Forty years ago today, Paul "Big Paul" Castellano was shot and killed in front of Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. The date was December 16, 1985. For anyone who was part of that world, or even close to it, the shock waves were felt all over New York.
Michael Francis remembers it distinctly. He was deeply entrenched in the life at the time. Three days after the Castellano hit, he was indicted by the Eastern District of New York on a major racketeering case. He eventually took a plea and did his time.
The anniversary is an infamous one. It has been covered in books, documentaries, and films over the past four decades. One film Francis always recommends is the 1996 HBO movie "Gotti," starring Armand Assante and Anthony Quinn. He calls it brilliant and says it captures the Castellano hit and the era surrounding it. He warns people not to confuse it with the later Travolta version.
Francis had a personal history with Paul Castellano that stretched back to his early days as a recruit. In the early 1970s, he ran a market in Suffolk County, Long Island, called Sunny's Market. It sold fruit, vegetables, and had both a meat counter and a fish counter.
At that time, he was told to buy his chickens from Paul Castellano. Castellano and his family were in that business. Francis bought chickens from him for quite some time.
Then came Memorial Day weekend. It was a busy three-day holiday, and the market received big orders for barbecues and celebrations. Francis ordered a large amount of chicken for a woman who wanted to buy it from them. They sold it to her.
The day after Memorial Day, a Tuesday, the woman came back. She said the chickens were bad. There were maggots in the chicken. It was a big order, worth $700 or $800.
Francis called Castellano's guy, a relative of Paul's. He said the chickens were bad and he was not going to pay for them. The man on the other end insisted the chickens were good when they were sent. The two went back and forth.
The man got a little crazy on the phone, and Francis responded in kind. He was not a Christian back then, he notes. He hung up on him.
A day or two later, Francis got a call from his captain at the time, Andrew Russo. Russo told him to get into Brooklyn right away. Francis sat down with Russo and Tom DeBella, who was the acting boss.
They told him to explain what happened with the chickens. Francis told the story. Then they asked if he knew who he had been talking to. It was Paul Castellano's nephew, or close relative. He was also a made guy.
Russo told him Paul was very upset. Francis had been very disrespectful to his relative on the phone. He was not supposed to talk like that.
A sitdown was arranged with Paul Castellano over the chickens. Present were Francis, Andrew Russo, Tom DeBella, Paul Castellano, and Castellano's guy. Paul was very upset. He asked how Francis dared to talk to his guy like that, noting the man was made.
Francis explained the chickens were bad and he did not want to pay. He said he did not mean to be disrespectful. Andrew Russo told him to apologize and say nothing more.
The resolution was this: Francis did not have to pay for the chickens, but he had to continue using Paul's company to buy his chickens. There was other product involved too. Francis agreed.
When they got into the car, Russo and DeBella scolded him. They told him never to talk to somebody he did not know. The man was a made guy. This could have been very serious. Paul was a boss and he was very mad.
Then they burst out laughing in the car. One of them said, "Do you believe Paul Castellano drove us crazy over $700 worth of chickens?" Francis says that was his early recognition of who Paul was. He was all about the money.
The undercurrent of the December 16 hit is well known. John Gotti had his crew, including his brother Gene and Angelo Ruggiero. According to what was known, they were dealing drugs.
That was not allowed. Carlo Gambino had put an order in place: no drugs for the Gambino family. Persico did the same thing. Getting involved in drugs could mean death or losing your position. It was very serious.
Paul Castellano found out about the drug dealing. That was not a good thing. It was not an immediate cause of problems, but he did not like Gotti and his crew for that reason.
Then an indictment came down on Paul Castellano. According to what was known on the street, that indictment was fueled by a wiretap on Angelo Ruggiero's phone. Ruggiero was a soldier under John Gotti. They called him "Quack-Quack" because he talked and talked.
Paul Castellano asked Neil Dellacroce, who Gotti was very close with, for the tapes that Angelo Ruggiero had. Castellano needed them in discovery. But they did not want to give them to Paul because the tapes were very damaging.
John and Angelo had been talking very negatively about Paul Castellano on those tapes. It could have gotten him in real trouble. It could have gotten him killed. So they tried not to give up the tapes.
