, Grasso ordered his girlfriend to deliver plates of food. It had to be unsalted and if the slightest thing were out of place, if tomatoes were not sliced the way he liked them sliced, Grasso might erupt.

"Someone would bring the food, macaroni, and we would eat macaroni," Castagna said. "And he'd start screaming. 'You moron. Cut the tomatoes. Don't think until I tell you to think.' "

Outside, Castagna said, Grasso was less inhibited. Still, the camera the FBI put on a pole near Castagna's front door produced nothing to incriminate the underboss.

Testifying in federal court in the early 1990s, Castagna called Grasso a "real gangster," as opposed to the pale imitations then sashaying along the avenue.

"That means you had to do what he told you to do," Castagna said. "He had a big ego. He treated everybody harshly. Old women. Kids. Everybody. He would threaten people over money, anything. It depended on how he felt when he woke up. If he was in a good mood, he would be all right. If he wasn't, he'd be nuts."

It was widely believed that to fight back was fatal. A young Hartford boxer who clipped Grasso on the face during a misunderstanding in front of Franco's was shot dead within weeks.

While he was living in Florida, Castagna recalled a weekend in Hartford when Grasso's appendix burst as he relaxed with his girlfriend. Grasso telephoned one of his soldiers, Louis Failla, with orders to drive him to the hospital. Failla jumped into his midnight blue Cadillac. Grasso survived. Failla returned the following day with flowers.

As Castagna told the story:

"And Billy says, 'Hey Louie, don't you come here to see me no more. You didn't save my life. The doctor saved my life. Just stay away from this hospital. You didn't do nothing for me. I'm not obligated to you for nothing.'

"Louis always said, 'Geez. I wish I had a flat tire on the way over to pick him up.' "

Criminal Against Criminal

Not long after Grasso's return to Connecticut from prison, criminals whose interests overlapped those of the Patriarca family in Connecticut and Western Massachusetts began getting gunned down or blown up or they just disappeared.

In late 1974, just released from a sentence of his own, John "Slew" Palmieri, a member of New York's Gambino crime family, returned to New Haven to flex his muscles. He was vaporized by a car bomb.

Five years later, three more gangsters died or vanished within 10 months.

The first to go, in June 1979, was Salvatore Annunziato, a boxer better known to many by his ring name, Midgie Renault. Midgie was short for Midget. Annunziato stood a little over 5 feet tall and weighed 110 when he fought. Annunziato was affiliated with New York's Genovese crime family, lived in New Haven and was said by the FBI to be closely connected to local labor unions. He spent most of his time getting drunk and starting fights.

His family said Annunziato got into "a big car" with some friends and never returned. A close associate of Grasso said recently, on the condition that he not be named, that Annunziato got drunk and stuck up one of Grasso's card games.

Thomas "Tommy the Blond" Vestano was shot in his backyard in Stratford in January 1980. He was said by the FBI to be affiliated with the Genovese crime family's gambling operations in Connecticut.

Grasso's old mentor, Tropiano, was next, early in April 1980. Tropiano, affiliated with New York's Colombo crime family, had been convicted with Grasso of extortion. After his release, he was said to be considering a return to business. He was in New York, walking along a Brooklyn sidewalk in broad daylight, when he was cut down by gunfire from a passing car.

"Why do we go for years and years in Connecticut without a hit and now … ?" an FBI agent in New Haven asked when Tropiano became the third Connecticut gangster to die or disappear in less than a year.

But there was more. Frank Piccolo, known for his attempt to blackmail entertainer Wayne Newton, was gunned down in Bridgeport in September 1981. Piccolo, a member of New York's Gambino crime family, was caught in a phone booth.

An FBI affidavit, citing informant information, said that "since the disappearance of Salvatore Annunziato and the gangland murders of Ralph "Whitey" Tropiano and Frank Piccolo, Grasso has been able to absorb a number of the interests of the deceased (or missing) individuals." Grasso was not charged in any of the deaths.

