May 19, 2019

 With that, Gioeli's trial officially began on March 20, 2012. The first two witnesses on the stand were Maragni and ex-Bonanno underboss Sal Vitale, who had bonded with Gioeli over running separate crime families back in the '90s. In opening statements, prosecutor Cristina Posa announced that she, with help of prosecutors Elizabeth Geddes & James Gatta, and turncoats Competiello and Calabro, would prove Gioeli ran a "crew of professional killers." Posa promised that the two main turncoats "will bring you inside the life of the Mafia, inside the ways of this murderous crew. They will tell you in chilling details how they shot and killed people, how they tied them up and buried them and how they committed these horrific acts with Gioeli and Saracino."

Posa declared that Gioeli "developed a crew of professional killers" back in the 1990s to combat insurgents during the Colombo war. Gioeli took "the bosses side," and "that meant eliminating traitors," she said. Then, amid the climate of suspicion and insecurity fueled by the civil war, the family's leadership decided one of its highest-ranking mobsters had to go, prosecutors said. Underboss William Cutolo "posed a threat" because he was "wealthy and powerful," and the family's leadership thought he might make a move to take over the family.
But defense attorneys countered that there was no physical evidence linking Tommy to any of the charged murders, and all the jury had to go on was the words of ex-mobsters, "psychopaths," and "liars."

Sal Vitale first opened up to the jury about the state of the Mafia in the 1990s, in terms of the Colombo family war and Gioeli's ensuing promotions. He had intimate knowledge of sit-downs taken to iron out the conflict, and the high-ranking role that Gioeli played. In fact, he even presented an address book that feds seized him his Long Island house when he was first arrested which had the numbers for "Tommy Shots" and his driver "Dino." Defense lawyers tried in vain to contest that 'Tommy Shots' was the nickname of a Gambino mobster, but Vitale shot that argument down. Vitale explained why Gioeli got his nickname - "on one occasion he was shot" - and then provided jurors with a helpful glossary of Mafia terminology, such as 'on the shelf,' and 'mad hatter.'

On March 21, Reynold Maragni took the stand and helped illustrate to the jury what Vinny Manzo was talking about on the 2011 tape recordings. He disclaimed that, indeed, some of the recordings were inaudible because they dropped their voices to a whisper, and all the jury could do was trust Ren when he claimed to have written certain questions on slips of paper for Manzo to answer. This didn't fare well in court, and despite the apparent 'smoking gun' recordings, Maragni was torn apart by defense lawyers. First off, Gioeli's lawyer Adam Perlmutter got Maragni to confess that his recording device, the high-tech "Hawk" system placed in his watch, often malfunctioned. It would frequently run out of time, Maragni said, but he also sheepishly admitted that he had full power to turn it on and off at will. The lawyers went further; on the stand, Maragni confessed that he turned the watch off when he was collecting extortion payments and loansharking debts that he didn't want the feds to know about. In a scene straight from Goodfellas, the wired-up Maragni even slipped a note to a crew member, Dennis Cinnante, letting him know he was wearing a wire, according to Gang Land News. 

Then, on March 26, the feds unveiled the big guns. Dino Calabro took the stand, and coolly recalled his life of crime from start to finish. He breezed through testimony of the Carmine Gargano murder - even the part where Gargano's head was squashed with a sledgehammer - to the dismay of the victim's long-suffering mother Rosa, who was watching the trial as a spectator. She later told reporters that she hoped Big Dino and Joey Caves would rot in hell, according to the Daily News. The feds backed up Calabro's testimony with evidence that Andrea Calabro swiped from Maureen's home a couple of years back, failing to mention that it was indeed stolen. 

Defense lawyers made sure to go through all of Calabro's horrendous personality and crimes. They got Dino to admit that he had bedded the ex-girlfriends of not one, but two, of his murder victims. In a poor attempt to save face, Big Dino insisted that his wife Andrea called him every day in the Witness Protection wing of prison, and didn't harbor a grudge against either him or a love child he had in an affair. Defense lawyers weren't finished with him yet. They even called in Calabro's remaining brother who wasn't yet in prison, Vincenzo, to back Gioeli and Co. This happened on March 28, during Dino's third day of testimony, as Vincenzo recreated a scene from The Godfather: Part III. A knockaround Colombo associate who hasn't been linked to any serious crimes, Vincenzo sat with Gioeli's family and glared at Big Dino, who was pressed by the defense as to whether he called his brother Vincenzo a "shitbag" and accused him of stealing $65,000, according to the Daily News. Adam Perlmutter even asked Vincenzo to stand up, so the jury could see which side he was on, until Judge Brian Cogan demanded he sit back down.

