TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061791/0617510.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 14.3 KB | 321 lines

                                                                                INTERVIEW, Page 11

A Crow Turns Stool Pigeon


He fingered his Mafia boss to save his own skin. Now Philadelphia
hitman NICHOLAS ("The Crow") CARAMANDI tells what it's like to
kill one of his best friends.

By RICHARD BEHAR and Nicholas (The Crow) Caramandi


    Q. You were righthand man to Philadelphia's Nicodemo
("Little Nicky") Scarfo. He has been described as the most
vicious Mob boss of his generation. What was he like to work
for?

    A. Well, you know, if you were in good graces with him, he
loves you and you love him. You understand? But you never knew
from one day to the next. He'd turn on anybody, and he drew no
lines when it came to killing. Most Mob bosses were not like
him. The Mob is basically run the same in every city, but our
"family" was unusual in that it was a very paranoid family
because we all feared each other and feared Scarfo the most. He
held grudges. If you didn't say hello to him 20 years ago, he
never forgot. He used to say, "I'm like the turtle. I get
there." You know, we were the best of friends. He believed in
me, and I believed in him. But he was very, very paranoid. He
betrayed himself. His own nephew turned.


    Q. You turned state's witness after pleading guilty in
1987 to murder, racketeering and conspiring with a Philadelphia
councilman to extort $1 million from a real estate developer.
Since then you've testified in 11 trials that have brought 52
convictions. Why did you squeal?

    A. It wasn't my will to be a rat. I was arrested after the
FBI had wired my construction partner, this guy John
Pastorella, for 18 months. I was in jail trying to make bail,
and I believed I was going to be killed there, probably with the
blacks carrying out the order. I got the word. And the next
morning I called the FBI and told them to get me the hell out.
I was scared to death. I was shakin'. I blame Scarfo. He's the
guy who wanted to kill me. I'm 55 years old, and all my life I
was a stand-up guy. I was loyal; I killed for the guy; I brought
him millions of dollars. There's no way I was ever gonna turn.
It never even entered my mind. What big sin did I commit? I got
arrested. I was always prepared to go to jail. I figured I was
facing 20; if I pled guilty, I could have gotten 10. I would
have been a king in jail. We might have even won the trial. You
know, you don't realize how precious a life is until you're in
that position where you're gonna get killed, and you'll do
anything to survive. And look what I did to survive. I went on
that stand 30 times, and it killed me. I loved some of them
guys. And I had to -- boom, boom, boom, boom -- point the finger
and bury them.


    Q. For all the Philadelphia family's paranoia and
violence, you guys were sometimes known as "the gang that
couldn't shoot straight."

    A. You know, sometimes it takes a year to kill a guy.
Sometimes it takes a week. That's because Scarfo was a cowboy.
He didn't want a guy taken in a house and shot easily in the
back of the head. He wanted it outside, in broad daylight, with
a million people around. Restaurants, funeral homes, anywhere.
Then it gets written up in the papers, and it puts fear in
people. He loved that cowboy stuff. He had a big fan club. He
used to get letters from black guys who wanted to join the Mob.
We had a filing cabinet full of letters. There was so much
killing. Things got so bad that they wanted us to go into houses
and shoot the whole family, the mother, the wife.


    Q. You helped kill Salvatore Testa, the youngest Mafia
capo in America and one of your best friends. How could you do
such a thing?

    A. Well, it's the name of the game. If you're a gangster,
you gotta be a gangster. You never know who you're gonna be
told to kill in this business. But I used to get nightmares
over Salvie and would wake up in cold sweats screaming his
name. This went on twice a week for three months. It was just
awful. We killed him in a candy store, and I helped to drag his
body out, threw him on a road in Jersey and left him in a ditch
with a blanket wrapped around him. I seen his face when I
turned the car around.


    Q. I see some water in your eyes. Do you feel remorse?

    A. Yeah, I really liked him. There was no reason for it.
I wanted to tell this guy so bad to take off. But what was I
gonna do? It was kill or be killed. There is no "no." You love
him, you gotta do it. "This thing" comes first. It comes before
your mother, your father, your sister.


