August 12, 2019

Long Island's best-kept culinary secret is finally catching on. Over the past decade, the grandma-style pizza - square, thin, and crispy - has surged in popularity among foodie circles. What was once a Long Island cult favorite has slowly crept to the rest of New York, and now further along the East Coast. In September of 2008, back when the grandma pizza renaissance was starting, Long Island's Newsday narrowed down the originators of the pizza to three Italian-born Long Islanders; Umberto Corteo, Ciro Cesarano, and Angelo Giangrande. It's not that the three invented the centuries-old pizza but instead brought it into the mainstream. In a nutshell, the story goes; Umberto developed his take on the pizza back in the 1970s at his restaurant. Two of his employees, Ciro and Angelo, "saw its potential," and put the grandma-style pizza on the menu. After it caught on, the pair both branched out into their own successful pizzeria ventures.

In 1991, Angelo Giangrande started Cujini's Pizzeria in Mineola. He honed his craft and developed a unique style of the grandma-slice, which his brother Mario helped spread across the Island. In 2000, with his two cousins Angelo and Antonio Franzella, Giangrande founded a second pizza parlor, "Cujini Due," in the nearby township of Albertson.

But what most food articles don't mention when discussing Giangrande is how his career took a dark turn when he started quarreling with his cousins. Things escalated, families were torn. One thing led to another, edging closer and closer to violence, until the FBI kicked in Giangrande's door at 6 AM on June 4, 2008. How did Angelo Giangrande, the pizzamaker who made culinary history on Long Island, end up in a Brooklyn courtroom, stood next to a mob boss accused of six murders?

It all started in 2000, when Giangrande and his cousins bought 815 Willis Ave., Albertson, for $525,000, taking a hefty loan from the bank. Money was tight, and there wasn't much to go around between the three co-owners. Proving time-and-time again that business and family don't mix, things went sour. Sources say the dispute reached a boiling point for several reasons; Tony Franzella gave Giangrande "a beating" in front of his son, and then began telling people "Tony was going to throw Angelo out of both places," meaning he would cut Giangrande out of both Cujini restaurants.

Although not too adept with his fists, Giangrande had one thing that the Franzella Brothers didn't. He had what prosecutors called a "criminal association" with John 'Sonny' Franzese, a legendary caporegime (captain) in the Colombo crime family, the smallest but most violent Mafia group in New York City. Angelo approached the Franzella Bros. with an almost-mocking offer to buy them out of both restaurants for $300,000. It's unknown what both restaurants valued at, but court documents note that the Willis Ave. building itself cost a cool half-million.

The Franzella Brothers, unsurprisingly, weren't fond of the idea. They refused their cousin's persistent offers, so Angelo turned to his mob godfather, Sonny. Angelo was "with" the 86-year-old mafioso, which, in Mafia parlance, means he had the full protection and power of Franzese, an elderly godfather once accused by prosecutors of committing over 50 gangland murders.

Long Island was Sonny's hood, and his association with the pizzamaker dated back years. The pair were both from the same town in Italy, and Angelo had gotten Sonny's youngest son a summer job at Umberto's Pizzeria, the birthplace of the modern-day grandma-slice, way back in the 1980s. Their relationship went two ways; Angelo had the backing of the Mafia, but sources say he was obliged to participate in Franzese's control of Long Island's illegal video-gambling industry. Sonny shared control of the video-gaming racket with a much-younger Colombo hoodlum named Tommy Gioeli. Under the implicit threat of violence, small businesses were forced to install illegal Colombo-backed "Joker-Poker" (video-poker) machines, as well as vending machines, in their establishments. Since the Colombo family split the machines' profits 50/50 with the proprietors, some small businessmen were glad to have the Mafia involved, with the added protection that the association afforded. Sources say that's where Giangrande stood;
"He loved to tell people he was hooked up with Sonny," said one source, who was intimately involved with the Cujini Pizzeria in the 1990s, likening Giangrande to "Artie from the Sopranos."

From left: Angelo Giangrande, John ‘Sonny’ Franzese.

