The Bloody End of the Utica Mafia

This is the eighth and final installment in our ButtonGuys series on the Utica mafia. This expose has been a story of immigrants. It was also a story of criminals and the story of the American dream. A skewered version of “The American Dream” to be sure. But over the course of nearly a century, a small band of Calabrian and Sicilian immigrants and their families settled the city of Utica.

Utica became a mob battlefield

They would eventually come to dominate the territory and make it their own. They had tremendous success in their chosen fields of endeavor, whether it be in the areas of criminality, legitimate business, and politics, or both. They did what they felt they had to do in order to elevate their blood brood and ‘amici’ to a level of financial success and social acceptance that as poor, uneducated immigrants, they may not have otherwise been able to accomplish.

Most of them would become wildly successful. And for over fifty years, they ruled at the forefront, if behind the scenes, in the city of Utica. But by the late 1970s into the early 1980s, the original founding members of this band of ‘amici’ were mostly dead. The few who still remained alive were already elderly and infirm.

The city of Utica, New York

In their place, came a young band of frauds and imposters to the throne of power. These new ‘replacements’ were, for the most part, incompetents and nincompoops who for lack of a better word fucked the whole thing up. Their wanton lust for power, their lack of prudence of any true street savvy, and even their lack of basic intelligence would lead to a lot of discontent and eventually bloodshed among the troops .

This is their story. Their final story or swan song. Or maybe a more appropriate term would be to call it a major disaster?

Grooming the Troops

By the early to mid-1970s, some new young mob associates started to be brought into the Falcone crew to be "groomed." Over the years, many of the original soldiers who had once made up the core membership of the regime had died off or retired for the greener pastures of South Florida and even California.

Fresh blood was needed to rejuvenate the crew. It was time to recruit some new men.

Capos - Joseph and Salvatore Falcone

But within a few years' time, these aspiring new "recruits," for lack of a better word, started becoming restless for both fast power and money. They had witnessed what Joe Falcone and a few other old-timers had achieved through the years and wanted the same success for themselves.

The only problem was that what had taken the Falcone brothers an entire lifetime to gather and accumulate, these upstarts wanted immediately. They had little understanding of what it truly took to achieve such underworld success.

Money Hungry

When fast wealth and the underworld power they sought wasn’t forthcoming fast enough for them, they started to step out on their own committing crimes and starting criminal activities under the mafia’s flag not sanctioned by the regional mob bosses.

They also started interacting with independent and unreliable criminals, bringing them in as associates of the crew. Down the road a bit, this envy even started to generate jealousy and unhealthy competition amongst each other. It was to become a powder keg for dissension and a surefire recipe for disaster.

Activities Exposed

Some of the crew's criminal activities over the years that were later exposed by informants to law enforcement were as follows;

Dating to 1973, Jake Minicone asked newly acquired crew associate Dennis Pritchard to “do a score” on two longtime veteran local bookmakers named Philip and Frank (Coke) DeFazio after veteran crew bosses Angelo Conte and Tony Falange were approached by two individuals who were owed money by the DeFazio brothers.

Anthony (Tony) Falange

Angelo (Ange) Conte

Pritchard and another crew member were sent to the bookies and proceeded to rough up and abuse the DeFazio’s before taking $8000 cash off of them. They handed $800 or $900 of that money over to Minicone and his fellow crew member Anthony (Tony) Inserra as ‘tribute.’

They got an ‘end’ of the score because they had offered it to Prichard to make some money.

In 1976, crew associates Minicone, Inserra, and Jack “The Turk” Zogby decided to murder fellow crew member Albert (Crazy Al) Marrone after he was released from a prison term he was serving at the time.

The reason for the murder plot was because of a fear that Marrone wanted to kill veteran mobster and crew boss Anthony Falange and possibly them as well. The crew also feared that Marrone, a known hothead and violent enforcer, wanted to take over their operating territory of Utica.

Plotting a Murder

The first machinations for his gangland execution were formulated six months before his actual release from prison. They had initially contemplated approaching a fellow inmate at the penitentiary where Marrone was serving out his sentence with a $10,000 ‘contract’ for Marrone. But they eventually rejected that idea and proceeded to ‘interview’ several other hitmen for the job.

Side Note: This was the crew’s first mistake of many. What self-respecting mafia crew needs to ‘farm out’ a murder contract to some unknown independent criminal. This sort of thing is typically handled ’in house,’ both to keep the anonymity of the killers as well as to show strength and capability to other criminals in the underworld…A very amateurish move on their part.

