On April 13, 1986, Frank DeCicco walked toward his Buick Electra parked outside the Veterans and Friends Social Club in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. It was 8:00 a. m. He had just grabbed a coffee.
At 50 years old, wearing a custom-tailored suit, he was the newly named underboss of the most powerful crime family in America. As he reached for the door handle, a deafening roar shattered the Sunday morning quiet. The blast radius measured 50 feet. The explosion ripped heavy steel doors off nearby buildings and sent shrapnel through second-story windows.
DeCicco was thrown 20 feet into the air. He did not survive. The assassination took three seconds. DeCicco was not just another mob victim.
He was the insider who helped John Gotti pull off the most brazen mafia assassination of the 20th century—the murder of his own boss, Paul Castellano. He rewrote the rules of the underworld and wanted to modernize the Gambino family. Instead, he was erased. Born in Bath Beach, Brooklyn in 1935, DeCicco was surrounded by organized crime from childhood.
His uncle George was a respected made man in the Gambino family. Unlike the thugs he ran with, DeCicco was calculating and sharp. While other young criminals committed petty theft, he watched how older men operated. He learned that violence was loud, but money was quiet.
He married his high school sweetheart, had children, and attended mass on Sundays. Behind the suburban dad exterior was a man who understood leverage better than anyone in Brooklyn. By the 1970s, DeCicco had caught the attention of Paul Castellano, then 60 years old. Castellano looked like a bank president and despised street-level thugs who dealt drugs and broke legs.
He wanted the Mafia to operate like a Fortune 500 company. He saw in DeCicco a man tough enough to handle street crews but smart enough to understand complex financial schemes. DeCicco became Castellano’s bridge to the violent factions of the family. He earned respect and millions.
The Gambino family controlled the concrete industry in New York City through what was called the concrete club. No skyscraper could be built in Manhattan without concrete, and the Mafia controlled the unions that poured it. The Gambinos bribed heads of the Teamsters and the Laborers Union. Any construction project worth over $2 million had to be approved by the Mafia, which rigged the bids and decided which contractor would win the job.
The winning contractor had to kick back 2% of the total contract value directly to Castellano. On a $50 million high-rise, that meant $1 million in pure cash handed over in a paper bag. The problem was that Castellano kept the lion’s share of the money. Street soldiers who actually enforced the rules got crumbs.
This unequal distribution of wealth created resentment—and that resentment had a name: John Gotti. Gotti was 45 years old, wore cheap suits he thought looked expensive, had a temper, and ran a crew out of the Bergin Hunt & Fish Club in Queens. He hated Castellano, hated the rules, and hated risking his freedom while Castellano sat in a mansion on Staten Island collecting envelopes. DeCicco was caught in the middle.
Castellano trusted him; Gotti respected him. DeCicco was the buffer. But tension was rising. Every time Castellano demanded a bigger cut of street rackets, Gotti complained.
DeCicco tried to keep the peace, sitting with Gotti to explain the long game and with Castellano to assure him Gotti was under control. He knew a storm was coming. The breaking point arrived in 1983. The FBI planted a bug in the house of Angelo Ruggiero, Gotti’s best friend.
Ruggiero was loud, careless, and dealing heroin—a massive problem because Castellano had a strict rule: anyone caught dealing drugs would be killed. The FBI tapes revealed Ruggiero and Gene Gotti discussing a multimillion-dollar heroin operation. When Castellano found out, he demanded the tapes. He told DeCicco that if they proved Ruggiero was dealing drugs, the entire Gotti crew would be disbanded—or worse, killed.
Gotti panicked, knowing Castellano was preparing to strike. He went to DeCicco and said they had to kill the boss. In the American Mafia, killing a boss without permission of the ruling commission was a death sentence. It violated every rule of the underworld.
But Gotti argued that Castellano was destroying the family and that the white-collar boss was out of touch. DeCicco had a choice: remain loyal to Castellano and watch the Gotti crew get slaughtered, or betray his boss and help Gotti seize the throne. He looked at Castellano, an aging man under federal indictment facing a trial that would likely put him away for life. Then he looked at Gotti, a ruthless killer with the loyalty of the deadliest men in Brooklyn.
DeCicco made his decision. He chose the streets. He chose Gotti. Gotti was too impulsive to plan the hit alone.
He needed DeCicco, who had the intellect, the access, and knowledge of Castellano’s schedule. Most importantly, Castellano completely trusted him. For three months, DeCicco and Gotti meticulously planned the assassination. By December 1985, they were ready.
DeCicco told Castellano he needed to arrange a sit-down to discuss family business. He suggested Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan. Castellano agreed, having no reason to suspect him. On December 16, 1985, at 5:00 p.
m. , Manhattan streets were crowded with Christmas shoppers. John Gotti and his top enforcer, Sammy Gravano, sat in a Lincoln sedan parked across the street from the restaurant. They were backup.
At 5:26 p. m. , a black Lincoln Town Car pulled up to Sparks Steak House. Paul Castellano was in the backseat.
His new underboss, Tommy Bilotti, was driving. Four men wearing matching trench coats and Russian fur hats waited on the sidewalk, looking like ordinary businessmen. Castellano opened his door and stepped out. The four men drew weapons and fired.
