Santo "Sonny Boy" Ricchiettore
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| Santo U. Ricchiettorelli | |
| Born | 1905 Palermo, Sicily, Italy |
|---|---|
| Died | 1976 Brooklyn, New york |
Santo "Sonny Boy" Ricchiettore (1905-1976) was a reputed Brooklyn loan shark, enforcer and legendary waterfront racketeer in what is now called the Gambino Crime Family, with a career reaching back to the beginnings of New York La Cosa Nostra. Sonny was once dubbed l'Animale (Italian for 'animal') for his personal involvement in Mafia homicides as the killer and setup man. Some of these killings were committed during his membership in Murder Incorporated (aka Murder Inc). Francis Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather, once explained that the character of Luca Brasi (Vito Corleone's chief bodyguard and assassin) was based on Ricchiettore. Whether the Luca Brasi theory is true or not, Sonny Boy was a force to be reckoned with. He was also the father of current Gambino family Capo Salvatore Ricchiettore, known as Vinny Papa, and grandfather of Sal Jr. ("Sally Lips"), Joe ("Joey Meatloaf") and Vito ("Frankie Blue Eyes").
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[edit] America
Sonny Boy Ricchiettore (Born Santo Umberto Ricchiettorelli) was born in Palermo, Sicily in 1905. Later that same year, his father (a Castellammarese fisherman from the outskirts of Trapani) and mother brought their infant son and his five-year-old sister to America aboard the steamship Agostina. During their registration at Ellis Island, New York, the family surname was accidentally truncated to Ricchiettore. The family eventually settled with their new shortened surname in the tough neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn, staying with a close friend of Santo's father who would later become Santo's godfather.
[edit] Red Hook, Brooklyn
Red Hook was riddled with crime in the early 1900s. The Brooklyn faction of the Five Points Gang preyed on countless shops and small business owners for protection money. The Black Hand Gang (La Mano Nera) engaged in traditional extortion, and the Irish mob known as the White Hand Gang controlled the Red Hook waterfront's gambling and loansharking. The Capones, Salvatore (known as Frankie), Vinny, Ralphy and Alphonse (later known as Scarface Al Capone) weren't yet known to the general public. Along with their cousins the Fischettis, Charley, Rocco and Joe (future Chicago mobsters with Capone), they were still young punks running around Red Hook, thieving, brawling with other locals and playing dice on streetcorners. Young Santo used to watch all types of criminal mischief from inside his mother's bakery shop (a joint venture with Supremas, his godfather's neighborhood grocery and meat market). Many times, the grocery was targeted by neighborhood punks even after protection money was paid out. Santo saw his godfather taken advantage by the thugs and felt that the older man had lost his honor as a man for not protecting or avenging himself or Santo's mother. Young Santo took it as a personal insult, and vowed when he became older, he would not let his godfather's actions shape him.
[edit] The Bronx Connection
Santo's early life was not a happy one. His lack of English did not help his relationship with the non-Italians in his neighborhood. His father, who had found work as a cargo shipper on the Brooklyn waterfront, frequently drank his pay away to cope with the stress of his job. The boy's mother and godfather were still falling victim to the neighborhood extortion gangs. Santo also did not enjoy coming home each day to the family's small two-bedroom apartment, which housed his father, mother, older sister, and grandparents, as well as the apartment's owner (his godfather) and Santo's godcousin.
In 1913, Santo met a young tough in his Red Hook neighborhood who would become his best friend and future crime partner. Born Tommaso Spiltornata, the tough went by the name Tommy "Spils" Spiltore because it sounded more American. Tommy Spils first became involved with gambling through his two cousins Donnie and Danny Sorrenti. Although the two later became part of the Lucchese crime family, in 1914 they were petty street hoods working their South Bronx neighborhood of East Tremont. Donnie and Danny formed a street crew the following year, which soon became known as the East Tremont Brawlers (E.T.B). Through Tommy, the cousins introduced card games, numbers and the Italian lottery to a young Santo, who jumped at the opportunity to make ends meet. As Santo and Tommy attended middle school together, they were able to make a fast buck hosting card and dice games.
Tommy's schoolyard gambling rackets sparked the two boys' lust for power and respect, and answered their prayers for a better life. Soon their gambling business was so extensive that they began hosting games after school and on their own street block. Tommy employed neighborhood boys as bodyguards while the games were active, and he and Santo spilt the profits equally after paying off the game's security.
[edit] The Five Points
Unfortunately, the boys' block was Five Points territory. Word of the games soon got back to the gang's leadership. In 1917, Santo was approached by Pasquale "Patsy" Ciccone (a vicious killer at the tender age of 21 and one of the gang's lieutenants) and his superior Massimo Dapolito (known as "Maxie Nose" because of his Roman profile). Patsy and Maxie were there on behalf of Frankie Yale, the leader of the gang's Brooklyn faction, to give the boys a choice. They could cut Yale in on the action; continue to operate while paying weekly protection and some back taxes for operating without gang consent; or become a memory, plain and simple. Patsy explained that a choice had to be made by the next day. Santo, speaking for a presumably absent Tommy, told Patsy that they would think about it and have an answer for him the following afternoon. Santo then had an emergency meeting with Tommy, who in turn consulted his Bronx connection.
