A "Fish" Tale From The Underworld

OCTOBER 21--Occasionally, a reader will write in to ask about the photo that has long sat atop TSG’s Facebook and Twitter/X pages.

The image, seen above, is a 1980s FBI surveillance photo taken of the Palma Boys Social Club, a Mafia hangout in upper Manhattan. Around the corner from the famous Rao’s restaurant, the storefront was a gathering spot for members and associates of the Genovese crime family’s East Harlem crew, a legendary assemblage of killers, drug dealers, and racketeers.

It was also the faction that included soldier Joseph Valachi, who defected in 1962, later becoming the first wiseguy to testify publicly about the Mafia and its members.

At the center of the photo is Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, the fedora-wearing cigar aficionado who, at the time, the FBI believed headed the Genovese family. In fact, Salerno had been secretly supplanted by Vincent “Chin” Gigante, who operated from Greenwich Village. With Salerno still thought to be the boss, law enforcement focus was primarily directed uptown.

Seated across from Salerno is Louis DiNapoli, a mob soldier. Standing next to the gangsters are Nicholas Auletta and Larry Wecker, construction industry executives and money-generating Genovese associates.

While the al fresco confab was not recorded by the FBI, the quartet had a shared love of labor racketeering, so conversation topics likely included bid rigging, extortion, fraud, and union corruption. Maybe even who had a booth at Rao’s that evening.

Finally, peering out from the Palma Boys doorway is Vincent “Fish” Cafaro, a Genovese soldier who ran a sprawling gambling and loansharking operation and served as Salerno's appointments secretary. Born in East Harlem, Cafaro was a generation younger than Salerno and considered him a father figure.

When he was 18, Cafaro was arrested for peddling heroin, which was a common pastime for both East Harlem hoods in training and established gangsters. Cafaro’s grandparents sought help from Salerno, who found a lawyer for the young dope dealer. He also offered the teenager some sage advice: “Leave the junk alone. If you need money, go out and steal.”

Cafaro would eventually spend more than 25 years at Salerno’s side, operating from the Palma Boys, a First Avenue wire room, and a second East Harlem social club. He was formally inducted into the Mafia in 1974 and remained a Genovese soldier until opting in 1986 to cooperate with the FBI. At the time, Cafaro and Salerno--who had a falling-out--were jailed on racketeering charges that carried the prospect of decades in prison.

Cafaro’s decision to cooperate was a seismic gangland event. He became only the second made man--25 years after Valachi--to forsake the Mafia, in court, law enforcement debriefings, and before the U.S. Senate. It would be years before other mobsters, from uninitiated associates to inducted members of all ranks, publicly followed in Cafaro’s footsteps, defections that debilitated all corners of the underworld.

* * *

On a personal note, I have been thinking about the Palma Boys photo since the recent death of Tom Robbins, a New York City journalist who was a friend/colleague of just about everyone who has ever worked at this website.

Tom was a prince of a guy, selfless, kind, and generous. His decades of exemplary reporting focused on shitty landlords, violent prison guards, grubby pols, and other public nuisances. He was a teacher, mentor, union rep, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and confidante to many.

When I left The Village Voice to run TSG full-time, Tom was hired as my replacement. He was part of a dwindling cohort of writers who produced smart, newsy, and deeply reported pieces about the mob (like this, this, and this). In 2013, Tom co-authored a biography of legendary Mafia turncoat Al D’Arco with journalist Jerry Capeci, who has dominated the wiseguy beat for an astonishing four decades.

At my Voice going-away party, Tom (seen at left) presented me with a framed copy of the Palma Boys surveillance photo, on which he had scrawled a “best wishes” message purportedly signed by “Fish Cafaro.” By that time, Cafaro had long disappeared into the federal Witness Security Program, which he entered without his wife, two grown children, or his girlfriend. Tom and I wanted to speak with him, but Cafaro, living alone somewhere with a new identity, never replied to letters routed to him by the U.S. Marshals Service.

What follows is the answer to “Whatever happened to Vincent Cafaro?” While other key cooperators like D’Arco and Genovese figures Peter Savino and George Barone were the subject of newspaper obituaries, Cafaro became a ghost whose post-Mafia life--and presumable demise--remained a mystery. It is a fish tale that Tom would have enjoyed.

* * *

During his final appearance as a government witness, Cafaro was asked in court about his nickname. When he claimed not to recall the origin of his “Fish” moniker, a defense lawyer floated a theory about Cafaro’s handle, which dated to his childhood.

“It has nothing to do with an odor or slipperiness?” the lawyer asked.

