Publication: Rochester Democrat and Chronicle Publication date: 04/25/2004 Page: 1A Edition: Metro Section: National Copyright: Byline: Gary Craig Day:
Man of the Mob: The Making and Breaking of Tom Marotta Byline: Gary Craig SPECIAL REPORT
Man of the Mob
THE MAKING AND BREAKING OF TOM MAROTTA
Gary Craig
Staff writer
The hit TV series The Sopranos is only the most recent example of America's longtime fascination with mafia myth. but there's nothing fictitious about Rochester's mob. Vicious crime and bloodshed were common during its heydey, the 1950s through 1980s. By focusing on one powerful mobster, this four-day serial exposes the inner workings of the underworld and shows how police destroyed it -- and began unraveling two of Rochester's most notorious unsolved crimes.
In July 1996, one of Rochester's most prominent mobsters left prison.
Thomas E. Marotta, then 54, had served a dozen years for racketeering crimes.
Beefy and muscular when he entered prison, the former mob captain was now much trimmer. His forearms still bulged, courtesy of a prison weightlifting regimen.
But Marotta's heart, already unsteady after a massive heart attack in 1977, was even less reliable. His wavy dark hair had thinned and grayed; his complexion was slightly wan.
His wife, who would be the fourth of five, picked him up at the Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Mich., to drive him home.
A very different Rochester, his home place, awaited Marotta, known as Tom or Tommy. The ranks of organized crime - the circles in which Marotta made his name and reputation - had long been decimated by a combination of aggressive law enforcement and the mob's own implosion from turf rivalries and petty jealousies.
1/10 Drug trafficking was now the city's most prominent crime, and violence was even more common, and more random, than in the days when the warring mob factions embarked on a bombing spree to protect their respective domains.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, Marotta was a fixture in the news, as were his mob friends and foes. Not so anymore. Few people in Rochester could even pick him out of a lineup now. No more notoriety. No more unrelenting media attention.
That was fine with Marotta. The father of 10 children, he longed for a quieter life, time to spend with his family. And he wanted to play golf - lots of golf.
But to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, an aging Marotta was still a threat. Although conventional wisdom held that organized crime in Rochester had been wiped out, police feared it could be revived. And if anyone could pull some of the ranks back together - especially with a handful of former mobsters exiting prison - Marotta was likely the guy. Prison hadn't sapped Marotta of his charisma, his charm, his quiet machismo.
Police figured Marotta's past would be prologue. It wasn't long after he left prison that he fell under steady police surveillance. To the cops, Marotta's past sins were not youthful transgressions but the acts of a man with crime in his blood.
In the end, their suspicions would be wrong - and right.
Marotta would not try to resurrect Rochester's mob. In fact, he'd chafe at rumors that he wanted to do so.
But, in concert with seven other men, Marotta would return to crime. And the investigation into Marotta's activities would ultimately help lead police to a major score: the resolution of the 1990 armored-car robbery of nearly $11 million and the 2000 execution-style slaying of a pool hall owner involved in illegal sports betting.
Here's the irony: Marotta, the former mob captain, had nothing to do with either crime.
Getting into trouble
Marotta refused to be interviewed for these stories, but did allow the Democrat and Chronicle access to evidence, including undercover audio and videotapes made while he was under surveillance between 1997 and 2000.
Born in 1942 in Rochester, Thomas Emilio Marotta was the son of working-class parents - his father an elevator operator and his mother a seamstress.
Russell Frantz, a 62-year-old harness racing driver from Wallington, N.J., has been a lifelong friend of Marotta's. "We patronized the same playgrounds as children," Frantz said. "The playground was the only place to go."
Interviews with his friends and acquaintances and a review of court records show that he fell into trouble as a teen. He skipped school and committed crimes, including a burglary when he was 16.
In their early teens, both Frantz and Marotta were sent to the State School at Industry, in Rush, for troubled youths. The kids whose delinquency was considered harder to crack often ended up in cottages assigned more
2/10 rigorous chores.
Marotta toiled at one of the more rigorous farming cottages.
Dennis Brann, who is a year younger than Marotta, also was in Industry at the same time. Oftentimes, the younger kids with minor transgressions ended up mingling with older, tougher teens who had engaged in more serious offenses - "burglary, stealing cars, things like that," said Brann.
"I thought (Marotta) was a great guy," said Brann, now free from prison after serving 30 years for two murders he insists he didn't commit. "Believe it or not, he was a real gentleman. If he hated you, he'd still be nice."
