Vincent Gigante , Mafia Leader Who Feigned Insanity , Dies at 77
Vincent Gigante
vincent gigante mafia leader feign insanity die 77
<m> Vincent Gigante </m> , Mafia Leader Who Feigned Insanity , Dies at 77
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<m> Vincent Gigante </m> , Mafia Leader Who Feigned Insanity , Dies at 77
Published : December 19 , 2005
Vincent Gigante , who feigned mental illness for decades to camouflage his position as one of the nation's most influential and dangerous Mafia leaders , died today in federal prison in Springfield , Mo . , officials told The Associated Press .
He was 77 .
Mr . Gigante died while serving a 12 - year sentence imposed in 1997 after he was convicted of racketeering and conspiring to kill other mobsters .
Officials at the prison medical center where he died did not provide the cause of death but noted that he suffered from heart disease .
Mr . Gigante , whose nickname was "Chin , " painstakingly maintained the fiction that he was incompetent until April 2003 , when he appeared before Judge I . Leo Glasser in Federal District Court in Brooklyn and pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice .
Specifically , he acknowledged running a con on the legal system that delayed his racketeering trial from 1990 to 1997 while his sanity was being examined .
As part of the plea , three more years were added to his prison term , but he avoided a lengthy trial on the other charges , which amounted to an accusation - long denied or sidestepped by Mr . Gigante - that he headed the Genovese organized crime family .
His lawyer , Benjamin Brafman , offered the explanation that "I think you get to a point in life - I think everyone does - where you become too old and too sick and too tired to fight . "
For Mr . Gigante , the guise that he adopted in the mid - 1960's - behavior that won him the nickname Oddfather - took considerable effort to maintain .
He could often be seen shuffling around his Greenwich Village neighborhood in pajamas , bathrobe and slippers , mumbling to himself and appearing to be a disturbed but harmless person .
Law - enforcement agents , prosecutors and Mafia defectors described his behavior as a staged performance calculated to evade prosecution for his activities as head of a crime family that under his leadership became the wealthiest and most powerful in the nation .
Based on information from informers and electronic eavesdropping on gangsters , F . B . I . and New York City law - enforcement officials ranked Mr . Gigante as the pre - eminent Mafia leader in the early and mid - 1990's , and prosecutors identified him as the dominant force in the early 1990's inside the Commission , the Mafia's ruling body , which resolves significant disputes among the five major families in the New York region .
His reach , law - enforcement officials said , extended as well to Philadelphia and New England , where he exercised veto power over the appointments of mob bosses in those areas .
Salvatore Gravano , the No . 2 figure in the Gambino crime family before he defected in 1991 , testified that even Mr . Gigante's archrival , John Gotti , grudgingly acknowledged Mr . Gigante's craftiness .
"He's crazy like a fox , " Mr . Gravano quoted Mr . Gotti as saying of Mr . Gigante after a summit meeting of New York City mob leaders in 1988 .
Mr . Gotti was the boss of the Gambino family until his own imprisonment forced him to relinquish undisputed control in the late 1990's .
He , too , died in a prison hospital , of cancer in June 2002 .
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and federal and state prosecutors regarded Mr . Gigante as the most elusive Mafia leader of his era and the most difficult to bring to trial .
"He was probably the most clever organized - crime figure I have ever seen , " said John S . Pritchard 3rd , a former F . B . I . supervisor , who led a squad that investigated the Genovese family in the 1980's .
Disputing the government's contentions , Mr . Gigante's lawyers and relatives maintained that he had been mentally disabled since the late 1960's , with a below - normal I . Q . of 69 to 72 .
His defenders steadfastly denied that he was associated with the Mafia , asserting that it was ludicrous to believe that someone so mentally subpar was capable of heading a major crime organization .
The Rev . Louis Gigante , a Roman Catholic priest , former New York city councilman and a builder of low - income housing in the Bronx , characterized the relentless investigations of his older brother as persecution by agents and prosecutors who were biased against Italian - Americans .
Organized - crime experts and mob turncoats said that Mr . Gigante was apparently willing to humiliate himself publicly as the price for escaping the long prison sentences that were being meted out to other Mafia leaders .
According to federal and state investigators , each of the family's 200 "made" or inducted soldiers and about 1 , 000 associates - the name for others who voluntarily cooperate in illegal activities but who are not sworn members - were obligated to funnel part of their loot to Mr . Gigante , as much as $100 million a year in the early 1990's .
The family's fortune , the experts said , flowed largely from a vast network of bookmaking and loansharking rings and from extortions of construction companies in the New York City area seeking labor peace or sweetheart contracts from carpenters , teamsters and laborers' unions that were dominated by Mr . Gigante's lieutenants .
