MOB TALK: Constantino “Big Paul” Castellano Gambino crime family

mobtalk247
Jun 28
13 min read

Born on June 26, 1915, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was American crime boss, who succeeded Carlo Gambino as head of the Gambino crime family, Constantino “Big Paul” Castellano. Many mafia lore enthusiasts just don’t realize the Castellano was born into the mafia. His father Giuseppe Castellano was a butcher & an early member of the Mangano crime family, the forerunner of the Gambino family. People like to pretend Castellano didn’t earn his button, but don’t let the business-savvy mobster fool you. He actually dropped out of school in the 8th grade to jump into the family business, learning butchering, as he collected numbers game receipts, both for his father.

In July 1934, Castellano was arrested for the 1st time in Hartford, Connecticut for robbing a haberdasher. The 19-year-old Castellano refused to identify his 2 accomplices to the police & served a 3-month prison sentence. By refusing to cooperate with authorities, Castellano enhanced his reputation for mob loyalty. Castellano's sister Catherine had married 1 of their cousins, future Mafia boss Carlo Gambino, in 1932. In 1937, Castellano married his childhood sweetheart Nina Manno; the couple had 3 sons (Paul, Philip, & Joseph Castellano) & a daughter, Constance Castellano; Manno died in 1999. Castellano often signed his name as "C. Paul Castellano" because he hated his 1st name, Constantino. His 1st name at birth has been cited as both Constantino & Costantino. In the 1940s, Castellano became a member of the Mangano family. He became a capo under boss Vince Mangano's successor, Albert Anastasia.

In 1957, after Anastasia's homicide & Carlo Gambino's elevation to boss, Castellano attended the abortive Apalachin meeting in Apalachin, New York. When New York State Police raided the meeting, Castellano was 1 of 61 high-ranking mobsters arrested. Refusing to answer grand jury questions about the meeting, Castellano spent a year in prison on contempt charges. On January 13, 1960, Castellano was sentenced to 5 years in prison for conspiracy to withhold information. But in November 1960, Castellano's conviction was reversed by an Appeals Court. Castellano identified more as a businessman than a hoodlum; he took over non-legitimate businesses & actually converted them into legitimate enterprises. But Castellano's businesses, & those of his sons, thrived from their mob ties. In his early years, Castellano used his butcher's training to launch Dial Poultry, a poultry distribution business that once supplied 300 butchers in New York City. Dial's customers also included supermarket chains Key Food & Waldbaum's. Castellano used intimidation tactics to force his customers to buy Dial's products.

As Castellano became more powerful in the Gambino family, he started to make large amounts of money from construction concrete. Castellano's son Philip was the president of Scara-Mix Concrete Corporation, which exercised a near monopoly on Staten Island on construction concrete. Castellano also handled the Gambino interests in the "Concrete Club," a club of contractors selected by The Commission to handle contracts between $2 million & $15 million. In return, the contractors gave a 2% kickback of the contract value to The Commission. Castellano also supervised Gambino control of Teamsters Union Local Chapter 282, which provided workers to pour concrete at all major building projects in New York & Long Island.

On October 15, 1976, Carlo Gambino died at home of natural causes. Against expectations, he had appointed his brother-in-law, Castellano to succeed him over his underboss Aniello "Neil" Dellacroce. Gambino appeared to believe that his crime family would benefit from Castellano's focus on white collar businesses. Dellacroce, at the time, was imprisoned for tax evasion & was unable to contest Castellano's succession. Castellano's succession was confirmed at a meeting on November 24, with Dellacroce present. Castellano arranged for Dellacroce to remain as underboss, while directly running traditional Cosa Nostra activities such as extortion, robbery, & loansharking. While Dellacroce accepted Castellano's succession, the deal effectively split the Gambino family into 2 rival factions.

In 1978, Castellano ordered the murder of Gambino associate Nicholas Scibetta. A cocaine & alcohol user, Scibetta participated in several public fights & insulted the daughter of George DeCicco. Since Scibetta was Salvatore "Sammy The Bull" Gravano's brother-in-law, Castellano asked Frank DeCicco to 1st notify Gravano of the impending hit. When advised of Scibetta's fate, a furious Gravano said he would kill Castellano 1st. But Gravano was eventually calmed by DeCicco & accepted Scibetta's death, as the punishment earned by his behavior. In 1978, Castellano ordered the murders of Gambino capo James Eppolito & his son, mobster James Eppolito Jr. Eppolito Sr. had complained to Castellano that Anthony “Nino” Gaggi was infringing on his territory & asked permission to kill him. Castellano gave Eppolitto a noncommittal answer, but later warned Gaggi about Eppolito's intentions. In response, Gaggi & soldier Roy DeMeo murdered Eppolito senior & junior.

