Thursday, 28 Mar 2024

Frank Cali, Reputed Gambino Boss Who Shunned the Limelight, Is Assassinated

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Francesco Cali wore the label quietly: old school. The reputed boss of the Gambino crime family was nothing like John J. Gotti, the “Dapper Don” who ruled the same operation when Mr. Cali was a little boy.

Known as Frank, he kept a low profile in his Staten Island neighborhood, yet he met the same bloody fate as many of his predecessors on Wednesday night, gunned down in the street outside his brick home in a brazen assassination that recalled the mob wars of decades past.

Mr. Cali, 53, was shot six times in the Todt Hill section of Staten Island at around 9:20 p.m., the police said. Neighbors heard a staccato burst of gunshots — “pow-pow-pow-pow-pow,” one said on Wednesday night — all the same volume, as if fired from the same gun. A blue pickup truck was spotted fleeing the scene, the police said.

Mr. Cali was pronounced dead at Staten Island University Hospital.

The bloody attack stood out against its serene setting on Hilltop Terrace: a tree-lined, curving lane of stately homes with circular driveways and swimming pools. Mr. Cali’s body lying on the street was a throwback to black-and-white photographs from Mafia assassinations past in Manhattan.

[Todt Hill, a getaway from the bustling city, offers privacy that has appealed to mob bosses.]

The former Gambino boss Paul Castellano was gunned down outside Sparks Steak House in Midtown in 1985, a power grab orchestrated by a young Mr. Gotti, who ran the family through the late 1980s in his trademark showy style.

Mr. Cali rose quickly through the ranks of the family, becoming a “made” member in the late 1990s, on the way to a “swift promotion” to acting captain in less than 10 years, a prosecutor, Joey Lipton, said at a 2008 detention hearing after Mr. Cali’s arrest in an extortion case. In Federal District Court in Brooklyn, Mr. Lipton cited Mr. Cali’s “familial and blood ties” to the Gambino family, and his “very close relationship” with John D. D’Amico, known as Jackie, who had become the acting boss of the family around 2005.

Mr. Cali’s swift rise did not please everyone. One Gambino soldier, Joey Orlando, was overheard on a wiretapped call that was disclosed at the hearing complaining about Mr. Cali, whom he described as “Jackie’s guy.”

“Jackie made him a skipper,” Mr. Orlando was overheard saying. “Some snot-nosed, 30-year-old kid.”

Prosecutors said Mr. Cali’s influence extended to Italy, where many members and associates in his crew were from, and where he was seen as a man of “influence and power” by other organized crime figures.

In one wiretapped call, two mobsters speaking in Italian were overheard discussing Mr. Cali. “He’s a friend of ours,” one said, “He is everything over there.”

Mr. Cali was arrested only once, in a 2008 extortion case involving a failed attempt to build a Nascar track in Staten Island. The Gambino family controlled the trucking operation that would have hauled the dirt to fill the track’s foundation.

He rose to power by avoiding detection. Other captains were not allowed to call him directly, and he avoided speaking on the phone. He chose to meet in person.

“He’s directing the activity from above,” Mr. Lipton, the prosecutor, said. He added: “Cali did not have to get his hands dirty.”

“He was very, very, very low key,” another law enforcement official who investigates Mafia cases said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for security reasons. “He was sort of the polar opposite of John Gotti.”

“He is as old school as you get,” the official added. “He’s basically a ghost. Where Gotti was always out, he was a ghost. You wouldn’t see him at social clubs or night clubs or boxing matches.“

The Gambino family was once the nation’s largest and most influential organized crime group, but several of its leaders were convicted in the 1990s of crimes that included murder and racketeering. Mr. Cali’s death arrives amid a recent spate of violence in the Mafia underworld.

In October, Sylvester Zottola, 71, a reputed associate of the Bonanno crime family was shot and killed as he waited in his S.U.V. to pick up an order at the drive-through window of a McDonald’s in the Bronx.

Just three months earlier, Mr. Zottola’s son, Salvatore Zottola, was ambushed by a gunman and left for dead outside his family’s Throgs Neck compound. He survived.

Follow Michael Wilson and Benjamin Weiser on Twitter: @MWilsonNYT @BenWeiserNYT

Joseph Goldstein and Michael Gold contributed reporting.

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