Angelo Ruggiero

Angelo Salvatore Ruggiero Sr., also known as "Quack Quack", was an American mobster who rose to the position of caporegime in the Gambino crime family. He is best known for his fraternal friendship with John Gotti and was instrumental in the assassination of incumbent boss Paul Castellano which led to the rise of Gotti to official boss of the Gambino family.

Family and early years

Angelo Salvatore Ruggiero was born at Lutheran Hospital and raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn. Ruggiero's father was a first-generation immigrant from Naples, Italy who was not involved in organized crime. Ruggiero's mother was Mary Dellacroce. Ruggiero's brothers were Gambino associate Salvatore Ruggiero Sr., John Ruggiero, and Francis A. "Little Frankie" Ruggiero. Ruggiero's nephew is mob associate Salvatore Ruggiero Jr. Ruggiero's cousins include Gambino underboss Aniello Dellacroce, and Sean and Shannon Connelly.
Ruggiero grew up with future Gambino boss John Gotti and underboss Sammy Gravano. A high school dropout, Ruggiero was arrested in the 1950s for street fighting, public intoxication, car theft, bookmaking, possession of an illegal firearm, and burglary. Some of these arrests were made while in the company of Gotti.

Crimes

In 1966, Ruggiero and Gotti were arrested together for attempting to steal a cement mixer truck.
On May 22, 1973, Ruggiero, Gotti, and a Gambino gunman, Ralph Galione, killed mobster James McBratney in a Staten Island bar. McBratney had recently tried to kidnap a Gambino loanshark for ransom, which led the Gambino leadership to order his assassination. Gotti and Ruggiero were convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison. After their release on parole in July 1977, Ruggiero and Gotti were inducted into the Gambino family as made men in a ceremony officiated by the family boss Paul Castellano, consigliere Joseph N. Gallo, and underboss Dellacroce. Law enforcement later speculated that Dellacroce’s personal affection for Ruggiero and Gotti played a crucial role in their elevation within the organization.
To comply with his parole conditions, Ruggiero was employed from 1977 to 1984 in a no-show job as a salesman for Arc Plumbing and Heating Corporation, which was owned by Gambino associates Anthony and Caesar Gurino.
Ruggiero was suspected in the 1980 disappearance of John Favara, a neighbor of Gotti's who had killed Gotti's 12-year-old son Frank in a car accident. Ruggiero participated in the 1985 slaying of Castellano.
Ruggiero was later the subject of a government undercover investigation. Mobster turned government informant Wilfred Johnson provided investigators with the layout of Ruggerio's home so that they could install four bugs and wire taps. Investigators monitored Ruggiero's activities in narcotics. Investigators later recorded conversations between Ruggiero and Gene Gotti that implicated the two men in Castellano's murder.

Ruggiero and Dellacroce

Ruggiero's uncle, Aniello Dellacroce, was an original supporter of Gambino boss Albert Anastasia's who became underboss under Anastasia's successor, Carlo Gambino. Before Gambino died, he named Paul Castellano as boss with Dellacroce remaining as underboss. Although Dellacroce was unhappy with Gambino's decision, he supported Castellano in the name of family unity.
Although Dellacroce helped Ruggiero during his early years with the family, many observers felt that Dellacroce was actually much closer to Gotti. Dellacroce's relationship with Ruggiero was tested when Peter Tambone, a Ruggiero associate, was arrested for narcotics trafficking. Dellacroce made it clear that he would kill Ruggiero, Gotti, or anyone else he discovered dealing in narcotics. To save Tambone's life, Ruggiero instructed Tambone to claim that he was never involved with the heroin, only the laundering of the drug money.
Sammy Gravano later said:

I don't think if he lived, he would've let Angelo get murdered. He would have probably put him on a shelf somewhere and appease Paul that way. If he let Paul kill him, there would have been a war. I think he felt, Paul's the boss, so let's 'fess up, this is the truth, this is what happened, here are the tapes. Then, if Paul followed up and said, "Well, I want him dead", Neil would have fought tooth and nail to save him. And if he couldn't, who knows what the fuck would've happened?

Gravano also later stated:

I don't think John gave a fuck about Angelo or the tapes. I think he was looking to create a situation to capitalize on our other grievances about Paul. There was tension between Aniello Dellacroce and his followers and Paul Castellano, and Frank DeCicco enjoyed their mutual respect. But when Ruggiero tried to convince DeCicco that Dellacroce had real disputes against Castellano, he did not believe him. To Ruggiero's unhappiness, DeCicco said that as far as he was concerned, his uncle was a faithful underboss to Paul Castellano. Angelo would also listen to his uncle's protege and childhood friend, John Gotti, insult Dellacroce about his "La Cosa Nostra bullshit".