In February 1978, Castellano made an agreement between the Gambino family & the Westies, an Irish-American gang from Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. Castellano wanted hitmen, that law enforcement could not tie directly to the Gambino family. The Westies wanted Gambino protection from the other Cosa Nostra families. The Gambino–Westie alliance was set in a meeting between Westies leader James Coonan & Castellano. According to Westies gangster Mickey Featherstone, Castellano gave them the following directive: “You guys got to stop acting like cowboys – acting wild. You're going to be with us now. If anyone is going to get killed, you have to clear it with us.”

Castellano also created an alliance with the Cherry Hill Gambinos, a group of Sicilian heroin importers & distributors in New Jersey, also for use as gunmen. With the Westies & the Cherry Hill Gambinos, Castellano commanded a small army of capable killers. In September 1980, Castellano ordered the murder of his former son-in-law Frank Amato. A hijacker & minor criminal, Amato had physically abused his wife Connie Castellano (Paul's daughter), when they were married. According to FBI documents, Gambino soldier Roy DeMeo murdered Amato, cut up his body, & disposed of the remains at sea. In 1981, Castellano met twice with Frank Perdue, the owner & commercial spokesman for Perdue Farms, who was the alleged cause of the 1975 Vito Borelli murder. Perdue wanted Castellano's help in thwarting a unionization drive at a Perdue facility in Virginia. But according to Perdue, the 2 men talked, but never agreed to anything. Castellano had Borelli murdered because he heard Borelli had compared him to Frank Perdue. Castellano was so insulted, he personally ordered the killing. In 2004, court documents revealed that Joseph Massino, a government witness & former Bonanno crime family boss, admitted murdering Borelli as a favor to Castellano.

Between late 1981 & early 1982, after the bosses Stefano Bontade & Salvatore Inzerillo killings, Castellano ordered John Gambino to save the life of their relatives. At the height of his power, Castellano built a lavish 17-room mansion on a Ridgeline, in Todt Hill on Staten Island. Designed to resemble the White House in Washington, D.C., Castellano's house featured Carrara marble, an Olympic-size swimming pool, & an English garden. He started a love affair with his live-in Colombian maid, Gloria Olarte. Castellano became a recluse, rarely venturing outside the mansion. Capos such as Daniel Marino, Thomas Gambino, & James Failla visited Castellano at Todt Hill, to provide information & receive orders. When not entertaining guests, Castellano wore satin & silk dressing gowns & velvet slippers around the house.

John Gotti, Dellacroce's former protégé, rapidly became dissatisfied with Castellano's leadership, regarding the new boss as being too isolated & greedy. Like other members of the family, Gotti also personally disliked Castellano. The boss lacked street credibility, & those who had paid their dues, running street level jobs, did not respect him. Gotti also had an economic interest: he had a running argument with Castellano, on the split Gotti took from hijackings at Kennedy Airport. Gotti was also rumored to be expanding into drug dealing, a lucrative trade Castellano had banned.

By 1982, the FBI was investigating the enormous number of missing & murdered persons who were linked to Roy DeMeo or who had been last seen entering his crew’s headquarters, the Gemini Lounge. In January 1983, Castellano ordered the murder of DeMeo. Around this time an FBI bug in the home of Gambino family capo Angelo “Quack-Quack” Ruggiero picked up a conversation between Ruggiero & Gene Gotti, a brother of John Gotti. In the conversation, it is discussed that Castellano had put out a hit on DeMeo, but was having difficulty finding someone willing to do the job. Gene Gotti mentions that his brother, John, was wary of taking the contract, as DeMeo had an "army of killers" around him. It is also mentioned in this same secretly recorded conversation that, at that time, John had killed fewer than 10 people, while DeMeo had killed 37, that they had known about. According to mob turncoat Sammy Gravano, eventually the contract was given to Frank DeCicco, but DeCicco & his crew could not get to DeMeo either. DeCicco handed the job to DeMeo's own men.

DeMeo's son Albert wrote that in his final days, DeMeo was paranoid & knew that he would be killed soon. In his final days, DeMeo was seen wearing a leather jacket, with a shotgun concealed underneath. DeMeo considered faking his own death, by having his son shoot him & laying low. On January 10, 1983, DeMeo went to crew member Patty Testa's house for a meeting with his men. That night, he failed to attend his daughter Dione's birthday party, which caused his family to be suspicious. Albert DeMeo later found Roy's personal belongings such as his watch, wallet, & ring in his study room, & a Catholic pamphlet. 10 days later, on January 20, DeMeo's Cadillac Coupe DeVille was discovered in the parking lot of the Veruna Boat Club in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. The car was towed to a nearby police station, where it was searched by Organized Crime Control Bureau detectives. DeMeo's partially frozen body was found in the trunk, with a chandelier on top of it. He had been shot multiple times in the head & had a bullet wound in his hand, assumed by law enforcement to be a reflexive defensive wound, caused when his killers opened fire on him.

