Nation/World

Trial of Vincent Asaro Highlights Loss of Mafia's Code of Silence

NEW YORK — After he had helped pull off one of the biggest cash robberies in U.S. history — the Lufthansa heist of 1978 — and stashed millions of dollars, along with burlap sacks of gold chains, crates of watches, and diamonds and emeralds, in his cousin's basement, Vincent Asaro thought first about the code: Protect the family.

"He says, 'We got to be real careful now,'" his cousin testified. "'Don't spend anything. Don't buy anything major.'"

He kept quiet, but another part of Asaro, a Mafia yeoman working his way up through New York's Bonanno crime family, could not resist. He bought a Bill Blass-model Lincoln and a Formula speedboat — symbols of a man who wanted to belong.

Asaro did not realize his world was vanishing.

Born in 1935, he entered the same business as his father and grandfather, also Mafia members: a company man even if the company business was murder and extortion. Growing old, Asaro stayed in his old neighborhood in Queens, shopping at Waldbaum's, sticking with the routines he knew.

By then, though, other organized crime groups were squeezing out the New York Mafia with new, sophisticated businesses. More devastatingly for him, Asaro's friends, superiors and even a relative began informing on him to the government — providing the material that allowed prosecutors to bring charges after all these years, and shredding the Mafia code that defined his life.

Now 80, Asaro has spent the past three weeks in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, the sole defendant in what may be one of the last big Mafia trials, accused of crimes including a 1969 murder, the Lufthansa heist at Kennedy International Airport — a plot point in the Martin Scorsese movie "Goodfellas" — other robberies and extortions. His arm tattoo has been covered up by sweaters. It reads, "Death Before Dishonor."

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In closing arguments, Elizabeth Macedonio, a defense lawyer, portrayed the cooperating Mafia witnesses as liars, and Asaro as someone who, despite years of being surveilled by federal agents, was never once caught doing anything wrong.

The case, which is expected to go to the jury Monday afternoon, has depicted a Mafia life from a time when the organization still ruled New York, drawn from testimony, recorded conversations, wiretapped phone calls, court filings and FBI surveillance records going back 40 years. Asaro was brought down in his old age by a violation of the codes he so embraced; his is the story of the disappearing New York Mafia, and of a disappearing way of life.

The five New York families each have a boss, an underboss and a consigliere ruling them. Captains follow, then soldiers. Under that are associates, who are not made, or inducted, members.

Salvatore Vitale, a former Bonanno underboss, explained the rules: You did not cooperate with law enforcement. You did not sleep with another member's wife or daughter. You could sell only pot, not other drugs.

Are the rules broken? an assistant U.S. attorney, Nicole M. Argentieri, asked him.

"All the time," Vitale replied.

This was the family business Asaro seemed destined for. Anthony Ruggiano Jr., whose father, known as Fat Andy, was a Gambino soldier, began noticing Asaro when he saw him at Aqueduct racetrack or around the neighborhood. Fat Andy said Asaro was going to be a third-generation wiseguy, and "thought it was a great thing," Ruggiano testified.

By the 1960s, Asaro was known as an "earner" in the Bonannos, a prosecutor, Lindsay Gerdes, said. His cousin Gaspare Valenti, a Bonanno associate before he started cooperating with the government, testified about the early crimes they committed together, like hijacking truckloads of Oleg Cassini shirts. The "scores" were often at the direction of James Burke, a powerful Mafia associate who was Irish. (In "Goodfellas," Robert De Niro plays the character based on Burke.)

In 1969, prosecutors said, Asaro graduated to murder.

One Sunday in 1969, Asaro and Burke met Valenti at a house Valenti's father was building in Queens, bringing a sledgehammer and a shovel. "Vinny came up the steps," Valenti testified, "and said, 'We have to bury somebody.'" Valenti thought he was joking; he was not. The body was that of Paul Katz, a man Asaro suspected of being a government informant. Asaro and Burke had strangled the man with a dog chain, according to Valenti. Valenti said he helped them bury the body underneath the basement concrete.

In the late 1970s, Asaro was formally inducted into the Bonannos: Vinny Asaro was a made man. Peter Zuccaro, a Mafia associate who testified at Asaro's trial, recalled being at a club called Little Cricket that night. When Asaro walked in, someone played a song called "Wise Guy," and then "the whole neighborhood knew," Zuccaro said. Soon, Asaro would show he merited the honor.

Rolf Rebmann was working his usual midnight-to-7-a.m. shift at Building 26 at Kennedy Airport on Dec. 11, 1978, when he heard a "holler" from outside the terminal. His co-workers were upstairs in the lunchroom for their 3 a.m. meal break, so Rebmann, a Lufthansa security guard, walked outside to see a man standing near a black Ford van.

"I asked him if I could help him, and he said 'No,' and stuck a gun in my face and told me to get in the van face down," Rebmann testified.

The assailants wanted Rebmann's keys to open the overhead door, and then they walked him upstairs to the lunchroom. "Somebody kept saying: 'Just do as you're told, do as you're told. We don't want to hurt anybody.'"

Led by Burke, they had been tipped off to the valuable cargo shipments by an airport employee.

They had pulled off what was then billed as the largest cash robbery in U.S. history, stealing $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewels.

In the 1980s, the Mafia, after years of prosperity and influence, was beginning a steep decline. The police and FBI agents infiltrated the mob. Federal prosecutors charged the bosses of the Five Families using a powerful racketeering act, and four of the five were imprisoned (the fifth was killed before trial).

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An enfeebled New York Mafia limped into the new millennium. In 2003, Vitale started cooperating with the government, and helped convict more than 50 Mafia figures. That was followed by a once-unthinkable betrayal. In 2005, a mob leader flipped for the first time. It was Joe Massino, Asaro's onetime boss.

Asaro did not seem to question it when Valenti, who had been in Las Vegas and not speaking to Asaro, returned to New York and befriended him in 2010. Valenti was secretly working with the FBI.

In 2014, the FBI finally closed in, arresting Asaro. Prosecutors charged him with racketeering conspiracy, including the Lufthansa robbery and Katz's murder, and extortion. Four other Mafia members, including his son, were arrested the same day. They all struck plea bargains. Asaro did not.

During the trial, which started in October, traces of Asaro's verve were on display. He insisted on a clear line of sight to the turncoats, mouthing obscenities as they testified. Some stuff struck him as amusing — when he heard a tape of himself telling Valenti he had a "face made of (expletive) plutonium," he put his head in his hands and chuckled.

People above him had flouted the code, people below him had flouted the code, and the last one left was Asaro clinging to his credo. He seemed angry and betrayed.

Partway through the trial, angry that his lawyers were not cross-examining more aggressively, he asked to speak to Judge Allyne R. Ross of U.S. District Court. "I just want some input in the case, your honor," he said. "This is my life. This is my life. I'm 80 years old."

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