Tommy and Santo now had a slight problem. By 1917, both were active new members (and the only two Brooklynites) of the East Tremont Brawlers, and were paying the Bronx gang roughly 10 percent of their profits. Although tough and vicious, the Brawlers were heavily outmatched by the Five Points Gang in size, manpower, weaponry, and political power. However, the smaller outfit, thanks to Tommy and Santo, now had a foothold in Brooklyn gambling. With time pressing, Tommy convinced Santo that they would make Patsy a strong counteroffer. Donnie Sorrenti handed the pair two pistols and told them "[I]f those Five Points come down with any bad intentions, shoot them dead then hide out in the Bronx." The following evening, Patsy returned, this time with three other toughs, future mobsters and killers, Aldo "Bully" Corrolo, Angelo "Dot" Dorio, and Willie "Two-Knife" Altieri. Five Points wanted an answer and both Dot and Altierri were both armed with concealed pistols. Santo, remembering how many times his godfather had been taken advantage of, became furious and talked back to the two Five Pointers, refusing to be intimidated by their arsenal. Altierri, annoyed, began drawing his weapon but was quelled by Patsy. Tommy began explaining that he didn’t care about the games and could easily start up another, but what he really wanted was to become apart of something big, like Patsy. Tommy offered to not only join Five Points but to work for Patsy personally, handing over the whole gambling operation whilst retaining control of day to day operations. In return, Tommy asked for twenty percent of existing action, fifteen percent to Patsy if Tommy created and operated new games, and formal induction into the Five Points gang both for himself and for Santo. Tommy was able to convince Patsy, who told the pair that he had to discuss the proposal with his boss.
The following day, Patsy appeared, accompanied only by "Dot" Dorio. Tommy and Santo were present with three of their closest associates, Giacomo "Jimmy Shortlegs" Bosco, Lorenzo "Larry Andone" Androzzi (known as "Larry the Ear" because of his large ears) and Peter Marangello. Patsy, impressed by Tommy's fearless negotiations the day before, accepted Tommy’s offer. Tommy and Santo were both inducted into the Five Points Juniors by Frankie Yale under Maxie Polito, in Yale's Coney Island nightclub. Santo, lacking Tommy's wits, became his friend's strong right hand, and extra muscle to be called upon by Patsy.
[edit] Prohibition
When Prohibition took effect in January of 1920, many of the more notorious street crews and local gangs began merging with bigger crime syndicates. The ban on liquor was a huge moneymaker for criminal outfits, and a harbinger of the 1960s boom in narcotics. Frankie Yale, the boss of the slowly-dissolving Five Points Brooklyn faction declared himself a gangland leader, taking over what was left of the old Johnny Torrio Brooklyn rackets and jump-starting them. The combined operation was dubbed "the Black Hand".
Yale's premier racket was extortion. His chief lieutenant was Maxie Nose, his chief enforcer Patsy Ciccone his main bodyguard and assassin "Two Knife" Altieri. Yale also employed a rogue's gallery of future gangland celebrities, including Vincent Mangano, Joe Adonis, Anthony "Little Augie Pisano" Carfano, Albert Anastasia and future Chicago Capone gunman Vincenzo Gibaldi (aka "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn). Together with Al Capone and Johnny Torrio who were involved with the Chicago rackets, the "Prince of Pals” became a force to be reckoned with. In 1920, Yale handed Torrio and Capone Chicago on a silver platter by murdering the city's first mob boss, Jim "Big Jim" Colosimo. This in turn made Yale even more powerful. Within a year, Yale was working directly with the Torrio-Capone gang on a project to build a pipeline from Chicago to New York to distribute illegal Canadian Scotch whisky, with the responsibility for protecting Torrio-Capone trucks from hijacking in New York.
Now under the Yale flag and reporting directly to Patsy Ciccone, Santo became "the dog that bites" while Tommy was "the dog that barks". However, neither became involved with bootlegging, nor did Patsy, who was enjoying large profits just from Tommy's gambling rackets. Tommy maintained his open-house games in Red Hook, and Santo made sure that the gambling was protected. Tommy also employed his crew and let Larry "The Ear" Andone run one of the lucrative neighborhood dice games. The Bosco brothers, Jimmy and "Big Vic", maintained law and order there under Tommy's flag. Santo and Peter Marangello (now going by the nickname "Pistol Pete" in reference to the concealed weapon he always carried to intimidate players) were always with Tommy Spils when he hosted large open-house games, as insurance that players would pay what they owed. Payment was enforced via broken limbs. Worse could happen, but a broken arm or leg usually did the trick.
Santo and "Pistol Pete" both had the same rank in protecting Tommy's games. Santo studied the operation closely, and realized that he could make big money if he set up a loansharking operation in all of Tommy's gambling spots, thus cutting out all the freelance sharks who had previously been operating and collecting without "official" permission. Tommy agreed to the idea and started a development system of open line credits. Players would enter a game by borrowing against a newly-established credit line of anything upwards of $200. If they lost the money, they simply owed the house. Since they couldn't pay, they would be introduced to Santo. Santo would then give them the choice of either borrowing from him at 25 percent weekly until the whole loan was repaid, or of never walking again. Players would then borrow from Santo and pay off the house, but would not be allowed to leave until they had revealed personal information to Santo. Every week, Santo would visit the players in the company of "Pistol Pete", collecting their 25 percent payments. Because Tommy's gambling rackets were very profitable, Santo soon found himself pursuing more and more addicts.
This was the beginning of Santo's sixty-year loansharking career. By 1921, Santo had become one the youngest gangsters to have more than twenty customers on his owe list at 25 percent weekly. The job became so big that he soon needed help just to pick up the money. Santo employed neighborhood gangster Salvatore "Sally Boots" Innonio as his bookkeeper, and formed a formal partnership with "Pistol Pete" to collect the debts. The operation brought in a cash flow of about two to three hundred dollars a week, and the same players kept coming back to Tommy's spots to gamble.
Eventually, however, the situation deteriorated when the ongoing dispute between Frankie Yale's Black Hand and the rival White Hand operation erupted into an all-out war on the streets of Brooklyn. Santo, however, was able to turn the situation to his advantage, rapidly becoming known for his skill at murder.
