After I completed but before the release of my second book, The Hunting of Cain(1983), a true story about a contract killing in Bath, Ohio, I started looking for another project. Then, after reading a fascinating series of articles in Cleveland Magazine about the Cleveland Mafia, I contacted the author, the legendary Ned Whelan, who was well-known and respected for his true-crime work.
Ned and I agreed to consider co-authoring a book about the life and the 1977 killing of Danny Greene, the boss of the Irish Mafia in Cleveland. Our working title was Ashes to Ashes.
We agreed to focus our basic plot on the two U.S. Strike Force attorneys who prosecuted the murder case, Abe Poretz and John Sopko, both of whom I had interviewed at length. (Notably, Sopko was and still is a close friend of mine.)
On March 25, 1983, we delivered our proposal to my literary agent, Philip Spitzer, who pitched it to a handful of publishing houses in New York. Unfortunately, we did not receive what we considered a legitimate offer. Consequently, Ned and I dropped the project and went our separate ways.
Within a week after the murder of John Nardi on May 17, 1977, Butchie Cisternino and Allie Calabrese drove in separate cars to Erie, Pennsylvania, to see Ray Ferritto. Cisternino was driving an old, beat-up, blue 1973 Plymouth.
When they arrived, Cisternino offered the Plymouth to Ferritto. Somewhat disappointed by the appearance of the car, Ferritto asked whether it was stolen. Cisternino said that it wasn't.
While the three men talked, Ferritto asked them if they had killed Nardi—since Cisternino was a known explosives expert.
Without admitting or denying it, Cisternino and Calabrese recalled that they had found out that Nardi and Danny Greene were flying to New York together in March. They followed them to Cleveland Hopkins Airport and watched where they parked.
After the two men had flown off, Cisternino placed a bomb under the hood of Nardi's car. He and Calabrese then rented a room in a motel adjacent to the airport parking lot. From the window of their room, they had a clear view of Nardi's car.
Nardi and Greene returned to Cleveland the following day. Cisternino and Calabrese were cheering in their hotel room as they watched Greene and Nardi approach Nardi's black Cadillac in the parking lot.
Once the two targets were inside the car, Cisternino picked up his remote-control device and flipped the switch to trigger the bomb. . . .
Nothing happened.
As the smiles disappeared from their faces, Cisternino and Calabrese took the elevator downstairs and raced through the lobby of the motel—furiously flipping the switch on and off, on and off.
As Greene and Nardi—unaware of what was going on behind them—drove safely away from the area, Cisternino and Calabrese sprinted after them until they were out of sight.
Cisternino had forgotten to turn the arming switch "on" when he placed the bomb in the car.
Now, in the aftermath, all three men laughed about the incident—although Ferritto started to wonder about the competence of the people with whom he was doing business.
Ferritto reminded them that he still needed an apartment in Cleveland while plotting to kill Greene. Cisternino said he would take care of it as he and Calabrese left Ferritto's home, leaving the blue Plymouth with Ferritto.
Later that day, Ferritto stopped a high-school student on the street and offered him twenty dollars if he would register the Plymouth in his name. The kid agreed. Subsequently, the car was retitled to "Guy Mitchell," a fictitious name. Ferritto also used the address of his neighbor on the registration. He figured that he could intercept her mail when the Pennsylvania license plate came.
On May 28, Hank Grecco, another Greene/Nardi associate, was found murdered. He had been responsible for making "the package" that blew up John Del Zoppo's car.
Greene had taken the murders of Nardi, Grecco, and other allies in stride. Because he continued to fight—despite the fact that he and his crew had neither the manpower nor the muscle to endure a long-term conflict with the Mafia—the Irish gangster continued to enhance his celebrity image in the media. The publicity he received made him even more defiant and more of a death lover.
Greene publicly cursed and taunted old man James Licavoli, challenging the Mafia to try and kill him again. In fact, after Nardi's murder, Greene sat on a chair outside his trailer/office, next to his green, white, and gold Irish flag. Bare-chested and with a shotgun in his lap, he told the mob, "Come on!"
