Biography
Cantarella was born to Italian parents on the Lower East Side, Manhattan and raised in Knickerbocker Village, a public housing development that was home to many Bonanno family members. A skinny kid with jet-black hair, Cantarella got the name "Shellackhead" from his hair pomade. Cantarella was married to Lauretta Castelli and they had a son, Paul Cantarella.
As a young man, Cantarella was introduced to the Bonanno family by his uncle, mobster Alfred Embarrato. Embarrato controlled the distribution center for the New York Post through local union of newspaper workers. In 1963, Embarrato obtained a job for Cantarella at the Post as a delivery truck driver. However, Cantarella and his cousin, Bonanno mobster Joseph D'Amico, actually served as enforcers on the newspaper's loading docks, jobs they would perform for over thirty years. From 1988 until 1991, Cantarella was a so-called “tail man”, a worker who rides on the back of the delivery truck and unloads the newspaper bundles. However, Cantarella never showed up for work; he paid a laborer $20 a night to do his job while Cantarella collected his $700 a week in wages.
Read more about this topic: Richard Cantarella
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