CHAPTER 16
LIKE FRANK “BOLO” DOVISHAW, CAESAR DAVID MONTEVECCHIO WAS brought up on the hard streets of Erie’s Little Italy during the height of the Great Depression. “Hard Times” became an era of American history that defined a generation of Caesar Montevecchio’s peers – some of them using the experience of growing up during the Depression to go on to greatness and fame, others heading in the opposite direction to infamy.
A hit movie a few years earlier, Little Caesar, might have been an accurate predictor of the soon-to-be life of this unknown Caesar from Erie, Pennsylvania. But Caesar Montevecchio was no Edward G. Robinson, although the character actor’s role as one of the first “Public Enemy” genre of movies might have been suited for the Erie hood.
Caesar’s father, Carmine D. Montevecchio, was born in Erie and attended local schools. Like many of his early 20th century generation, he rarely left the familiar confines of Little Italy, where there were ample bars and private clubs, opportunities for skilled and non-skilled laborers, and an abundance of Catholic churches. According to Pennsylvania State Police intelligence reports, Carmine was known to have frequented Little Italy clubs and was a moderate drinker. Carmine, unlike his son, Caesar, kept steady legitimate jobs, starting with the Hayes Manufacturing Company, where he worked as a die-setter, and later at Marx Toys, “The Monkey Works” situated in the heart of Little Italy on West 18th Street. Carmine labored long hours as a machinist. Earlier, he was known to have been a skilled brick-layer.
Caesar’s mother, Tilba S. Sambuchino Montevecchio, had a remarkably similar history as her husband, Carmine. Also born and educated in Erie, she was raised in a devout Catholic home. Described in police intelligence reports generated in the 1960s as a “social drinker,” Tilba, too, had previously worked at the Hayes Manufacturing Company with Carmine, and also at “The Monkey Works.”
In their life together, Carmine and Tilba were typical of the time. They had a strong work-ethic and true to their Catholic roots, they produced four children. In addition to Caesar Montevecchio, there were Albert, Condita (Candi) Concilla, and Carmen.
How Tilba raised the couple’s brood was her business alone, Carmine had decided. She ran the household and was responsible for all familial duties, a role she apparently relished, without the interference of her husband. It was a fairly typical arrangement among the highly ethnic families of that era. Mama ran the roost. Papa supported the roost. Not surprisingly, neither Carmine nor Tilba had contact with police, nor did they have criminal records.
In this environment, young Caesar would grow up in Little Italy, almost exactly as Bolo Dovishaw had. Whereas Dovishaw had suffered the involuntary loss of male role models through untimely deaths, Montevecchio’s similar loss of a strong male figure in the home was by his parents’ mutual consent. While Carmine lived there and supported the family, it was Tilba who was in charge of the household. Unlike Dovishaw, Montevecchio grew up with both brains and brawn. Perhaps, had he applied his many talents in other, more meaningful endeavors, Montevecchio could have chosen virtually any of life’s many roads to great success. No one ever doubted his mental capacity. His value system, however, would not allow for such personal success – at any level. Caesar was not hard-wired that way.
Police, with some irony, are fond of noting that young Caesar Montevecchio served as an altar boy in his parish church – St. Paul’s in Erie’s “Little Italy” – for more than 10 years. The question – what happened? – then becomes even more puzzling to ponder. But, by pre-ordained design or choice, something did happen to Caesar Montevecchio.
Born two years before Bolo Dovishaw on March 27, 1934, Montevecchio was not only smarter than most of his streetwise contemporaries, but he possessed an extraordinary athletic prowess. He was a jock. And a relatively smart one. Unlike the pudgy, bloated slain bookie of Eastern European descent, Montevecchio was blessed with classical-Italian chiseled good looks. Even in his late teenaged years, at five-feet 10, his 180 pounds contained far more muscle than fat.
