Andrew Gerardo was reared and educated on the gritty streets of Newark. In that era, Newark was a largely immigrant Italian neighborhood teeming with new arrivals from Southern Italy and Sicily.
He was a scrappy Italian kid prone to the fast and loose life of the streets. He fell in early with the older Italian racketeers who were operating the area and soon became an “associate” on record with a Mafia faction operating under the guidance of Genovese Family caporegime Ruggiero (Richie the Boot) Boiardo.
For many years, a young Andy Gerard maintained a low profile and not much ever came out about him or his racket activities. Only with his later ascension as Boiardo’s “right arm” did Gerardo’s true significance within the New Jersey underworld hierarchy start to emerge.