Marotta didn't continue standard public school past the seventh grade. As an older teen and young adult, he settled into an assortment of jobs. He sold used cars, drove a cab, worked construction and became a union steward.
Among Marotta's close friends was Salvatore "Sammy G." Gingello. And Gingello was among the inner circle of Rochester's mafia chieftain, Frank Valenti. Before he was even 30 years old, Gingello assumed control of some of Valenti's illegal gambling parlors and ascended to the role of power broker in the local mafia.
Always stylishly dressed, Gingello frequented discos, bars and late-night joints, spending lavishly.
Marotta was often at his side.
"The bottom line is that they were so close, wherever Sammy was going, Tommy was going with him," Frantz said. "Whatever road Sammy took, he was going with him."
That road would lead straight into the Rochester's criminal underworld.
Marotta gets 'made'
Sammy G. was nothing if not bold.
While some of Rochester's mobsters preferred a quiet life of relative anonymity, Gingello was constantly out on the town. Often chauffeured around Rochester, he clearly had money to spare - and it was no secret how he made his living.
When more than $100,000 in gambling proceeds was stolen from his Penfield home in 1969 - $50 and $100 bills stashed in a suitcase in his living room - Gingello reported the crime. Though the money was the fruit of illegal activities, Gingello wanted it back, and was brazen enough to ask the Monroe County Sheriff's Office to figure out who had stolen it.
(Gingello suspected mobster William Lupo of the theft. Two months later, police found Lupo, Gingello's next-door neighbor, shot to death in his car.)
Gingello provided Marotta with an entree to a glitzier life.
Though their attire may have been cut from different cloth, their characters were not. Both were known as gentlemen willing to help out a friend in need. They often intervened when someone was crass or harassing a
3/10 woman at a bar - especially if the woman was attractive.
Both also had reputations as tough guys who'd violently pummel anybody they considered deserving of a good beating. Gingello's slight, wiry physique belied his fierceness. But the brawnier, broad-shouldered Marotta was clearly a force to be reckoned with, and few chose to cross his path.
Unlike many of the wannabe mobsters and some of the mouthier mafiosi, Marotta also could be trusted with secrets. He was loyal to friends, and loyalty, along with secrecy, were valuable attributes in organized crime.
It's unclear who decided that Marotta should join the criminal ranks - perhaps Gingello or Marotta's cousin Thomas Didio, another Rochester mobster. But by the early 1970s, Marotta had been welcomed into the family. In late 1971 or early 1972 - court records are unclear on the date - the initiation became official. (Some mob families required "made" men to have participated in a homicide; there's no indication that was required in Rochester.)
One day Gingello told Marotta to prepare for a swank evening out. "He said, 'Get dressed up tonight, we gotta go somewhere,'" Marotta recalled in a conversation captured in a December 2000 undercover videotape.
Instead of club hopping, Gingello took him to the Henrietta home of Rochester mob boss Valenti.
More than 30 people, including a local college professor, awaited Marotta in a large basement, to ask whether he wanted to officially join the mob, Marotta recalled on the videotape.
In Valenti's basement, the mob adhered to an induction ceremony common with the national crime syndicate La Cosa Nostra. Valenti, or another local mafioso of prominence, pricked the trigger finger of the new member. The blood would be drained onto a tissue. The bloodied tissue would be handed to the inductee, then set afire. The newly "made" member would hold the tissue as it burned away.
Marotta acknowledged on the videotape that he agreed to become one of the local family - then connected to New York's prominent Bonanno crime family - and underwent the standard rite. Still, he had his doubts about some of those sitting in judgment of his criminal worthiness.
"I sat around with three guys I know are stool pigeons, and they're OK'ing me," he said.
Sacrosanct rules were made evident at the Henrietta induction: You revealed no secrets; you engaged in no illegalities without the knowledge of the mob powers-that-be; and you watched whom you slept with.
"You don't mess around with any of the wives or girlfriends of any men in the organization," Joseph "Spike" Lanovara, who was "made" at Valenti's home months before Marotta was, once testified about the initiation.
Angelo Monachino, another "made" man, once testified of the risks of breaking the rules. "If you divulge any secrets, or anything else, it could even become your death," he testified.
Months after Marotta's induction, a power shift in the Rochester mob boosted him into a more prominent role.
Gingello, Samuel "Red" Russotti and Rene Piccarreto decided that Valenti had been skimming excessive money and should go. They told him his days were up as leader. In June 1972, one of Valenti's closest associates was shotgunned to death.