Mob deserters in the mid - 1990's testified in criminal and civil cases that the Genovese gang's other lucrative enterprises included the control of cartels that rigged bids and inflated prices in the private garbage - hauling industries of New York City and Westchester County ; kickbacks from shipping and trucking companies on the New Jersey waterfront in exchange for labor peace ; protection payoffs from merchants at the Fulton Fish Market ; and the control of many union jobs at the Jacob K . Javits Convention Center in Manhattan .
Mr . Gigante's influence even extended over the San Gennaro Street Festival in Little Italy until a 1995 crackdown by New York City officials and federal prosecutors resulted in allegations that the Genovese family operated gambling games at the festival , extorted payoffs from venders and pocketed thousands of dollars donated to a neighborhood church .
In the 1980's , after the authorities said Mr . Gigante had assumed undisputed command of the Genovese family , he conducted his activities in a starkly unorthodox fashion for a Mafia leader .
Most days , in the early evening , Mr . Gigante , a hulking man who was about six feet tall and weighed 200 pounds , would emerge from his mother's walkup apartment building on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village .
Sometimes dressed in a bathrobe and pajamas and sometimes wearing a windbreaker and shabby trousers and always accompanied by one or two bodyguards , he gingerly crossed the street to the Triangle Civic Improvement Association , a dingy storefront club that served as his headquarters .
Inside , he played pinochle and held whispered conversations with men who agents said were his trusted confederates .
After midnight , according to F . B . I . surveillance reports , he would be driven to a townhouse near Park Avenue at East 77th Street , that was owned by Olympia Esposito , who was characterized by Mr . Gigante's lawyers as his common - law wife and the mother of three of his eight children , Vincent , Lucia and Carmella Esposito .
F . B . I . agents , who in 1986 observed the townhouse from a nearby rooftop post , said that soon after arriving , Mr . Gigante would change into more elegant clothes , carry on conversations with associates , and read or watch television before retiring .
About 9 or 10 the next morning , he would reappear in his shabby downtown clothes and be driven back to Sullivan Street or a nearby apartment occupied by his relatives at 505 LaGuardia Place .
"It was hard to understand what enjoyment he got out of being a mob boss , " said Ronald Goldstock , the former director of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force .
"His only pleasure appeared to be the pure power he exercised . "
Vincent Gigante ( pronounced ji - GANT - tee ) was born on March 29 , 1928 , in New York City and grew up on the same streets in Greenwich Village where he would spend most of his adult life .
He was one of five sons of Salvatore Gigante , a watchmaker , and Yolanda Gigante , a seamstress , both of whom had immigrated from Naples .
His mother usually addressed him as "Cincenzo , " a diminutive of Vincente , and his boyhood friends shortened that into his lifelong nickname , "Chin . "
A lackadaisical student , Mr . Gigante graduated from P . S . 3 , an elementary school in Greenwich Village and dropped out of Textile High School in Manhattan in the ninth grade .
Police detectives said that as a teen - ager , he became a prot�g� of Vito Genovese , who was a potent Mafia leader in the United States and in Italy from the 1930's to the 1960's and whose name still describes the organized - crime group he headed until his death in 1969 .
The gang was founded in the 1930's by one of the nation's most notorious criminals , Charles ( Lucky ) Luciano , who was deported to Italy and who died in 1962 .
Mr . Genovese is believed to have endeared himself to the Gigantes when Vincent was a boy with a loan to pay for surgery needed by Mrs . Gigante .
Between age 17 and 25 , Mr . Gigante was arrested seven times on an array of charges : receiving stolen goods , possession of an unlicensed handgun , auto theft , arson and bookmaking .
Most were dismissed or resolved by fines .
His only jail sentence in that period was 60 days for a gambling conviction .
When arrested in his early 20's , he listed his occupation as a tailor .
But as a strapping youth with quick fists , he was better known as a prize fighter .
Mr . Gigante , from age 16 to 19 , fought as a light heavyweight in clubs around town , winning 21 of 25 light - heavyweight bouts , according to Nat Fleischer's Ring Record Book .
Club boxers in those days fought four - and six - round contests in neighborhood arenas , usually getting a percentage of the tickets they themselves sold .
One of Mr . Gigante's managers was a Greenwich Village neighbor , Thomas ( Tommy Ryan ) Eboli , who later became the boss of the Genovese family .
Former New York City detectives who were assigned to organized - crime intelligence units said that Mr . Gigante earned his Mafia spurs as an enforcer in the 1950's .
But his prominence in the underworld surged in 1957 , when Mr . Genovese wrested control of a mob family from Frank Costello , who had been a close friend of Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky and was one of the best - known underworld figures in America .
Mr . Costello retired abruptly as a boss after a gunman grazed his scalp with a bullet in the vestibule of his apartment building on Central Park West .
A doorman identified the 29 - year - old Mr . Gigante as the shooter , but Mr . Costello testified that he was unable to recognize his assailant and Mr . Gigante was acquitted in 1958 on charges of attempted murder .
