PAUL WILBORN Tribune Staff Writer
Memo: TAMPA'S SICILIAN LEGACY
Last of 4 parts
(see related article, 10A)
TAMPA -- Tony Pizzo pulls his Cadillac off 26th Avenue and drives slowly through the open gates of Tampa's Italian cemetery, L'Unione Italiana. Shimmering sunlight radiates off marble mausoleums and flying cherubs. Pizzo, somewhat of a cherub himself, with a perpetual smile spreading below a bald dome and a majestic nose, steps lightly from the car.
"Gosh, I love to come to this cemetery," he says. "There are so many
people I know."
Pizzo's people -- the Sicilian settlers of Ybor City and their descendents -- rest here. For them, it is the final stop on an immigrant journey that started in the remote Sicilian villages of Santo Stefano Quisquina, Alessandria della Rocca, Bivona, Cianciana, and Contessa Entellina and led to a Cracker village on Florida's Gulf Coast.
These silent markers and mausoleums are now home to the cigar workers, the grocers, the barbers, the shoemakers, the dairy farmers, the vegetable growers, the peddlers, the labor organizers, the politicians and the gambling kingpins who lived and died in Tampa during a raucous and exuberant era that is rapidly fading into distant memory.
It was an era that spanned two centuries and two continents. A 100-year era of hardship, suffering and repression in Sicily's Magazzolo River valley; terrifying Atlantic crossings and a new life in Tampa; hard work, labor unrest, discrimination, political victories, family triumphs, financial successes and finally, assimilation into mainstream American culture.
Pizzo, a wine merchant turned historian, himself the descendant of Sicilian immigrants in Tampa, sees all that history as he walks the narrow pathways among the graves.
"Look at this," he says, pointing to a magnificent mausoleum. "Here you've got cigar makers buried like rich people. The fierce pride of the Sicilians shows in this cemetery."
He points to the kingly grave of Filippo Cagnina -- topped by a marble bust of Cagnino.
"He was a ball racker in a pool room at the old Italian Club," Pizzo says, his smile spreading.
Pizzo moves on to the mausoleum of Castenzio Ferlita -- a monument of marble, brass and stained glass.
"Look at the marble -- all from Italy, and that bronze door," Pizzo says.
Ferlita was 16 when he left Santo Stefano with his uncle Gaetano. They came to Florida as migrant workers, cutting sugar cane in St. Cloud. The work was hard and few Americans could be found to do it. The pair heard of a Latin settlement in Tampa and made their way here.
Castenzio found work in the cigar factories, but as for many Sicilian immigrants, it was only a temporary career stop. He became a dairy man, starting with three cows. In 1915 he opened an ice factory and an ice cream company.
"Oh, he was a very respected man in Ybor City, and he started out cutting sugar cane. That's the story of the Sicilians right there," Pizzo says.
The story of Tampa's Sicilians started in the 1880s, with the collapse of the farm economy of their homeland. Peasant attempts at land reform were being violently snuffed out. Anywhere looked better than home to the farmers of the Magazzolo valley.
The early immigrants, like Castenzio Ferlita, came to Florida as migrant workers. But word soon spread of a Latin village east of Tampa where there were jobs and good pay making cigars.
Tampa then was truly a village -- there were 720 residents in 1880. But with the railroad of Henry Plant and the cigar factories of Vicente Martinez Ybor and a handful of other Spanish and Cuban entrepreneurs, Tampa changed. By 1900, the city boasted 15,839 residents; by 1930 it had grown to 100,000. Of those, at least 33,000 were Latins living in West Tampa and Ybor City.
The 1930 census found more than 9,000 Sicilians -- immigrants and their children and grandchildren -- living in Tampa.
Somehow, immigrants who knew nothing but rural life and hardships discovered an innate sense of entrepreneurship in Tampa. For many Sicilians, cigar factories were just a stepping stone to the establishment of grocery stores, macaroni factories, ice houses, dairies, large farms and other businesses.
A contingent of Sicilian fishermen from the coastal town of Syracuse also found their way to Tampa and pioneered the Tampa fish business. Two of the families, the Aglianos and Mirabellas, are still in the business today.