Ultimately, this ragtag crew of bumbling would-be mafiosi hired Edward Noel who had previously spent time in jail with Zogby to help them do away with the troublesome Marrone.

In the early fall of 1976, Inserra, Minicone, Zogby, and Pritchard met with Noel at a local restaurant to plan the murder. Later that month, they gave Noel a semi-automatic rifle with a scope on it for the murder assignment.

Jack (Turk) Zogby

They also armed themselves with several handguns for the job as well as for self-protection against Marrone should he decide to strike at them first.

On the evening of October 2, 1976, while Minicone and Inserra monitored a police scanner in the background more than a block away from the scene, Noel, Zogby, and a third, backup hoodlum shot Albert Marrone dead as he stepped onto the sidewalk in front of his girlfriend's home in East Utica.

They hit him multiple times in the head and chest. He was dead before he hit the pavement. Marrone was just returning home from having dinner with a few old associates at the nearby Alfredo’s Ristorante.

Mission accomplished!

The Threads Unravel

Side Note: There also came a time soon after the Marrone murder during the early 1980s that more bare threads of the regime started to come unraveled and show themselves in other ways. Inserra and Minicone soon had a serious falling out with one another. So serious, in fact, that it came down to Minicone actually shotgunning Inserra’s residence.

The dispute allegedly had its origins in the fact that Inserra had collected some extortion money from gamblers but had kept Minicone’s share for himself because he felt Minicone owed him money. Jake Minicone was so incensed by this brazen act of defiance that he shot out the windows of Inserra’s kitchen.

At a later subsequent ’sit-down’ with crew boss Falange they were ordered to settle their differences immediately. But the two men remained on less-than-friendly terms and the anger still brewed under the surface.

Several years later in January of 1988, Inserra asked his buddy Benny Carcone for 9mm bullets for an automatic pistol he owned. Carcone didn’t provide him the ammo and even tried to quell Inserra’s temper and bad intentions.

S everal months later in April, Inserra swung by the Swap Shop one day unannounced to advise Carcone to quickly get word to Falange that, “there’s something fucking coming down between me and this Minicone.”

So there was little love lost between these two hoodlums.

Seeds of Discontentment

But dating to the killing of Marrone in 1976, and even a few years before his murder, the seeds of discontentment were already being sown. The city had seen more than its fair share of gangland killings over the years, but at least under Falcone’s rule, the use of murder was a tool as a means to an end.

After Sal Falcone died and his brother Joe was pushed to the side as he aged, the wanton bloodletting that would follow in the coming years was careless, stupid, and achieved nothing in the long run except to bring tremendous law enforcement ‘heat’ down on the city’s underworld.

At some point in time, a veteran street hoodlum categorized by federal law enforcement as a part-time associate of capo Sal Falcone named Dominic Bretti appeared back on the Utica scene.

Poor Decisions

Long known as a hotheaded, uneven-tempered, ignorant hoodlum, Bretti made the decision to attempt to assert his dominance over Utica’s underworld. He had been raised in Upstate New York before gravitating to the Miami Beach section of South Florida by the 1960s.

He had been in and out of trouble with the law his entire life.

In fact, Dominic Bretti had spent a good portion of his adult life behind bars for his poor choice of decisions. Even as a gangster, Bretti was largely viewed as a loser.

Dominic Bretti

He was the guy you went to and paid him a few dollars if you needed somebody’s head cracked open. Bretti was also a guy who would involve himself in practically any type of score if he thought he could make a quick buck out of it.

He had been a desperado his entire life.

Up For Grabs

With one of the Falcone brothers having died in 1972, overall territory boss Stefano Magaddino dead by 1974, and the other Falcone brother largely faded off the scene because of his age and loss of influence, many local hoodlums felt Utica was now ‘up for grabs,’ so to speak.

Among the most prominent of these aspiring racketeer “kingpins” to the throne was none other than the trio of Falange, Conte, and Minicone.

But on the other side of the room was Bretti, his brother Tommy, and a small contingent of allied hoodlums they had “with” them who felt much differently about who should now wear the mob crown.

It would all come down to a bloodletting, that in time, would completely destroy the fabric of whatever was left of the Utica “regime.” Over the next thirteen years, scores of hoodlums and their allies would meet their maker in a very untimely fashion.

A Symphony of Murders

What follows is a short chronology of the various gangland-style murders, as well as, a score of careless wanton senseless killings that took place in and around Utica just a few years before and right up to the time of later federal indictments in 1989.

