 Welcome into the original gangsters podcast. I'm your host Scott Bernstein. This is another quick hitter episode where I'm going to tell y'all about a very interesting situation that has probably got lost in the shuffle of great 80s mob stories and it ties into something that's going on today with a couple of names in the Genovese crime family that are in the news lately, but it also includes kind of a who's who of five family icons from that era. Some of them hadn't even really become icons yet, but I'm talking about guys like Vincent the Chin, Gigante, Paul Castellano, Sammy the Bull Gravano and Sammy the Bull touched on some of this in an episode of his podcast a couple years ago, but I don't think that he contextualized it the way that I want to based on these this arrest from earlier the summer of Frankie DiPietro aka Skippy aka Frankie the Fish. He along with a number of other good fellas were busted doing diamond heists in Manhattan really some brazen ballsy cowboy shit rolling into in broad daylight rolling into high end jewelry stores and sticking them up and coming away with millions of dollars worth of merch. So Frankie DiPietro has a brother Rocco DiPietro and they seem to both be kind of movers and shakers in their 60s right now in the Genovese organization according to our friend John Penicio sit down podcast sit down news he reported that Rocco DiPietro is as a as a captain right now I was able to confirm that with my people both Rocco DiPietro and Frankie the Fish DiPietro are convicted murderers both did prison time for homicides and they have a father who was murdered back in 1981 or disappeared nobody's seen him since Carly DiPietro Carly DiPietro they call him Carly or Carly another one of these type of guys that seem to be kind of like a gangster force gump where he was throughout the 60s and 70s was brushing up against a lot of pretty notorious powerful guys in different crime families his brother-in-law was Frankie T Maria Russo who was a guy that lost his life in the banana war in the Bananos but had become a pretty big time player in the Bananos and was involved in Carmine Galantes big heroin distribution pipeline was a guy that was close to the ebbly brothers who were Tommy ebbly was an acting boss who ended up dying up ended up being killed within the Genovese family was in on the early stages of that Daisy chain bootleg gasoline scam through the Francis crew of Klumbos anyway he and Andy owned a series of flea markets and swap shops with a then young capo named John Gotti when he's murdered a guy named Joe Joe Glitz ends up taking over those rackets it's a legend FBI files that Joe Glitz was responsible for Carly DiPietro's disappearance and was inducted into the Genovese crime family and given all of his rackets and then him and his brother Larry Glitz became pretty major earners for for Ginger gante and the Genovese and in the years after Carly vanishes his sons Frankie and Rocco are making their own reputation on the streets as you know some real loose cannons you know Cowboys and in Vincent Gigante's court file there is the the recounting of this series of incidents that happened in 1982 that led to this big sit down and the reason for the sit down was that the deep Pietro brothers were planning on murdering Sammy the Bull and at that point Sammy the Bull was acting capo for his mentor total aroo and you know wasn't yet the Sammy the Bull that was in all the tabloids and headlines and people magazine but within the orbit of the mafia you know Sammy the Bull was a guy that people knew was a was a was a rising star and a force to be reckoned with so it all started with the DiPietro's were underneath a guy named Georgie Rush as a Polo who's the father of a Casey capo right now Georgie neck as a Polo but this was the original George that George is a Polo they call him Georgie Rush and Georgie Rush who was running around with the or the D Pietro brothers were running around with him gets into a beef with a Gravano crew member Nikki Cowboy Mormondo and Nikki Cowboy was a Cowboys he had this kind of like Wild West going on with these whether you're talking about the Gambino's or the Genovese and they clashed these they know the clash the Cowboys and Georgie Rush ends up taking a shot and wounding Nikki Cowboy and then word starts to matriculate onto the streets that the DiPietro brothers want to kill Sammy the Bull and a guy named Pete Scarpacci who was a Genovese maybe a soldier at least an associate who was friendly with Sammy the Bull delivers the news to Gravano that these young DiPietro brothers would just lost their dad were gunning for him and that he was already upset over the fact that Georgie Rush had taken a shot at his his guy Nikki Cowboy so a sit-down has to be held and you had Sammy the Bull go to Toto Toto goes to Paul Castellano who was the boss of bosses at that point and in order for Castellano to get word to the chin who was behind the scenes you know he wasn't the household name that he became you fat Tony Salerno was the street boss the guy that was taking you know the lightning ride to take all the heat and get all the headlines in 1988 this is this is the spring early summer of 1982 but Gigante's the one who's going to represent the Genovese at this at the sit-down and Castellano gives the word to Tommy Bellotti who three years later he'd be killed with alongside uh to set up a to set up a um a meeting of the minds so you had a sit-down take place in I believe it was June in 1982 where Sammy the Bull Paul Castellano Toto Aurelo and Chin Gigante um are all there and the DiPietro brothers were their murder contracts were green lit at that meeting or at that sit-down um Sammy the Bull told the story to the chin the chin says you know there's nothing I can do protocols should allow you and your family to take vengeance on the DiPietro brothers but this was the chin the chin says but I want you to