Biography
Born in the Fourth Ward neighborhood of Manhattan, Ruggiero grew up in the Knickerbocker Village private housing development in Little Italy, Manhattan. Ruggiero joined the Bonanno family as a young man, serving as a street soldier under caporegime Michael Sabella. Ruggiero soon became successful in bookmaking, extortion and loansharking rackets. Ruggiero was a 6-foot-tall (1.8 m), lean-bodied man with a narrow face, intense eyes, slightly stooped shoulders and a cigarette-raspy voice (likely due to chain-smoking English Ovals cigarettes).
He lived in an apartment on Monroe Street in Manhattan in the same building as his 'friend' and Bonanno soldier Anthony Mirra. Ruggiero reportedly owned a cigarette boat that he kept docked on the East River in New York. Ruggiero became good friends with future family boss Philip "Rusty" Rastelli and Mirra. Ruggiero became the part-owner of a fishery in the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan. As a part-owner, Ruggiero was able to put himself on the company payroll with a $5,000-a-month "no-show" job. During the 1970s, he purchased a social club in Little Italy. Ruggiero loved animals and his apartment had several tanks with tropical fish. He also had a pet lion cub, which he had to let go once it got too big.
Ruggiero had an estranged brother who changed his surname to 'Reggero' to avoid association with the rest of the family. Ruggiero had three daughters and one son, Thomas Sbano, with his first wife. In the late 1950s, Ruggiero left his first wife, eventually moving in with his second wife, Louise. In September 1977, Ruggiero married Louise in a small ceremony at New York City Hall. Ruggiero's son, Thomas, struggled with a heroin dependency until he checked into a drug rehabilitation center in 1979. Ruggiero's younger daughter worked at a New York hospital and managed a booth at the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. Two of Ruggiero's daughters reportedly married mobsters. The Bonanno family allegedly discovered that Ruggiero's son-in-law, Marco, was cheating the family and told Ruggiero to eliminate him. Marco disappeared and his body was never recovered.
Read more about this topic: Benjamin Ruggiero
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