Little Italy flourishes
By the 1920s and 1930s, Ybor City was a simmering stew of Italians, Spaniards and Cubans. Little Italy was on the eastern edge of Ybor City, starting at 17th Street and running to the Italian farmlands at 30th Street, bordered north and south by Adamo and Columbus drives.
Italian peddlers, carrying their wares on the back of horse-drawn carts, spread out through Tampa's neighborhoods. Social and mutual-aid clubs flourished.
Pizzo remembers that in the tight-knit world of Little Italy, mothers were highly respected and fathers, no matter how menial their jobs, were unquestioned.
"The father was the dominant character. Highly respected. His word was law," he said.
Mary Settecasi remembers the community as a place where no one went uncared for or hungry.
"The Italians had their heart open. You could go to anybody's house and they'd feed you and they'd look out for you too."
But life in Little Italy was by no means all sweetness and love.
Sicilians have a big heart, said Pizzo, but also a fast temper.
"You didn't insult a Sicilian. They had a fiery temper and quick fists. Insult them and you had a fight on your hands," Pizzo said.
Many of the fights were between the natural enemies of the Ybor City boys, the Crackers who lived in Sulphur Springs. Fights between Anglos and Latins became almost a rite of passage in Tampa.
Also in those early days, a criminal underworld known as the Black Handers used violence and extortion to make a living. Feuds were often solved with shotguns. Some Sicilians also tapped the immigrants' love of gambling to build empires based on the tiny bolita ball -- an illegal forerunner of the Florida Lottery.
Prohibition gave Tampa's gambling elements another market and they capitalized on it.
Only a few of the original immigrants learned more than a few words of English. Most picked up more Spanish than English, so they could communicate with their co-workers and neighbors. And the early immigrants put their children to work as soon as they were old enough, usually after an elementary- school education.
Members of the next generation saw life differently. They pushed their children to higher education. Many made English the main language of the household, except when the elders were around.
Political clout
The Italians also were moving into politics. Nick Nuccio, the grandson of immigrants, entered politics in 1929, winning two terms on the City Council and eight terms on the Hillsborough County Commission.
A consummate politician, Nuccio kissed any baby in his path and kept his pockets full of trinkets for children. He also controlled patronage like a ward boss, kept his office open to a steady stream of constituents, and placed his name on every sidewalk and bus bench in his district.
Historian Gary Mormino, a professor at the University of South Florida, says Tampa's Italians were generally well-accepted by Tampa's larger Anglo population, especially during good economic times.
But early fears of the Black Handers and the presence of Sicilians in Tampa's wide-open gambling and bolita trade left a dark blemish on the Sicilians, including Nuccio.
Tampa developed an image as a gangland city. That image was enhanced by 17 unsolved, gambling-related murders and congressional hearings on organized crime in Tampa.
Nuccio lost his first election to Mayor Curtis Hixon in 1955 after a particularly vicious newspaper column by Drew Pearson linked Nuccio to the Mafia.
But Hixon died the following year and Nuccio jumped back into the race for mayor. Despite opposition from The Tampa Tribune and the Anglo business establishment, Nuccio beat interim Mayor J.L. Young by 125 votes.
Nuccio's victory opened the doors for other Italian politicians, which ultimately led to his defeat. In 1967, a good-looking young Italian named Dick Greco ousted Nuccio from the mayor's office.
Greco, who speaks English with no trace of an Italian accent, said he had two roles as Tampa's mayor. One was running the city. The other was changing the city's image.
Greco said he made a point to take a speaking engagement once or twice a week outside of Tampa -- in Clearwater, Lakeland or Sarasota. "I was trying to change the image of this community. They thought we were backward. I felt I was a reasonably good spokesman for the community," he said.
As a Sicilian, Greco realized he had to walk a fine line.
"I knew deep down inside, I was another generation and I had to do a better job than if my name had been Smith. I was always conscious of that," Greco said.
A new generation
Paul Antinori, elected state attorney in 1964 and now in private practice, said Sicilians had always been more active in politics than their Spanish and Cuban neighbors, so it was only natural that Tampa's first major Latin officeholders would be Sicilians.