John was honest with Neil, according to Francis. He told him they would be in trouble if Castellano heard the tapes. Quack-Quack talked and talked, and they were not saying good things about Castellano.
Paul kept pushing for the tapes. Neil was able to hold him up until they got closer to trial, but he had to give them up at some point. Paul was going to know about it, and that would have been really dangerous.
John realized this. They had to strike first. That is what happens in that life. If you know somebody is out to get you, you have to make the move first.
But according to what was known on the street, Gotti did not get permission to take out a boss. You have to get approval from the Commission, from all five families. You just cannot do it.
He was not able to get permission from Chin, a very powerful figure. He was not able to get permission from Fat Tony Salerno of the Genovese family. Persico did not give him permission either. He did not like it. You do not take out a boss like that.
Gotti went ahead with the hit anyway. Sammy Gravano later told the whole story of how it happened because he was intimately involved. They set it up at Sparks Steak House in Manhattan.
Castellano was there with Thomas Bilotti, the underboss. Castellano had passed over Neil Dellacroce to make Bilotti his underboss. Gotti was very upset about that.
Then Neil Dellacroce died in early December. When Neil died, John knew he was in trouble. He had to give up those tapes. Once he gave up those tapes, it was over for him and his crew. He knew that.
So he acted first. But again, he did not get permission from all the bosses in New York. Some people did not like what he did, especially Chin. Persico was upset too. Francis talked about it with Persico when they were in MDC together shortly after it happened. Persico was not a fan of Gotti.
The hit happened in front of Sparks. Castellano was killed. The shock waves went everywhere. It was all over the news.
Francis interjects a thought here. If social media had existed in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, it would have been dominated every single day by stories about himself, his former associates, his father, Gotti, and others. Every day in the newspapers there was something about one of them.
The New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Long Island Press, Newsday, all the papers carried stories every single day. If social media had existed back then, mob stuff would have dominated it. Guaranteed.
They would not have been on it themselves, but other people would have capitalized on it the way they capitalize on things today. Reporters and others would have been all over it because the mob dominated the media during that time.
But on that day, the front page of every paper carried the Castellano hit. Three days later, Francis was in MDC. A lot of guys were locked up during that time. Paul was on trial or about to go on trial.
It sent shock waves, and a lot of things changed. Gotti was promoted to boss of the family. He was immediately targeted because the FBI knew it was Gotti right off the bat. The quest became proving that Gotti was involved in the Castellano hit.
Many people say Gotti caused the downfall of the mafia in New York. Francis disagrees. It was RICO that caused the downfall. RICO did the damage, and Giuliani led that charge.
But Gotti did not help. After the Castellano hit, the intensity on Gotti was off the charts because they knew. When the intensity came on Gotti, it stimulated the FBI to go after everybody. It reawoke the pressure.
Back then, Francis believes there were 12 to 14 hundred agents working all five families. Among the five families, there were about 750 made guys. That meant almost two agents for every family member, plus a lot of associates. That is how intense the FBI and the Department of Justice were on the mob back then.
The Castellano hit made it even more intense. Gotti and his crew suffered the most damage as a result, but it was widespread among all the New York families.
Francis says Castellano was not well liked. Andrew Russo, the acting underboss, and Tom DeBella were pretty close with Castellano. Francis knows this because he often drove them to meet with Paul. He was their driver and took them around. They met with him a lot and had a good relationship.
But Castellano was not well liked overall. He was seen more as a business guy, not a street guy. In the 1996 HBO movie, Neil Dellacroce, played by Anthony Quinn, says it in a sitdown: "You're not a street guy. You're a business guy."
He was also very tight with money. At one point, it was said he was taxing his crew. Ten percent of all the money they made on the street had to be delivered to him at his Staten Island home, which they called the White House.
People were insulted because he would not even invite them into the house. They would just leave the envelope and go. They resented that. Then he raised the tax to 15 percent, and a lot of the men were upset about it.
So Gotti did have support within the family for killing Castellano. Not all outside the family, but within his family, he had support. When Castellano was shot, a lot of people were happy about it.