Giangrande figured his cousins would wise up once they were paid a visit from the 86-year-old Sonny Franzese who, despite his age, was remarkably spry. Don't take my word for it; two mob bosses from the Bonanno family were tape-recorded in 2004 gushing over the geezer gangster.
"He's in some shape, Bo," said Bonanno family 'acting' boss Vinny Basciano to his 'official' boss, Joey Massino. "He might live to be a hundred."
One mob associate from the mid-2000s, Kenji Gallo, likened uncle Sonny Franzese's reputation in the underworld to Ronald Reagon's standing among Republicans. He was legendary; in the 1980s, the FBI caught John Gotti on tape marveling; "Sonny Franzese, he's one tough fuckin' guy."

Unfortunately, Sonny wasn't available. He was serving a three-year sentence for consorting with known felons. On parole from a 1970 bank robbery conviction, prison was a revolving door for Franzese, who wasn't allowed to meet with established members, or associates, of the Mafia. But, from prison, Sonny promised to take care of it, and he stuck to his word. After arranging a sit-down, Giangrande was introduced to Franzese's up-and-coming nephew, Mike Catapano who, at 39, was beginning to make waves in the underworld as a feared extortionist, loan shark, and drug dealer. Mike never shied from bloodshed - he once urged Uncle Sonny to murder an entire group of gangsters from Staten Island - but in most cases, violence was averted with the mention of his uncle's name.

Catapano teamed up with a longtime goon of his uncle's, a beefy 63-year-old named Joe DiGorga. In his meeting with Giangrande, the pair came up with a strategy. The mobsters would convince the Franzella Brothers to sell their share of the business for a measly $300,000 and, for scoring him such a good discount, Giangrande would pay Catapano and DiGorga $30,000, and Uncle Sonny would get a comfortable $400 a week in protection money.

Michael got to work immediately, ambushing one of the brothers in a parking lot. He started "abusing" him, Catapano later recalled, although it's unknown whether the abuse was physical, verbal, or both. Then, he brought DiGorga along to visit the other brother, Angelo Franzella, at a hair salon he owned. In the barber's chair was Giangrande's mother, who got a front-row seat to the dispute between her son and nephews.

Catapano didn't have to say much while he was there. He and DiGorga were passive-aggressive, and Franzella got the message. The nervous hairdresser urged them to leave, and quickly agreed after Catapano sternly asked if Franzella would "sign the papers."

That was all it took. After an eerily polite interaction between the two, the brothers quickly sold their stake. Giangrande bought the restaurant for a cool $300,000, gave Mike Catapano his $30,000, and the Franzella Bros. slunk into obscurity. Forever wheeling-and-dealing, Catapano was supposed to hold onto the money until his uncle got out from lockup in early 2004, but instead squandered $10,000 himself and loaned out another $9000 of the payment to his cohort, Joe DiGorga.

As Catapano fretted over what to do when his uncle got out of prison, Giangrande continued to hit speedbumps of his own, and couldn't make the weekly $400 protection payments. But this was the Mafia he was dealing with, and it was no secret what happened to other business owners who tried to cross the legendary Sonny Franzese. When Mike Catapano or Joe DiGorga weren't available, Sonny could call upon a contingent of Eastern-European goons to dish out beatings. One of them, Chris Curanovic, was an arms dealer accused of selling rocket launchers and AK-47s to Kosovo, and another henchman, Albanian-born Dardian 'Danny' Celaj, was a member of a violent New Jersey home invasion gang. In 2007, Franzese called Curanovic and Celaj when one East Village bar-owner refused to pay an astounding $1500 a week in protection money to Sonny Franzese. The pair's antics at the East Village bar, Rue B, made the Cujini Due shakedown look like a joke. Curanovic stampeded into the bar owner's office, ramming a screwdriver through his hand, and later drawing a knife on another part-owner.

But Angelo Giangrande, who filed for bankruptcy not long after he turned "Cujini Due" into its current name "Da-Angelo's," managed to dodge the weekly shakedowns for the time being by laying low and keeping quiet. That's because his 86-year-old don was dealing with too many troubles of his own. Sonny was still in jail, and reeling over a Gang Land News report that his son, John Franzese Jr., was an FBI informer. John Jr. apparently tipped the feds off to a get-together Sonny was having with mobbed-up underlings, giving feds ammunition for another arrest.