The Daily News also outed another attendee in the Gioeli camp, a mysterious priest who sat beside Maureen to offer support. First, the Daily News outed him as a follower of Tommy Gioeli's blog, then grilled him over his identity outside of court. His refusal; "I think it would be better if I didn't say anything," only heightened to the News' speculation, who published an article all about him, even commenting on a book he carried into the courthouse about longevity. Adam Perlmutter did give up the priest's first name, Peter, and said that he ran a retreat in Western Massachusetts. 

Joseph 'Joey Caves' Competiello took the stand next and defense lawyers again had a field day with him. First and foremost, prosecutors were slammed for failing to have any record of his guilty plea and cooperation deal at all. Judge Cogan had to convene a special "re-enactment" of the plea proceedings, since defense lawyers pointed out that they couldn't effectively cross-examine him if they didn't know what he had pleaded guilty to, or what prosecutors had agreed to give him sentence-wise. After that was cleared up, Joey Caves took the strange approach of trying to win over the jury as he confessed to a handful of heinous murders. When asked what he was planned to do with a truckload of detergent he stole back in the '90s, Caves cracked; "Drink it!" before continuing that he was going to sell it. Although the Daily News reported that Competiello won giggles across the courtroom with his antics, it's unknown whether the jury approved of his lax retelling of murders he committed. Judge Cogan certainly kept him on a short leash, reprimanding him in open court for making hand signals to Tommy Gioeli. 

On April 3, 2012, a former FBI agent named Gerald Ryan testified to the court on how much of a slippery mobster Gioeli was to catch, recounting the numerous times when Tommy Shots dodged FBI tails. Ryan also explained to the jury why there were never any phone records or bugged conversations from Gioeli's cellphones - he only ordered his phones from the son of a Colombo associate, and used various cellphone features to make his calls invisible. 
"In light of Gioeli's close relationship with (the associate), it would have been futile for law enforcement to obtain such court authorization to intercept communications over such a device because Gioeli would likely learn of the authorization and alter his behavior," court papers said.

The testimony got headed again later that month when Sebastiano Saracino took the stand. Little Dino, whose brother, cousin, and right-hand-man had all flipped on him and whose criminal rackets were being poached from him on the streets, finally snapped on April 19 as he was being led back to his holding cell.
"Stop lying Sebby!" he yelled at his sheepish-looking kin. "Don't call me your brother no more!" Then Scott Curtis took the liberty of picking a fight with the handcuffed Little Dino. "You want some?" Curtis said, deciding that he could probably beat Little Dino in a fight given the latter was shackled from head-to-toe. Curtis and Saracino were both given a stern warning by Judge Cogan. As Dino's young son and several other relatives sat in court, he also let loose later that day, telling Sebby; "You made your mother proud, Sebby! You made her proud!"

After Saracino's testimony, the prosecution also got Saracino's right-hand-man David Gordon to take the stand, as well as Robert Ventriglia, who had confessed to murdering Minerva & Imbergamo in 1992. But one of Gioeli's own character witnesses seemed to do more damage than both of these men. Alongside a dozen or so civilians that spoke of Tommy's good deeds in his Farmingdale community, cousin Tom McLaughlin was expected to exonerate many of Gioeli's charged crimes. Maybe Gioeli had forgotten about the fact that him and his cousin had a serious falling out back in the early '90s that never fully healed. Or maybe Gioeli hadn't read the Gang Land News article from 2011 which quoted sources as saying that McLaughlin flipped, in part, because his cousin hadn't even sent him so much as a Christmas card during his fourteen-year incarceration, or bothered to visit him after his release. Therefore, it shouldn't have surprised anybody when Irish Tommy told the jury that the acting boss had indeed approved the Frank Marasa hit, and congratulated the hit team afterwards. This prompted a "Stop drinking!" remark from Gioeli, followed by; "How's Joey Caves?" referencing the fact that McLaughlin and Competiello, who had never gotten along, were now in the same government camp. 