Looks, however, never equate with human behavior. While still in high school, Montevecchio is alleged to have pulled his first “job.” It was a 1951 burglary mentored by Giuseppe Scutella (Joseph Sr.), who took Caesar and Joey, Jr., along, as any thoughtful, nurturing parent would do, according to police reports. Carmine Montevecchio had taken no active interest in raising the family, leaving most of the child-rearing to wife, Tilba. And with no truly dominant and guiding male figure at home, Caesar turned elsewhere. Elsewhere was the Scutellas.
The threesome burglarized a house at West 22nd and Cascade Streets, situated in Erie’s familiar Little Italy section, according to what DiPaolo later learned. The home was the dwelling of an elderly German-born resident. It was a nice haul for the first-timer Caesar. The trio reportedly made off with $7,000 in cash. For his efforts, Montevecchio’s first score netted him $500. Ol’ Man Scutella and Junior reportedly kept the remainder. Although the three initially were considered prime suspects in the caper, they were never arrested for this crime. The case was never solved.
The event – how easy money could be made if one had the guts to take it, and now knowing how easy it was to get away with it – appeared to have a lasting impact on young Caesar Montevecchio’s life to come. Montevecchio, in less than an hour, had made more than his father brought home in a month. With that kind of logic, why not give serious consideration to such an easy life?
Without Carmine Montevecchio in the picture, the senior Scutella’s influence on Caesar’s life and criminal career path can never be fully measured. But at some point it seems clear, as one examines Giuseppe (Joseph) Scutella’s background, that the older man was destined to make a deep and lasting impression on Montevecchio’s psyche during Caesar’s most impressionable early years. To say Giuseppe had the same impact upon his own son, Joey Jr., is again stating the obvious. In this case, the old tree/apple cliché was true.
To get into Caesar Montevecchio’s head, one must first understand the significance of Scutella’s early influence on the enthusiastic, and bright and brawny kid from Erie’s Italian neighborhood.
Giuseppe Scutella was born in Italy, migrating to the United States at an early age at the start of the 20th century. Immediately, he began living the “American Dream” – that is, the “dream” as he saw it. He spent his early years in various Western Pennsylvania communities, some rural, some urban – Ridgway, Kane, Bradford, New Kensington – taking advantage of the times, becoming deeply involved in illegal bootlegging during the Prohibition Era. Eventually, after disgracing his heretofore respectable family through numerous criminal activities, Giuseppe was asked to leave those communities. He soon found his way to Erie, where Italians were firmly established in the growing lakefront city’s community life. At first, Scutella found legitimate employment at the Erie Foundry, and then the Firch Baking Company, producer of the locally-famous Sunbeam Bread.
Soon, working for others – hard work at low wages – bored him. He had enough cash to purchase two lunch-counter restaurants, popular in the day, where he did a mighty illegal numbers business in both. With profits from the restaurants and numbers, Scutella bought the Tally Ho Bar at 18th and State Streets – not far from Dee’s Cigar Store, the establishment long suspected as one of the city’s biggest numbers fronts.
Giuseppe’s wife, Josephine, was also born in Italy, and, like her husband, arrived here as a youngster. A passionately religious, ardent Catholic, she’s credited with holding together the large family of eleven Scutella children. But, as the Pennsylvania State Police observed in an unflattering 1968 intelligence report distributed to local law enforcement officials, “. . . she succeeded in bringing up the girls (four) as young ladies. However, several of the males of this union became involved in many illegal activities.”
Some of Joey Jr.’s brothers, through political patronage hiring, common for years in Erie, ended up working for the City of Erie, but some, according to state police investigators, “had police contact within the three-state (Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York) area.”
One brother, Jimmy Scutella, worked hard for 40 years, molding a family of good citizens. Then his son, James Jr., became a police officer. Ironically, James Junior and DiPaolo were friends since grade school and Jimmy never ever condoned the efforts of some others who had turned to lives of crime in the Scutella family. Jimmy Jr.’s son is now a police officer in California.
Caesar Montevecchio’s mentor, the senior Scutella came ever-so-close to losing his “American Dream” forever. Close, but – somewhat mysteriously – not quite.
