May 19, 2019

Introduction.

At the grotto of a quaint, Long Island church, Tommy Gioeli sat with his two closest friends. He didn’t look out of place at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Massapequa, New York. He never missed the parish’s Sunday service, and was good pals with the pastor. But on this pleasant Spring morning, Tommy wasn’t there to mull over Bible verses. He was there to discuss his future and, by extension, the future of New York’s most violent and turbulent Mafia clan.

It was May of 2008. The FBI were casting an ominous shadow on Gioeli’s life, as well as the day-to-day lives of his two disciples Dino Calabro and Joey Competiello. Subpoenas were flying, search warrants were being executed. Law enforcement pressure had been a part of Gioeli’s life since 2004, when the FBI first began investigating his role as the so-called "acting boss" of the Colombo Mafia family. But, after years of dodging undercover tails and avoiding federal wiretaps, prosecutors were finally getting somewhere and Tommy could read the writing on the wall. That was the basis for the get-together at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, a location picked specifically because it was so quiet and unassuming that the FBI didn’t think about staking out the place.

55-years-old, plagued with obesity-related heart problems and diabetes, Tommy was fed up with the Mafia. He had been at the top of the Colombo crime family since the early 1990s and, by all accounts, had done a pretty good job. The family had barely survived a brutal civil war from 1991 to 1993 that left almost a dozen people gunned down, but Tommy had been instrumental in rebuilding the family and bridging the gap between the discontent factions. One of his key aides, a tough old-timer named Paulie Bevacqua, helped bring the various rebelling factions back under one flag. Gioeli then brought the Colombos back into the good graces of New York’s various other Mafia groups by using longstanding connections to old pals, and helped get approval for his crime clan to officially "induct" new members.

Through it all, Tommy artfully avoided FBI scrutiny, never dropping the ball when it came to counter-surveillance. Various FBI agents have admitted that the Long Island-based godfather was adept at dodging police tails while he was on his way to high profile mob meetings. By keeping his inner circle small and loyal, Tommy was never caught on tape by wayward snitches and federal cooperators. Even his phone was immune from court-authorized wiretaps, since Tommy got his cellphones made special from a mob associated telecommunications company.

But by 2008, prosecutors had finally found their way in. The year prior, a low-level drug dealer named Anthony Basile agreed to cooperate after being charged with a 1992 murder. Of special interest to the FBI was Basile’s knowledge about crimes committed by Dino Calabro, Tommy’s right-hand-man, during his hoodlum years during the 1980s and 1990s. Dino and Tommy were peas in a pod. Fifteen years his junior, Dino owed his rise in the Colombo family entirely to Tommy, whom he met in 1989 and quickly latched onto him as Tommy’s full-time "driver" and chief enforcer. Soon enough, Dino moved him and his family from Bensonhurst to a Farmingdale property adjacent to Tommy’s, and made his portly mentor the "godfather" of his children.

Now, that low-level drug dealer gave the FBI all the ammunition they needed to crack down on Tommy and Dino, as well as Dino’s own protege Joey Competiello. According to Basile, Dino told him all about murders he committed on behalf of his adopted "uncle" Tommy. That was all it took for the powerful godfather’s world to come crashing down. Reading the writing on the wall, Tommy convened his two lieutenants at Our Lady of Lourdes to announce his planned retirement from the life. If he managed to skate through the charges, Tommy declared, he would peacefully retire and spend out his later years with his wife in their modest two-story home. He had cash squirreled away from various robberies and scores over the years, and could potentially continue to collect paychecks from his lucratively-placed video poker machines across the city. That, Tommy hoped, would mark an all-too-peaceful end to his violent career in the Colombo crime family.

Tommy Gioeli - "The Suburban Scarpa."

While Greg 'the Grim Reaper' Scarpa turned Brooklyn into a battlefield during the 1990s, a low-key ally was doing the same thing in Long Island. Unlike Scarpa, Thomas 'Tommy Shots' Gioeli made few headlines during his decade-long murder spree which saw him and his crew rack up nine bodies. Scarpa died of AIDS in 1994, facing multiple murder charges stemming from the 1991-93 Colombo war. He was also marked for death by the mob after being exposed as a double-crossing federal informant. Gioeli, meanwhile, dodged the post-war prosecutions and shot his way to the top of the beleaguered Colombo clan, leading a murderous group of hoodlums from his Farmingdale family home. As far as Colombos go, Gioeli had a good run and didn't see the inside of a jail cell until 21 years after he was made, and five years into his reign as boss. Better yet, despite being charged with six murders, including an NYPD officer, Gioeli is slated to exit prison in 2024 at the age of 71. 

