April 13, 1986
Big Paulie Castellano had been bumped off right in front of Spark’s Steak House in Manhattan. His body lay partially outside his Lincoln, his feet stretching out onto the frigid New York sidewalk, while his head rested just inside the car. What an iconic mob picture.
John Gotti was now the boss of the Gambino family, possibly the most powerful of the Five Families, while the position of underboss went to Frank DeCicco, a mastermind of the Castellano murder. The Don was dead, long live the Don.
DeCicco was intelligent and capable, a solid guy who could be trusted. Gotti relied on him and gave him control of the so-called White Collar crimes, the rackets that Castellano had preferred over the street jobs such as robbery and narcotics.
But the positions of Gotti and DeCicco were far from secure. Though Castellano was no more, Gotti had not received permission from the Commission for the job, and in the Mafia, that’s a problem. As Antonio Caponigro found out when he killed Don Angelo Bruno in New Jersey, only the Commission can authorize a hit on a boss. The Commission was not pleased with what just went down in New York.
Genovese boss Vincent Gigante (aka “The Oddfather”) was most enraged. Gigante practically controlled the Commission at the time, and did not like the breach of Mafia protocol that Gotti had committed. Besides, he had been a tried and true buddy of Castellano’s, making a lot of money with the Gambino Don. Gigante went to Lucchese boss Victor Amuso for support, and the two of them decreed that both Gotti and DeCicco had to go. The plan was to use explosives to make the hit look like the work of the Zips.
Amuso outsourced the job and hired Westies member Herbert Pate to do the deed. The time came on April 13, 1986, when both Gotti and DeCicco were to attend a meeting at the Veterans & Friends Social Club. As Pate strolled through the parking lot of the establishment, two bags of groceries in hand, he pretended to drop one of the bags. When he knelt down to pick up the groceries, Pate affixed an explosive device under DeCicco’s car. Then he went off to wait.
Some time later, DeCicco exited the club and headed to his car. He was accompanied by Lucchese soldier Frank Bellino, who coincidentally resembled Gotti to a certain extent. Pate, of course, mistook Bellino for Gotti, and detonated the device. The parking lot exploded. Bellino only lost a couple of toes, but DeCicco was blown to bits. When Sammy “The Bull” Gravano came racing out of the club to see what happened, he found that DeCicco was literally in pieces and beyond help.
The kicker was that Gotti wasn’t even at the meeting that day. He had planned to attend, but then had to cancel. Gigante and Amuso would have to be satisfied with the death of DeCicco for the time being—Gotti had been spared. The violence between the three Families, though, was not yet over.