Of all the mobsters snared in a celebrated three-year FBI undercover operation by turncoat Michael (Cookie) D’Urso – so far 47 defendants have been convicted – the most important may be an aging, ailing, battle-weary Hell's Kitchen gangster.
George Barone was a powerful waterfront racketeer in the days when the mob ruled supreme on the city’s docks. In his prime, in the 1950s, Barone was a character right out of “On the Waterfront,” a “Johnny Friendly” type who used guns, knives and his own fists to enforce the rules of his then-boss and close pal, Mafia chieftain Vito Genovese.
Barone, now 79, stoops when he walks. He suffers from lung disease, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. He is so hard of hearing that he needed a teleprompter to read questions from lawyers when he took the stand last week in his debut as a government witness.
But his memory appears to be pretty good, and Barone is poised to be a key witness against another old friend, 74-year-old Genovese boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante, as well as Gigante’s son Andrew and six other wiseguys when that case begins in March. Barone is the third family member to defect since Genovese soldier Joe Valachi paved the way in 1962.
Most defectors today have little insight about the mob’s glory days and a limited historical perspective about the Mafia. Barone, however, was nabbed for extortion in 2001 and has first-hand knowledge about a half century of crime.
A World War II veteran who took part in five Allied invasions, including the assault on Iwo Jima, Barone spent a couple years at Pace College before acquiring an accelerated education about the waterfront while scrubbing down ships at Manhattan piers in the late 1940s.
He joined the International Longshoremen’s Association around 1949 as a working foreman for a ship cleaning company controlled by Albert Anastasia, boss of what is now known as the Gambino family, according to FBI reports obtained by Gang Land.
After fending off efforts by Anastasia capo Carmine (The Doctor) Lombardozzi to use non-union workers, Barone got in bed with Genovese – a fierce Anastasia rival – and began taking payoffs to allow Genovese to use non-union labor.
By the mid 1950s, he was an ILA official and “very close” to Genovese, so close that Don Vitone confided that he had learned about a diabolical plot in which his underboss, Frank Costello, and Anastasia planned to kill him, and how Genovese responded.
“Genovese directed Chin Gigante to kill Costello (and) Genovese was also responsible for Anastasia’s murder” in October 1957, Barone said, according to a report by FBI agents Michael Campi and Joy Adam.
“He’s the real deal, a guy who knows it all and decided to get out rather than die in jail,” said one law enforcement official.
Barone was a personal hit man for acting boss Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno in the 1960s and ’70s. He spent most of the 1980s in prison, but he got back into “the life” in the 1990s, flourishing as the Genovese family’s man on the Miami docks until his arrest.
In his day, he was involved in so many murders, he can’t remember them all.
“I didn’t keep a scorecard, but it was probably ten or twelve,” Barone said last week at the waterfront racketeering trial of Gambino boss Peter Gotti, capo Anthony (Sonny) Ciccone, a rival for 30 years, and five others.
Barone said he dispatched most of his victims in the 1950’s, when he belonged to a Hell’s Kitchen gang of mostly Irish hoodlums whose name, “The Jets,” was made famous in the 1957 musical about gang violence, “West Side Story.”
“I am a mongrel. I’m partly Italian, Irish and Hungarian,” Barone testified when asked about his own heritage.
His lucrative labor racketeering partnership with Genovese ended in 1958 after the leader of The Jets was killed. Barone aligned himself with Salerno, who later sponsored his induction into the family.
Barone became a favored hitman for his mob masters. In the mid-1960s, he traveled to Covington, Kentucky and killed a Salerno nemesis who was causing problems for a gambling operation Fat Tony controlled there. In 1967, he again did Salerno’s bidding, killing John Biello, a New York wiseguy who had moved to Miami and earned Salerno’s wrath.
Before going to prison in 1983, Barone was ordered to meet Chin Gigante in Greenwich Village with several wiseguys and ILA officials and smooth the way for Andrew Gigante to take over some of Barone’s responsibilities on the docks, according to an FBI report.
As they waited for Gigante to arrive, Barone saw a man entering the apartment who “looked like the Man From LaMancha,” the fabled Don Quixote character, and for a brief moment, “thought this person was there to kill them,” the report said.
“As the person came closer, he realized it was Chin dressed in a robe with the hood up over his head. Gigante embraced (Barone), told the others how much he loved (him) and described how they were together years ago with Vito Genovese,” the report said.
Turning his back on the mob after a 50 year run was a difficult decision, he testified, but one Barone was forced to make after he was cheated by the Gigantes and suspected that they had marked him for death.
“I wanted to get even. I wanted to survive. I didn’t want to get killed by them,” he said.
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