4/10 Valenti got the message and moved to Arizona. A new hierarchy was created: Russotti was the boss; Piccarreto, his consigliere, or counselor; Gingello, the underboss; and Marotta and Richard Marino, the captains.
Marotta oversaw the illegal gambling establishments on the western side of Rochester and Monroe County, and made sure they paid their "vig," the cut designated for mob leaders.
"The clubs were a fairly lucrative source of income for these guys," said Robert King, the former Monroe County executive who, while a specially appointed federal prosecutor, investigated and prosecuted Rochester's mobsters as part of a law enforcement task force.
Weekly, the mob pocketed between $1,500 and $1,800 from each of a number of gambling clubs, King said. They also had other criminal enterprises on the side, though none quite so profitable.
"They periodically would hijack a truck and be able to dispose of the goods on the truck," said King, who is now chancellor of the State University of New York system. "They had this deal where they were muscling their way into one of the labor unions and generating money for themselves with these no-show jobs."
'A Team' vs. 'B Team'
On Nov. 28, 1973, Jimmy "The Hammer" Massaro was found slain, execution-style, stuffed in the trunk of his car.
Massaro, an arson-for-hire specialist, was one of the men who had sat in on Marotta's mob induction and was one of the men Marotta suspected of being a stool pigeon.
The Massaro slaying wasn't the first mob murder in Rochester. But it came at a time when local authorities, fearful that they'd allowed the mob to swell to unimagined power, had embarked on an aggressive crackdown on organized crime.
The Sheriff's Office targeted mobsters who they figured would likely know why Massaro had met his fate. In 1975, Rochester's mafia leaders were indicted for planning the Massaro homicide. Marotta, who contends to this day he was not involved in the killing, was among them.
Gayle Ward, a former stripper who used the name "Boom Z Boom" and who dated Marotta in the late 1970s, said Marotta told her he had nothing to do with the slaying. Massaro had owed Marotta money, she said, and Marotta said he never wanted anyone dead who owed him money.
In November 1976, a county court jury convicted Marotta and four others, including Gingello, for the Massaro murder. Two months later, a judge sentenced all except Marotta to 25 years to life. Marotta received 15 to life because evidence did not place him at a key meeting where the slaying of Massaro was allegedly plotted.
In 1977, while imprisoned, Marotta, then 35, suffered a near-fatal heart attack. His health deteriorated, and it seemed possible - even likely - that he'd die an inmate.
Within months of the sentencings of the five mobsters, however, federal authorities were tipped that the Sheriff's Office may have manufactured evidence used in the Massaro murder trial. The tips proved true: Key evidence - surveillance notes placing the mobsters together to plan the murder - was fabricated.
5/10 In 1978, Marotta, Gingello and the three other mobsters were freed, their convictions overturned. They returned to Rochester to resume control of their turf.
But it was not to be. "The guys who had been left in charge didn't want to give up control, and the guys who were coming back out on the street wanted to reassert themselves," King said. "That led to a little disagreement."
In fact, the warring between the mob factions - dubbed the A and B teams by the media and police - was vicious in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mobsters torched buildings, blew up gambling clubs and murdered leaders on the other side.
Marotta's friend Gingello was a prime target, but he refused to let any threats slow his lifestyle. Marotta also was conspicuous, unwilling to keep a low profile.
Gingello's enemies hatched all kinds of plots to kill him. They considered placing a remote-control bomb in a Big Wheel that Gingello would walk by. They abandoned the plan, not out of fear that a child could be killed but more because they could lose the explosives if a youngster walked away with the tricycle-like toy.
Several attempts on Gingello failed. But on April 23, 1978, his car blew up moments after he stepped into it. The explosion severed his legs near the knees, and he died within the hour.
The death racked Marotta. The loss of his close friend, coupled with his faltering health, took its toll.
He suffered frequent chest pains. He'd break into sweats. He'd awaken during the night short of breath.
But most of his suffering was in private. On the streets, he maintained his steely, steady demeanor as the mob wars raged.
"The gang war never seemed to affect his sense of humor or personality," said Ward, who now lives in Decatur, Ind., and works as an aide to a lawyer. "If you met him and you didn't know that he was involved with what he was involved in, you would never know. He made fun of himself and of his reputation as a gangster."
But one family tragedy stung Marotta deeply, Ward said, and he couldn't mask the anguish.
In June 1981, his 19-year-old daughter and her fiance drowned off the Charlotte pier.