February 20, 1970 - Death by Hand Grenade

As a precursor of events to come, mob associate William (Billy) Conley is blown to bits by a powerful hand grenade attached to his inside car door after he had just walked out of Mr. Joe’s Restaurant on Utica’s South Side.

As he pulled the door’s lever to open his car door, it triggered the explosion. Conley’s arm was torn from its socket and his charred badly mangled body was hardly recognizable.

July 4, 1971 - Dumped in a Lake

Less than fourteen months later, mob associate David Sgroi is found shot to death. His corpse was discovered after being dumped near Hidden Lake, just outside the little City of Rome, New York.

December 20, 1976 - Like Roadkill

A Syracuse produce wholesaler and known mob associate named Albert Schiano is shot to death and his body discarded along the side of a road near Onondaga County.

December 3, 1979 - A Strangled Wife

The wife of a known criminal associate of the Bretti crew, Dawn Grillo, is found murdered. She had been strangled and badly beaten about the face, head, and torso.

Authorities and underworld sources alike said that her killing was because she had allegedly been skimming money from racket operations that she and her husband had been entrusted to handle.

Dawn Grillo was also suspected of having been cooperating with federal authorities.

Donato (Danny) Nappi

SIDE NOTE: Mob figure Donato (Danny) Nappi was later convicted of semi-related racketeering charges that included a conspiracy to murder Grillo, more than twenty-five years after her killing. Convicted along with Nappi was his superior, Dominic Bretti, and another crew member, John D’Amico.

During their trial, prosecutors alleged that Bretti and his associates had aligned themselves with New York’s Colombo crime family in an effort to take over the Utica rackets. That, in fact, the Colombo mob had given Bretti the green light to become boss over the territory and that the remnants of the Falcone crew resisted all efforts which is what led to bloodshed between the factions.

February 14, 1980 - A Tavern Bombing

The tavern of a known Utica mob associate named Richie Clair is bombed and badly damaged. Luckily for Clair, he had been forewarned of the murder attempt on his life and was already under FBI protection in a safehouse at the time of the bombing.

Clair had recently given key testimony in a trial regarding the Albert Schiano killings.

January 4, 1983 - Macabre Message

A young aspiring criminal attorney named Joseph Dacquino was shot to death on the first floor of his law offices by unknown assailants. He was a protege and close aide to noted mobbed-up criminal attorney Louis Brindisi.

Homicide investigators felt at the time of Dacquino’s murder that his death was either a case of mistaken identity (that Brindisi was the real target of the killers), or it was a very macabre message to Brindisi himself.

January 15, 1983 - A Hotel Murder

A little more than a week later, mob associate, Hector Ambrosi is shot in the back of the head from behind while inside a room at the Ramada Inn Hotel, New Hartford, New York. Police suspect that he was killed by someone he knew and trusted.

January 17, 1983 - A Topless Dancer Dead

Two days later a topless dancer named Carla Feliciano, who was closely associated with the Bretti faction, is found repeatedly stabbed to death inside her Woodside apartment in Queens County, New York.

September 16, 1983 - A Cold-Blooded Drink

Mob figure and Bretti faction associate Angelo Grillo is gunned down in cold blood while having a drink at the bar at the packed Regency Lounge in the seedy neighborhood of Cornhill.

His wife had been Dawn Grillo, who was killed only four years earlier.

October 23, 1983 - Bomb Explosion

Just one month late, Mobster Tommy Bretti, the brother of the notorious hotheaded hoodlum Dominic Bretti, was seriously injured when a bomb exploded on the front steps of his home as he approached the entrance.

It later came out at trial that the bomb had been made by another young crew associate named Mike Andrello. It had been placed on the porch by Minicone, who had been given the murder assignment by senior Falcone member Anthony Falange .

Dominic Bretti was in prison at the time of the attack on his brother. It seems that Tommy Bretti had stopped paying some Utica bookmakers connected to Falange and had gotten into several heated arguments with both Falange and other key members of the old Falcone regime.

Bretti had also allegedly had bad words with a Falcone-allied attorney and mob associate, the noted Utica barrister Louis Brindisi. It all started to come full circle.

February 11, 1989 - The Closing Salvo

Finally, it all came to a head with the killing of longtime bookmaker George (Butch) Sandouk. The veteran gambler was found murdered inside his apartment.

Authorities got several conflicting theories about why Sandouk was murdered from their informants. Word on the street was that he was killed for refusing to pay “protection” payments to the Falcone mob to continue operating his gambling businesses. But that didn’t make sense to organized crime squad detectives who knew that he paid off the Falcone crew for years without any problems.