Growing up on 115th Street in East Harlem, Cafaro’s neighborhood was the launching spot for gangsters with more menacing aliases, like “Trigger Mike” and “Charlie Bullets.” On Pleasant Avenue, a six-block stretch where Rao’s (seen below in 1940) opened in 1896, a wholesale heroin marketplace flourished, with gangsters flooding New York City and points beyond with the poison. The neighborhood would later become homebase for the Purple Gang, a notorious murder-for-hire crew that also trafficked narcotics (Nicky Barnes was a customer).

Cafaro was born in August 1933, two months after the marriage of his parents Dominick and Fannie. At the time of his birth, Cafaro’s mother was 14 and his father was around 32. Theirs was a union that did not last. According to census and criminal court records, Cafaro spent parts of his childhood living with his maternal grandparents and an aunt in the Bronx.

Prosecuted as a “youthful offender,” the heroin case proved a gateway conviction for Cafaro, who spent the next few years committing thefts and store robberies (as the sagacious Salerno had advised). After marrying in 1954, Cafaro took a job at a Safeway supermarket and had two children (Vincenza and Thomas) with his wife Antoinette.

But Cafaro’s legitimate employment ended when Salerno offered him a job in one of his numbers spots. Over the next 25+ years, Cafaro would occasionally be arrested on minor charges as he grew to become Salerno’s chief deputy and oversaw illegal enterprises that generated millions annually. Cafaro’s business interests, according to one New York Police Department report, even included an East Harlem hot dog restaurant.

In 1974, sponsored by Salerno, Cafaro was inducted into the Genovese family during a ceremony in the basement of Il Cortile, an Italian restaurant on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan. At the time, Salerno had risen into the upper echelon of the Genovese gang, serving as its consigliere, or counselor, the crime group’s number three post. “In the end, Fat Tony had become, in many ways, like a father to me,” Cafaro would later testify.

Owing to his proximity to Salerno--perennial law enforcement quarry--Cafaro was the subject of five separate FBI wiretaps targeting mob social clubs and meeting spots. The first time Cafaro was named in a federal application for a listening device was in 1971, when agents identified his nickname as “Jimmy Fish.”

The final FBI wiretap involving Cafaro and Salerno intercepted scores of incriminating conversations at the Palma Boys club and a second Genovese hangout in East Harlem. Cafaro was recorded speaking about beating debtors (“I will break your fucking ass”) and threatening competing numbers operators ("Break it up and put locks on the door, and whoever is in there, knock their fucking brains out").

During one call, Cafaro became upset upon learning that an unknown individual was guilty of the unauthorized use of the wiseguy’s name. He directed an intermediary to send a warning: “Just say, ‘Fish said if you ever mention this name again...he is going to come over here personally and break your fucking legs.’”

The recordings were central to a 29-count indictment accusing Salerno, Cafaro, and other Genovese family figures of a variety of felonies, including extortion, fraud, illegal gambling, and homicide conspiracy. Prosecutors identified Salerno as the Genovese boss and Cafaro as a family captain in the 1986 indictment.

Denied bail, Cafaro was locked up in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, where Salerno was already residing due to his February 1985 indictment in “The Commission” case, which brought racketeering charges against the reputed leaders of New York’s five Mafia families.

In the MCC (seen above), Cafaro quarreled daily with Salerno over a $65,000 debt and other mob financial affairs. At one point, the 75-year-old Salerno threatened to strike Cafaro with his cane. “So I says to him, ‘Well, that’s the biggest mistake you’ll make in your life if you ever pick up that cane to me,’” Cafaro later recalled. “And that’s how I think I turned.”

After seven months in custody, Cafaro--who faced decades in prison--reached out to a federal investigator and offered to cooperate. He secretly met with two FBI agents and spoke about construction rackets, union corruption, and mob hits, and revealed that Gigante, the actual family boss, had been using Salerno as a heat shield for several years. Cafaro’s proffer was a tantalizing peek at the hoodlum firmament.

In addition to further debriefings, Cafaro agreed to wear a wire and testify against fellow wiseguys. But first he had to be sprung from the MCC without raising suspicions. So Cafaro filed a motion seeking a temporary release on medical grounds, a petition that the government did not oppose--as long as he posted a $1 million bond.

To gain his release, Cafaro’s bond was secured by several properties, including a Westchester home he had purchased for his girlfriend and the Manhattan residence of Vincent and Anne Rao, the East Harlem royalty who turned Rao’s into a red sauce shrine. Additionally, a Pleasant Avenue building was pledged by Joseph “Joey Cupcakes” Urgitano, whose future rap sheet would include convictions for manslaughter and narcotics dealing (for which he served nearly 20 years). In 2018, Urgitano was sentenced to 18 more years in state prison for repeatedly stabbing his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend.