The task force investigating the DeMeo crew theorized that DeMeo was set up in a similar manner to how Roy had set up his protégé, Chris Rosenberg, who had scheduled a drug deal with a Cuban man living in Florida & then murdered him & his associates, when they traveled to New York to complete the sale. The Cuban had connections with a Cuban drug cartel, raising the possibility of violence between the Gambino family & the Cubans unless Rosenberg was dealt with. On May 11, 1979, Rosenberg reported to the Gemini clubhouse for the crew's usual Friday night meeting. Shortly after his arrival, DeMeo quickly fired a single bullet into the unsuspecting Rosenberg's head. The usually ice-cold DeMeo hesitated, when the still-living Rosenberg managed to rise off the floor to 1 knee, but Anthony Senter then moved in & finished him off with 4 shots to the head. Unlike Grillo, Rosenberg's body was not dismembered or made to disappear. The Cubans had demanded that his murder make the newspapers. DeMeo's men placed Rosenberg's body in his car & left it on the side of Cross Bay Boulevard, near the Gateway National Wildlife Refuge in Broad Channel, Queens to be found. Albert DeMeo later recounted that Rosenberg's murder affected his father deeply, & that when DeMeo came home after the killing, he went into his study room & didn't come out for 2 days. After Rosenberg's murder, DeMeo spent 6 weeks hiding out with Guglielmo in a safe house near 42nd Street in Times Square, Manhattan, growing a full beard & disguising himself with a baseball cap & sunglasses when out in public.

Investigators believe Gaggi, Testa, & Senter were present when Roy DeMeo was killed. In April 1984, Colombo crime family soldier Ralph Scopo was overheard explaining to an associate that DeMeo had been killed by his own family, because they merely suspected that he would not be able to stand up to legal charges, which would have resulted from his stolen car ring. According to Scopo, Castellano also "had to put DeMeo away" because he "was crazy & had cast-iron balls". Albert DeMeo believed that his father was killed by members of his own crew as well. The FBI was able to obtained a warrant to install secret listening devices in Castellano's house, in March of 1983. Waiting until Castellano went on vacation to Florida, agents drugged his watch dogs, disabled his security system, & planted devices in the dining & living rooms. These devices provided law enforcement with a wealth of incriminating information on Castellano.

In August 1983, Angelo Ruggiero & Gene Gotti were arrested for dealing heroin, based primarily on recordings from the bug in Ruggiero's house. Castellano, who had banned made men from his family from dealing drugs under threat of death, demanded transcripts of the tapes, &, when Ruggiero refused, he threatened to demote Gotti. On March 30, 1984, Castellano was indicted on federal racketeering charges in the Gambino case, including the Eppolitto & DeMeo murders. Other charges were extortion, narcotics trafficking, theft, & prostitution. Castellano was released on $2 million bail. On February 25, 1985, Castellano was 1 of many Mafia bosses arrested on charges of racketeering, which was to result in the Mafia Commission Trial; he was released on $3 million bail. On July 1, 1985, Castellano was indicted on loansharking charges & with tax evasion for not reporting the profits from his illegal racket, & he pleaded not guilty. On November 4, 1985, in a testimony from car thief Vito Arena, Castellano was named the head of the stolen-car ring that employed him, as well as having been connected to 5 murders.

Neil Dellacroce died of cancer on December 2, 1985, starting a chain of events that led to Castellano's murder 2 weeks later. Several factors contributed to the conspiracy to kill Castellano; his failure to attend Dellacroce's wake was an insult to the Dellacroce family & his followers. Secondly, Castellano named his bodyguard Thomas “Tommy” Bilotti as the new underboss. A Castellano loyalist, Bilotti was a brutish loanshark, with little of the diplomatic skill required as underboss. Castellano also hinted that he was breaking up Gotti's crew. The biggest factor of all, was that Big Paul no longer had the DeMeo crew, his crazy viscous killers backing him up, & Nino Gaggi was in prison, this gave Gotti the push he needed to take down the vulnerable boss. Sammy Gravano suggested killing both Castellano & Bilotti, while they were eating breakfast at a diner. But when Frank DeCicco tipped Gotti off, that he would be having a meeting with Castellano & several other Gambino mobsters, at Sparks Steak House on December 16, Gotti & the other conspirators decided to kill him then.