With that defense ploy backfiring, Gioeli finally decided against taking the stand in his own defense. After Cogan gave him an hour to prepare to testify, the alleged boss got cold feet and backed out, the reality of his predicament finally closing in. In fact, when prosecutors were set to unveil closing remarks on April 25, Gioeli refused to leave his cell altogether. His family and regular supporters were also no-shows, making it a lonely courtroom when prosecutors once again detailed Tommy Shots' alleged life of crime. Gioeli and his lawyers claimed health problems as a reason he couldn't attend, without getting specific. But his demeanor improved when his defense team made their closing remarks. On April 30, Adam Perlmutter, presumably with a bit of help from the devoutly religious Gioeli, quoted Biblical and Talmudic passages "with the authority of a religious scholar," according to the New York Post.
“Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies,” Perlmutter quoted from Psalm 27. “For false witnesses are risen up against me." These "false witnesses," he said, were "untrustworthy, unreliable, desperate individuals."
"You know what else they are? Rats!" Perlmutter even alluded to the fact that Gioeli may very well have been at the scene of some of the crimes, but that didn't mean he played any part in the murders, unlike the confessed triggermen on the stand.

On May 2, deliberations began. It took a full week for the jury to make their verdict. As they evaluated the testimony of the witnesses on the stand, they came to the conclusion that Gioeli was not to blame for Calabro and Competiello's various confessed murders. It obviously didn't sit well with them that federal prosecutors were seeking to punish Tommy Gioeli with murders that were willingly executed by the two "rats" on the stand. So, on May 9, they found Gioeli not guilty of any of the charged crimes, including the murder of a cop. They conceded that, yes, Gioeli was almost certainly a career criminal and top dog in the Colombo crime family, and found him guilty of a racketeering conspiracy that included the 1991 murder conspiracy of Frank Marasa, the 1992 murder conspiracy of John Minerva, and another general conspiracy to murder Orena faction members including John Baudanza and Joseph Scopo. 

But as for the murders themselves, that was all Calabro and Competiello's doing, and Gioeli was acquitted of those. Little Dino Saracino was also found guilty of being part of the Colombo crime family, along with the predicate acts of plotting to murder Orena faction members and his brother's killer, Michael Burnside, in 1998. He was also found guilty of four additional counts of loansharking, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering for advising David Gordon to "take the Fifth" when responding to a grand jury subpoena (a dubious charge at best).

Racketeering conspiracy carries a maximum sentence of twenty years, something which Judge Cogan was almost certainly going to mete out for Tommy. But the verdict was still a victory, since it meant that there were only twelve years left for him to spend in the slammer before he could live out the rest of his days with his family and children. Wife Maureen was ecstatic in a photograph taken outside court by the New York Times, and even a state senator clapped for the mobsters in a courtroom hallway.

On January 10, 2013, Gang Land News released court papers which presented some grim news for Dino Saracino. The lowly Colombo soldier was nowhere near as high-ranking as Gioeli, and was found guilty of less murder conspiracies than his acting boss. But those pesky obstruction of justice charges were separate to the racketeering conspiracy, and could be meted out consecutively. That meant Saracino could be given his 20-year racketeering conspiracy sentence, as well as a combined 80 years for non-violent obstruction of justice offenses. Therefore, despite their cheers when the verdict came through, Gioeli and Saracino hit the books once more to try and get their conviction overturned.

For the entirety of 2013, Gioeli's lawyers lambasted prosecutors for "gross misconduct," accusing them of withholding evidence that exonerated their clients. The evidence in question was obtained by prosecutors the day after the split verdict came in. On May 10, 2012, James Calderone admitted to a DEA informer that he was "there for Chestnut's" murder, something which neither Big Dino or Joey Caves testified. Calderone also never named Gioeli as a participant, despite naming the two key turncoats against him. Prosecutors countered that they hadn't withheld any evidence, since it only came forward after the verdict came through. Judge Brian Cogan agreed on October 1, refusing to grant the defendants a new trial.

Meanwhile, Joel 'Joe Waverly' Cacace went to trial in November 2013, and unsurprisingly beat the case. Big Dino and the crew of turncoats were hauled up to the stand once more, and Cacace's lawyers used the same strategy pioneered by Adam Perlmutter the year prior. Cacace was found not guilty on all counts, and is set to leave prison next year after he serves out the remainder of his 2003 racketeering conviction.