With Franzese incapacitated, Catapano didn't bother collecting the measly $400 a week for his incarcerated Uncle Sonny. There was too much heat on the crew due to John Franzese Jr.'s tips to cops, and the FBI was pulling out all the stops to try and halt the Colombos' burgeoning suburban empire. After almost a decade of infighting and turmoil, the Colombo family was slowly regaining strength on the Island, thanks to the careful guidance of low-key street boss Tommy Gioeli and legendary capo Sonny Franzese. The FBI didn't want to let that happen and wasted no time making a case.

So, with everybody laying low, Angelo Giangrande was good. The mob had lent him a hand, Angelo had given them a small slice of the pie, and it seemed like they wouldn't be bothering him anymore. But I wouldn't be writing this article if everything went smoothly. Giangrande, the famed co-pioneer of the grandma pizza, was set to become another casualty in a far bigger battle between the FBI and the Colombo organized crime family.

From left: Michael Catapano in 2010, Joseph DiGorga.

John 'Sonny' Franzese was released from prison in early 2004 and wasted no time ingratiating himself into Mafia affairs. His short stretch behind bars was the fourth violation of his parole, but the geezer gangster didn't learn his lesson. He proudly accepted a promotion to "underboss," the second-highest position in the family. That role wasn't symbolic; the underboss' duty is usually to act as the boss's eyes and ears, meeting up and down New York with underlings and emissaries from other crime groups.

Gang Land News reported that Franzese, days after his release, "was meeting with high-level wiseguys from other families," and court documents alleged he was currying favor so his organization could officially induct more members.

But Sonny's problem was the same as The Godfather's Don Corleone; he had a sentimental weakness for his children, which he showed when his informant-son John Jr. came running back with his tail between his legs. In what must have been an emotional meeting, Junior pleaded with his dad, insisting that he never cooperated with the FBI back in 2000.
"His son denied it," said a source from Gang Land News. "He came home and cried his eyes out saying, 'I would never do that, no matter what kind of trouble I had.' Sonny believed him.” 

If there's one thing mobsters like to do, it's talk. And it was that kind of talk that saw poor old Giangrande get caught in the crossfire. After telling the FBI about the pizzamaker's shakedown, John Franzese Jr. managed to get Mike Catapano on tape bragging about his role. A born-and-bred mobster like Mike should've known better than to blab about past crimes, but he let his guard down in a leisurely chat with John Jr. and a Colombo soldier named Frank 'Frankie Camp' Campione.
"You know who hates me? When he sees me, he sees the devil. Cujini," Catapano said, referring to Cujini co-owner Tony Franzella.
"I don't even know 'em," replied Frankie Camp, a 62-year-old aide of Sonny Franzese.
"Frankie, you'd love Tony. Talk about an attitude," John Jr. said, goading Catapano into incriminating himself. 
Catapano continued, priding himself on bullying the restauranteur.
"I abused 'em one day in the fuckin' parking lot…
"One time, I went to see his brother," Mike continued, referring to Tony's brother Angelo Franzella. "You know, his brother's got the haircuttin' joint over there, Angelos?"
"Angelo and Company, or something?" Campione asked.
"Yeah, that's Cujini's brother."
"I didn't know that," John Jr. piped up.
"Neither did I, that's a big store," Frankie Camp remarked. 

After a little more chit-chat, Catapano gave the two underlings a run-down on what he did to the nervous Angelo Franzella.
"Fuckin' he had Angelo's mother in the chair, he was doing her hair. When he seen me walk in, he got so nervous, I felt sorry for Angelo's mother cause I seen her head going down like this, could see this curling the hair and pulling it out."
"An' they're really related?" Campione asked.
"Yeah, they're related. And once I showed up there, then they fuckin' signed the papers. It was all over."

Just like that, the FBI had a Mafia capo joking about extortion on tape.
"Wow," Campione said. FBI agents listening to the conversation probably said the same thing.
"Fuckin' Angelo," Catapano chuckled. "I went there, I was looking all around, I said, 'Ohh, this is a nice place, I like this place.'"
Frankie and John were laughing, lapping up Mike's story.
"I said, 'I could do a lot of things over here,'" Catapano said. "Nobody said a word, ya know." 

