Former Gambino crime family associate Anthony Ruggiano Jr. recalled that the Ravenite Social Club felt like a second home when underboss Aniello Dellacroce ran it, but everything changed once John Gotti took over and transformed the landmark Manhattan hangout. Ruggiano, son of legendary mob figure Fat Andy Ruggiano, shared his memories in a recent interview. He first visited the Ravenite as a teenager and described the club in its earlier days as old and full of character, with a tin ceiling, a bar on the left, tables along the walls where men played gin, and a card table in the back where Dellacroce played pinochle.
He said it was always crowded on Saturdays but remained comfortable and welcoming. In 1978, when Ruggiano was heading to prison, Dellacroce threw him a going-away party at the club with a buffet, treating it like a send-off to college. Ruggiano was close with Dellacroce’s son, Buddy, who lived across the street. But when Gotti became boss, the atmosphere shifted dramatically.
Gotti bricked up the glass front and modernized the space, and Ruggiano said he and his associates stopped going because the club became packed with people trying to get close to Gotti. Around the corner on Mott Street, Charlie West ran another club, and Ruggiano recalled many similar social clubs scattered across Mulberry Street, including one operated by a Genovese associate known as Black Phil. His own father had a club in East New York above a beer distributor with a pigeon coop on the roof, which was the first club Ruggiano ever visited. When the East New York crew moved to Ozone Park, Fat Andy opened the Cafe Liberty.
Ciro Perrone of the Genovese family had a nearby club that Ruggiano admired, with a full kitchen, a basement workshop, and baseball memorabilia. Other clubs in the area belonged to associates including Jo Jo and Phineas Shaw, and Ruggiano also visited an old Brooklyn club run by Johnny Green of the Bonanno family. Ruggiano said all the clubs had the same basic feel and served as the mafia’s version of an office. Card games, meetings, and number runners were constants, and no strangers were ever allowed inside.
He also described the Triangle Club on Sullivan Street, where he was only inside twice, once for a confrontation with a man named Tommy and once for a sit-down. In both cases, the room was wide open with a large card table in the center where a Gambino captain sat with his back to the wall, surrounded by number sheets. Ruggiano said he rarely felt uncomfortable in social clubs because he usually knew the people inside. One exception was a sit-down at the Metropolitan Avenue club of Louie Metropolitan, a Bonanno captain.
Ruggiano and Mikey Gal had permission from Bonanno boss Joe Massino to go there without their own captain present. The sit-down involved a young man who owed Ruggiano’s crew $16,000 in sports betting debts. Ruggiano negotiated with the young man’s father through Louie and accepted $8,000 in cash, with the condition that the young man never bet with them again. Turning back to the Ravenite, Ruggiano confirmed that Gambino associate Joe “the Cat” LaFont purchased the building and much of the surrounding block.
He said Dellacroce pressured LaFont to buy the property. Ruggiano worked for LaFont for years and described him as extremely wealthy, earning tens of thousands of dollars weekly from the numbers business alone in the 1970s. Ruggiano noted that LaFont was so established that his operation predated the Verrazzano Bridge, with numbers being smuggled across the harbor by ferry. LaFont owned a compound in Lake George, had his own plane, and ran a major travel agency.
Ruggiano said he personally benefited from LaFont’s wealth when Dellacroce, then in jail, arranged for the young man and his new bride to stay at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas in 1977 with a $2,000 casino credit limit. Gotti, however, disliked LaFont intensely. Ruggiano believed Gotti felt LaFont had so much money that he was not kicking up his fair share to the family. He described witnessing Gotti publicly berate and humiliate LaFont, including throwing him out of his office next to the Bergen club.
LaFont was so desperate that he went to Sammy “the Bull” Gravano’s house and begged him to intervene, asking Gravano to tell Gotti to stop abusing him. Gravano told LaFont there was nothing he could do because Gotti was the boss. Ruggiano also shared a troubling detail concerning Buddy Dellacroce, the underboss’s son. While sitting in the Ravenite with Gotti at the back table, Buddy repeatedly told Ruggiano that when his father died, Gotti was going to kill him.
Ruggiano said he never sensed any threat and told Buddy he was crazy, but Buddy was convinced. After Neil Dellacroce died in 1985, Buddy took a plea deal he did not need to take just to get out of jail and flee, believing Gotti would have him killed. Ruggiano heard through a cousin that Buddy took over $1 million worth of his father’s jewelry and disappeared. Buddy died later in the Poconos, a heavy drinker and cocaine user.
Ruggiano also discussed the downfall of Joe “the Cat” LaFont’s son, Buddy LaFont, who allegedly paid Mike Tally tens of thousands of dollars to secure an acting captain position. Ruggiano called that the last straw and said both men deserved to be killed for the scheme, which went behind everyone’s backs. He argued that Mike Tally was surrounded by far more qualified men and that the payment revealed his character. Tally was spared only because he grew up with Neil Dellacroce.
Ruggiano expressed bewilderment about what has happened to the LaFont family fortune, noting that Joe the Cat was incredibly wealthy but that his grandsons appear to have nothing today. Ruggiano has a memoir coming out in June, titled “Reform Gangsters: Life Inside,” with pre-orders available through his website. He described the book as a real-life account of what goes on inside a crime family and inside his own immediate family, covering his 14 years in prison and his 37 years of sobriety.