This case starts with the FBI taping members of Gambino Capo John Gottis’s Bergen Hunt and Fish Club crew.  This included his brother Gene Gotti and his good friend Angelo Ruggerio along with John Carneglia. Ruggerio was the main target and the Bureau uncovered their multi-million dollar a year heroin distribution ring. Additionally, Ruggerio was a big mouth who talked incessantly about everything. He even bad-mouthed his friend and boss, John Gotti. Even though when Ruggerio was with John Gotti, he was constantly stroking his ego and complimenting him. These tapes would be used as a big part of a probable cause affidavit to get a listening device placed inside big Paul Castellano’s home. Ruggerio and Carneglia were John Gotti’s closest allies in his crew and both participated in the murder of John Favera who was the man who accidentally hit and killed Gotti’s kid in an accident.

In 1985, both men would help John Gotti murder his boss, Paul Castellano. Both had their own reasons for wanting Castellano dead because by the time of this murder in the FBI was moving on them for the heroin case and Paul Castellano had ordered the murder of the last member of the Gambino family caught dealing drugs. Plus, Castellano knew about the tapes made by the FBI because they were part of the evidence against him and he demanded that Ruggerio give them up to his lawyer. Ruggerio refused and appealed to his uncle, long-time Gambino underboss Aniello Dellacroce. He kept Castellano fended off until he died in 1985. Shortly after Dellacroce died, Gotti and his crew moved on Paul Castellano and with that murder, Gotti would ascend to become the boss of the Gambino crime family.

During these years, Angelo Ruggerio would be caught trying to bribe a telephone man to find out about FBI wiretaps and he would have two mistrials because of jury tampering. He hired a couple of different private investigators to watch the courthouse and catch jurors entering cars to get their car registration names. He then sent someone out to attempt to bribe them. In the end, both Gene Gotti and John Carneglia were convicted and given 50-year sentences. Gene was released in 2015 after serving 29 years in prison.

During all the is time there is a New York City police officer working in the Public Morals squad which is the Vice squad. They worked prostitution, illegal casinos, bars that violated liquor laws and all in all a fertile ground for bribes. On December 3, 1984, he is taking his wife and mother in law to a celebration at St. Barbara’s Greek Orthodox church in Manhattan. He was driving across the Manhattan Bridge when his car stalled and stopped. It was raining and low visibility. As traffic backed up and horns were blasting, a speeding car hit the officer pinning him against his car. At the hospital, doctors had to amputate his left foot at his ankle that day and over the next few months, they would take off more of his leg up to his thing. Intelligence Unit.”

Once he was back to duty in 1986, The NYPD turned down the officer’s application for an on-duty disability. He did get a 1.4 million settlement from the driver’s insurance. The NYPD assigned this man as an Intelligence Unit analyst where he had access to sensitive information on organized-crime cases. Remember this was during the time that Gotti’s was taking over the Gambino family.  He was able to obtain confidential information like the locations of electronic listening devices (wiretaps and bugs), the identity of confidential sources of information and cooperating witnesses, and the timing of prospective indictments.

It was during this time that the feds figured out john Gotti had paid an old lady to vacate her apartment and he could access her apartment from inside the Ravenite Social Club. It was a tape from that microphone planted inside a VCR and wired directly to a telephone line that was a leased line monitored from the Manhattan FBI office. A Gotti Capo named Joe Butch Corrao and a guy Gotti like...