    Q. Why was Testa killed?

    A. You see, Salvie figured by marrying the daughter of the
underboss, [Salvatore] "Chuckie" Merlino, he'd be right near
the top. But she was a spoiled brat, and a few months before the
wedding he backed out. Everything was all set up: the gowns, the
tablecloths, the invitations to the Bellevue-Stratford, the
announcement in the newspaper. It was gonna have approximately
1,000 guests and cost well over $100,000. They were gonna try
and get Michael Jackson to sing. When Salvie backed out, he
signed his own death warrant. It was a blow to the underboss.
This was the ultimate insult. We were actually gonna kill him
right in a crowded funeral parlor, but there was too much law
outside. That night, it's time to leave, and Chuckie grabs
Salvie by the neck and kisses him on the lips. Smaaack! I said,
"Aw, if he doesn't know now, he'll never know." That was the
kiss of death.


    Q. Could you really have got Michael Jackson to perform at
the wedding?

    A. Through people, we could get to anybody. We've got
judges, lawyers, Senators, entertainment people. God knows how
high it goes. When I was pinched, we were gonna take over
Philadelphia's waterfront development. Some $200 million in
construction was gonna come my way. We had big plans for
Atlantic City. I was all set to go into Caesars and start
organizing the dealers and move into the union's health and
welfare plans. We were gonna set up satellite doctors and give
them a monthly fee to take care of union patients, with 65%
going to us. There's nothing that can't be done. The FBI has
been cracking down in many cities, but "this thing" never dies.


    Q. You also helped kill your own mentor, Pasquale ("Pat
the Cat") Spirito.

    A. We tried for months to kill him, and for a while that's
all we used to talk about. We used to get sick when we'd see
him. We'd want to throw up. Pat had bad vibes and knew what was
coming. This guy tried to work my head for hours the day before.
He had me in a booth in a luncheonette drinking coffee for four
hours, making me tell him how much I love him, and it's already
set up to kill him the next night. I said, "Pat, what are you
talking like this for? I'd do anything for you. Hey! I wouldn't
be here if it weren't for you. Buddy, my life is yours. Jesus
Christ, I love you." He was relieved.


    Q. What happened the following night?

    A. We killed him in a car. Bango! Shot twice in the back
of the head. Then we went a few blocks to throw the guns away
and clean up. I went around the corner to a bar and waited till
it came on the TV news at 11. I said, "Christ, they killed my
best friend." I was pretending like I was crying, and guys are
coming over to me. Everybody hated this guy. But this was my
alibi. See, people in the bar said I'd been there all night.
Fifty people would have sworn that I was there since 8 o'clock.


    Q. You want to pass along any tricks of the trade?

    A. As far as advice goes, you can't show greed. It's the
fastest thing that gets you killed. Also, when you're around the
boss, don't drink. See, when a guy drinks, his feelings come
out. What Scarfo would do, and he was famous for this, was take
everyone to dinner and order double margaritas. Then he'd start
talking about people, and he wants to see who chimes in, wants
to see what they got to say. He'd make a guy drink and drink and
talk and talk until there was no more talk left in him. I never
talked because I knew this was a trap. When you drink, you say
things. Maybe you don't shake someone's hand. Maybe you make a
remark. You don't know. Animosity comes out.


    Q. Could I have come to you and said, "Hey, I'm not sure
how the Mob works, but I'd like someone's legs broken"?

    A. Well, if you were somebody's friend and somebody was
bothering you, yes, we'd do you a favor. There's no favors that
we can't do.


    Q. What would it cost me?

    A. We don't kill or hurt people for money. That's greed.
Maybe you'll want to buy me a gift or send me a case of
champagne. You'd find out what I like. Maybe I'll want to borrow
money from you sometime. See, "this thing" is like the second
government. If politicians, doctors, lawyers, surgeons come to
us for favors, there's got to be a reason. There's no justice
in court for certain people, so they come to us. Maybe somebody
is bothering a guy's wife or daughter, or he wants to borrow
money to go into business. I don't know how this country would
survive without the Mob.