Ironically, by the time of Nuccio, Antinori and Greco were coming to power, Tampa's Sicilian community was dispersing. Families were leaving the old houses and neighborhoods as an educated and affluent younger generation headed for the suburbs.
An interstate highway knocked down part of the neighborhood, and federal urban renewal demolished blocks of Little Italy. Property values dropped and poor blacks, driven out of areas west of Ybor City by urban renewal, moved into the old Italian houses.
Quietly, without a eulogy, an era died.
"It was really another world," Pizzo says, looking around at the old cemetery. "God, it's all vanished. It's just gone."
Today, a new generation of Sicilians are making a mark on Tampa.
Coach Tony Ippolito, the inspirational Armwood High School wrestling coach whose long fight with cancer captured the heart of the community, was himself an immigrant. He came to Tampa with his family in 1967 from Santo Stefano. Ippolito is buried in Tampa's Italian cemetery.
And Greco's son, Dick Greco Jr., is following in his father's footsteps. He was elected County Court judge in November.
The younger Greco says he still displays the passport his grandfather used to come to America from Sicily.
"I think about some of the things they didn't have, and how they worked very hard to try to give those things to their children. They helped make me what I am today," the younger Greco said.
Paul Antinori remembers the days when the old families still lived in close quarters. When the elders were often original immigrants who spoke little English but commanded great respect among their families. When the rules of living were clear and concise.
When a weekly or even daily visit with the matriarch and patriarch was a requirement, not a choice.
"But once the grandparents passed on and there was a loss of the central figures, the families began drifting apart. You also lost the coherent neighborhoods."
Antinori says he is lucky. He has seen both worlds. He knows what he has and what he has lost.
"What indeed has gone forever and never can be recouped is a very precious commodity," he said.
As the strings of the old world and the old ways were snipped one by one, the invisible anchor that held so many lives together was gone.
"There is something lost in that process," Antinori said. "Now, our values are all suspect. Everyone is on their own. You are cast adrift to find your own way."
Cutline: (map) (C) Tampa's Little Italy Tribune graphic by ESSEX JAMES
<FILED: MAPS LITTLE ITALY>
(C) Historian Tony Pizzo, himself the descendant of Sicilian immigrants, sits in Tampa's Italian cemetery, L'Unione Italiana on 26th Street. Tribune photograph by CLIFF MCBRIDE <FILED: NOT RETURNED>
Italian immigrant Onofio Romano, standing, established a dairy in east Tampa in 1906. Son Henry sits in the cart.
Photographs courtesy of TONY PIZZO <FILED: RETURNED TO PAUL WILBORN>
Tampa's Italian families unified to gain political clout. Second generation Sicilian Dick Greco became mayor of Tampa in 1967.
<FILED: GRECO, DICK>
Grocer Ignazio Candileri, behind counter, tends his Highland Avenue store, while his brother and fellow grocer Gaetano Candileri, in the light jacket, stops in for a visit <FILED: RETURNED TO PAUL WILBORN>.
Fishermen for Mirabella Fish Company unload a catch from the Hillsborough River in this 1939 photograph. The Mirabellas are still a big part of Tampa's seafood industry today. <FILED: RETURNED TO PAUL WILBORN>
The corner of 8th Avenue and 19th Street was a part of Ybor City's Italian quarters before federal urban renewal programs gutted the neighborhood in the 1960s. <FILED: RETURNED TO PAUL WILBORN>
September 25, 1994
Section: SPECIAL CENTENNIAL
Page: 10
TOM BRENNAN Tribune Staff Writer
Memo: CITY ON THE MOVE 1960 - 1994
It billed itself as the city with the "best race relations" in the South
and promoted its business climate as "the city on the move." During the first
half of the turbulent 1960s, Tampa served as a model of racial decorum.
With biracial committees meeting regularly and discussing the city's
problems, lunch counters and movie theaters were quickly and quietly
integrated.
But Tampa was developing into two towns, one white and one black, poised for an explosion.
It came on the sweltering Sunday night of June 11, 1967 when 19-year-old black burglary suspect Martin Chambers was killed, shot in the back by a white patrolman.
