A Rookie Cop vs. The West Coast Mafia. Tanya Chalupa
double jeopardy (a procedural clause in the Fifth Amendment forbidding a defendant from being tried again on the same or similar charges following a legitimate acquittal or conviction).
Mafia criminal activities during Scotty Spinuzzi’s rise to power were divided into two ruling factions in Colorado: Denver and Pueblo. Dick Kreck, author of Smaldone: The Untold Story of An American Crime Family, confirms that the “real” Mafia was in Pueblo. Denver came to be ruled by two brothers: Clyde Smaldone, who was the head of the crime family from the thirties until his retirement in the sixties, and Eugene “Checkers” Smaldone. The latter was said to be the tougher of the Smaldone brothers. The relationship between the crime families in Pueblo and Denver was friendly and cooperative. The Smaldone family was also closely aligned with the Kansas City mob, as was the Pueblo crime family.9
Until 1969, Pueblo was ruled by James “Black Jim” Coletti, who was a part-time owner with New York City Mafia boss Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno of the Colorado Cheese Company in Pueblo and Trinidad. When Coletti retired, Scotty Spinuzzi took over the reins. And with Spinuzzi’s meteoric rise, Ettleman’s clout also skyrocketed among the top leadership in the Mafia. Ettleman knew which shooting star to latch onto.
Etttleman found newlyweds Ralph and Luette Morris an apartment in Stockton, where he frequently stayed with them when conducting criminial activities in the region. During this period, he was active in running stolen credit card rings.10
A couple of post offices were hit by Ettleman’s crew in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was not only the cash and stamps that were taken, but also a series of credit cards. Fenced stamps brought in 80 percent of their value. But the credit cards that were stolen in the post office heists circulated as far south as Texas and Oklahoma.
The Texas-California connection and the movement of Ettleman’s stolen credit cards may be explained by Ed Reid, who in his book, The Grim Reapers, states that Los Angeles boss Nick Licata’s dominion stretched from Los Angeles to San Diego and into Texas, where in Dallas, Licata shared the rule with Joe Civello, an importer of food and liquor and the head of a Dallas crime family. He was the same Joe Civello whose personal acquaintance, Jack Ruby, murdered presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in front of law enforcement and a swarm of media cameras. Civello is said to have been related to former Los Angeles boss Frank DeSimone, whom Licata replaced and to the very same James “Black Jim” Coletti who was replaced by Scotty Spinuzzi as boss of Pueblo, Colorado.11
This is just a small sample of how intricately linked the relationships between Mafia bosses was and how closely Ettleman was aligned with its top echelon through Spinuzzi. Although Ettleman was an outsider in the Sicilian organization, he moved in its elite circles. And the men just discussed hung on a higher rung in the Mafia organization than the feared San Diego boss Frank Bompensiero. Because of this, Bompensiero secretly resented Ettleman. And so did his close buddy, Jimmy “The Weasel” Fratianno.12
Frank Bompensiero and Jimmy Fratianno both started out as hit men for the mob. They became known for their infamous “Italian rope trick,” where a noose is thrown over the neck of the victim and each man pulls until the individual chokes to death, leaving a surprised look on the victim’s face.
Fratianno admitted murdering five men and being present at killings of an additional six, but that’s just what he confessed. Agents who knew him and tailed him believe he murdered as many as thirty men. His most famous quote was, “I never killed anyone who didn’t deserve to die.” But it was Frank Bompensiero’s ruthlessness that was legendary among law enforcement officials in California. Even Fratianno once stated that Bompensiero “had buried more bones than could be found in the Brontosaurus room of the Museum of Natural History.”1 Bompensiero could not act on his resentment of Ettleman by knocking him off, but there was another way he could do great harm to him. Unknown to everyone in the underworld, Frank Bompensiero had become an FBI snitch.
The CI&I reports that young detective Bill Palmini read in his investigation of the Trident’s safe burglary were based on leaks stemming from Frank Bompensiero. Had Palmini known this, he no doubt would have asked “why?” Why would a fearsome, old-time Mafia tough guy like Frank Bompensiero turn and place his life on the line?
Few infamous men have the cunning or toughness from which legends are born. Frank Bompensiero—or “The Bomp,” as some in the media liked to refer to him—may have come close to having it. It is not surprising that his persona was included in the hit television series, The Sopranos. The character Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, played by actor Vincent Pastore, was said to be based largely on Frank Bompensiero.
The stepping stones that led Bompensiero to turn and become an FBI informant started forming in the mid-1950s, initiated by his own sloppiness in connection to the surreptitious issuing of liquor licenses developed by State Board Equalization member Bill Bonelli. Bonelli’s so-called Saloon Empire, where bribes flowed like whiskey on a Friday night, contained a roster of Mafia figures, whom Bompensiero endangered of being dragged down with him when he was indicted by a grand jury and ordered to stand trial for receiving a five-thousand-dollar bribe from Jacumba Café owner Ernest Gillenberg Jacumba.2
Bompensiero was unlucky when he got John Hewicker as the presiding judge for his trial. Hewicker had just finished reading Ed Reid’s 1954 book, Mafia, in which Bompensiero was listed as number twenty-six among eighty-three Mafia members. The book also addressed Bompensiero’s close friend and associate, Momo Adamo, along with Jack Dragna. They were all linked to the American Mafia, which Reid described in the chapter, “Phi Beta Mafia,” as being more dangerous than communism.3
This was a strong statement to make in an era of lingering McCarthyism. Crime damages the economy and creates astronomical costs for taxpayers. It also creates personal and public turmoil. But now, according to Reid, it was politically dangerous to the safety of the nation. Reid’s reasoning was that the Mafia had cooperated with Mussolini during World War II as well as Joseph Stalin, who was out to destroy the United States. Stalin was in a position to hire Mafia members to work internally to bring down the country.4
Hewicker could not wait for the day he had Bompensiero in his court. And as Judith Moore wrote in The San Diego Reader, Hewicker “was smacking his lips at the thought of getting himself the real McCoy. He finally had himself a big criminal, and he was ready to lower the boom on him.”5
Frank DeSimone was Bompensiero’s lead lawyer. He was the same DeSimone who was involved in the botched-up murder attempt on Mickey Cohen with Bompensiero and other Italian mobsters in Jack Dragna’s war on the Jewish gangsters in California. DeSimone tried to have Hewicker disqualified because he was prejudiced. He tried every trick he knew in the law books, but in the end he failed. Bompensiero was found guilty of the bribery charge and the conspiracy to bribe in the Bonelli liquor license scandal. Hewicker ended up sentencing Bompensiero to three to forty-two years in prison and ordered him to pay a five-thousand-dollar fine on each of the three counts for which he was found guilty.6
Bart Sheela, the prosecutor in the case, recalled that on Friday, April 29, 1955, when he and others from the prosecution team were sitting in a bar at a San Diego hotel waiting for the verdict to come out on Bompensiero, the defendant was seated at a nearby table having drinks with his lawyers, including DeSimone. As Sheela recalls, “Frank comes over to me and he says, ‘Sheela, what they pay you in the district attorney’s office?’ I said, ‘Six hundred sixteen dollars a month.’ Frank says, ‘I paid those assholes seventy thousand dollars and I think you got the best side of it. Wise up.’”7
Sheela thought Bompensiero’s lawyers were well qualified. One of them even served in the DA’s office shortly before Sheela joined the agency. Sheela added:
“Bompensiero really was on the fringes of this liquor license business. The San Diego prosecution was