Aniello Dellacroce, the longtime underboss of the Gambino crime family, died on December 2, 1985, in a Queens hospital under a false name. The records listed him as Timothy O’Neil, a variation of Father O’Neil, the alias he had used for years while moving through Manhattan disguised as a Roman Catholic priest. On at least one documented occasion, he used that disguise to commit murder. The false name was the last echo of a decades-long deception.
Born in Manhattan’s Little Italy in 1914, Dellacroce grew up across the street from a building he would one day own: the Ravenite Social Club. He entered the Mangano crime family in the late 1930s under the mentorship of Albert Anastasia, the ruthless head of Murder Incorporated. Dellacroce rose to become a capo with his own crew and eventually bought the club that became the operational headquarters of his Manhattan operations. The priest disguise developed during this period.
A man in a priest’s collar attracted no law enforcement attention, allowing Dellacroce to move through the neighborhood freely, conduct meetings without surveillance, and approach targets who never saw the danger coming. By the 1960s and 70s, his face was too well known for the disguise to remain functional, but it stayed part of his legend. When Anastasia was gunned down in a Manhattan barber shop in 1957, Dellacroce sided with the new boss, Carlo Gambino, rather than resist his patron’s murder. Gambino rewarded that loyalty in 1965 by making Dellacroce his underboss.
For nearly three decades, Dellacroce ran the family’s street-level operations while Gambino controlled the broader organization. When Gambino died in 1976, he did not name Dellacroce as his successor. Instead, he chose his brother-in-law, Paul Castellano, a white-collar operator focused on legitimate business and distance from violence. The decision split the family into two factions: Castellano’s corporate wing and Dellacroce’s street crews.
A war seemed inevitable. Dellacroce prevented it by accepting the arrangement without protest. Castellano would run the legitimate operations while Dellacroce kept control of the traditional rackets. The deal held for nine years, almost entirely because of Dellacroce’s personal authority.
Among the men under Dellacroce’s protection was a Queens capo named John Gotti. Gotti dealt drugs openly despite Castellano’s rule that such activity was punishable by death. When Castellano obtained FBI surveillance tapes documenting the drug dealing, he wanted Gotti dead. Dellacroce stood between them, delaying Castellano’s ability to act and buying time that kept Gotti alive.
By early 1985, Dellacroce was dying of lung cancer. He was 71 years old and facing two massive federal prosecutions while trying to hold the family together. Castellano never visited him in the hospital and did not attend his wake. To the men of Dellacroce’s faction, the snub was a declaration: the truce was over, and they were now unprotected.
Dellacroce died on December 2, 1985. Fourteen days later, four gunmen in matching white trench coats shot Paul Castellano and his underboss, Thomas Bilotti, to death outside Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan. John Gotti watched from across the street. With Dellacroce gone, the restraint on the conflict died with him.
After Dellacroce’s death, Gotti took over the Ravenite Social Club and placed portraits of himself and Dellacroce on the back wall. The portraits were still hanging when Gotti was arrested there in 1990. Dellacroce’s son, Armand, cooperated with the government after his father’s death, providing information used in multiple prosecutions. The Commission trial Dellacroce had faced proceeded without him, resulting in convictions that reshaped mob prosecution for decades.
Dellacroce is buried under his real name at Saint John Cemetery in Queens, alongside Carlo Gambino, Lucky Luciano, and Salvatore Maranzano. The alias Timothy O’Neil followed him to the grave, but the headstone carries his true identity: Aniello Dellacroce, the little lamb of the cross.