In 1958, the Italian immigrant was accused of indecent assault stemming from separate incidents with two 14-year-old girls. He was indicted. Joseph, Sr., eventually pleaded guilty to the charges and was fined $250 while being sentenced to serve 23 months in the Erie County lock-up. Although Erie County, Pennsylvania’s criminal justice system was not nearly as overcrowded and overburdened as it would become in later years, Joseph Scutella, Sr. was nonetheless immediately paroled. However, because of the conviction, proceedings were quickly launched to deport Scutella back to his native Italy. Once there, Italian authorities would be forced to deal with his criminal behavior.
Inexplicably, after first petitioning the Erie County Court to issue a ruling against the deportation, the prison sentence was suddenly commuted by Pennsylvania Governor David Lawrence and Giuseppe Scutella was saved from being sent back to his homeland. But because of the crime, he was still forced to divest himself of his Tally Ho tavern. Caesar’s role model and mentor died of natural causes two years later.
While Joseph Scutella Senior’s life of crime in his adopted country was ended through his death, Caesar Montevecchio’s career was just getting rolling.
Coming of age during the post-Depression and post-World War II prosperity of the late 1940s and early 1950s, Montevecchio, attended both public and Catholic Schools. Montevecchio excelled athletically at Cathedral Preparatory School, a private Catholic high school for boys, a facility directly responsible for spawning doctors, lawyers, professors, CEOs, statesmen, journalists, judges and even Tom Ridge, a Pennsylvania governor and the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. But Caesar Montevecchio would not become a poster child for Cathedral Prep. In fact, Montevecchio would become to his high school what Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer symbolized to their alma maters.
During those impressionable high school years, Montevecchio still managed to earn fair academic grades and, because of his natural athletic aptitude and ability, he became a wildly-popular football and baseball star. Cathedral Prep records indicate no school infractions during his time there, and, more important, no criminal activity of record. According to those school records, as a student he was better than average academically, but did not apply himself.
Despite his first, at that time undetected criminal endeavor with the Scutellas a year earlier, he was named Erie’s High School Athlete of the Year in 1952. What’s more, Caesar Montevecchio’s athletic prowess was responsible for the high school sports star being heavily recruited by regional colleges as well as universities and colleges at the national level. After graduating 137th in his Prep class of 173 that year, he carefully weighed his many college options before selecting the full scholarship offered to him by the prestigious University of Detroit. It was another of those life-altering decisions that would impact Montevecchio’s criminal career.
Detroit, Michigan, at the time of Caesar Montevecchio’s inauspicious arrival, was known for much more than cars. Since the Prohibition Era 1920s’ “Purple Gang” Detroit was not only the nation’s undisputed automotive capital, but had grown into one of the country’s leading cities for harboring organized crime activities.
Long before the Michigan city became famous for its innovative Motown music, the tough street-thugs who once made up Detroit’s famed Purple Gang were now replaced by the equally vicious eastern Syndicate. While Detroit might not have had a reputation as the nation’s organized crime capital, it could still hold its own with the midwest’s Chicago, the east’s New York, and dozens of smaller cities, like Youngstown, where the mob ruled.
Montevecchio’s childhood was not angelic, yet the Motor City was perhaps the worst town Caesar could have selected to pursue higher education. Detroit was ripe as a training ground for the next generation of thugs. Had Caesar chosen, say, a smaller suburban or rural school in the South, New England, the West Coast, or even in his own native Western Pennsylvania backyard, where a dozen smaller institutions thrived, his life, despite the negative influences established by the Scutellas, might have gone in a much different direction.
But Caesar chose Detroit. And Detroit is where Caesar found all the action he could handle – and then some. It was Detroit where the hard-core criminal mentality of Caesar Montevecchio would develop, be honed, and eventually fully emerge. Before long, college man Montevecchio was playing more than football for the Titans.
In the early-1950s Detroit, where America’s powerhouse automotive industry had refitted and re-energized itself in the years following World War II’s lack of domestic car production, Caesar Montevecchio wasted little time in finding his way to the Michigan city’s slimy underbelly. For Caesar, it was exciting and far different than anything he ever experienced in Erie. He met new people, but more important, he developed powerful relationships with the worst of Michigan’s criminal underworld.