On March 19, 2014, Gioeli was given a satisfactory 224-month sentence by Judge Cogan, sixteen months less than the twenty-year maximum. The judge noted that his six years in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center were probably worse for him than any time he would have spent in federal prison, and brought up Gioeli's declining health, which was only aggravated by his poor living conditions. Tom was pretty pleased with the results, and is currently scheduled for release on September 9, 2024, when he will be 71 years of age. Things weren't so good when Little Dino came up for sentencing on April 28. Citing a tape-recorded conversation in which Dino said he would take seventeen years "with a fuckin' smile," Judge Cogan dropped a hefty 50-year sentence on him, meaning he would be 79 years of age when he got out. In court, Judge Cogan noted that even though he was acquitted by a jury, he still felt Little Dino was responsible for the Ralph Dols murder, as well as the Cutolo and Greaves hits. Saracino's lawyer, Sam Braverman, summed it up pretty well;
"I thought the judge's response was remarkable," said Braverman. "I am not going to say that he was a defender of Tommy Gioeli, but it sure sounded like that. I asked, 'Why don't you give him some credit for awaiting death adjudication for such a long protracted period.' The judge said that he wasn't sick. 'Tommy Gioeli was very sick.' I thought that was remarkable.""He gave my client 50 years and Gioeli less than the maximum of 20 because he was sick," said the attorney. "My guy got more than two and half times what Gioeli got and he committed the exact same conduct as my client."
"Soldiers following orders do deserve to get punished," said Braverman. "History is replete with the idea that everybody is responsible. But the guidelines, the statutes, morality, every principle of justice says that leaders bear the ultimate responsibility. To give my guy a sentence more than two and a half times greater than what his leader got doesn't make any sense."

Since the sentences, both Gioeli and Saracino have been continuing their legal battle with feds. Saracino has called into question, among other things, the notion that the conspiracy to kill Michael Burnside was strictly personal and not related to the Colombo crime family, and the fact that he wasn't obstructing justice by advising David Gordon "take the Fifth." Gioeli, meanwhile, has sued the feds over a fall he had in Brooklyn lockup on August 29, 2013. The former acting boss had slipped and fallen while playing Ping-Pong with an inmate he knew as "De," blaming the wet floors in the MDC. Gioeli claimed that the recreation area's proximity to the showers, as well as a leaky pipe, were to blame for the 60-year-old diabetic breaking his right kneecap; an injury which required surgery, physical therapy, and occupational therapy, according to an exclusive New York Daily News article which made the front page on February 7, 2017, accompanied by the headline "BADA PING!" 

Gioeli sued for a whopping $10 million, something which Judge Kiyo Matsumoto warned him was probably excessive. In court, Matsumoto advised Gioeli that he should probably try and work something out with the Bureau of Prisons, because a court could easily find that he was liable;
“You ought to think about settling, resuming your settlement discussions, all right? Because I think there is some measure of liability here,” she said, according to the Daily News.

Gioeli testified in his defense on June 4, 2018, explaining how when he went to retrieve a Ping Pong ball, he had no way of knowing that the ground was slippery;
“Lights in the main room don’t penetrate good... I got bad eyes to begin with,” he was quoted by the Daily News. “It wasn’t drip water. It was like ice.” He needed to play Ping-Pong, he said, because he was watching his waistline;
“Obviously, I can’t play basketball with the other guys, so I played Ping-Pong.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Cleary ridiculed the acquitted mobster on cross-examination, and was reprimanded by Matsumoto for doing so;
“Do you have good friends?” he asked. 
“Explain ‘good friends’ ” Gioeli replied.
“Like Goodfellas, good friends,” Cleary replied.
“You know, stop it, really. Don’t use terms like ‘Goodfellas’” Matsumoto scolded. In November of 2018, she ruled that Gioeli and the BOP were equally at fault for the slip. Tommy should have paid more caution, and prison officials should have repaired the leak, which was apparently brought to their attention long before the slip and fall. It's unknown how much dough Gioeli got in the settlement, but New York Post reported on November 29 that any money he owed would go towards a $365,000 restitution that was ordered by the government back in his 2013 sentencing.