Long-simmering rage ignited the seven-block core around Central Avenue. The anger was flamed by black neighborhoods and businesses being destroyed by urban renewal and highway construction; squalid housing conditions; mistreatment from white police officers and the lack of jobs.
Within three hours, storefronts on Central between Cass and Harrison streets were ablaze. Teenagers pelted police cruisers with rocks and bottles. Snipers, believed armed by weapons looted from a neighboring gun shop, held police and firefighters at bay.
Pleas for calm went unanswered. Fearing the violence could escalate into another Watts, Sheriff Malcolm Beard asked Gov. Claude Kirk to call out the national guard. Kirk flew into Tampa to watch as the soldiers deployed and cordoned off the area by 5 p.m. the next day.
Though the guardsmen exchanged gunfire with rioters, they never attacked. Instead, black leaders convinced Beard to allow groups of their own youths to quell disturbances and disperse crowds. Police and soldiers stayed away unless called by the volunteer patrols.
On Wednesday, State Attorney Paul Antinori cleared the officer, ruling he was justified because Chambers was a fleeing felon. Though angered by the ruling, black leaders and patrols continued to preach calm. By the next day, Beard called the riots over. He demobilized the guard and a severe thunderstorm doused the area with several inches of rain.
The scene would be repeated April 4, 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at a Memphis motel.
But for many, the riots were an aberration that betrayed the climate of racial accommodation Tampa experienced.
"Tampa in the 1960s was an ambitious community, a good place to do business and to live. Because of that, it went above and beyond the call of duty to solve its problems," said James Hargrett Jr.
When he was a senior at Middleton High School, Hargrett took part in the sit-ins to desegregate the lunch counters at Tampa's downtown five and dimes.
"I only had the chance to do that two or three times, then the problem was solved," he said.
He gives credit to the city's ethnic and cultural diversity and the ability of its various leaders to put the common good above political advantage.
"Tampa then was a little village of close-knit neighborhoods of different ethnic backgrounds. Cubans, Spanish, Italians, Afro-Americans and Afro-Cubans lived and worked together," Hargrett said. "It provided the city a degree of strength other communities didn't have to sit down around the table and talk and solve our problems."
Tampa's first biracial committee, the state's first, was formed in 1959 when blacks asked clothing store owner Harold Wolf to sit down to discuss desegregation.
Hargrett said local politics also worked to keep racial problems from exploding.
"To be elected in Tampa you had to reach out to all communities, you couldn't reach out to one segment without reaching out to others because the community was so intertwined," he said. "We all worked together, did business together, lived with each other. Also we had leaders to put their community above their political careers."
Hargrett said the 1967 riot was as much an expression of national frustration felt by the lack of progress on civil rights.
"It was a local spark, symptomatic of a national problem," he said. "It was a controversial shooting, illustrative of the poor relationship between police and the black community. Whenever a forest gets dry, it will catch on fire."
Bob Gilder, a former president of the local NAACP chapter, was among those who walked the streets trying to defuse the 1967 riot.
He remembers a different Tampa, saying the civil rights situation here in the 1960s was "real bad."
"There had been killings -- police killing blacks. And before the bodies were cold, there would be rulings of justifiable homicide. At that time, that was the fuel for the racial flames in Tampa," he said. "That was during the times that the police said you did it, so you did it."
Hillsborough County didn't get its first black prosecutor until George E. Edgecombe was sworn in in March 1969. He later became the county's first black judge when he was appointed by Gov. Reubin Askew in August 1973.
Hillsborough County schools accepted their first black student in September 1961 when 8-year-old Benjamin Lowry began attending Bayside School for Handicapped Children. Three months later, second-grader Robert Saunders Jr. transferred to all-white Macfarlane Park Elementary School in Tampa.
But it wasn't until August 1971, after years of legal maneuvering, that the county's schools were totally integrated.
Along with a comprehensive desegregation plan, Hillsborough also had to draw up a busing program, redrawing school boundary maps, creating bus routes and shifting textbooks and furniture around to accommodate the different age groups that would be using the buildings.