Police worried that Marotta might seek vengeance if he thought B team members were involved in the deaths, but decided there was no foul play and the two had drowned in an accident.
'I'm in no organization'
In the early 1980s, the police assault on organized crime was bearing fruit. Seven B team members were convicted in a racketeering trial in 1980. In November 1982, a federal grand jury handed up a racketeering indictment against 10 reputed A team members, including Marotta.
The indictment alleged that the mobsters had engaged in murders, attempted murders, extortion and arson as part of their criminal enterprise.
Marotta and the other mobsters were freed on bail as they awaited trial. Marotta didn't let the pending trial
6/10 slow him. His attorney asked permission for Marotta to travel - to take his kids to Disney World, to golf in Toronto, to go to Atlantic City, N.J., for "a boxing event and relaxation."
The fall 1984 trial lasted six weeks and produced more than 10,000 pages of transcript.
Early in the trial, Marotta lost his attorney when it was discovered that the man, Richard A. Miller, had once briefly represented one of the mobsters who had agreed to go into the federal Witness Protection Program and testify against organized crime figures in Rochester.
Marotta handled his own closing argument at the federal trial.
Holding the racketeering indictment in front of the jury, he contended that he was not a member of the local mob.
"I gamble, I drink, I chase broads," he told jurors. "My lifestyle may be different, but that doesn't warrant this. I'm in no organization or enterprise."
Jurors were not swayed. They convicted him and six others. In December, a judge sentenced most of the convicted men to 40 years, but sentenced Marotta to 20 years because evidence did not link him to so many crimes.
Marotta argued in an appeal that he'd been denied legal representation because the judge would not allow him to be retried with a new lawyer. Buffalo-area lawyer Joseph LaTona handled the appeal, which was rebuffed by federal appellate courts.
Marotta "was very involved in his appeal," said LaTona, who still practices in Buffalo. "I feel strongly today as I did back then that he got a raw deal and his conviction should have been overturned."
In 1987, LaTona unsuccessfully sought a reduction in Marotta's sentence. LaTona wrote in his motion that Marotta was a model inmate, working in the federal prison cafeteria at Terre Haute, Ind. Marotta was sure to be a model citizen when he left prison, LaTona maintained.
After all, LaTona wrote, there would surely be "intensive law enforcement surveillance" once Marotta was freed.
Little did LaTona know how prescient that statement would be.
PHOTO CAPTION
Tom Marotta, 1976
PHOTO CAPTION
Tom Marotta appears in federal court with his attorney, Richard A. Miller, to face racketeering indictments in 1982. In his trial two years later, Marotta told jurors: "I gamble, I drink, I chase broads. My lifestyle may be different, but that doesn't warrant this." Unswayed, the jury convicted him and six other mobsters.
File photo
7/10 PHOTO CAPTION
Tom Marotta, here in a police booking mug, committed crimes including burglary at 16. The Rochesterian was sent to the State School at Industry.
Courtesy of Greg Quail
ROCHESTER'S MOB
Rochester had one of the nation's most active mobs from the late 1950s through the early 1980s, and the leadership was constantly shifting. Mob factions battled violently over turf. The infighting, coupled with a law enforcement crackdown, ultimately led to the demise of Rochester's mafia.
Nov. 14, 1957: Conference of nation's organized crime figures at a home in Apalachin, a rural hamlet in Tioga County. In attendance are two brothers from Rochester, Constenze "Stanley'' Valenti and reputed crime boss Frank Valenti.
August 1958: Valenti brothers jailed for more than a year after refusing to answer questions from state crime commission about Apalachin meeting.
April 1961: Frank Valenti ordered to leave New York for at least three years after an election law violation. Moves to Pittsburgh.
October 1963: Convicted mob murderer Joseph Valachi identifies Frank Valenti as a member of the Mafia.
Fall 1964: Frank Valenti returns from Pittsburgh, takes reins of Rochester's illegal gambling and organized crime.
August 1969: U.S. Department of Justice lists Frank Valenti as one of nation's most influential mobsters.
Oct. 12, 1970: Local mobsters engage in Columbus Day bombings at two Rochester churches, county office building, federal office building and home of a labor official.
December 1971: The bombing spree, which included bombings of local synagogues, an Islamic mosque and a home of a county court judge, ends.
May 1972: Frank Valenti approached by mob colleagues who think he's over-skimming money. They urge him to retire. He orders them killed but is refused.
