Mob don's death ends era in Detroit

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DETROIT - At the end, with his kidneys shot and his heart failing, mobster Anthony Giacalone's moment of fame was a fading memory. His one-time world of big cars and bookies, of sleek suits and shakedowns, was, if not in ruins, then at least aging and vulnerable, with a few outright bumblers in the ranks.

"Nitwit Incorporated," one defense attorney called them, referring to two wise guys in Giacalone's gang whose misadventures were taped by the FBI. They botched appointments, got lost, fretted over gun permits and blithely wondered aloud - as recorders rolled - whether anyone was eavesdropping. And who ever heard of Mafia guys meeting at a T.G.I.Friday's?

Such are the latter-day fortunes of the Detroit Cosa Nostra, a crime family once so fearsome that extortion targets paid up to $1 million just to be left alone. But that was when the family, and Giacalone, were better known for their role in one of America's most famous disappearances.

Giacalone was the guy who in July 1975 set a lunch date with labor leader Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa drove off to meet him and never was seen again. Investigators of the unsolved mystery believe it was part of an elaborate setup.

Giacalone denied everything, of course, cracking about Hoffa, "Maybe he took a little trip."

Then, on Feb. 23, the end came for Giacalone as well, when he died of a heart attack at 82. By all accounts, he maintained his silence on Hoffa to the last. But what he couldn't keep secret was the way the fortunes of the Detroit family's business so closely had tracked his own - vigorous in youth, famous and intimidating in middle age, a bit soft and infirm at the close of the century.

Giacalone was one of the six elderly men who allegedly once ran the Detroit Mafia. Three of them, including boss Jack William Tocco, have gone to prison in the past three years. Another, alleged underboss Anthony Zerilli, is ailing and awaiting trial on racketeering charges. The last, alleged capo Anthony Joseph Tocco, was acquitted in 1998 on 14 counts of extortion and racketeering.

The pivotal moment in their downfall came in 1996, when they and 11 other alleged members and associates were indicted by a federal grand jury after a four-year FBI investigation.

"It was the end of an era for them," says Howard Abadinsky, a professor of criminology at St. Xavier University in Chicago who keeps tabs on the Mafia in the Midwest. "The whole family has kind of aged and suburbanized."

Yet the organization "has not gone dormant," says Joseph Finnigan, organized-crime supervisor for the FBI's Detroit office. Nor will it as long as people still play the numbers, call a bookie, gamble at an after-hours casino or arrange an illegal loan to cover their losses. New members have replaced the old, keeping the local Mafia's size at about 30.

But the investigation's findings made it clear that, even before the indictment, all was not well with the Detroit Mafia and its aging leadership.

The FBI bugged several members' vehicles, phones and homes during the investigation, and also placed several under surveillance, but Nove Tocco, 53, and Paul Corrado, 42, easily had the loosest lips, regularly boasting and bumbling their way around town while FBI cameras and microphones stayed within range.

Some of their patter indicated this was anything but a happy Mafia family.

Consider this transcript of Corrado complaining to Tocco that he was fed up with being called on the carpet for "sit-downs" with the ruling elders:

Corrado: I'm not going to no more sit-downs. They ain't calling me in all by myself.

Tocco: Yeah. They want to browbeat you. ... You know what I mean, and whipsaw you.

The family had built close ties to the big labor unions so prevalent in Detroit's auto industry, which is how Giacalone became an associate of one-time Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa. Federal investigators eventually uncovered Hoffa's links to the mob, resulting in his temporary ban from union involvement. But by July 1975 he was plotting a return to power, and some labor leaders, such as Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, a former Teamsters vice president, apparently weren't too happy. So, he and Giacalone asked for a meeting.

It was supposed to occur at 2 p.m. July 30, at Machus Red Fox restaurant, an old-line place of cigar smoke and stuffy waiters that required a jacket and tie.

It was on a busy highway in the northerly Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Township. Hoffa drove there in his Pontiac, and was seen in the parking lot. He called his wife to say Giacalone and Provenzano were late. That was the last anyone ever heard from him. Theories have placed his body everywhere from the Detroit River to the end zone of Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands.

Giacalone maintained to the end he had nothing to do with Hoffa's disappearance.

"I just don't believe he was involved," says his lawyer, William Bufalino II. "If he'd been arranging or setting up anything (the FBI has) known all about it. They tapped his home and his office.

"He was getting a rubdown at the Southfield Athletic Club at the time. He was prominently seen, at a place that was tens of miles away."

The club masseur testified that Giacalone was indeed in the massage room quite a while that day, entering at 11:10 a.m. and not leaving until 2:10 p.m., dropping off a tip of $2.25 on his way out the door.

Finnigan asked Giacalone about the Hoffa case one last time in 1996, when he went to Giacalone's house to arrest him after the grand-jury indictments.

"He didn't like that," Finnigan says. "I think it was words to the effect of, `If you're so smart why don't you figure it out?' "

But Giacalone never seemed to mind the Hoffa publicity. It was good for business, especially when the business was extortion.

Times weren't always good, of course. Giacalone served eight months in prison for a 1954 bribery conviction and a few years for tax evasion and extortion convictions in 1976. He never went to trial on the 1996 charges of racketeering and extortion because of poor health. He spent the last two years of his life on dialysis.

And in recent years, as the Hoffa case became a dim memory, he had to deal with grumbling in the ranks and reduced respect on the streets for the local Mafia. Several witnesses at the 1998 trial spoke of ignoring orders for payments, with no consequences.

FBI tapes recorded Tocco and Corrado, two mob underlings later convicted of racketeering, joking at times about mounting a palace coup, or about eliminating some of the associates who met regularly with family elders.

But Giacalone and other older mobsters never dropped their guard when it came to their suspicions about law enforcement. They always acted as if their cars and homes and offices were bugged, Finnigan says, assumptions that were sometimes correct. They held business conversations while walking outdoors, or in noisy restaurants.

If Tocco and Corrado had shown similar discretion, the FBI might not have amassed the material it needed to secure indictments. It wasn't as if they were unaware of the possibility of being recorded.

On one tape, Corrado reminds Tocco of the fate of New York City mobster John Gotti. He tells Tocco he needs to watch a videotape of a Gotti documentary, because it shows how the FBI engineered Gotti's downfall with informants and surveillance.

"That's what my uncle warned me about yesterday, walking and talking," Tocco says. "He says it's better if you go to a McDonald's and talk. Go to a different one every time, you know?"

Then they ignored that advice. The Detroit Mafia might never be quite the same.