Not included in Cafaro’s bond package was his family’s home, the deed to which was held by his wife and daughter. Cafaro got the Bronx property from a mob-controlled construction company fronted by Wecker (who is seen in the Palma Boys surveillance photo). The home in leafy Pelham Manor where Cafaro’s mistress resided was obtained from the daughter of Auletta, a Genovese associate who owned a large concrete firm (and is also in the Palma Boys image). Auletta later kicked back the purchase price to Cafaro.

Upon leaving the MCC, Cafaro wore a recording device to mob sitdowns and meetings with the Genovese underboss, and he arranged a $400,000 heroin deal. Cafaro also was debriefed by his FBI handlers, who detailed the defector’s admissions in dozens of reports, including one that described Roy Cohn’s unmatched sleaze.

Cafaro’s career as a recording artist ended after five months when prosecutors revealed his central role in the heroin case. Noting that the wiseguy was under federal protection, U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani declared that Cafaro was the highest ranking Mafia member to cooperate with law enforcement.

But within months of his cooperation being disclosed, Cafaro backed out of his deal with prosecutors, citing threats directed at his son and daughter. At the time, Thomas Cafaro was a Genovese associate who, according to FBI intelligence, had placed a contract on his father’s life and was even willing to execute the hit.

With his bail revoked, Cafaro returned to custody, spending about 15 months in solitary confinement at the federal lockup in Otisville, New York, about 80 miles north of the Palma Boys club. The “total separation status,” a prison psychologist reported, left Cafaro anxious, depressed, and “tearful at times.” When he was allowed to work as an orderly, Cafaro could only leave his cell at night “while the other inmates were locked up.” One Bureau of Prisons evaluation stated that Cafaro “feels he doesn’t need to be separated from everybody” and that he “would tell staff if there was somebody he’d have to be kept away from.”

Cafaro eventually struck a new cooperation deal and agreed to plead guilty to two RICO charges. Prosecutors vowed to take protective measures so that Cafaro would not be harmed by his former confederates. He would also be able to petition for admittance to the Witness Security Program administered by the U.S. Marshals Service.

Cafaro’s tapes and trial testimony would subsequently be used to convict various Mafia associates and made men, including Bobby Manna, the powerful Genovese family consigliere. Cafaro was a star witness at a U.S. Senate hearing on organized crime. He also testified at the trial of John Gotti for arranging the shooting of a union boss (for which the Gambino boss was acquitted).

Considering himself a “rat” who betrayed his friends, Cafaro believed that his initial impulse to cooperate was a mistake, one that resulted in him being renounced by his loved ones, none of whom accompanied him into witness protection. But there was no rescinding Cafaro’s decision to assist law enforcement, of course, and he could never return to the mob's impolite society.

More than five years after pleading guilty, Cafaro was sentenced to the time he had already served in custody. Prior to sentencing, when Cafaro was still on the hook to the government, he would have to meet with agents and lawyers who wanted to question him about organized crime matters. Cafaro could sometimes prove irascible. One former prosecutor recalled a meeting with Cafaro in Texas. Transported to the neutral site by federal marshals, Cafaro expected his visitor to arrive bearing a gift. The cooperator greeted the prosecutor with a demand: “Where’s my bottle of scotch?”

Despite his father’s defection, Thomas Cafaro remained in Genovese good graces, thanks to his close relationship with Liborio “Barney” Bellomo, who ran the East Harlem crew and would later become head of the crime family.

In an FBI debriefing, George Barone recounted a conversation during which Bellomo--whose late-70s mob induction was sponsored by Vincent Cafaro--claimed that “Fish” did not “disclose all the details about crimes committed by members and associates of the Genovese LCN [La Cosa Nostra] family.” Cafaro purportedly “didn’t fully cooperate” due to an agreement with Bellomo to protect his son from retaliation.

Law enforcement officials, however, never accused Cafaro of pulling punches, and they supported his lenient sentence. 

* * *

Cafaro’s last appearance in public was at the Gotti trial, where he was the government’s leadoff witness and gave jurors a Mafia 101 tutorial that touched on the underworld’s structure, rules, and assorted rackets. He also testified about his own criminal trajectory, from teenage junk dealer to made man.

Two weeks after leaving the stand in State Supreme Court in Manhattan--where he recalled earning (and spending) up to $2 million annually from his gangland interests--Cafaro was arrested for the more mundane crime of shoplifting from a Kroger supermarket in his new hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina.

Technically, it was not Cafaro who was collared by the local cops. According to his North Carolina driver’s license, the accused thief was a 56-year-old retiree named “Vincent Ronga.”