Caesar was not a dean’s list honors student. Rarely attending classes, he made neither the college grades he needed to keep his scholarship intact, nor did he even compete well on the playing fields. As a result, it wasn’t long before Montevecchio left the University of Detroit and returned to Erie in search of other, less noble pursuits. Eventually, some of these opportunities would be with his new-found pals.
With his college deferment from the U.S. military draft no longer valid, he needed to complete standard military obligations. He knew there was no way out, and enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he served a three-year stint. In those post-World War II and Korean War days, military service was considered much more patriotic than it would be with the generations of Americans who would follow. Military service, because of the hundreds of thousands of Americans killed in the two world wars, was considered highly honorable, and veterans were generally revered. However, whatever patriotism Caesar Montevecchio experienced in uniform was quickly converted to a more narcissistic and self-centered mentality more typical of those who would grow up in the materialistic world decades later. Upon discharge, he reverted to his Michigan mob contacts.
His closest partner in crime would become a Michigan wise guy he met not in Detroit, but actually after Montevecchio returned to Erie. This new friend was Joseph Paul Giacalone of Flint, Michigan. “Joey” was a true wise guy from an early age. His father and uncles, including Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone, who would later figure into the disappearance of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa – long reported to be taking a “dirt-nap” – were well-established within the Detroit mob.
Through his good pal, Tom Parry, teacher and highly unsuccessful football coach at Erie’s Technical Memorial High School, Caesar Montevecchio met Bobby Guaranti of Flint, Michigan. It was actually through Guaranti that Montevecchio became close with Joey Giacalone.
Erie’s legendary underworld family leader, James “Westfield Jimmy” Salamone, had a hand in much of the action in the tri-state area between Erie and Buffalo to the east, Cleveland to the west, and Youngstown to the south.
But Erie was still Salamone’s home base. Low-key and quiet, Salamone controlled the underworld of wise guy wannabes from behind the scenes, allowing the more flamboyant figures to dominate the headlines while in apparent silence he pulled their strings. It was Westfield Jimmy’s connections with the Detroit mob, including the Giacalones, that also helped establish and cement the very close friendship between young Caesar and Joey. And from Joey, Caesar Montevecchio would learn and hone another kind of team-play, a group sport of sorts very much different from springing hither and forth across a 100-yard playing field. The “elementary” education Caesar picked up from Giuseppe Scutella was supplemented with the “higher” education guidance now provided by Giacalone.
In the next decade and a half to come, new best friends Joey Giacalone and Caesar Montevecchio were picking their “teams.” These were separate, but connected gangs that would later terrorize the East Coast with their brutal crime sprees, leaving dozens of hapless victims in their wakes. For his team, Montevecchio selected his longtime Erie pals, Anthony “Cy” Ciotti, Carl Caccamo, Tom Parry, Billy Rieger, and his original burglary co-conspirator, Joseph Scutella, Jr. Also recruited was the wise guy wannabe John Fasenmyer. Giacalone, for his part, selected Loren Jolly, John “Chino” Juarez, Bobby Guaranti and Steve Maruca, all tried and true veteran thugs from the streets of nearby Flint, Michigan. A thug from Boston was also said to be part of this group. The new games would soon begin. Points in this sport were not listed on any scoreboard, but in the number of illegal dollars raised through crime. Victims terrorized by these games were of Olympic proportions.
By the middle of the 20th century, Erie was still a blue-collar, shot-anda-beer town, no different from the rest of the nation in experiencing unprecedented post-war prosperity and rapid growth of the new middle class. If legitimate and legal business was booming, then so was the underworld.
For Caesar, at least for the time being, love was in the air as well. After returning to Erie in the mid-1950s, before enlisting in the U.S. Army and prior to joining forces with Joey Giacalone, Caesar Montevecchio began in 1955 what the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania calls “Common Law Marriage” with Mavis Thompson, a native Erieite.
