Free Manhattan Mafia Guide by Eric Ferrara Page A

Genovese family after his release from prison in the mid-1960s and inherited the Little Italy crew he was initiated into, which he ran out of the Triangle Social Club at 208 Sullivan Street. Here, Gigante’s odd behavior began to take shape, as his power within the Genovese family grew. The former prizefighter was often seen wandering around the neighborhood mumbling, wearing nothing but pajamas and a bathrobe. His lawyers and family members declared that he was mentally incompetent; however, law enforcement officials and turncoat Mafioso claimed Chin was feigning mental illness in order to mislead authorities.
    By the end of the 1960s, while continuing to base his operations out of Lower Manhattan, Gigante purchased a home in Bergen County, New Jersey. In February 1970, Old Tappan Township police chief Charles Schuh was suspended from the force for accepting money from Gigante’s common-law wife, Olympia, and passing payments off to fellow officers. Gigante was accused of bribing the local police force in order to receive tips on law enforcement activities, but charges were dropped in October 1973, when the forty-two-year-old mobster was declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
    Over the next couple of decades, Gigante divided his time between the crew’s Sullivan Street headquarters, his New Jersey home, his mother’s apartment at 225 Sullivan Street (Apartment 3D) and a town house apartment on Park Avenue and East Seventy-seventh Street. The FBI maintained almost constant surveillance on the curious mobster and, on several occasions, witnessed him enter his chauffeured town car in ratty pajamas, only to emerge at his destination suited for a night on the town. His influence extended into several profitable rackets, including shipping, construction, gambling and loan-sharking.
    When elevated to boss of the Genovese crime family in the early 1980s, the elusive Gigante implemented a rule that no family member was to ever mention his name again, under any circumstance. It is alleged that, instead, mobsters would point to their chin or shape a letter “C” with their hands when referencing the boss in conversation.
    Despite such tight security restrictions, authorities had built a case against the mob boss and indicted him in 1990 on several charges of racketeering, conspiracy and murder. The mental illness claim kept him out of court for several years; however, Gigante was ultimately brought to trial in 1997, largely due to the testimony of Mafia turncoats like Sammy “the Bull” Gravano.
    Gigante was sentenced to twelve years in prison in July 1997 and spent the last years of his life in a federal penitentiary. A former FBI supervisor, John S. Pritchard, said of Gigante, who is said to be the inspiration behind the character Junior Soprano on the popular HBO series The Sopranos , “He was probably the most clever organized-crime figure I have ever seen.” 63
    I ANNIELLO , M ATTHEW
384 Broome Street, 1930; 123 West Forty-ninth Street, 1950s
Alias: Matty the Horse, Sweet Sixteen
Born: June 18, 1920, New York City
Died: [?]
Association: Genovese crime family acting boss
    This 220-pound Little Italy native was a Mafia heavyweight in every sense of the word, with controlling interest in New York’s most powerful criminal organization and dozens of semi-legitimate operations by the 1970s. The Horse was a notorious kingpin of New York’s infamous (pre-gentrification) seedy underworld, presiding over his empire from an apartment above the original Umberto’s Clam House at 129 Mulberry Street.
    Ianniello’s father, Pietro di Biagio (February 8, 1893–April 15, 1976), was born in Naples, Italy, and arrived in New York in 1910 at seventeen years of age. Pietro was living at 140 Mulberry Street and had changed his last name to Ianniello by the time he married East Harlem native Michelina Zarrella (October 8, 1897–April 20, 1974) in December 1915. The couple had had their first of eight children, Oscar, in 1917. (Matthew