As with others seeking witness protection, a threat assessment and vetting of Cafaro would have been conducted by federal officials, who also subject applicants to a psychological review. Upon entry into the program, a witness is provided a new name and identity documents, and resettled somewhere not considered a “danger area.” Witnesses initially get financial assistance for housing and basic living expenses, payouts that are reduced as the recipient becomes self-sufficient.

The U.S. Marshals Service does not disclose relocation details, the monetary support provided to a protected witness, or even if a specific person is actually in the program.

Located 500+ miles away from New York City, Greensboro had no history of Mafia infiltration and, like most locales below the Mason-Dixon Line, it was just part of flyover country for wiseguys headed to South Florida.

According to court and police records, “Ronga” was busted for drunk driving three weeks after his Kroger collar. In arrest reports for both incidents, the defendant’s occupation is described as “Retired” and his birthdate is listed as August 27, 1933 (which is Cafaro’s d/o/b). “Ronga” pleaded guilty to the shoplifting charge and was fined $50. He copped to a DWI count and was fined $150, sentenced to 60 days in jail, and placed on five years of unsupervised probation. He was also briefly barred from operating a motor vehicle.

Since the original files have been destroyed, it is unclear whether “Ronga” served two months in the county lockup or if the sentence was suspended by a Superior Court judge. After all, a rap sheet check would have reflected no prior criminal history for "Ronga."

A photo taken at the time by the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office showed Cafaro, booked under his assumed “Ronga” surname, with thinning, greying hair. He stared expressionless at the mugshot camera.

In the DWI case, “Ronga” was arrested around 10:30 PM near the Stonesthrow Apartment Homes, a leafy collection of dozens of drab two-story buildings, each of which offered several rental units. The Mafia turncoat lived in a one-bedroom apartment near the development’s community pool and tennis courts.

Greensboro Police Department records reveal two other arrests for the ex-gangster, both for shoplifting. He was nabbed for stealing from a Phar-Mor discount drug store and, 18 months later, got busted at the Kroger where “Ronga” was first apprehended. He pleaded guilty in both cases.

Oddly, corresponding police and court records list the arrestee as “Vincent Dominick Cafaro,” who shared the same height, weight, date of birth, and Greensboro address as “Ronga.” Why Cafaro was booked under his actual name is unknown. Had he left the witness protection program and reverted to his real name? If so, why did he stay in the Greensboro apartment where federal marshals placed him years earlier?

The arrest reports indicated that Cafaro, then in his early-60s, was no longer retired. He was employed at the Sheraton Greensboro, where he worked security at the hotel. Under which of his surnames he got the job is a mystery. Though it is hard to imagine that a background check on Cafaro, not “Ronga,” would not have raised a passel of red flags.

After 15 years as a North Carolina transplant, Cafaro died at age 71 inside his 721-square-foot Greensboro apartment, according to a death certificate filed with the state’s Department of Health and Human Services. Signed by a cardiologist, the document listed Cafaro’s immediate cause of death as coronary artery disease.

Cafaro’s estranged wife Antoinette, still living in the Bronx, was listed as the married decedent’s “surviving spouse,” and his “usual occupation” was “Security” at a hotel. Cafaro, who died a few days after Christmas in 2004, was embalmed at a Greensboro funeral home and his body was transported to New York for burial at the Staten Island cemetery where mob boss Paul Castellano was laid to rest after being gunned down outside Sparks Steak House by John Gotti’s henchmen.

A check of cemetery records showed Cafaro had been buried in an area across from the 18th fairway at the Richmond County Country Club.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, a visitor to the Moravian Cemetery went looking for Cafaro’s plot, but his name was nowhere to be found in sprawling Zone L. The only name on the granite marker above grave number 322 was that of Filomena Sanginetti, a woman who died in 1974 at age 55.

Asked about the apparent mixup--and where Cafaro’s grave was actually located--a clerk reviewed burial records and declared, “Oh, he’s in there.” She explained that the narrow gravesite allowed for two separate interments and stacked caskets.

Cafaro, as it turned out, had been buried in a plot with his mother, who had remarried and taken her husband’s surname. She had four daughters with her second spouse and worked for 18 years as a cleaner at a Staten Island clothing manufacturer. According to a newspaper obituary, Sanginetti’s survivors included her husband, daughters, and “a son, Vincent Cafaro of the Bronx.”

While Cafaro was relegated to what amounted to an unmarked grave, when Antoinette died in 2019 at age 87, she was placed in a family-size vault at Calvary Cemetery in Queens. Her obituary prepared by a Bronx funeral home made no mention of the man she married 65 years earlier.

An accompanying video included dozens of photos of her children, grandchildren, and gatherings for a First Communion, a baptism, and Christmas. In one image, Vincent Cafaro is seen kissing a toddler, a fleeting flashback to a time when “Fish” was still part of two families. (9 pages)