Another incident became news on the street. It was found out that Castellano had erectile problems and had to get them fixed. When that happened, people lost respect for him even more. He was also having a relationship with his housekeeper while he was married, which people did not like.
There were things about him that made people say nobody was going to miss him. Gotti was especially upset when Neil Dellacroce was passed over by Carlo Gambino. Gambino put his brother-in-law Paul Castellano as head of the family instead of promoting Neil Dellacroce.
Carlo Gambino did it for a reason. He wanted to take the family more in the business direction than the street direction. Neil Dellacroce was a street guy and a tough guy. He was not a business guy. Gambino wanted to take the family in a different direction, so he put his brother-in-law in there.
There was not a lot of love lost when Castellano was hit. Francis remembers being in MDC three days later. He was locked up and given no bail. He was in there for several months. There was a lot of talk about it.
A lot of people resented the fact that Gotti acted. But a lot of people also said Castellano was not going to be missed. He was cheap. He was this and that. People started to talk about him more openly. He was not well liked.
It was still a big deal during their time that he was hit. What followed was constant scrutiny on Gotti. He decided to play it up. The Teflon Don went to trial a couple of times and beat a couple of cases.
Francis notes he thinks Gotti beat three cases. Francis beat five. So he had him beat by two, but he was not the Teflon Michael. Gotti was the Teflon Don.
The scrutiny on Gotti and the whole Gambino family, and all five families in New York, was intense. The RICO statute came down on so many people.
Francis says he has information and evidence he will be releasing fairly soon. He mentions a very dear friend of his, Michael Cesar, a Colombo guy along with him. He also mentions Vic Orena. Francis says he and Vic did not always get along, but he knew him since he was a kid. He was around his father and was a prominent figure in that life.
Francis says they got railroaded, both of them. He plans to talk about this soon. He says he will make revelations that will blow people's minds about how corrupt the FBI and prosecutors could be.
He says he will give facts and information, not hearsay or innuendo. He says he will dare anybody he is talking about to sit with him on it because he will show them the proof. He says he will accuse them to their face.
He mentions prosecutors and ex-FBI agents, and maybe current FBI agents. He names Comey as one of them. He says a couple of them are still around and caused tremendous damage during their time as prosecutors or FBI agents.
He says the whole Colombo war that started afterward was a result of the FBI instigating that war through somebody he knew very well, a government informant. He says he did not know it at the time. The informant was Greg Scarpa Sr.
Francis says he just came across this information and it really hit him. For a while he did not believe it. But then the evidence started coming out. He says he will be sitting down with somebody very soon who will tell the story.
He says the FBI had information that could have saved lives and they sat on it. They did not want to destroy some of the cases they had brought forward because the information would destroy their cases. Their cases were built on lies, and they did not want to ruin that. They allowed people to die as a result.
He emphasizes that was back then, not the current FBI. When people say they may not believe things about the government, Francis says, "Are you kidding me?" He wrote the book "Mafia Democracy." He knows what these people are capable of. He knows what the Department of Justice is capable of when they have corrupt people in their leadership.
His family was victimized by that. He says he brings facts and evidence, not hearsay or innuendo. He says it is a very significant day and urges people to stay tuned for two important videos coming Thursday and Friday. There will be a followup to all of it.
He says it is all mob related, but it goes beyond that. It goes beyond how innocent people were killed as a result of corruption at the highest levels of the government and the Department of Justice. He calls them terrible people.
He says the only way to stop this is by holding people accountable. He says the mafia were amateurs compared to what goes on when there is a corrupt Department of Justice official. They destroy lives.
He says the mafia might have destroyed their own lives. That was up to them. They fed on each other. But innocent lives are being destroyed as a result of corruption in the Department of Justice and different agencies under its control. He calls it disgusting and says some of these people are the scum of the earth.
He says when people hear what happened, they will understand. He calls it a very significant day. Forty years ago today, Paul Castellano was killed. Shock waves followed. He says he made definitive declarations and will back them up. He has done his homework, his research, and has his evidence. There will be more to come.
He ends by telling his audience to be safe, watch their surroundings, and be healthy. He wishes them a blessed Christmas season and says God bless them, their families, their loved ones, their neighborhoods, their communities, and America.