The task was monumental -- especially when it had to be accomplished against a backdrop of concerns about white flight and race riots.
E.L. Bing, who died in 1990, was the district's first black assistant superintendent and is credited as the man behind Hillsborough's desegregation plan. Before his leadership, efforts to integrate the county's schools had been piecemeal at best.
The University of South Florida integrated its faculty in 1966 when it hired reading specialist Eva Laney Pride. She moved to Hillsborough Community College four years later.
In 1976, the Rev. A. Leon Lowry Sr. became the first black elected to office in Hillsborough County since Reconstruction, winning school board District 5 at-large seat in the first primary.
It would take other changes to give blacks a better voice in local politics -- abandoning at-large elections and drawing electoral districts to give minorities a better change to elect the candidates of their choice.
Hargrett became the county's first black state legislator in October 1982 when he beat Warren Dawson in the Democratic Party primary runoff for a newly created black majority House district.
The Tampa City Council got its first black member of modern times in March the next year when Perry Harvey Jr. edged Rubin Padgett by 20 votes. The seat became vacant when white incumbent Lloyd Copeland resigned his 24-year hold on the seat to run for the county commission. Joseph A. Walker was the first black elected to the city council on July 15, 1887.
It took the arrest of three Hillsborough County commissioners on federal racketeering charges before blacks would be represented on that board. Gov. Bob Graham appointed Bing, a Hillsborough Community College trustee, to replace one of the arrested commissioners in March 1983.
When Bing chose not run in the following election, Padgett became the county's first elected black county commissioner in May 1985 when he defeated black Republican candidate Leonard Campbell.
Cutline: The riots following the shooting death of a black burglary suspect left the city scarred by fire and violence. <FILED: NOT RETURNED>
Burglary suspect Martin Chambers, 19, was shot by a white police officer.
<FILED: NOT RETURNED>
Janie Bell Chambers grieved over her son's death. <FILED: NOT RETURNED>
James Hargrett Jr. says the city's diversity helped calm things in 1967. <FILED: NOT RETURNED>
Bob Gilder said the situation in the 1960s was "real bad."
<FILED: NOT RETURNED>
Protesters -- black and white -- file in front on the Tampa Theatre on Franklin Street seeking the integration of theaters in 1963.
<FILED: NOT RETURNED>
With the hiring of reading specialist Eva Laney Pride in 1966, the University of South Florida was integrated. <FILED: PRIDE, EVA LANEY>
TOM SCHERBERGER
Memo: BAYVIEW
The Greco treatment: Last Wednesday saw a political feeding frenzy at the
Italian Club in Ybor City. The occasion was the club's annual spaghetti dinner,
which is still called a stag event even though women are now allowed.
Wherever there's a crowd these days you'll find politicians, and the
dinner drew candidates for county commission, school board, the state
Legislature and tax collector.
Our spy, though, says the best candidate, the smoothest handshaker and baby kisser in the crowd, isn't running for anything. Not yet, anyway.
Former Tampa Mayor Dick Greco was the dinner's guest of honor, and many of the guests on hand recalled his administration with the kind of misty memories Barbara Streisand sings about.
""It was Camelot when he ran the city,'' said County Commissioner Joe Chillura, who grew up with Greco and served on the city council when Greco was mayor.
""Talk about urban renewal,'' said former State Attorney Paul Antinori, who introduced Greco. ""With Greco, we had it all. Talk about Franklin Mall. Talk about Horizon Park.''
And, yes, talk about Greco running for mayor in '94.
When Greco began speaking, there were shouts of ""four more years'' from the audience.
Greco beamed demurely.
He won't say what he will do. He's still working for shopping mall developer Edward DeBartolo, and the election is still three years away.
Still, it's interesting to note that the Italian Club dropped the men-only part of the cantina dinner for the first time this year at Greco's insistence. Got to keep those options open, and there's no need to offend anyone.
""Only Dick Greco could get ladies into the cantina,'' Antinori said.
""My wife said they had to allow women because I have far more women friends than men,'' said Greco.
Some things never change.
Three's a crowd: Phyllis Busansky has gone from having no opponents to three - all of them write-in candidates.