“Before her marriage,” a Pennsylvania State Police intelligence report of 1967 relates, “she played the local hoodlum element very hard and was known for her being in company with the local . . . professional men.
“She has been very productive and five children were born to this union (with Montevecchio),” the report continues. “A check with the local courthouse records failed to locate an application for marriage.” The report did acknowledge, however, that since her common law marriage to Montevecchio, “She spends most of her time at home with the children, attends church, and is seldom seen or observed in her former hangouts.”
While police found no evidence of a marriage certificate, Montevecchio would later insist he was married to Mavis on December 3, 1956. Mavis, on the other hand, says the date was actually January 3, 1955. This nearly two-year discrepancy was never fully explained. But a State of Michigan probation officer’s report would later observe, “According to the wife, at no time have they had any serious marital problems or separations. Montevecchio appears to be a family man, although, it is felt that like his father he has left the rearing of his children up to his wife.”
The official record about the life of Caesar Montevecchio grows somewhat murky during the decade he was producing offspring with Mavis Thompson, wearing Army green and engineering the beginnings of what would become a memorable crime spree with Joey Giacalone.
Here’s what is known from a court-ordered pre-sentencing report submitted on December 13, 1968 by Ralph L. Soffredine, a probation officer with the Michigan Department of Corrections, Bureau of Probation:
“Caesar enlisted in the U.S. Army in July of 1955 and was given an Honorable Discharge on October 17, 1958. The highest rank he held was that of Specialist 4.”
Soffredine’s report goes on to say that Montevecchio was employed by Erie’s Marx Toy Company for five years before working for the Fenestra Corporation for six years. By the mid-1960s, police had long suspected an East Coast crime wave was created by the “teams” selected, organized and ruled by Caesar Montevecchio and Joseph “Joey” Giacalone.
“He spends most of his time loafing around various clubs and taverns along West 18th Street . . . ,” one Pennsylvania State Police intelligence report of the period observes about Montevecchio. “He must be classified as about the top contact man in Erie and is suspected as being the set-up man for the large stick-ups.”
The same report further speculates, “On the date of March 20, 1967, there was an armed robbery at Ralph Miller’s Jewelry Store, 7th and State Streets, Erie, Pennsylvania, where a total of $75,000 worth of jewelry was taken. It is suspected that he (Montevecchio) was involved in this crime.”
Being suspect is one thing. Being able to prove what you think is another. As such, Montevecchio was never charged with the Miller’s job.
About the same time, the John Hancock Insurance Company office at West 37th and Poplar Street, was another target of the Erie gang in which Montevecchio was said to be involved. Ron Dalton, an insurance agent at the company, told DiPaolo, Bob Polito, Gido Alo and Joe “The General” Gaeta while golfing one day that when the robbery went down, Ron was in a back room doing paperwork. Dalton came out of the room, not knowing what was happening, as his co-workers were face down on the floor and the robbers were running out the front door. Dalton said it was a good thing he was not in front since he had played football with Montevecchio at Cathedral Prep and would have been easily recognized by his former classmate. Dalton shudders to imagine the possible consequences had he been in the front room.
Further police speculation existed at the time that indicated Montevecchio “was involved in robberies in the State of Michigan” as well as many in Erie. Surprisingly, there is only one “official” rap sheet reference to actual criminal activity. The State Police intelligence report confirmed, “Caesar was arrested once in Erie, Pa., and that was on Nov. 5, 1966 and for visiting a disorderly house. He was arrested with a number of card players at the Monarch Club, West 18th Street, when it was raided by Erie city police. He (Montevecchio) paid a fine of $10 and costs and was released. He was not photographed, nor was he fingerprinted at that time.” The alderman who presided over the case was Merchie Calabrese, Sr.