Thomas Gioeli was born in 1953 to Salvatore & Julie Gioeli and grew up in the quaint Long Island village of Farmingdale. Gioeli became acquainted with the Profaci/Colombo family as a teenager, although his parents were never linked to organized crime. But by the age of 19, Gioeli was boyhood pals with a neighborhood kid named JoJo, whose father happened to be one of the Colombo crime family's biggest up-and-comers. Andrew 'Andy Mush' Russo, who was among the many Colombo gangsters that had migrated their families and their rackets to Long Island, was an influential underworld figure who was then attending various functions with mob bosses across the country on behalf of his imprisoned cousin, boss Carmine 'Junior' Persico. When the FBI searched Gioeli's house in 2008, among the items they discovered were a photo of Tommy and JoJo in 1972, with broad smiles on their faces in front of a Farmingdale candy store. 

Soon, along with JoJo, Gioeli became a fixture in both Brooklyn and Long Island Mafia circles. Reynold 'Ren' Maragni, a self-described Bensonhurst "tough guy" and later a Colombo caporegime, recalled meeting Gioeli for the first time in the 1970s at Monte's Venetian, an age-old Carroll St. establishment that was a favorite of both the Colombo family and Frank Sinatra.

Gioeli served prison time in the 1970s for robbery and was released in 1980. Since Andy Mush had just been arrested on bribery charges that year, Gioeli became an on-record associate of his acting capo & nephew Anthony 'Chucky' Russo, who was so close to Mush that he was frequently mistaken by Greg Scarpa as his son. But despite his decade-long friendship with JoJo Russo, Tommy would still have to "make his bones" if he wanted to be inducted into the Colombo crime family. He allegedly did this on January 4, 1982, in the botched hit of father-and-son mobsters Joseph Peraino Sr., 60, and Jr., 31. Tom Gioeli and a second-generation Brooklyn gangster named Joseph 'Junior Lollipops' Carna, 42, were allegedly in crash cars down the street, according to testimony from the gunman in the hit. Given that they weren't on the scene, the pair would have heard, but not seen, the five shotgun blasts by the four-man hit team, and would later find out that the hit went horribly wrong. That's because, after failing to murder the father-and-son pornography tycoons initially, the hit team was forced to pursue them in a random Gravesend property on Lake Street.

Joseph Jr. was hit in the chest by a shotgun blast and died instantly, but Joseph Sr. made it to the second-floor porch of Veronica Zuraw's apartment. Zuraw, who had no ties whatsoever to organized crime, was hanging shirts in a closet and was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. A Brazilian-born ex-nun, Zuraw met an accountant and moved to America to pursue her relationship with him. The Daily News described her on January 6, 1982, as a "tireless social worker who often worked out of an office at St. Finbar's Church on Bay 20th St. She also served as director of social services for the Italian Board of Guardians in Brooklyn." But she met a tragic end that day when bullets intended for the elder Peraino hit her, killing her instantly. Peraino Sr. was hit in the buttocks, but he survived for another sixteen years. The triggerman, soldier Salvatore 'Big Sal' Miciotta - who was inducted in the same ceremony as Peraino Jr. - fled the scene, forced to report his failure back to his capo Chucky Russo. The other three members of the hit team were Vincent 'Jimmy' Angelino, John Minerva, and Frankie Blue Eyes Sparaco. Angelino and Minerva were also inducted alongside Joseph Jr. and Miciotta, confirming the age-old adage that in the Mafia, your murderers come as your friends. 

The media coverage of the tragic wrong-place-wrong-time murder was intense, and the Daily News reported on January 6 that the slaying marked the "continuation of a mob war to control a nationwide, multibillion-dollar smut ring." This may have been an overstatement, but there's no question that the Perainos were among the top of America's pornography industry. In fact, Peraino Sr. and his brother Louis had indeed been convicted the month prior in Miami of conspiracy to distribute pornographic films, and the pair were on bail awaiting sentencing. They had been collared as being two of the "45 top porn wholesalers across the country."

