Aladena Fratianno spent about three decades in the American Mafia, first in Cleveland and then in Los Angeles, and in 1977 became the most important witness the federal government had yet obtained against it. He was indicted that year with eight other men over the murders of two Cleveland men, Daniel Greene and John Nardi. He pleaded guilty to the 1977 charges, received a five-year sentence and served 21 months. Prosecutors called him "the most important witness ever" in the effort against organized crime in southern California, and his testimony was used in trials in Los Angeles, Cleveland, New York and San Francisco.
His record as a killer rests on his own words. At a trial in Los Angeles in 1980 he admitted to five murders and to taking part in six others. Police had believed for years that the number on the West Coast was as high as 16. He was convicted on his plea over the Cleveland deaths. He died on June 29, 1993, at the age of 79.
Fratianno was born in 1913 in Naples, Italy, and was brought to the United States as an infant. He grew up in Cleveland, where his father had settled in the district known as Little Italy. He began in gambling at 14, and by 17 he was an equal partner in an operation near an automobile plant in the city. From 1938 to 1945 he served seven years in an Ohio prison on a robbery conviction.
In 1946 he moved to Los Angeles, where he became an associate of John Rosselli, and he was initiated into the Los Angeles family in the late 1940s. He was a regular visitor to Las Vegas in those years. By 1975, when the New York and Chicago organizations moved into the West, he was running their operations on the West Coast. In 1973, after a further prison term, he began to cooperate with the FBI.
In early 1978 he had given the FBI details of at least ten gangland killings on the West Coast since 1951. Police believed that he had committed up to 16 murders on the West Coast and had helped plan others in New York and Ohio. At the Los Angeles trial in 1980 he admitted to five murders and to taking part in six others. Weeks later, testifying in New York, he spoke of 10 gangland murders in which he had taken part.
The one set of deaths that was the subject of a charge against him, and of his plea, is that of Daniel Greene and John Nardi in Cleveland in 1977.
Daniel Greene died in October 1977 in Lyndhurst, a suburb of Cleveland. John Nardi died in the same year. A federal and local task force later gained convictions of eleven organized-crime figures, including Fratianno, for offenses related to the two deaths.
In November 1977 Fratianno was indicted with three other men on a charge of trying to extort $20,000 from undercover FBI agents. In December 1977 he was indicted with eight others over the murders of Greene and Nardi. That month Chicago leaders had reportedly decided that he should be killed; FBI agents warned him, and he turned to the government. He went into the federal Witness Protection Program and into protective custody of U.S. marshals. The Justice Department was expected to drop its charges in return for his cooperation, and to give him a new identity and a new job.
In exchange for his testimony he pleaded guilty to the 1977 charges and was sentenced to five years, of which he served 21 months. He was not required to testify in the state's own murder trial over Greene's death, in which a Cuyahoga County jury in 1978 convicted Ronald Carabbia and one other man of aggravated murder and sentenced both to life. Pasquale Cisternino was convicted as well.
Federal prosecutors in Cleveland tried the wider case under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO. Fratianno testified in a federal racketeering trial there against James Licavoli and others. In 1982 a federal jury convicted Licavoli, Carabbia, Cisternino and three other men under RICO, accepting the prosecution's case that they took part in the conspiracy to kill Greene, in Greene's murder, and in the bribery of an FBI secretary. Licavoli received 17 years; Carabbia received a 12-year federal sentence, which ran alongside his state term.
The defendants appealed in 1983, arguing that conspiracy to murder was not a valid predicate act under RICO. On January 9, 1984, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed all the federal convictions in the Licavoli case, rejecting the appeal. A Justice Department official told the Senate that year that across this case and one other, federal juries had convicted almost the entire hierarchy of the Cleveland organization. Licavoli died in federal custody in Wisconsin in November 1985.
The case on the West Coast was a racketeering prosecution of three reputed organized-crime leaders that opened in Los Angeles in the fall of 1980. Prosecutors called it the most important racketeering case in state history. Prosecutors described Fratianno as an admitted killer, gambler, extortionist and loan shark who was nonetheless their best witness; his earlier testimony had helped send more than a dozen racketeers to prison in New York, Cleveland and San Francisco. His 1980 testimony helped lead to racketeering convictions of five reputed Mafia figures.
In November 1980, in federal court in Manhattan, Frank Tieri was convicted of heading a national crime syndicate and of authorizing the murder of a man in California who owed the mob money. The jury acquitted him of tax evasion. He faced up to 20 years at sentencing, set for January 6, and his lawyer said he would appeal. Fratianno testified at the trial that Tieri had backed the killing.
By 1987 the Justice Department had spent nearly $1 million on Fratianno and his wife during the ten years of his cooperation, and he was dropped from the program's payroll that year, an outcome he blamed on a book. Two books had been written from his accounts: The Last Mafioso, by Ovid Demaris, published in 1981, and Vengeance Is Mine, by Michael Zuckerman, in 1987. He said he never read either. He appeared on television talk shows. In 1987 he said he had put "30 guys away, six of them bosses," and added: "I'm a dead man." He lived for six more years under an assumed name. He died on June 29, 1993, aged 79.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act carries penalties of up to 20 years in prison. The cases built on Fratianno's testimony were brought under it. The Cleveland defendants argued on appeal that conspiracy to murder was not a valid predicate act, and the Sixth Circuit rejected the argument. The federal Witness Protection Program gave Fratianno a new identity, and he became the highest-paid participant in its history.
The figure of up to 16 West Coast murders is a police belief. Fratianno was never convicted of any of those deaths. His plea resolved the charges against him over Greene and Nardi.
1913: Born in Naples, Italy; raised in Cleveland.
1938 to 1945: Serves a robbery term in an Ohio prison.
1946: Moves to Los Angeles.
Late 1940s: Initiated into the Los Angeles family.
1973: Begins cooperating with the FBI.
October 1977: Daniel Greene dies in Lyndhurst, Ohio.
November 1977: Indicted with three others on an attempted-extortion charge.
December 1977: Indicted with eight others over the Greene and Nardi murders; breaks with his associates and enters the Witness Protection Program.
1978 onward: Pleads guilty to the 1977 charges; sentenced to five years, serves 21 months.
1980: Testifies in Los Angeles; testifies in New York at the trial of Frank Tieri (convicted November 1980).
1981: The Last Mafioso is published.
1982: Federal jury in Cleveland convicts Licavoli, Carabbia, Cisternino and three others under RICO.
January 9, 1984: Sixth Circuit affirms the federal convictions in the Licavoli case.
1987: Dropped from the program's payroll; Vengeance Is Mine is published.
June 29, 1993: Dies, aged 79.