Catapano, in his version of events, asked Franzella; "Listen, whatta you think you're gonna talk to your brother?" Angelo replied; "Yeah, yeah, please, don't come towards the customers, they get nervous…' I said, 'For what?'"
"Customers don't even know who you are," John Jr. pointed out.
"I said, 'What are you talking about?' I says, I says, 'Well listen, if you don't want me to come back, you better have your brother…'"
Franzese Jr. interrupted with a joke; "You got a lotta friends with long hair?"
"'Listen, I'll talk to 'em, I'll talk to 'em, alright?'" Catapano recalled Franzella saying. "'Please, please try not to.' Listen, I said, 'I won't come back unless you can do what I gotta ask you to do. Otherwise, I gotta come back.'" 

That was easy enough. Once again strapping himself with a recording device, the FBI next tasked John Jr. with getting the 65-year-old Joe DiGorga on tape discussing his involvement. As it turns out, DiGorga didn't need much prompting. On August 9, a month after Mike Catapano gave an accidental confession, DiGorga unleashed a tirade to Junior about Angelo Giangrade.
"And then lemme tell ya something else, okay?" Joe ranted to John. "And I don't wanna get outta line with this, because, you see, that cocksucker in the fuckin' pizzeria over there?"
"Which one, Angelo?" John asked.
"Angelo. He better fuckin' hope, he better hope…"
"What did he do?"
"I swear on my mother, he better hope that your fuckin' dad, nothing happens to 'em, because the day it happens to (Franzese), I'm putting (Giangrande)…"
"What did he do?"
"… in the ground. Huh?" Joe DiGorga was sweating, his chubby face beet-red. Franzese Jr. frantically tried to rein him in to say something coherent enough for the FBI.
"Yeah, you did your work and then he backed, when he realized he didn't need you," John Jr. said, trying to poke DiGorga into self-incrimination.
"I did my work, he backed out, he was supposed to give your dad, and fuckin' Polito was there and Michael was there when I made the fuckin' deal that night." DiGorga was still talking near-gibberish. "He was supposed to give your dad four hundred a week when he came home, every fuckin' week, and he never gave 'em a fuckin' dime…" 

DiGorga continued his tirade, which is pretty hard-to-decipher, by going into detail about how the restauranteur avoided the $400 weekly payments by taking credit for scoring DiGorga the $9000 loan by Mike Catapano, which Catapano took from Giangrande's original $30,000 fee. Confusing, I know. DiGorga stressed that his loan to Angelo "has nothing to do with your dad," and how the situation had caused him some serious agita.
"I made a fuckin' deal, I had the fuckin' feds come to my house because his cocksucking partner called the fuckin' boss," Joe raved, referring to when the FBI questioned the elderly gangster about the shakedown. Sources have stressed that it wasn't any of the Franzella Brothers that called the cops, but most likely one of the mob informants who were privy to the strongarm.

DiGorga carried on;
"Alright? I got (Giangrande) that fuckin' joint. We went in there, we went into the bar, his, his, that other guy's beauty parlor and his fuckin'… mother fainted."
Now John Jr. was holding back a grin. In his rage, Junior had gotten the second extortionist to begin confessing. Without interrupting the rant, John Jr. clarified;
"Yeah, I know his cousin, yeah."
"Right?" DiGorga said.
"On Hillside Avenue," Junior confirmed.
"Yeah, and it was supposed to be that (snaps hands together) every fuckin' week, it was four hundred going to your Old Man (snaps hand together) every fuckin' week and he never gave 'em a fuckin' dime," Joe lamented. "Gives 'em a slice of pizza. Cocksucker."

From left: Surveillance photo of father-and-son John Franzeses (2005); John Franzese Jr. with his wife; Frank ‘Frankie Camp’ Campione.

It was September of 2006 when John Franzese Jr. finally went into the Witness Protection Program, making him the only mobster to be outed as an informant, be subsequently welcomed back into the mob, only to become an informer once more and leave New York in one piece.

Back in Long Island, the Colombo family was in a panic. Particularly riled was John Franzese Sr., who could tell the FBI was building a grand-slam indictment. His suspicions, which proved correct, arose because the feds hadn't arrested him for violating his parole, despite his informant-son tipping the FBI every time his old man met with his ex-felon Mafia cronies. Sonny's freedom could only mean that the feds were biding their time, waiting until a fully-fledged criminal indictment had passed through a grand jury, and Sonny Sr. was ready to be locked up.