By the turbulent mid-60s, Montevecchio’s and Giacalone’s “teams” weren’t protesting the war in Vietnam or racial injustice at home, as did so many of their generation. No, Caesar and Joey and their gangs were out for only themselves and what their unique brand of capitalism brought them. Banks, jewelry stores, insurance companies, other merchants. All victims. Nothing was taboo, nothing off limits, nothing too small or too big, in their rash of armed robberies along the East Coast. Caesar Montevecchio was considered the “brain” of the teams. He set up the jobs in Erie while Joey Giacalone and his Flint gang drove to Pennsylvania from Michigan and staged the many stick-ups. That was for the Erie jobs. In return, Joey did the same in Michigan and Massachusetts for Caesar’s team.
It was said many Erie business owners were clearly in the know of the availability of Caesar and Joey Scutella to torch any establishment for a fee. For the arsonists’ efforts, some local business owners with such a pioneering spirit, collected huge insurance payouts from the fire claims. Caesar Montevecchio also was suspected of a business-type arson in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, not far from Pittsburgh, where he was hired by Kelly Mannarino, alleged head of the local mob there.
Since Giacalone had been well-connected in Boston as well, the teams quite easily operated there, at least as long as their robbery spree lasted. Police long suspected one of Giacalone’s connections, Hobie Willis, owner of Boston’s New Deal Café, was instrumental in setting up many of the East Coast bank jobs. According to police, it was believed Willis accompanied Montevecchio’s “team” and Joey Giacalone in many of these pursuits.
But by 1967 – the year of America’s pot-hazed “Summer of Love,” hippies, war protestors and social upheaval – the team concept that had worked so well and for so long for Montevecchio and Giacalone was about to end. At least temporarily.
It had taken law enforcement agencies many years, but during that “Summer of Love,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local and state police in Erie and Detroit began comparing notes. Finally, they got it. The Montevecchio-Giacalone team games ended, but only after 11 bank robberies and many lesser hold-ups. For police agencies, it was anything but a love fest that summer as they hammered Montevecchio and Giacalone – as the “team” leaders – hard and mercilessly. (Merchie Calabrese, Jr., son of the alderman, and Hobie Willis were arrested in Boston.)
The team leaders had been suspects for years in multiple East Coast bank jobs. Dozens of charges were filed against them, ranging from bank robbery, armed robbery, conspiracy and even attempted murder. But the crime that ultimately did them in was an armed stick-up at the Irvin Hirsch Jewelry Store in Flint, Michigan on August 16, 1967. The robbery netted the teams $40,000 in jewelry, all of it fenced in Erie by Montevecchio. Caesar and Joey were arrested that November and taken before the Genesee County Court in Flint, where after another year in the criminal justice system they were found guilty following a jury trial by their peers. The police report was telling:
“Caesar Montevecchio and Joseph Giacalone were two members of a group of several men belonging to a gang that pulled armed robberies in the east and Midwest. Caesar Montevecchio and Joseph Giacalone had an arrangement whereby Giacalone would set up jobs here in Michigan and Montevecchio would set up armed robberies in Pennsylvania,” the document concluded.
The pre-sentencing report authored by local Probation Agent Ralph L. Soffredine to Genesee County Judge Donald R. Freeman was pivotal in determining what would come to be a devastating sentencing outcome for this modern day version of the James gang:
“Montevecchio appears to be very worried as to the sentence the court might impose. He has stated that if they give him a lot of time, when he gets out he will make Dillinger look like an altar boy.” It was perhaps the most inflammatory, unthinking comment one could make prior to facing a sentencing judge. It was a comment, given Montevecchio’s intelligence, that even his most ardent detractors would not have expected to come from the boastful Caesar. Soffredine also wrote:
“According to information from Erie Police . . . he (Montevecchio) has been maintaining close associations with known racketeers in the eastern section of the United States. . . . Montevecchio has acted as a set-up man and contact man for gangland operations. Police officials indicated that they consider Montevecchio the more professional of this group of men and stated that he should be considered dangerous.’’