It's never happened before and no one's quite sure why it has happened this year.
We reported last week that Jerad Anderson switched his write-in candidacy from the state House to Busansky's District 6 race.
On Friday, two more write-in candidates popped up - Robert Weimer of Ruskin and George Clayton of Tampa.
Clayton had considered running against Busansky once before. He filed to run for another commission seat and switched to the property appraiser's race before dropping out completely. Now he's back again to run against Busansky.
George Bush is right about something: It's weird out there.
The heights of absurdity: Yet another krewe - make that ""crewe'' - is forming to take a piece of the Gasparilla action.
This one is strictly a neighborhood affair, though, and very exclusive.
To join the Bungaleer Crewe you must either ""live in Seminole Heights, know somebody who lives in Seminole Heights or once drove through Seminole Heights,'' says Judy Breuggeman.
Breuggeman says she got the idea after spending a few days in Tallahassee.
""And you know what a few days in Tallahassee can do to you,'' she said. ""It makes you go nuts.''
She talked it up with neighbors and got a commitment from about 25 people.
The plans are still fluid, but the group does not plan to take part in the Gasparilla invasion or parade. Instead, it wants to have its own parade through the neighborhood on the same day as the Illuminated Night Parade in Ybor City, which traditionally closes Gasparilla festivities.
The crewe - the group refuses to use the traditional spelling - also hopes to have a ball the night before the parade.
""We think it's the most wonderful idea,'' she said. ""Everybody should do this in their neighborhood.''
And why not? Gasparilla is loosely based on New Orleans' Mardi Gras, where social clubs, or krewes, of all shapes and sizes take part.
The Bungaleer Crewe - the name comes from all the bungalows in the neighborhood - is the third social group to start up this year.
But this is the first one that doesn't take all this krewe business too seriously.
And that's the idea, Breuggeman said. ""We're trying to be socially unprominent.''
That shouldn't be too hard.
By KATHERINE GAZELLA
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 19, 2000
In 1995, Louis Tsavaris asked the governor and Cabinet for a full pardon of his conviction in the 1975 strangulation of a former patient. It was denied.
Considering that the charge was murder in the first degree, the prosecutor found it odd that the defendant kept approaching him during breaks in the trial. But this was no ordinary defendant.
"You're trying to put me in the electric chair," Dr. Louis J. Tsavaris told the prosecutor. "But Tampa Electric doesn't have enough power to kill me."
Other times, Tsavaris shot the breeze with the prosecutors like a guy asking a neighbor if he saw the game last night.
"He had a very cavalier attitude," recalled prosecutor Mark Ober. "He would come up to me and engage in very friendly conversation, when I was probably the worst adversary of his entire life."
It was typical of Tsavaris, a high-profile psychiatrist charged with strangling a former patient who prosecutors said was his lover.
The 1981 trial had it all: a psychiatrist who catered to Tampa's upper crust, tales of exotic sexual practices, a pathologist flown in from Scotland Yard to testify, even a jar containing the victim's larynx that was set before the jury.
It featured some of the biggest names in Tampa jurisprudence: Harry Lee Coe III, then a judge and later the controversial state attorney who committed suicide; Ober, then a 30-year-old lawyer and now a candidate for Hillsborough state attorney; Paul Antinori, the former state attorney who led Tsavaris' defense team; and, consulting for the defense team, Frank Ragano, a lawyer associated with Mafia figures, who was suspended from practicing law at the time.
"It definitely was the highest profile case of its time," Antinori said.
At the center was Tsavaris, whose professional life unraveled as the case progressed. For nearly two decades afterward, he tried every way imaginable to have his license restored so he could practice psychiatry again.
Last week, at age 70, he died in a bizarre accident. Visiting a construction site along the Anclote River where his cousin's company was building seven houses, Tsavaris stopped his 1988 Volvo station wagon but left the gearshift in drive instead of putting it in park. He walked in front of the car, which moved forward at about 2 mph, with his third wife, Irene, in the passenger seat.
The car ran over him, and the front wheel axle pinned his head to the ground. A construction worker ran to the car and put it in park, but Tsavaris was trapped underneath until firefighters lifted the car with a backhoe. He died at Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital shortly afterward.