Top-echelon Colombo informer Greg Scarpa Sr. confirmed to the feds the following day who had committed the hit - he said one of the assailants was capo Anthony 'Chucky' Russo, although the other two names in the file are redacted. Scarpa explained that the murder attempts were a culmination of several incidents that left the Perainos in poor standing with the mob. The father-son partners-in-crime had apparently progressed from dealing porn to narcotics, and Joe Jr. had refused to take part in a hit that was requested by Gambino boss Big Paul Castellano. Incensed at the blatant breaking of Mafia rules, Carmine Persico requested that Chucky's crew whack them.

When Miciotta started blabbing about the murder in 1993 as part of his cooperation with the government, nobody was left to prosecute. Jimmy Angelino was murdered in 1988, Minerva in 1992, and Sparaco had just been convicted of enough murders to ensure he wouldn't be leaving prison for decades. Interestingly enough, even though Miciotta himself admitted he "hated" Gioeli, he didn't name him or Carna as being in the crash car. Perhaps Miciotta, whose central testimony related to the 1991-93 Colombo war, didn't see the relevance in pointing the finger for a crime the feds weren't particularly interested in, or perhaps - as Gioeli and his attorneys have long maintained - the pair weren't actually involved in the murder. By the time Miciotta changed his tune about the hit twenty years later and "remembered" that Tommy Shots and Lollipops were there, the feds decided that it wouldn't stick in court.

In 1984, Andrew Russo was indicted again along with cousin Carmine Persico in the Concrete Case, a headline-grabbing bust that culminated in arrests for all Five Families. All but guaranteeing he'd be behind bars for a while, Russo pushed for his son JoJo to be inducted. This bode well for Gioeli, who was himself straightened out on January 9, 1987, along with two other aspiring gangsters, according to Greg Scarpa. Around this time, Gioeli began mentoring his 18-year-old cousin, Thomas 'Irish Tommy' McLaughlin, a rough-and-tumble half-Irish, half-Italian Bensonhurst hoodlum. Gioeli also took a liking to McLaughlin's 20-year-old friend, the Sicilian-born Big Dino Calabro. When he emigrated to the United States as a child, Calabro knew no English and flunked out of school, opting instead to deal drugs on Bensonhurst street corners. His first taste of organized crime came through a high school friendship with John Parlagreco, a low-level hoodlum who brought Calabro along to a Mafia social club. Although John wasn’t too entrenched in racketeering, his brother Mario was a full-time member of the “Wimpy Boys,” a misleadingly-named crew of murderers, loansharks and extortionists under the command of father-and-son Colombo mobsters Greg Scarpa Sr. and Jr.

With John Parlagreco, Big Dino began stealing cars and burglarizing homes, and then showed up to the Wimpy Boys social club on 13th Ave. and 75th St. to chat about his endeavors. Dino was enamored by the respected and feared mobsters that showed up at the social club to confer with the elder Scarpa, whose ominous underworld nicknames included “the Grim Reaper” and “the Mad Hatter.” In Brooklyn Federal Court almost thirty years later, Big Dino testified about his first impressions;
"I seen older guys with dress suits on and cars and jewelry in the middle of the day.” That, Calabro said, was “(j)ust what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to work and that’s the kind of life I wanted.”

Calabro’s short-lived time as a Wimpy Boys wannabe was cut short when he received a 1.5-to-4.5 state sentence for attempted burglary and grand larceny. After his exit from prison, he eschewed his old friend John and became “best friends” with another neighborhood crook named Richie Greaves. Ingratiating himself with his new pal, Calabro soon buddied up to Greaves’ friends. There was John Baudanza, a violent Mill Basin gangster whose uncle was an enterprising bigwig Colombo mobster. There was Anthony Basile, an on-record associate of one of the Bonanno crime family’s most prolific killers, Tommy Pitera. And, lastly, there was Thomas ‘Irish Tommy’ McLaughlin, whose uncle/cousin happened to be the newly-inducted Colombo soldier Tommy Gioeli.