(Montevecchio, Joe Giacalone, Charles Kinsman, John “Chino” Juarez, and Loren Jolly had been arrested at a Pittsburgh hotel during the attempted murder of police informant Charles Thomas. Shot twice in the head by “The Shooter” Jolly, Thomas somehow ran from the room and escaped. The Montevecchio gang was part of a crime ring imported from Flint to try to kill a prosecutor. Later, DiPaolo, in a very personal way, would come to know all about Flint “shooters.”)
More details followed. But Judge Freeman had heard enough. If he had intended to be lenient in the sentence he was to mete out to Montevecchio, Soffredine’s report completely eliminated any previous tendency toward mercy the judge might have harbored. In this case, he would create no manic John Dillinger. Instead, he would do his judicial best to make sure Caesar Montevecchio never would have the opportunity to make anyone – let alone Dillinger – look like an altar boy.
And so it was on that chilly November 10, 1968, that the handsome, still youthful-looking 34-year-old Caesar Montevecchio was sentenced to serve 50-to-70 years at the Michigan State Prison at Jackson. Serving just the minimum would mean Montevecchio wouldn’t see freedom until he was into his eighties. Serving the maximum meant life. His pal, Joey Giacalone, of Flint, got the same sentence.
Putting his own jurisprudence exclamation point on the sentencing, Judge Freeman further ruled that neither man would be even eligible for review for parole until they had served at least 22 years each in prison. John Dillinger, indeed! But judicial sentencings, even more than four decades ago, were just as they are now and not written in stone. The former Erie Catholic Church altar boy who once held so much promise would eventually get the opportunity to carry through with his Dillinger threat. Sooner than anyone in the criminal justice system would have believed or even imagined, Caesar Montevecchio, like the clichéd cat with nine lives, got his second chance.
Released in 1978, not 70, 50 or even 22 years later, but after serving less than 10 years in the state prison – where he would learn new tricks to complement those already gained from his Erie and Michigan teachers – Montevecchio quickly resumed his criminal career. This time, however, it was in stolen cars, grand larceny, and whatever else that would generate quick, relatively easy income.
On July 30, 1975, while Joey Giacalone was still serving time for the jobs he pulled with Caesar Montevecchio, Joey’s uncle, Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone, the well-known Detroit mobster, and New Jersey Teamsters boss Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, were on their way to a lunch meeting with national Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa at a suburban Detroit restaurant. Hoffa mysteriously disappeared from the restaurant’s parking lot that day, never to be heard from again. Federal investigators have long speculated Giacalone and Provenzano had Hoffa killed to prevent him from regaining the Teamsters’ Union presidency.
As for Detective Sgt. Dominick DiPaolo, he could easily understand how Joey Giacalone was influenced by his mobster uncle. It was also clear how the younger Giacalone passed along that influence to Montevecchio, that Caesar combined with influence he had already gained from his pals, the Scutellas.
The 50-to-70-year sentence in Michigan should have been the end of Caesar Montevecchio. It should have been another Erie punk bites the dust in a state pen. Tutti Finuto! Unfortunately for all of Montevecchio’s many future victims – including a portly, Erie bookie, it was far from the end of Caesar Montevecchio. Instead, it was the beginning of a new and arguably the most violent chapter in Montevecchio’s life.
Through 10 years of appeals and court motions, Montevecchio managed to successfully challenge and eventually beat the system as well as what would have been a life-sentence. With his final successful appeal, Montevecchio – who ironically had served as sports editor of the Jackson, Michigan State Prison newspaper – was given his freedom in 1978.
It was a decade later. The turbulent 60s had passed. The Vietnam War was over. The Civil Rights movement had mellowed. And the “Summer of Love” was but a brief footnote among the now aging hippie generation. But the mob – no matter where its social cancer erupted or how it morphed – was still flourishing. It was a time when Ray Ferritto was giving up the Cleveland mob in the Danny Greene bombing murder, and, along with his pals Bolo and Frank Thomas, was about to do a restful stint under federal witness protection in Texas.
When Bolo Dovishaw was whacked, Caesar Montevecchio had been back in Erie for four years. Yet, for DiPaolo, with each passing day, more and more signs pointed toward the former altar boy who once had the chutzpah to compare himself with John Dillinger.