A year later , he was convicted with Mr . Genovese in Manhattan on federal charges of heroin trafficking .
Mr . Gigante , who listed his profession as the superintendent of a tenement on Bleecker Street , was sentenced to seven years in prison .
The sentencing judge said he would have imposed a longer sentence but was swayed by a flood of letters from residents of Greenwich Village and Little Italy attesting to Mr . Gigante's good character and his work on behalf of juveniles .
He was paroled after five years and detectives said that soon afterward he was promoted from soldier to the rank of capo , or captain , overseeing a group of Mafia gangsters known as a crew , in Greenwich Village .
Although his headquarters was in Lower Manhattan and he spent his nights farther uptown , Mr . Gigante had a home in Old Tappan , N . J . , where he lived with his wife , the former Olympia Grippa , and their three daughters and two sons .
They are Yolanda Fyfe , Roseanne D'Cola and Rita Gigante , and Salvatore and Andrew .
In 1969 , he was indicted in New Jersey on a charge of conspiracy to bribe the entire five - member Old Tappan police force to alert him to surveillance operations by law enforcement agencies .
The accusation was dropped after Mr . Gigante's lawyers presented reports from psychiatrists that he was mentally unfit to stand trial .
Mafia informers and defectors said that Mr . Gigante gained control of the Genovese family in a peaceful transition in the early 1980's when the group's acting boss , Philip Lombardo , stepped down because of ill health , and Mr . Gigante's main rival , Anthony Salerno , was imprisoned for life on racketeering charges .
Mr . Salerno died in federal prison in 1992 .
As a new godfather , Mr . Gigante quickly imposed extraordinary security measures .
Genovese soldiers and associates were forbidden to utter his name or nickname in conversations or telephone calls .
When references to him had to be made , capos and soldiers would silently point to their chins or form the letter "C" with their fingers .
Mr . Gigante was indicted in 1990 with 14 others on federal charges in Brooklyn that they had conspired to rig bids and extort payoffs from contractors on multimillion - dollar contracts with the New York City Housing Authority to install windows .
At his arraignment , he appeared in court in his familiar pajamas and bathrobe and a peaked cap .
Because of defense contentions that he was mentally and physically impaired , his case was severed from the other defendants and legal battles ensued for seven years over his competence to stand trial .
A superseding indictment in 1993 brought more serious accusations against him .
Mr . Gigante was charged with being the head of the Genovese family and sanctioning the murders of six mobsters and conspiring to kill three others , including John Gotti , the boss of the Gambino family .
Mr . Gigante , the indictment asserted , wanted Mr . Gotti eliminated because he had violated Mafia protocol by arranging the assassination of the previous Gambino boss , Paul Castellano , without seeking Mr . Gigante's approval .
The evidence in both indictments stemmed mainly from deserters from the Genovese and other mob families who entered the Government's Witness Protection Program .
At sanity hearings in March 1996 , Mr . Gravano of the Gambino family , and Alphonse D'Arco , the former acting boss of another New York Mafia organization , the Lucchese crime family , testified that Mr . Gigante was lucid during top - level Mafia meetings and that he had acknowledged to other gangsters that his eccentric behavior was a pretense .
Mr . Gigante's lawyers elicited testimony and reports from psychiatrists and psychologists that from 1969 to 1995 , he had been confined 28 times in hospitals for treatment of hallucinations and that he suffered from "dementia rooted in organic brain damage . "
In August 1996 , Judge Eugene H . Nickerson of Federal District Court in Brooklyn ruled that Mr . Gigante was mentally competent to stand trial on murder and racketeering charges .
The judge found that at least until 1991 , Mr . Gigante had engaged in an "elaborate deception" with the help of his relatives to deceive psychiatrists about his condition .
Before the trial began , Mr . Gigante , who had open - heart surgery in 1988 , had another cardiac operation in December 1996 , putting his fitness to stand trial in doubt once again .
Mr . Gigante had pleaded not guilty and had been free for years on $1 million bond .
During the monthlong trial in 1997 , a gaunt - looking Mr . Gigante sat in a wheelchair , looking blankly into space as witnesses testified and lawyers argued .
He did not testify .
After three days of deliberations , the jury on July 25 , 1997 , convicted him on charges of running multimillion - dollar rackets as the Genovese family chief and of conspiring unsuccessfully in the late 1980's to murder Mr . Gotti and a Genovese family defector .
But he was acquitted of ordering three other gangland slayings and the jury was deadlocked on accusations that he ordered four other murders .
Imposing a sentence of 12 years - instead of a possible maximum of 27 years - and a $1 . 25 million fine , Judge Jack B . Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn reflected in December 1997 on Mr . Gigante's career .
"He is a shadow of his former self , " the judge said , "an old man finally brought to bay in his declining years after decades of vicious criminal tyranny . "