Another theory, and one that many subscribed to, is that George Sandouk had been approached by Dominic Bretti and his crew for shakedown money but had refused to pay because he was already under the protection of the Falcones.

The belief was that Sandouk ended up getting caught between two opposing and competing underworld factions for extortion money. Once he declared himself with the Falcone crew, Bretti’s crew killed him as a lesson to others not to oppose their rule.

Side Note: Aside from the mob conflict between the Falcone and Bretti crews slowly but surely a lot of dissension was building right within the ranks of the old Falcone regime itself. The old man, capo-regime Joe Falcone, had in recent years been losing the control and enormous respect he once had among his men. Both Tony Falange and his lifelong partner Angelo (Ange) Conte had grown disenchanted with Falcone over the years.

At one point, it was even alleged that Falange had set up a burglary at Joe Falcone’s personal residence where $54,000 was stolen from a safe in his basement. If true, it only goes to show how far the local mob had fallen in respect and reverence for one another. And what comes next can in some ways be laid directly at Falange and Angelo Conte’s doorstep.

"We Scare People into Paying Us"

It was a noted and time-honored moneymaker for members of the Falcone crew to regularly operate a ’shakedown’ and to extort local bookmakers.

Tony Inserra once stated to Pritchard that, “The way we get our money is that we scare people into paying us. We put fear into them. We rough them up. We have to use violence but as long as they’re scared of us they’ll pay up.”

Another crew member who helped with these shakedown collections was Carl Mazza. He made sure that local bookies didn’t get too far behind in their payments.

The gamblers were required to make regular monthly payments at Benny’s Swap Shop at 512 Albany Street. This location also served as the unofficial headquarters of the crew, and the main drop-off point for “protection payments.”

Besides the DeFazio brothers, many other bookies and gamblers made these payments including two other veteran Utica bookies named George (Butch) Sandouk and Louie Kallasy.

In fact, federal investigators on surveillance duty observed on more than one occasion Sandouk arriving to drop off his monthly envelope to either crew member Benedetto Carcone, Russell Carcone, or Minicone.

Like Taking Candy from a Baby

The hoodlums were actually even caught on tape discussing Sandouk’s regular promptness of payment, and their thoughts about informing him that he needed to increase his payments during the upcoming basketball season.

Another good example of a veteran gambler who capitulated to the Falcone crew’s demands was George (Hoppy) Tamer who operated as a bookmaker in Utica for many years. Tamer also ran a card game that allowed him to take a 5% cut out of every pot.

Around 1983, Falange approached Tamer and informed him that from that moment forward, Tamer was to make regular payments of $50 each week so “he wouldn’t have any problems.” He originally made these payments directly to Falange. But in approximately 1986-87, at Falange's request, Tamer began making the payments to Benny Carcone.

Once, after Tamer dropped off his required ‘protection’ envelope, Minicone remarked, “This is a joke. It’s like taking candy from a baby with these people. Keep them scared, and they keep paying. They even find us now.” Inserra laughingly agreed.

Gambling and Entrapment

Other activities they readily engaged in were actually conducting several gambling operations themselves.

For instance, Inserra, Pritchard, and Carcone participated in a joint bookmaking business. Another type of illicit gambling they involved themselves in was conducting a ‘football parlay sheet’ operation each fall.

Although Carcone was again later caught on a ‘bug’ complaining that he’s probably the only hoodlum gambler in the country who couldn’t make four cents with football sheets.

Zogby was recorded engaging in the ‘fencing’ of stolen goods. After he turned informant, Pritchard steadily ‘fenced’ alleged stolen loot through Zogby.

In reality, much of this future stolen property was in fact supplied to him by the federal government to entrap Zogby. Pritchard also sold stolen goods to Falange, and to Benny Carcone. They in turn would resell the goods through their respective Swap Shops for disposal.

Dating back years, Pritchard and other young crew members had obtained merchandise on shoplifting sprees or “boosting” trips throughout the northeast corridor. After later learning that Pritchard had turned rat, Zogby commented, “They got me with interstate transportation of stolen property.”

Swimming with the Rats

Another major racket they engaged in was loansharking. Especially those men around Tony Falange, who was known as one of Utica’s most prominent shylocks.

In later years, Benedetto Carcone was alleged to have taken over the duties once held by Falange as the group’s loan overseer and money manager.

