Jun 10 2007
Gangs of New York: America’s real Sopranos
The final episode of the Mafia TV drama airs tonight. But fans needn’t mourn - the real-life trials of New York’s Gambino crime family are proving just as darkly entertaining. None more so than the case of ‘Skinny Dom’ Pizzonia…
The genius of the television series The Sopranos, which will air its last episode ever in the United States tonight, was the mix it achieved between the comic and the morally repugnant. Tony Soprano, as the emotional head of a New Jersey mob clan, was at once devilish and devilishy sympathetic. We caught ourselves smiling at his frailties even as fresh blood seeped across our screens.
It was clever especially, though, because it is more or less so when it comes to the Mafia in real life. American fans of The Sopranos need not mourn its passing too deeply, because the show goes on, if not in their living rooms then in the courtrooms of New York. Rarely a month passes without a sprawling new Mafia epic opening before a jury. Every one combines shock value with almost music-hall slapstick.
The most recent, which played out in a Brooklyn courtroom last month, ranked among the best. It featured ageing hoodlum Dominick “Skinny Dom” Pizzonia, accused of gunning down a young Queens couple for daring to hold up a number of Mafia social clubs in the early 1990s. (How dumb were they, you might ask?) His fate was largely in the hands of mobster turncoat and star prosecution witness Michael “Mikey Scars” DiLeonardo. No scriptwriter could have dreamed up a tale more entertaining or bizarre.
Of course, there are differences between fantasy and fiction. We are assuming that the creators of The Sopranos will wrap things up all neat and tidy this evening. As the credits roll one last time, Tony will either be dead or in an FBI cruiser on the way to a judge. But the non-fictional war between the feds and the wiseguys of New York is far more messy. And so are most of the trials. This is how it goes between the US government and the crime families of New York: just when the feds seem to be making headway, they lose a big case, or half lose it. For them it’s always a frustrating two steps forward and one back.
The prosecution of “Skinny Dom” Pizzonia was a case in point. A former captain with the Gambino crime family who is 65 and illiterate, he was perhaps not the biggest of big fish. But the trial promised entertainment because it re-told one of the most storied incidents in New York Mafia-lore, one that had all of The Sopranos’ magic of human dumbness and stupefying violence. In the end, it also became a model for everything that should work for New York’s prosecutors in pursing the mob - but often does not.
The real stars of the trial, however, were a uniquely misguided young couple named Thomas and Rosemarie Uva. It was the early 1990s and the pair, both of whom had previously served time, were newly-weds working at a collection agency in Manhattan. But bored and short of cash, they hit upon a self-enrichment scheme that to them seemed brilliant. They would scope out and shake down the numerous social clubs around town, including in Little Italy, in Queens and in Brooklyn, owned and patronised by Mafia bosses.
If you have seen where Tony hung out with his lads, you know what kinds of places they were. Black-and-white pictures of Sicilian great-uncles above the bar and gingham table-cloths. They could look like legitimate spots - you and I could eat some rigatoni and sauce in any one of them without realising where we were. But they had back-rooms for poker, hatching heinous crimes, hiding the cash and entertaining ladies. All, in fact, were the private domains of senior Gambino henchmen, including Pizzonia - places such as the Hawaiian Moonlighters in Little Italy and the Veterans and Friends in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Pizzonia’s place, the Café Liberty in Queens, was hit by the Uvas not once but twice.
Rosemarie, 31, was the wheel-woman, waiting, foot poised on accelerator, while Thomas, 28, did the business inside. This was never complicated but involved bursting in with a loaded Uzi sub-machine gun in one hand and an empty swag bag in the other into which the astonished hoodlums, usually midway through a high-stakes card game, were told to put their cash and jewelry. When he was feeling especially cheeky, he would ask the gentlemen to drop their pants to the floor before he left. Before long they became known as the Bonnie and Clyde of the Mafia fraternity.
Jerry Capeci, a New York journalist and leading authority on the Mafia whose regular column ‘Gangland’ appears in the New York Sun newspaper and on his own web site, www.ganglandnews.com, attempted back in 1993 to explain what could possibly have possessed the young sweethearts to embark upon such reckless work. “After all,” he said, “the patrons usually have thousands of dollars in their pockets and never carry hardware when they conduct their business in the intimacy of their clubs.” More importantly, he went on: “These men, for the most part, are criminals who would never call the cops.” (omega)
At the same time, of course, a more useful monicker for the pair might have been Bonnie and Clod. Mobsters might not ring 911 when they are robbed, but they have their own means of tracking down those who cross and humiliate them. (Arguably they are better at it than the FBI even.) During one raid, one of the victims stood up and issued Uva a frank warning that he would be hunted down and killed. In a flash of Che Guavara-style bravado, he apparently shrugged and said, “everybody dies”.
Indeed they do. It wasn’t long before someone at one of the clubs was able to escape Uva’s notice long enough to slip out and jot down the number-plate of the getaway car outside. And so the inevitable eventually arrived.
It was Christmas Eve, 1992, at 8.30 in the morning. The newly rich Uvas had headed out in their maroon Mercury Topaz saloon for some last-minute holiday shopping. As they approached the intersection of Woodhaven Boulevard and 103rd Street in the Ozone Park section of Queens, their shenanigans caught up with them, as they were always going to, in a hail of bullets. Each was struck three times in the back of the head. The assailants vanished into thin air and the Mercury rolled a few yards further before colliding with another car and bumping to a halt. Aside from passenger and driver, both as dead as dead can be, police found $1,000 in cash in the car as well as a stash of watches and other jewelry.
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