On Monday, December 16, 1985, Bilotti drove Castellano to the prearranged early evening meeting at Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan, on East 46th Street near 3rd Avenue. A hit team (consisting of Salvatore Scala, Edward Lino, & John Carneglia) waited near the restaurant entrance; positioned down the street were backup shooters Dominick Pizzonia, Angelo Ruggiero, & Tony Rampino. Gotti watched the whole thing, as it went down, from a car across the street. As Castellano was exiting the car at the front of the restaurant at around 5:26 pm, the gunmen ran up & shot him several times. Supposedly, John Carneglia was the gunman who shot Castellano in the head. Bilotti, who was known around town as a bully, was shot as he exited from the driver's door; before leaving the murder scene, Gotti drove over to view the bodies. Castellano was buried in the Moravian Cemetery in the New Dorp section of Staten Island. The Archdiocese of New York refused to grant Castellano a Catholic funeral, citing his notorious life & death.

2 weeks after Castellano's murder, a meeting of capos in a Manhattan basement elected Gotti, age 45, as the new Gambino boss. The Castellano murder enraged Vincent Gigante, boss of the Genovese crime family, because Gotti never received permission for the act from the Commission. Gigante solicited the help of Lucchese crime family boss Anthony Corallo to kill Gotti. On April 13, 1986, a car bomb exploded outside a Bensonhurst social club, but the only casualty was Frank DeCicco. In June of 1989, the 3rd ranking member of New York's Genovese crime family, Louis “Bobby” Manna, who was reputed to be the most powerful member of the family in New Jersey, was convicted with Martin “Motts” Casella & Richard “Bocci” DeSciscio of plotting to kill Gotti & his brother Gene in a struggle for control of organized crime in the metropolitan area. The same 3 defendants were also found guilty of arranging the 1987 murder of Irwin Schiff, a New York businessman with connections to organized crime, & of racketeering. Frank “Dipsy” Daniello, a former Hoboken police officer, also was convicted of conspiracy in the plan to kill Gotti. 3 other men were convicted of racketeering & illegal gambling &, in 1 case, conspiracy. Between August 1987 & January 1988, the FBI recorded 12 conversations, in which Manna & other Genovese mobsters discussed murdering John Gotti, Gene Gotti, & New York contractor Irwin Schiff. While discussing the John Gotti murder, Manna advised the hitman to wear a disguise, as the target area was fairly open. On August 8, 1987, Schiff was shot in the head while dining in a Manhattan restaurant.

The 15-week trial included testimony describing the brutal tactics of the mob. Prosecutors made their case using the scratchy tape recordings & testimony by an informer & a woman who was with Schiff the night he was shot in the back of the head at the Bravo Sergio restaurant on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan, between 75th & 76th Streets. 2 others, Rocco J. Napoli & John Derrico, a cook at a restaurant owned by Casella, were charged in the plot on Gotti, but were acquitted. They were convicted of running a gambling operation, & Napoli, a business manager of Local 21 of the Laborers Union, was found guilty of extortion. On June 26, 1989, Manna was convicted of conspiring to murder the Gotti brother & Irwin Schiff in aid of racketeering. On September 26, 1989, Judge Maryanne Trump-Barry sentenced Manna to 80 years in federal prison. John Gotti himself was arrested by the FBI in late 1990 on racketeering charges & he was denied bail 10 days later. On April 2, 1992, with the help of Sammy Gravano becoming a government witness, Gotti was convicted of numerous racketeering charges, including the 1985 Castellano murder. On June 23, Gotti was sentenced to life in federal prison, where he died of throat cancer in 2002. Nobody else was ever charged in the Castellano murder.

Anthony Senter & Joseph Testa, better known as the Gemini twins, the former members of the Gambino’s DeMeo crew who later changed over to the Lucchese crime family, after eliminating crew leader Roy DeMeo for Paul Castellano, were found guilty of racketeering & 10 counts of murder & were each sentenced to life in federal prison on September 14, 1989. On June 22, 2022, Senter was granted parole by the United States Parole Commission (USPC) & was release on June 22, 2024. He was transferred from the United States Penitentiary, Canaan, Pennsylvania to a halfway house in New York in December 2023. In February 2024, the USPC also ordered the release of Testa, who was paroled on April 30, 2024. Currently, these 2 former cold-blooded killers walk amongst us after paying their debt to society. As a little side-note, Paul Castellano’s Staten Island mansion hit the market with a price tag of $18 million The grand estate, spans over 33,000 square feet & sits on 2.3 acres of landscaped grounds. Castellano built the 4-storey residence in 1980.