Consolidating Power

With southern Connecticut under control, Grasso moved north, according to the FBI and Grasso associates. Hartford had by tradition been an open city, meaning rival mobs were free to operate without fear or favor of anyone but the law. Grasso stopped that.

Right off the bat, he slapped a local wiseguy in the face at the Casa Mia restaurant and chased him down Franklin Avenue for holding back part of a $2,000 gambling score, a witness told The Courant. Next, Grasso informed Tony Volpe, the Hartford tough guy friendly with the Genovese family crew in Springfield, that Volpe was henceforth retired.

Grasso put a crew of guys in charge of running card and dice games and lending money in the back rooms of the restaurants and cafes along Franklin Avenue. He did the same in New Britain. He demanded a cut of anything his crew made, anywhere in New England.

From New Britain to Rhode Island, Grasso "lined up" bookmaking offices, meaning everyone now worked for him and owed him a percentage of whatever they earned. There was testimony in court in Hartford in the early 1990s that Grasso was collecting millions of dollars a week from bookmakers in eastern Connecticut alone.

Grasso looked next to Springfield, solidly under the control of Genovese capo Frank "Skyballs" Scibelli. Grasso "bought" Castagna by paying off a loan-shark debt Castagna owed Scibelli, Castagna later testified. Grasso recruited Springfield loyalist and East Hartford area restaurateur William "The Hot Dog" Grant, who owned Augie and Ray's on Silver Lane.

He recruited and swore in a new Patriarca family soldier from Springfield. Two associates who knew Grasso well said he did it to spite the Springfield Genovese crew.

A Sanctuary For Fugitives

Back in Connecticut, Grasso was running a sanctuary for fugitive gangsters. According to FBI sources and others, he had a man inside the state Department of Motor Vehicles who could fabricate phony identifications. Grant, whom Grasso had put in charge of much of the gambling in Hartford, was able to arrange apartments from a principal in one of the state's largest real estate companies.

Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico, the Colombo crime family underboss, lived for years under Grasso's protection in a West Hartford apartment. A U.S. Marshals Service fugitive squad tracked him down in 1987. The marshals said Persico was startled when they crashed into his kitchen. He was making sauce.

Salvatore "Mickey" Caruana lived similarly in a Middletown apartment arranged by Grasso in the 1980s. He was the Patriarca family's principal marijuana smuggler and fled in 1983, following his indictment for distributing $173 million of marijuana.

Caruana disappeared for good around 1986, according to FBI agents and other sources.

Longtime organized crime investigators believe Caruana may have ended up in a secret grave Grasso had dug beneath a residential garage in Hamden. The investigators suspect Annunziato may have been buried there as well, although it is unlikely anyone will ever know for sure.

When an informant led the FBI to the garage in 1990, agents discovered that someone else got there first. The old graves had been unearthed, the big bones removed and a new concrete floor poured.

The owner of the garage was an ex-member of a gang of Irish bank robbers who set himself up in retirement as a locksmith. He said in court much later that that he believed he would have ended up beneath his garage if he hadn't cooperated with Grasso.

Grasso's luck ran out on June 13, 1989. Patriarca gangsters in Hartford, Springfield and Boston, convinced they were on Grasso's short list of victims, decided to strike first. The plot to kill him, outlined in prosecution papers and testimony in court, became part of a wider attempt by disgruntled Patriarca factions in Hartford and Boston to seize control of the family.

The Hartford crew got Grasso into a van on the pretext of a meeting in Worcester and one of the members shot him in the back of the neck. The same day, Grasso's right-hand man in Boston, Frank "Cadillac Frank" Salemme, was riddled with gunshots as he stepped out of the International House of Pancakes in Saugus. Salemme lived.

The revolt failed. Peace was made between rival factions in the family.

But it was too late for Grasso.

His killers dumped his body in a patch of poison ivy by the side of the Connecticut River in Wethersfield.