The aspiring crew congregated at sports bars such as “the Home Stretch” and “the Sports Page,” as well as the Getty Gas Station on Kings Highway. The gas station would be where Dino first met Gioeli, sparking a friendship which would define his criminal career. By 1989, the 36-year-old Tommy was amassing an array of Joker-Poker machines; illegal video gaming devices which he would install (forcibly or otherwise) in local establishments from Brooklyn to Long Island. In fact, Gioeli’s nickname among his Colombo peers was “Tommy Machines,” specifically because of his Joker-Poker prowess, the proceeds of which he would split 50/50 with the establishment’s proprietor.

One way or another, Tommy Machines took an instant liking to the Sicilian-born car thief, and Calabro felt the same way.
"I wanted what he had,” Calabro later testified about Gioeli. “He had the power to get me in.” Before long, Dino was accompanying his new mentor - who was fourteen years his senior - to pick up cash from his Joker-Poker spots. These locations included; “Jimmy’s,” an after-hours bar on Coney Island Avenue between O and P; the Getty Gas Station; The Glory Club in Downtown Brooklyn; a candy store owned by mob associate “Lenny the Barber.”

Gioeli entrusted Dino with his first underworld task at some point in 1989 or 1990. With Tommy McLaughlin, Calabro was tasked to wait outside a Brooklyn Meat Market until a man named Joe “the Banker” Monte exited. (Note; This is a different person to Joseph “Joe Monte” Monteleone, a Colombo family soldier). When Monte came out, the two young hoods gave him a beating in broad daylight. It wasn’t made clear why Joe the Banker deserved such an attack; all Calabro remembers was that Gioeli raved about the victim as being a “dirty old man.” Regardless, the message was clear; Gioeli now had a crew of young and able hoodlums beneath him that didn’t hesitate to get their hands dirty.

McLaughlin, Calabro and Greaves subsequently introduced their criminal pals to Tommy Machines, and formed a fearsome street gang called the "Bay Parkway Boys." Big Dino Calabro's self-described protégé was Joseph 'Joey Caves' Competiello, whose graffiti name was “The Rock.” Five years younger than Dino, Competiello was a "tough kid," he testified in 2012, arrested at the age of 13 for joyriding a stolen car across the Verrazano Bridge. When he wasn't being schooled on crime by Gioeli and Calabro, The Rock could be found at a candy store called "The Corner" on 75th St. and 20th Ave.

Gioeli, at least a decade older than his underlings, became almost like a surrogate father for the group and schooled the delinquent teens on how to stick up stores, burglarize banks, and pull off home invasions. The "BPB," similar in nature to the Dyker Heights-based Wimpy Boys or the Bonanno's infamous Bath Avenue Crew, became a key Colombo family "farm team," and by 1991 consisted of;

Tommy Gioeli, 38, the crew's leader.
Big Dino Calabro, 24, Gioeli's right-hand-man.
Richie Greaves, 22, a Brooklyn-based burglar.
Irish Tommy McLaughlin, 22, the scrappy cousin/nephew of Gioeli. 
Anthony Kenny, a little-known thief with ties to the Bonanno family.
Joseph 'Joey Caves' Competiello, 19, a self-described protégé of Calabro.
Dino 'Little Dino' and Sebastiano 'Sebby' Saracino, 18 and 26, respectively. Sebby was known in the neighborhood as the "good brother" while Little Dino was "no good," according to Gang Land News, although both were prolific criminals during this timeframe.
Awjab 'O.J.' Ennab, 19, a stickup artist.

A favorite money-maker for the crew came in the form of bank burglaries. In one heist, Calabro broke through the wall of a Farmingdale bank, broke into an ATM, and emerged with a stack of cash. With Joey Competiello as the getaway driver, they made off with $20,000, which they split with Tommy. The money that flowed up to Gioeli was invested in purchasing "Joker-Poker" machines, which were illegal video-poker machines that exploded in popularity in the 1990s. They were placed in storefronts, bars, and eateries, and the profits were generally split 50/50 with the store's owner. Even if the small businessman refused, the Mafia always managed to push them into shops one way or another. His success in the industry earned Gioeli the moniker "Tommy Machines."In a less successful operation, Calabro, Sebby Saracino, and Richie Greaves were the burglars while Tommy Machines and Little Dino acted as lookouts outside. The trio kicked in drywall to enter the building and started using a blowtorch to open a bank's safe. Unfortunately, Little Dino and Tommy Machines discovered on their police scanners that a silent alarm had been tripped, forcing the crew to flee. 