Meantime, Geraldine Linhart found another, updated FBI report on Licavoli at the FBI office, dated May 4, 1977. After xeroxing a copy, she and her fiancé went to Ken Ciarcia's home and gave it to him. Ciarcia again asked her about the numbers and codes on the cover letter—and whether she could obtain the corresponding list of names of the informants. She again said she would try to get them.
Beginning in June, Ferritto made regular trips to Cleveland, sometimes staying two or three weeks at a time. Because Cisternino was still afraid—now of Greene, no longer the late John Nardi—he often tried to have one of the kids in his neighborhood drive Ferritto around. Ferritto always taunted Cisternino for cowardice when he did this—but always convinced Cisternino to come along for the ride.
Looking for opportunities to kill Greene, they once observed a meeting between Greene and Tony Liberatore in a restaurant at the Sheraton Hotel. Outside the parking lot, Greene's two bodyguards, Kevin McTaggert and Keith Ritson, watched his car.
During one trip, Ferritto met with Carabbia and asked him about the Nardi murder. He specifically asked whether Cisternino had done the job. Carabbia laughed that Cisternino and his friends were "the gang that couldn't shoot straight."
"No," Carabbia added, "Butchie [Cisternino] didn't do it." Carabbia appeared to know who did, but Ferritto didn't press him.
In late June, Geraldine sneaked into the informants' room at the Cleveland FBI office. Seeing that no one was there, she began looking around and noticed a list of ten names of informants along with their corresponding code numbers. She copied the list.
She recognized only one of the FBI informants’ names: Danny Greene.
Geraldine didn't tell anyone right away that she had the list, waiting until Ciarcia called her to say that her upcoming civil court case had been "handled." When he finally assured her that her problem was solved, she told him that she had a few names of FBI informants. He then asked her to bring them to his office. When she arrived, Liberatore was also present. Ciarcia introduced him as his uncle.
Before handing Ciarcia the list of FBI informants, she said that she didn't like what she was doing and was worried. Liberatore told her not to be concerned because no one would get hurt.
When Ciarcia again asked her for the list, she again hesitated. Liberatore assured her that the fix was in and that her civil case had been taken care of. She added that she needed to win the case so that she and her fiancé, Jeff Rabinowitz, could get married and buy their dream house. They needed the money from the civil case as a down payment. Liberatore replied, "We'll take care of that."
Liberatore then asked whether the Internal Revenue Service used wiretaps when it investigated someone. Geraldine said she didn't know, because the IRS was a separate federal agency. Liberatore smiled and left the room for a few moments. When he returned, he gave her $1,000 in cash.
Geraldine took the money and handed Ciarcia the list. He read it, jotted down the informants' names, and then burned the list that Geraldine had given him.
Two weeks later, Ciarcia called Geraldine again and said that the codes on the two Licavoli reports did not accurately correspond with the list of names she had given him. She replied that it was only a partial list. He asked her to try to get the entire list of all the FBI's informants.
In early August, Ferritto went to Warren, Ohio, to complain to local Mafia boss Tony Delsanter about the manner in which the contract against Greene was being handled. He found Delsanter's car at the Living Room restaurant.
He parked and went inside, finding Delsanter sitting with Licavoli at a table. Because Licavoli was there, Ferritto was less forceful but managed to make his point. He added that he was not happy with the Plymouth he had received and that he was still waiting for his apartment in Cleveland. Delsanter assured him that everything would be taken care of.
Also at this meeting, Ferritto said that during one of his recent trips to Cleveland, Cisternino had told him that they had obtained a list of informants from the FBI. Licavoli then pulled the list out of his coat pocket. He showed it to Ferritto and asked him whether he was working with anyone on the list. Ferritto didn't recognize any of the names—except that of his target, Danny Greene, who, to his complete surprise, was an informant for the FBI.
On August 4, just two days after his meeting with Licavoli and Ferritto, Delsanter went into the hospital to be treated for hemorrhoids. While lying in his hospital bed, he had a massive heart attack and died.
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