As for Gioeli's traitors, there have been a few speedbumps along the way to a happy life in the Witness Protection Program. Paulie Bevacqua, Gioeli's turncoat acting capo, never lived to retire peacefully. He died in November 2011 at the age of 72, waiting to testify in the trial of acting boss Andrew Russo. In 2014, Joe Competiello was given a twelve year sentence, and Calabro was given an eleven-year sentence in 2017. The following year, both of them were sued by Carmine Gargano's mother, father and two brothers for $10 million, the same amount of money that Tommy Gioeli wanted in the Ping-Pong lawsuit. Carmine's brother Jerry told the Daily News in an exclusive report that Calabro "doesn't feel sorry. He got away with it." There has been no word on the lawsuit's progress since the Daily News' exclusive July 14, 2018 article.

Tommy McLaughlin was given a sweet no-jail sentence for murder in 2016, but had a bit of trouble adjusting to his new digs in North Carolina. In mid-2011, a mere few months after he was taken off the streets, he was charged with trying to extort a business partner for $30,000. McLaughlin had invested in a restaurant with a onetime Gambino associate named Peter Cinelli in Raleigh, but when the going got tough, McLaughlin allegedly threatened him for the money back, according to Cinelli. The charges were dropped in August of 2012, and McLaughlin made it clear what he thought about the baseless allegations in an exclusive interview with Gang Land News;
"There were no threats," said McLaughlin. "That's a story they made up to stop me from pursuing my civil suit," he said, asserting that he ended his business agreement with Cinelli when he learned that they had been evicted for nonpayment of rent at the site of the new restaurant they were planning to operate. McLaughlin also brought up two sexual harassment cases that Cinelli had been convicted of and forced to pay damages, and he called Cinelli a "sick, perverted bastard." Currently, McLaughlin is not in Witness Protection, and has caught up with other former Colombo associates including Big Anthony Russo, whom McLaughlin was responsible for initially arresting back in 2011 on murder charges.
In February 2018, Sebby Saracino was also given a time-served sentence for his "brave" testimony against his own brother. In meting out the sentence, Judge Cogan noted that Sebby "took no glory" in mob life, and Seb agreed that he would have been "perfectly fine being a nobody."

Nowadays, Gioeli can take comfort in the fact that when he leaves federal prison, things on the street will likely be a lot calmer. That's because various manpower reductions in the FBI since 2011 have meant the Colombo crime family are currently all but ignored by the feds. The successful Colombo squad that saw nine separate administration members prosecuted in four years has been scrapped, and in its place is a depleted Mafia-busting team that also has to juggle the much larger, and more active, Bonanno and Genovese clans. Gang Land News has reported that new recruits have been added to the ranks in recent years, including the inductions of longtime associates Jerry Ciauri in 2013 and Vito Difalco in 2016. Tape-recordings from the 2015 arrest of Giovanni 'John' Cerbone indicate that he was recently inducted as of 2014. One source speaking to the New York Post in September of 2018 claimed “The Colombos just made about half a dozen guys." With all of that hinted activity, there is scant information on the leadership of the family. The last designated "head" was acting underboss Dominic 'Donnie Shacks' Montemarano, who was promoted to acting underboss and interim street boss in 2011, according to Gang Land News. Donnie Shacks, a permanent resident of Los Angeles and a Hollywood socialite, hasn't been charged with a Mafia-related crime since 1984. 

Gioeli's crew was dispersed in December of 2011, as revealed by Ren Maragni's tape-recordings. But Billy Russo, a longtime underling and friend of Gioeli's, is currently a powerful capo who has yet to serve any jail time, and his dad Andy Mush has been back on the streets since 2013, uninhibited by any supervised release. The same goes for Dennis DeLucia, another powerful capo and Gioeli family friend, and a high-roller who owns luxury yachts. Fat Dennis' son, Dean, is the secretary-treasurer of the Laborers' International Union of North America's Local 621.

For the time being, however, Gioeli spends his days at the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, which has long been described as a great place for wiseguys to conduct their business on the streets. That was the same prison that allowed Mikey Mancuso to run the Bonanno crime family through his nephew, Frankie Salerno, and was the home of a 2015 prison scuffle between the Italian-American Mafia and Albanian organized criminals, according to Gang Land News.