Angelo Ruggiero - The Murder of DiBernardo and Attempted Murder of Casso

The Murder of DiBernardo and Attempted Murder of Casso

In June 1986 he successfully arranged the murder of Gambino crime family capo, Robert DiBernardo. Angelo started talking subversively about Robert. Sammy Gravano later said,

"I said to Angie that if DiB said anything, it didn't mean nothing. Just talk. DiB wasn't dangerous. I asked Angie to reach John and see if we couldn't hold up on this, and when John came out, we would discuss it. It was something we could hold up on. But Angie immediately responded that it had to be done. John was steaming. John's brother Genie, and Genie's crew would the hit at this house of the mother of one of the soldiers. I was to get DiB there for a meeting, and whoever was sitting behind DiB would shoot him. But the house wasn't available. Angie came back to me. He said John was really hot. He wanted it done right, he wanted it done right, and he wanted me to do it. I didn't know what Angie was telling John about my reservations. I knew Angie was into DiB for $250,000. I would imagine that this could've played a part in everything. But I don't know if John knew that. Maybe John had some other motives, some hidden resentment in the past. Frankie (Frank DeCicco) and me had a tough time even getting John to elevate DiB to captain after Paul (Paul Castellano) got hit. But I never questioned that he gave the order."

In all likelihood, the above statement is false, self-serving on Gravano's part. Other sources, along with Gravano himself (on tape from an apartment above the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club) trace the money to Gravano. DiBernardo and Gravano also had other, combined, lucrative business interests. Gravano's greed eventually led him to want DiBernardo out of the picture.

But later botched the murder of Lucchese crime family mobster Anthony Casso, who was a "soldier" at the time. Casso openly called Ruggiero an "idiot". Insulted, Ruggiero decided to have Casso murdered, a task entrusted to Michael Paradiso, one of John Gotti's oldest friends. Paradiso, in turn, assigned the actual task of killing to three hoodlums, including a Staten Island thug named James Hydell, a nephew of Gambino crime family capo Daniel Marino. Hydell shot Casso five times, but failed to kill him, a mistake that proved costly: kidnapped by Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, Hydell was hideously tortured by Anthony Casso for twelve hours, then killed, all as a warning to Ruggiero.

The incident further rattled Gotti's faith in Ruggiero's abilities as a capo, and created a major managerial problem: as family boss, Gotti was being ushered into the great riches of the upper-level rackets, ones that required captains with some intelligence and business sense who could help him run the organization. Ruggiero proved to have none of these attributes. After the attempted shooting of Anthony Casso, John Gotti Jr. later stated that Ruggiero was placed on the "shelf" for ordering the attack. Despite orders from his father, John Jr. continued his friendship with his father's old friend and spoke to him regularly.