As his attorney, John D. Middleton, put it, "This is an ironic finish to a star-crossed life."
Story by JIM ROSS and TIM COLLIE
Memo: Second in six parts (See related
story, page 4.)
THE TRAFFICANTE LEGACY
Sunday: A native Sicilian whose father was a "ranking" mobster allegedly controls a third generation of the so-called Trafficante crime family. Today: A century-old murder of a New Orleans police chief may have helped turn old Tampa into an underworld capital. Tuesday: One business has attracted some of the city's suspected mobsters over the years - the bar and liquor industry. Wednesday: Authorities are investigating an alleged mobster's plan to sell an environmentally sound oil-cleaning d evice. Thursday: Just a couple of guys from the old neighborhood? How ties have entangled some of the city's decision makers and alleged mobsters. Friday: Is he in the mob? Santo Jose Trafficante, a nephew of Florida's legendary underworld figure, respon ds during an in-depth interview.
Tomorrow: Suspected mobsters and the liquor business.
TAMPA - The origins of this city's reputed Mafia family stretch back through three generations of Sicilians nourished in the rugged mountain soil of their native land. But it was a single event one October night a century ago in another southern city that may have helped transform Tampa from an immigrant port in the New World into a roaring center of the underworld.
That night, Oct. 15, 1890, New Orleans Police Chief David C. Hennessy was
walking home on a dark Crescent City street when he was ambushed and, he said
before he died the next morning, shot by gangsters.
The murder capped anti-Italian sentiment building after decades of heavy immigration from Sicily and dozens of murders thought to be the work of a shadowy organization known as the Mafia.
Hennessy had gained a national reputation with his capture of a bandit named Esposito, supposedly one of the men who brought the Mafia into the United States. The chief had vowed to eradicate the group, but was greeted by a code of silence among the Sicilians, according to news accounts.
Reaction to his murder was outrage: Prominent citizens formed a vigilance committee dedicated to wiping out the immigrant criminal gang. Dozens of Italians were rounded up; nine were tried for the murder.
Expectations of a guilty verdict were high when the jury found six of the men innocent. A mistrial was declared for the remaining three.
Against the backdrop of bribery and jury tampering suspicions, the committee put an advertisement in the newspaper asking for volunteers "prepared for action."
Marching to the local jail, a huge mob broke in and grabbed Italian men. Nine were shot to death.
Two others were forced through a gantlet of brutal kicks and then lynched. One of them fought vigorously and was finally shot to death as he writhed at the end of a rope.
The brutal mass killings won hearty approval from 42 newspapers across the country, but prompted talk of war with Italy. And while the violence didn't stem the flow of Sicilians into New Orleans, it prompted many already living there to move to a Florida city just across the Gulf of Mexico:
Tampa.
Cutline: (CHART) Fear and informing Lester Rushing wasn't paranoid after all. An FBI informant, Rushing's reliable work had resulted in the arrests of 35 people, one federal agent wrote in 1988. He'd worked within the ranks of a drug cartel, providing testimony in one case of how drug profits helped finance local day-care centers. But he was scared, remembered a neighbor, and paranoid that those he had fingered would come after him. And he was right. On Jan. 29, 1985, Rushing was gunned down in front of a teen-age boy riding his bicycle. The dealer-turned-snitch died in the street sprawled near his black baseball cap and a Miller Lite beer can. The gunman: a mob associate angry about Rushing's testimony. "Lester Rushing was shot to death by Traffican te family associate John Hernandez after testifying for the United States ... ," an FBI agent noted in court documents in 1988. Hernandez was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 17 years in 1985. He was released from prison Nov. 8, 1990. T he FBI agent who had worked with Rushing wrote that - besides informants' fears - other obstacles hinder investigations of organized crime. For instance: Surveillance of mobsters doesn't penetrate their sanctuaries. "Agents couldn't clearly see the subje cts nor hear the conversations," he wrote. Undercover agents can't gain the confidence of mobsters, partly "because of the close-knit relationship ... and their distrust of strangers." Interviews will only alert them to stop their illegal acts. And seizi ng documents won't help. Mob-affiliated activities normally are carried out without legitimate records.
