Anthony Casso

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Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso (b. May 21, 1940) is a former New York mobster and a member of the Lucchese crime family.

With a reputation as one of the most violent enforcers of the Lucchese crime family, Casso rose to become one of the criminal organizations leading Capo's. During his days as a safecracker and enforcer along Brooklyn's Red Hook waterfront, Casso became known in the area for his violent temper and a piece of gas pipe he used regularly to threaten loanshark victims and suspected informers.

Due to his close association with then Lucchese leader Vic Amuso, Casso became the family Underboss. During this time, Casso had been gaining attention for his glamorous lifestyle wearing expensive clothes and jewelry (including a diamond ring worth $500,000); running restaurant tabs up to thousands of dollars and owning a mansion in an exclusive upscale Brooklyn neighborhood.

While at the top of the Luccheses, Amuso and Casso shared huge profits from their family's illegal activities, which included: "$15,000 to $20,000 a month from Long Island carting shake-downs; "75,000 a month in kickbacks for guaranteering eight air-freight companies labor peace and allowing them to cheat employees out of union benefits; 20,000 a week in profits from illegal video gambling machines; and $245,000 annually from a major concrete supplier, the Quadrozzi Concrete Company." (As reported in Selwynn Raab's "Five Families"). The two also split sums of more than $200,000 per year from the Garment District rackets, as well as a cut of all the crimes committed by the family's soldiers.

In one instance, Casso and Amuso split a sum paid to them by the Colombo crime family of $800,000 for Casso's aid in helping them rob steel from the construction site at the West Side Highway. In another instance, the two received tribute of $600,000 from the Gambino crime family for allowing them to take over a Lucchese protected contractor for a housing complex project in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Casso also received tribute from Russian gangster Marat Balagula who operated a gasoline bootlegging scam, as well as controlled Greek gangster George Kalikatas who in 1990 alone kicked up $683,000 to Casso for allowing him to operate a loan sharking and gambling operation in Queens.

Following the imprisonment of Amuso in 1991, Casso became acting boss of the family. However, under murder and racketeering charges, Casso fled the state. While evading authorities for over three years, Casso maintained control over the Lucchese family reportedly ordering 11 deaths as well as conspiring with Genovese leader Vincent "Chin" Gigante in a possible retaliation against Gambino leader John Gotti (who had murdered former leader Paul Castellano in order to gain leadership of the crime family, defying the National Commission's edict for prior approval of a crime family leader's murder). Eventually arrested at a safehouse in Mount Olivet, New Jersey in 1994, he agreed to become a government informant in exchange for dropping a life imprisonment sentence against him and entered the Witness Protection Program. Casso disclosed information about countless murders and other mafia related information, such as releasing the fact that he had two NYPD detectives on his payroll. These detectives were later determined to be Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito. However the government determined that Casso was an unqualified witness. He was dropped from the Witness Protection Program and is now serving life imprisonment in Supermax ADX Florence.

[edit] Further reading

• Capeci, Jerry and Gene Mustain. Gotti: Rise and Fall. 1996.

[edit] References

• Kelly, Robert J. Encyclopedia of Organized Crime in the United States. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. ISBN 0-313-30653-2

Raab, Selwyn. Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires. New York: St. Martin Press, 2005. ISBN 0-312-30094-8