Castellano was hit six times in the head and chest and collapsed instantly. Tommy Bilotti stepped out of the driver’s side and was shot four times. The shooters calmly walked away and disappeared into the crowd. Gotti and Gravano drove slowly past the bodies to confirm the kill, then vanished into Manhattan traffic.
The aftermath was chaos. A mafia boss assassinated in Manhattan during rush hour was unprecedented. Law enforcement scrambled. Investigators recovered 12 shell casings at the scene.
Time of death was recorded at 5:30 p. m. Castellano bled out on the asphalt. Two weeks later, Gambino family captains held a secret meeting.
John Gotti was officially voted in as the new boss. His first act was to name Frank DeCicco underboss. DeCicco had achieved his ultimate goal: second most powerful criminal in America. He thought he had outsmarted everyone and that the danger had passed.
But he made one fatal miscalculation—he forgot about the commission and about Vincent Gigante. Vincent Gigante was the boss of the Genovese crime family. He was 57 years old and walked around Greenwich Village in a dirty bathrobe muttering to himself, pretending to be insane to confuse the FBI. Behind the act, he was the most cunning and traditional boss in the country.
Gigante was furious about the Castellano murder. Castellano had been his close ally. More importantly, Gotti and DeCicco had broken the most sacred rule of the mafia by killing a boss without permission. Gigante knew he had to send a message.
If Gotti and DeCicco got away with it, any ambitious soldier could murder his boss and take over. The structure of the entire American mafia would collapse. Gigante decided that Gotti and DeCicco had to die. But he did not want an all-out shooting war with the Gambinos, who had over 300 made men.
A war would attract too much law enforcement attention. Gigante needed a surgical strike. He needed a bomb. Using explosives was highly unusual for the New York mafia.
Bombs were considered too unpredictable; they killed innocent bystanders and brought federal terrorism task forces down on the mob. But Gigante wanted to make a statement. He reached out to Anthony Casso, known as Gaspipe, a 43-year-old rising star in the Lucchese crime family and a vicious killer with connections to corrupt police officers. Casso accepted the contract.
The opportunity was DeCicco’s routine. Every Sunday morning he visited the Veterans and Friends Social Club in Bensonhurst, always parking his Buick Electra in the same spot. A Genovese explosives expert knew how to wire a remote detonator. For four weeks Casso tracked DeCicco’s movements, studying his habits and noting the exact time he arrived at and left the club.
By early April 1986, the plan was finalized. On April 13, 1986, at 6:00 a. m. , two men working for Casso drove to Bensonhurst.
They located DeCicco’s Buick. One man crawled under the car and attached a powerful explosive device directly beneath the passenger seat. The bomb was packed with C4 plastic explosives and wired to a remote control receiver. The men parked a van down the street and waited.
At 7:45 a. m. , DeCicco arrived at the club. He was supposed to meet John Gotti that morning for important family business.
He walked in, had coffee, and spoke with a few soldiers. He felt completely secure. He was the underboss. He controlled Brooklyn.
At 8:00 a. m. , DeCicco walked back out to his car, accompanied by a Gambino soldier named Frank Bellino, who vaguely resembled John Gotti from a distance. The assassins waiting in the van saw the two men approaching the Buick.
They assumed the second man was Gotti—the chance to wipe out the entire Gambino leadership in one strike. DeCicco reached the passenger side door and put his key in the lock. Bellino stood right behind him. The assassin in the van pressed the button.
The explosion was catastrophic, tearing through the heavy steel frame of the Buick as if it were paper. A massive fireball engulfed the street. DeCicco absorbed the full force, and the heat instantly incinerated everything within 10 feet. His body was thrown across the pavement.
He died in a fraction of a second. Bellino was blown backward. His legs were severely injured. He survived but would never walk the same again.
The assassins sped away in the van, quickly realizing their mistake: they had killed DeCicco but missed Gotti, who had changed his schedule at the last minute and was miles away. The bombing shook the New York underworld. Gotti was terrified, realizing instantly this was retaliation for the Castellano hit. He doubled his security and surrounded himself with armed guards.
The swaggering boss became a paranoid prisoner of his own ambition. The real tragedy of the bombing was what it meant for the Gambino family. DeCicco was the brains of the operation—the one who understood how to navigate the complex politics of the commission and manage massive financial schemes. Without him, Gotti was isolated, a street thug wearing a nice suit who did not understand the quiet diplomacy required to run a criminal empire.
Over the next five years, Gotti’s reckless behavior destroyed the Gambino family. He demanded constant attention, held meetings on federal wiretaps, and alienated his own men. By 1990, Sammy Gravano realized Gotti was leading them all to ruin. Gravano made a deal with the government and testified against his boss.
Gotti was sentenced to life in prison and died behind bars. The men who planted the bomb also met violent ends. Anthony Casso eventually became a government informant before dying in federal custody. Vincent Gigante successfully faked insanity for over a decade before the FBI finally proved he was faking.
He died in a federal medical center. Frank DeCicco spent 40 years building his reputation. He was careful, intelligent, and survived the treacherous politics of the Brooklyn streets. He earned millions and reached the absolute pinnacle of mafia power, helping orchestrate the most famous mob hit of the century.
In the end, he traded a lifetime of discipline for just four months of absolute power.