Tony Inserra was later caught on tape by Pritchard while he was wearing a wire for the FBI. Inserra stated into the hidden microphone, “Benny’s in charge of all the loansharking now,” and “you pay 10% a week or per month, or whatever the hell the interest is.”

Pritchard and Andrello (who by that point in time had also turned informer) later testified that they had both borrowed money at usurious rates to finance their burglary and other illicit ventures.

Once when Andrello fell behind on his payments, Minicone and Inserra paid him a visit and told him, “Ange (Conte) wants that money…”

Andrello said he would pay Conte in person, which he did the very next day.

Another loanshark customer was reported to have been Salvatore Spina, who borrowed $2500 for six months. Benny told him that it would be “2% per week or 10 points monthly interest.”

Loansharking was one of the crew's primary endeavors over the years.

When crew members first learned of Pritchard’s and Andrello’s cooperation with the federal government, they discussed amongst themselves the grave concern and serious fallout from these revelations.

Minicone told Benny Carcone, “You know how many people are going to jail over here? He was wired two fucking years.”

They originally planned to kill Pritchard, but they were frustrated because the security around Pritchard was too tight and they couldn’t get close enough to kill him.

The Other Shoe Finally Drops

In August 1989, Jack (Jake) Minicone, Jr., Jack (The Turk) Zogby, Anthony J. (Tony) Inserra, Benedetto (Benny) Carcone, and Russell E. Carcone would all get pinched by the feds on RICO charges.

After a multi-year investigation conducted by the FBI, state, and local authorities, the feds handed down a huge indictment charging key members of Utica’s mafia with a laundry list of crimes.

They eventually all went to trial in the Northern District of New York on criminal counts that included racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, murder conspiracy, murder, solicitation of murder, illegal gun possession, gambling, illegal debt collection, criminally receiving stolen property, and the transportation of stolen goods over state lines.

Two other indicted crew members, the aforementioned Michael Andrello and Dennis Pritchard had turned rat for the FBI and later became cooperating witnesses for the prosecutors at trial to save themselves from jail.

Additionally planned as codefendants who became un-indicted coconspirators because they each passed away before the case came to trial were top regime bosses Angelo Conte and Anthony Falange.

Each of the defendants was later convicted in federal court before a jury of their so-called peers. Each received long prison terms.

The convictions stemmed from their alleged involvement in a wide-ranging criminal enterprise that had profited from extortion, loansharking, illegal gambling, and trafficking in stolen property during the period from approximately 1973 to 1989.

The indictment stated that the alleged enterprise was centered in Utica, New York and that it was run by veteran hoodlums Conte and Falange.

Sentences Handed Down

Jack Minicone received a total of 391 months imprisonment (32.5 years in jail) and 3 years of supervised release (should he ever make his release date.)

Anthony Inserra was sentenced to a total of 240 months imprisonment (20 years) and 3 years supervised release.

Jack Zogby received a total of 78 months behind bars (6.5 years) and 3 years supervised release.

Benedetto Carcone received a total of 30 months (2.5 years) in jail and 2 years supervised release.

Russell Carcone was sent away for 18 months (1.5 years) and also received 2 years supervised release.

All the defendants later appealed their convictions and sentences. And all were denied, the convictions confirmed.

The only exception was the appeal court's decision to vacate Minicone’s original sentence and allow him to be re-sentenced in accordance with proper sentencing guidelines.

The End of an Era

In the years immediately following the culmination of this case as well as in the decades that followed organized crime in Utica and its surrounding territories Rome and Syracuse has become almost nonexistent.

The notorious Falcone Regime once led by brothers Salvatore and Joseph Falcone, and by extension, all their important soldiers and associate members who once ruled the territory with an iron fist is no more.

Today, they are iconic mafiosi names from history and only a memory. They are remembered as being from a bygone era of lawlessness during a time in this country that saw similar phenomena develop throughout our United States.

It was a time of our country’s early development and while we were still in diapers, so to speak. It was a venerable period during an embryonic stage of our nation’s history and evolvement. It was a time of weak laws and strong men.

A very special time indeed. Not only for those men who chose that lifestyle and made the most of their ‘golden’ opportunity, many of whom became wealthy and powerful beyond their wildest dreams. But also for the rest of us.

It was a ‘golden era’ that will never again be repeated. Whether it be in Utica or anywhere else in the United States of America. Similar to what the “Wild West” of old once was, so too is our “Gangster Era.”

Until next time…”The Other Guy”

Ah Finito! The Bloody End of the Utica Mafia

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