    Q. Was it so great being a mobster?

    A. It's the greatest thing that a human could experience.
The flavor is so good. The high is so natural. When you sneeze,
15 handkerchiefs come out. I mean, everywhere you go, people
just can't do enough for you. At Christmas people are bangin' on
your door, dropping off gifts. If it rains, 25 umbrellas open
up. If you walk into a restaurant, they'll chase the person out
of the best table and put you there. There's just so much
glamour and respect and money. The nightclubs, the broads.
Broads just die over you. It's unbelievable. In the Mob, you've
got friends; you belong to an army, something that is so
powerful. You're with the elite. Your word is law, you're like
the judge and jury. Anything you say is final. You feel that
you're so superior and that you're chosen. I had 100 to 150 guys
with me: bookmakers, loan sharks, drug dealers, union guys,
politicians, doctors. There was nothing we couldn't penetrate.
We had the sports-betting business, the numbers, loan-sharking,
the shakedown business, union kickbacks. But, you know, it
really wasn't me. It was the wall around me that was so
powerful.


    Q. Besides getting arrested and having to disguise your
whole life, what's the downside?

    A. The killing. And the treachery. Everybody's jealous of
something in "this thing." There's no security, and you're never
safe. You learn how to read eyes. You gotta be a good
manipulator. You gotta meet somebody; you don't even know if
you're gonna come back. You get in a car; you don't known if
you're gonna get a bullet in your head. The capos were always
trying to trap me, thinking maybe I got more money that I wasn't
kicking in. But I used to keep records and slips of paper,
weeklies, monthlies, stacks of them for three, four, five years.
I turned in every dime. Then I became the boss's righthand man,
and everybody was scared to death of me. Now I got the boss's
ear, and nobody knows what I'm saying. Everybody trembles now.


    Q. What do you think of people who lead straight lives?

    A. The average guy who works and pays taxes is a sucker.
They're trapped, with kids and a mortgage and car payments, and
they can't live. They're just existing. They work from 9 to 5,
and they don't even know what day it is. All you gotta do is
throw the dirt over them. I didn't want to take that road.


    Q. George Anastasia, the Mob chronicler, is coming out
with a book, Blood and Honor, about your 30 years as a
gangster. This is the stuff that makes for great movies. Are any
of the recent Mafia films accurate in their portrayal of what
the life is like?

    A. I saw Godfather III. It stunk. I didn't think much of
the plot, and I didn't see any good reviews of it either.
Godfather I was pretty close [to the real thing], and
Godfather II was good, but this one was farfetched. I remember
sitting there and thinking, If these suckers in the theater only
knew they were sitting with the real McCoy.


    Q. Do you trust anyone?

    A. I trust Dave Gentile. He's an FBI agent from
Philadelphia who helped me a lot mentally when I was falling
apart. There were times I wanted to take pills and just forget
about it. He spent a lot of time with me and encouraged me. I
thought the other law-enforcement guys were conning me, but he
believed in me. He's given me the confidence to do things that
I'm afraid of. To me, he's my best friend in the world. I owe
my life to him.


    Q. Do you believe in God?

    A. Yeah, I believe in God. I go to church once a month,
but I can't bring myself to go to confession right now. I don't
have the balls yet to do that. I don't know if my sins are
going to be forgiven, you know. I broke all the commandments.
That's something that I wrestle with, and I know I got to deal
with it in time, and I want to deal with it. That's the only
peace I think I'll have, if I could get to God. But I don't want
to use God as an excuse now, because I know in my heart that I
would do it all again. I'm talking from the heart. So how could I
say I'm sorry? If I say I'm sorry, who am I kidding? I did it,
and I loved it.


    Q. You helped destroy the Scarfo family, the first Mafia
family to be wiped off the map. Not since Joe Valachi has anyone
done this much damage to the Cosa Nostra. But here you are with
a completely new identity under the Federal Witness Protection
Program, somewhere a long way from Philadelphia. What's life
like for you now?

    A. This is a dog's life compared to the life I had. I try
to cover my tracks, but I'm constantly looking over my
shoulder. I can't make any friends. You never know where or when
they're going to come. I did a lot of damage when I was on that
stand. A lot of families are really bitter. My wife disowned me.
Nobody likes what I did. Nobody likes what I am. They would
mutilate me in such a way, and they would want the whole world
to see it to put fear in people. I took a whole family down, you
know. But I'm trying to adjust to a legitimate life. I could go
out and steal and set somebody up just like that [snaps
fingers], but I can't take the chance. I wouldn't last too long
in jail. So I'm working. And I'd like to get a house, fix it up,
sell it and, you know, things like that.


    Q. You mean be a sucker like the rest of us?

    A. Yeah. Be a sucker.