June 5, 1972: Valenti associate Dominic Chirico is shotgunned to death. Valenti, already facing federal criminal charges, moves to Phoenix.
June 1972: Samuel `'Red'' Russotti becomes the new Rochester boss. Salvatore "Sammy G" Gingello is the new underboss.
Dec. 15, 1972: Frank Valenti convicted of extortion.
Nov. 23, 1973: Jimmy "The Hammer'' Massaro killed in execution-style shooting.
Summer 1975: Five reputed local mobsters, including Thomas Marotta, arrested for the Massaro murder.
8/10 Nov. 10, 1976: All five are convicted in Massaro slaying.
Fall 1977: Proof surfaces that evidence in the Massaro homicide case was manufactured by law enforcement.
January 1978: The five reputed mobsters are freed after convictions overturned in Massaro slaying.
April 23, 1978: Gingello dies in car bombing.
Nov. 1982: Many of those accused in the Massaro homicide, including Marotta, are indicted on federal racketeering charges.
April 13, 1983: Marotta shot, but he survives.
Nov. 10, 1983: Marotta shot, but he survives.
Oct. 30, 1984: Most of the accused in the 1982 racketeering indictment are convicted, including Marotta. Marotta later sentenced to 20 years; most others sentenced to 40 years.
Aug. 1, 1990: Mob hitman Dominic Taddeo accused of three mob murders in Rochester as well as the two shootings of Marotta in 1983.
Jan. 1992: Taddeo pleads guilty to three murders and Marotta shootings. Sentenced to 24 years in prison in addition to 30 years on racketeering charges.
PHOTO CAPTIONS
Frank Valenti Boss of the local mob from 1964 to 1972. He was considered one of the nation's most influential mobsters.
Samuel Russott Replaced Valenti as Rochester mob's boss in 1972.
Rene Piccarreto Became counselor - or "consiglieri"- to Russotti.
Salvatore "Sammy G" Gingello Served as Russotti's underboss until 1978, when he was slain.
Richard Marin One of two captains under Russotti.
Thomas Marott One of two captains under Russotti.
Jimmy "The Hammer" Massaro Arsonist slain in 1973; five mobsters convicted.
Dominic Taddeo Mafia hit man attempted to kill Marotta twice in 1983.
SOURCES: Democrat and Chronicle, Times-Union, AmericanMafia.com, court records PAULINA GARCES REID staff artist
Sources for this series
The people interviewed by the Democrat and Chronicle for this series include: current and retired law enforcement officials; others knowledgeable about the history of Rochester's mob and the nation's mafia
9/10 families; local and national mob historians; friends and acquaintances of local and Cleveland mob figures; and lawyers connected to mob-related cases.
Most sources agreed to be identified. Any information that originated from a source who did not agree to be identified has been corroborated with at least two other sources, including interviews and/or court documentation.
Documentation used for the series spans more than two decades, and tens of thousands of pages of court documents and other public records in Rochester, Cleveland and New York City.
The Democrat and Chronicle also reviewed dozens of hours of undercover FBI audiotapes and videotapes in the possession of the Federal Public Defender's Office. Former mob captain Thomas Marotta, who has been represented by the Federal Public Defender's Office, permitted access to the tapes, which have never been released publicly because Marotta never went to trial. The FBI used undercover informants who agreed to have their conversations with Marotta and others recorded. The FBI has not released the tapes but the tapes have not been sealed by a court order.
Other undercover tapes, which have been released publicly, were also used as sources for this series.
Sources for today's installment include interviews with individuals quoted in the story; interviews with Rochester mob historian Greg Quail of Henrietta; interviews with law enforcement officials, local lawyers and friends of Marotta; undercover tapes; transcripts and court records connected to a 1984 racketeering trial; Marotta medical records also included in court files; records connected to recent criminal cases in federal court; various news accounts about Rochester's mob history; information about Rochester's mob history at the Web site AmericanMafia.com; and local lawyer Frank Aloi's 1982 book about Rochester's mob, The Hammer Conspiracies (Parthenon Books).
About the writer
Gary Craig is a senior investigative reporter who also covers federal courts for the Democrat and Chronicle. He has been working on this series for the past six months.
A Roanoke, Va., native, Craig, 45, moved to Rochester 14 years ago to work as the City Hall reporter for the now-defunct Times-Union.
Text name: Slug: Topic: Subject: Man of the Mob: The Making and Breaking of Tom Marotta Keyword: Crime, Organized Crime Type: Geographic: Art type: Art caption: Proc: Status:
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