There were more unsuccessful heists, showing just how lucky the crew was not to get caught. One time, Big & Little Dino, Richie Greaves and Joey Caves tried to rob a Mill Basin bank. They planned to throw a cinderblock through a window while the employees were emptying the night depository boxes, but, embarrassingly, the brick bounced off without shattering the window, and the crew had to flee the scene. The team also tried their hand at looting banks' night deposit boxes, but that was a mostly futile task. At a Chase Bank in Farmingdale, near Route 110, Calabro, Competiello and Greaves canceled their plan to steal the deposit box since there were always too many people around. In another project, the Saracino Bros. joined the trio to rob a Long Island night deposit box. Everything seemed perfect - Big Dino and Greaves had built a plywood structure around them to obscure their attempt, while Caves and Sebby used a blowtorch to melt the screws securing the night deposit box to the wall of the bank. But when Little Dino, the lookout, spotted a security guard stumble onto the scene, the plan was ruined, and they hastily aborted. In a panicked escape, Big Dino totaled his car and then mangled his hand while jumping a fence. By some divine intervention, none of them were caught.

When no banks were available to rob, the crew tried their hand at sticking up other stores, but these were obviously less profitable. In fact, in 1991, Little Dino and Joey Caves stuck up a Brooklyn candy store and scored a pitiful $250, which they dutifully split among themselves and Big Dino. Other schemes were plagued with problems. Tommy, Big Dino, and Richie staked out the owner of Pat's Farms in Farmingdale, a Long Island jewelry store on Route 109 and Hempstead Turnpike, the back office of Farmingdale's Adventureland amusement park and an armored car depot on Route 110, but canceled all those heists for one reason or another. Joined by the rest of the crew, the wiseguys also tried to rob the Farmingdale Meats Market but fled after an alarm went off, and tried (unsuccessfully) to break into a Long Island fur store with a sledgehammer.

Sometimes the crew even resorted to mugging to make a fast buck. After the owners of a Long Island market closed up for the night, Tommy Shots, Big Dino and Greaves jumped the owners on the street and made off with bags of cash. Tommy Shots also arranged for the mugging of a drug dealer; he organized Big Dino and Richie Greaves to enter the dealer's house as flower deliverymen. Once they were safely inside, they whipped out guns, handcuffed the occupants, and stole a safe filled with drugs and cash. Trailer loads proved to be more reliable to rob than banks or stores. In fact, Tommy Gioeli even rented out a warehouse in Long Island to store hot goods that came from swiped trailers, such as one stolen from the Macy's Long Island parking lot at Massapequa Mall. Truckloads of loot were regularly taken from one particular L.I. trucking depot before the scene became too "hot" for future attempts. For that depot, the crew stole a tractor unit to break in, hitched it to a trailer and drove off with the loot. After another heist, everyone in the team sported flashy leather jackets after Richie Greaves, acting on a tip from Tommy Shots, robbed a truckload of those.

One of the crew's most successful heists took place in Syosset, Long Island, at Furs by Mina on 408 Jericho Turnpike. At 6:45pm, on February 11, 1991, Gioeli, Calabro and Competiello entered the store posing as a father and his two sons shopping for Valentine's Day. They then drew guns and handcuffed the store's owners, Alexandra Hatzis, 56, and her son Gus, 25. Keeping abreast of the cops with a police scanner, the crew made off with 150 high-end fur coats worth $900,000 at retail value. This robbery was especially crucial since it was pulled off to fund the upcoming wedding between Big Dino and his girl Andrea. Calabro's marriage was typical of any wiseguy's. He always had a goomah on the side and even raised an illegitimate child. Making matters worse, Calabro later confessed to regularly abusing Andrea. Cheating is a common theme in the Mafia, although - by all accounts - Gioeli, an avid churchgoer, was never disloyal to wife Maureen.