When Dellacroce was dying, Ruggiero was a constant visitor to his bedside until his death on December 2, 1985.

Ruggiero and Castellano

Following the diagnosis of his uncle's terminal cancer, Paul Castellano issued an edict on narcotics, ruling that any member of the family made after 1962 was strictly prohibited from any involvement in narcotics under pain of death. He followed up by pressuring the American Mafia Commission to issue a firm Mafia-wide ban that would also carry an instant death penalty. This new edict was aimed directly at John Gotti, Ruggiero, and Dellacroce, whom Castellano began to suspect had been secretly sanctioning Gotti's narcotics operation. Castellano hoped that these and a number of other politically motivated moves in the crime family would break the sudden, ambitious ascent of Ruggiero and John Gotti.
Ruggiero frequently complained about the lack of money that he was earning through his illicit criminal enterprises. Authorities later commented that, judging by appearances, however, both Ruggiero and John Gotti seemed blithely unconcerned by a second consequence of the Ravenite Social Club wire tapping operation, a grand jury subpoena calling forth Ruggiero, John Gotti, and ten other habitués of the Ravenite to discuss certain aspects of organized crime, as revealed by the successful Operation Acorn.
Gambino crime family capo John Carneglia often complained about Ruggiero to fellow criminals stating, "Dial any seven numbers, and there's a fifty-fifty chance that Angelo will answer the phone." Every other Sunday, Ruggiero drove to Castellano's house in Todt Hill, Staten Island to report to Castellano about the activities of the Bergin crew and the profits he could expect from the crew's hijacking and gambling operations. At home, Ruggiero would complain about Castellano's high-handed manner. He sneered that Castellano was a "milk drinker" and a "pansy". He put down Castellano's two sons, who were running Dial Poultry, as "the chicken men", and called business advisers that Castellano had around him as "the Jew club." He referred to Thomas Gambino, who oversaw the family's interests in the garment center as a "sissy dressmaker". He also conjured up images of Castellano and Bilotti spending evenings together at Todt Hill, "whacking off."
On December 16, 1985, two weeks after Dellacroce's death, Castellano and his new underboss Thomas Bilotti were murdered outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan, and John Gotti assumed the role of Gambino family boss.

Ruggiero and the Gottis

Given John Gotti's new position as Gambino crime family boss in 1985, Gotti no longer handled the actual specifics of contract killings and assigned the job to Ruggiero.
Ruggiero frequently insulted Gotti behind his back, which was recorded on FBI wiretaps. He considered Gotti a "sick motherfucker" whose "fucking mouth goes a mile a minute." He also complained that Gotti was always "abusing" and "talking about people", and was "wrong on a lot of things." Even so, he spoke of a love for Gotti, whom he equated to a "brother".
Ruggiero was considered John Gotti's biggest ego booster among his close associates, despite the behind-the-back barbs. He later became a father figure to John Gotti Jr., who considered him an "uncle" although they were not related by marriage or blood.
Although the Ruggiero and Gotti families have close, long-lasting ties, when Peter Gotti and Gotti Jr. were promoted to boss of the Gambino crime family, Ruggiero's son, Angelo Ruggiero Jr., and nephew, Salvatore Ruggiero Jr., were not inducted into the family, as Ruggiero's uncle Dellacroce had done for Junior's father, John Gotti. This was possibly caused by the legal troubles Angelo Ruggiero Sr. brought upon John Gotti and the Gambino crime family after having his house tapped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Justice.

Relationship with Wilfred Johnson

For reasons that remain unclear mob associate Wilfred Johnson harbored a deep hatred for Ruggiero. Of all the members of the Bergin crew, Johnson appeared most determined to harm Ruggiero through his role as an informant. He frequently referred to Ruggiero derisively as "that fat fuck." Despite being an informant, Johnson deliberately excluded John Gotti from his discussions about the Bergin crew's narcotics operations, telling the FBI that he knew little about the subject. The FBI suspected this was untrue, but Johnson still provided them with detailed floor plans of Angelo Ruggiero's home in Cedarhurst, New York, along with recommendations for the optimal locations to plant a wire transmitter. When the FBI successfully installed the bug in 1982, it yielded what many in law enforcement now regard as one of the most significant oral histories ever captured, documenting the inner workings of a major criminal conspiracy.
Ruggiero later helped in the disappearance and murder of family soldier Anthony Pilate, with John Gotti and Wilfred Johnson, for his uncle Dellacroce in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.