Counting the days 'till the feds busted down his door, Sonny Franzese formally inducted his nephew Mike Catapano into the Colombo borgata, in a holy ritual complete with a gun, knife, and a solemn oath by Mike to never betray the family. The burly Catapano was then promoted to "acting caporegime," putting him formally in charge of Sonny Franzese's Long Island crew. Although the strategy came too late, this promotion was intended to insulate Sonny from other potential informants in his team by making sure everyone reporting to "the Old Man" Franzese would have to first go through his nephew. Court papers indicate that, with his new promotion, Catapano finally began collecting the $400-a-week from Angelo Giangrande, which he dutifully kicked up the ladder to Uncle Sonny.

In May of 2007, the Probation Department finally busted Sonny Franzese for violating his parole, although law enforcement sources for Gang Land News promised, at the time, that Sonny's arrest was the "tip of the iceberg."
"A bunch of people are about to go down," assured another Gang Land source. According to the article, Franzese was spotted at "a number of Long Island eateries" with his mobbed-up pals, who were apparently "targets of a continuing investigation."

The exclusive article by mob writer Jerry Capeci was dead on the money. Later that year, subpoenas started flying left-and-right, and the two Franzella Cousins were each paid a visit by the FBI. Hard-nosed investigators pressed the cousins about the alleged shakedown, pointing to the tapes made by John Franzese Jr. But the two cousins, for one reason or another, declined to cooperate, promising that they never felt threatened or intimidated when Mike Catapano and Joe DiGorga ambushed them.

Nevertheless, the FBI still had a case. The tapes from Catapano were damning, backed with testimony from John Franzese Jr. and bolstered by the questionable property records, which proved that the Franzella Cousins sold their stake for considerably less than the market value.

After months of agonizing wait, Angelo Giangrande finally received the telltale FBI knock on his door at precisely 6 AM, June 4, 2008. He was hauled away in handcuffs and driven down to the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse at 225 Cadman Plaza East. The media was in a frenzy outside, but it wasn't for the small-time restauranteur. Giangrande was actually a defendant in the same indictment that charged the Colombo family's street boss, Tommy Gioeli, underboss Sonny Franzese, two high-ranking capos, and eight others with crimes including racketeering, robbery, drug dealing, and four gangland-style murders.

In the grand scheme of things, Giangrande was a mere footnote in the monstrous indictment, charged with the sole crime of "extortion conspiracy." Quickly given bail, Giangrande skulked away from the media frenzy as photographers flashed poster-worthy pictures of the scowling mob boss Tommy Gioeli, charged with ordering three executions.

All things considered, Giangrande came out pretty well. A couple of months after his arrest, the pizzamaker was the subject of a Newsday article about the origins of the grandma-pizza, and Giangrande's continued success at "Da-Angelo's" Pizzeria and Ristorante. The story made no mention of Giangrande's pending case, which ended with a plea bargain for "misprision of a felony," which is legalese for knowing about a felony but doing nothing to stop it. Giangrande was ordered by the court to serve three years probation with a $15,000 fine, paid for in $5000 a year installments.

It was a much longer road for his codefendants, who were the actual targets of the FBI probe. Mike Catapano took a plea deal for 78 months behind bars, working 35 hours a week as an inhouse prison electrician. Catapano got parole in 2016, two years after codefendant Joe DiGorga. Sonny Franzese is still kicking at age 102 and has been seen in-and-around his home turf in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with his cousin and codefendant in 2008, John Capolino. Sonny decided to roll the dice and go to trial back in 2010, where he was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Surprisingly, John Franzese Jr. decided to leave the Witness Protection Program and now lives openly in Indianapolis. This year, he collaborated Indianapolis' Indy Star newspaper to talk about his life before and after his federally-subsidized relocation.

And Giangrande? His pizzeria, Da-Angelo's, is still going strong, earning rave reviews from local critics. Averaging a 4/5 score on Yelp, some reviewers have gone as far as to call it the best pizza on Long Island. In 2015, Giangrande fully paid his court-ordered fine, so one can only assume business is good - better, at least than the business affairs for the rest of the Colombo crime family, who've been crippled by federal prosecutions and weakened by New York's recent legalization of sports betting.

From left: da-Angelo’s Ristorante; da-Angelo’s Ristorante; Grandma-style slice from da-Angelo’s Ristorante (Yelp); John ‘Sonny’ Franzese in 2010; Michael Catapano in prison, 2014.