know that I'm gonna kill your friend Pete Scropacci um who broke rank and and and eclipsed the chain of command he should have never came to you with our family's problems he should have came to me if he had an issue with what the DiPietro's were doing and because he came to you and not to me I'm gonna kill him uh and then the chin says or I should say Sammy says to the chin let's play a little wheel fortune here um let's let's uh let's play let's make a deal uh I'll abstain from killing the DiPietro's at a a request really of of the chin who had told him early in the meeting that the DiPietro's weren't acting of sound mind over the last couple years because they had lost their father and what how tragic it was and how how much it was affecting them affecting them and that Sammy should kind of know that as as you know kind of backstory and uh Sammy kind of sensed that the chin had a soft spot in his heart for the the DiPietro brothers and Sammy says well I'll spare the lives of the DiPietro's if uh you spare the life of my friend Pete Scarpacci and Gante agreed and he according to this court filing commented to Sammy who again at this time hadn't become the Sammy the bull that we would all know uh said to him or first said to him how impressive he was in the kind of the negotiations or the back and forth of the sit-down um how he carried himself how he was impressed with how he carried himself and uh how he thought and I I believe he made a comment to uh the people that he was with is hit the higher ups Castellanos uh and Aurelos about how this is a guy that you you know you should be fast tracking towards towards leadership you know it it didn't happen in the way that maybe he thought it was going to happen at the time were uh with Paul Castellano you know he definitely made him a made him a capo but but but Gotti and and Gravano had to kill Castellano to take total power and uh the fallout didn't affect the DiPietro's um but it did affect Georgie Rush and Georgie Rush ends up or parts of Georgie Rush end up on a beach in Long Island in July of 1982 around the July 4th holiday uh Georgie Rush's head and hand uh pop up on the beach he had allegedly been tortured uh he it's interesting because he was the made guy at that point the DiPietros were just too young um nobody's who who had a dad that had been somebody who had been slain and they were really acting a fool I think it was thought that maybe Georgie Rush was setting the tone allowing them to act that way and uh but Georgie Rush is the one who paid the price now his son Georgie next to Paul is the New Jersey allegedly is the capo New Jersey for the Lucchesis right now took over for the Pernos um and then Sammy the Bull went on to do what he did you know they take him and him and Gotti take power he flips on Gotti becomes the most you know infamous cooperator in mob history other than Trophilaci and then the chin rises to become you know probably the premier boss of the in in New York in the last quarter of the of the 20th century and then let's update you with the the DiPietros right now Frankie the fish aka Skippy uh he he's looking at you know time in this in this case he had gone to the Lucchese family for a while uh as an associate in the late 80s early 90s in the 90s and then uh was was nailed by a murder case in 98 I believe um or maybe it was I'm getting my dates all messed up but it ends up doing about 18 years I think he came out in 2016 and Rocco Di Pietro who had done a pretty big chunk of a sentence for a crazy murder in a year or two after it was around the same time I think it was about six months or a year after the incident with Sammy the Bull uh Rocco Di Pietro who had a reputation as a you know quick temper quick trigger uh is it is in a bar some he's yelling at somebody over something a guy who was just a young filmmaker I believe tells him to calm down uh why you getting so upset about and he tells him to mind his own business this is coming from Rocco Di Pietro the guy I think cursed him and then Rocco Di Pietro takes out his gun and kills this guy uh what's interesting right now about Rocco is after talking to my people um on both sides of of the law it seems like Rocco has done a really in terms of organized crime he's done a great job of reinventing himself and rebranding himself and at one point he was known as this off-the-chain crazy kid uh is now trusted and is known as being very level-headed and a guy that uh is a diplomat a guy that is tasked with uh representing the Genovese with other crime families has a lot of respect as a as a mediator and it's kind of the polar opposite of what he was when he was a young guy I can't I don't know if I can say the same thing about Frankie the fish uh because he's 65 66 years old and he's going in with guns blazing into jewelry stores in the middle of Manhattan you know in the middle of the afternoon but uh it it's when you know the what's going on now in 2023 and you can look back 40 years ago and see that these guys came you know as Junior Soprano might have said a cotton air away from uh not making it uh it you know through the 1980s and if it wasn't for Sammy the bull and the chin um bartering over uh you know over over potential dead bodies we wouldn't be here to be talking about the deep petro so uh shout out to Sammy the bull if he already did most of this I don't think he did but if he did I'm just you know it's my nod to him if he didn't I hope I could shed some uh some new light some new perspective on this um it's just it's it's it's riveting when you uh when you think about who was involved in this and uh where they are now and who they were then and I just stumbled upon this in in uh in the chin's uh court file uh someone pointed out and and uh I thought it made uh for a good quick hitter so for Benny behind the glass I'm Scott Bernstein Jimmy we'll be back for the full link episode later this week OG pod out