(3) "Dean of the Underworld' Before the Trafficantes, the big gambling
operator in town was Charlie Wall, above right. He styled himself "Dean of the
Underworld," but forfeited leadership of the Anglo rackets to Santo Trafficante
Sr. Police say he had good reasons. There were three Mafia attempts on his life,
including one during the "Era of Blood" that left a few bullet holes in his car.
Although retired, the much-shot-at maestro of gambling was found dead in his
home in 1955 - throat slit. Tribune file photos <FILED: WALL, CHARLIE>
Santo Trafficante Sr. <FILED: TRAFFICANTE, SANTO SR.>
Santo Trafficante <FILED: TRAFFICANTE, SANTO JR.>
Vincent Lo Scalzo <FILED: LO SCALZO, VINCENT>
Charlie Wall <FILED: WALL, CHARLIE>
(2) Big-time gambler Charlie Wall, right,told the Kefauver panel about lotteries at hearings in Tampa in 1950. thirteen years later, another U.S. Senate committee absorbed tales of a national Cosa Nostra as narrated by turncoat mobster Joe Valachi, below. <FILED: NOT RETURNED>
Richard Cloud's funeral drew hundreds of mourners including his law enforcement comrades. Tribune file photo <FILED: CLOUD, RICHARD>
Santo Trafficante, above, left, was detained after fidel Castro came to power in 1959. He is with Cuba police days before his arrest. Tribune file photo <FILED: TRAFFICANTE, SANTO JR.>
An old familiar scene Ignazio Antinori was a big-shot, mob-linked gambler, but his slaying in 1940 erased him from any further criminal calculations. His was among the 23 gangland slayings in Tampa from 1928 through 1959. <FILED: NOT RETURNED>
Seeking a piece of the action During Vincent Salvatore Lo Scalzo's early years in the liquor business, he was thought by one FBI agent to be a "gofer" for reputed Tampa Mafia boss Santo Trafficante. In 1980, agents photographed him accompanying Trafficante to a meeting with a reputed New York mobster who, the government said, wanted to move into the rackets along Florida's west caost. Lo Scalzo wasn't charged in the so-called Coldwater case. Trafficante was acquitted. <FILED: NOT RETURNED>
August 12, 1993
Section: NATION/WORLD
Page: 1
JIM ROSS and TIM COLLIE(Tribune Staff Writers)
Memo: Fifth of six
parts
THE TRAFFICANTE LEGACY
Tomorrow: What's in a name - when the name is Trafficante?
TAMPA - Even as Vincent Salvatore Lo Scalzo allegedly was making a climb toward succeeding Santo Trafficante as Mafia chief - observed meeting with mobsters in New York and New Orleans - he was moving in more lofty circles in this city. During that time, in the mid-1980s, he was a member in good standing of two of this city's prestigious Latin organizations. But what intrigued police were personal notes they found that were between him and various judges.
Although criminal intelligence information alleges Lo Scalzo and other
"third generation" Tampa mob suspects are radically different from their violent
and vice-driven predecessors, some still seem to carry on a tradition of ties to
the city's powerful and elite.
In many respects, Tampa is a big city with a small-town atmosphere.
Whether friends, relatives or just some of the boys from Tampa's old Latin neighborhoods, four of the Tampa Bay area's nine alleged mobsters turn up at various times with public officials - some former, some sitting - including judges, city councilmen, county commissioners and a school board member.
A Tampa Tribune examination of their activities has found some have supported political campaigns, while others have hosted charity events, supplied liquor for judges' conventions, or have held sway on an important government board and in an exclusive social club.
Consider:
In the early 1980s, Hillsborough County Judge Edgar A. Hinson bought liquor for a statewide judges' conference from Lo Scalzo. The judge also gave one of Lo Scalzo's alleged associates - later convicted as a cocaine dealer - power of attorney over some of his business affairs.
Another judge is the brother-in-law of an alleged mobster and co-owns commercial property with a sister of reputed Trafficante crime family underboss Frank Diecidue.
Hillsborough Property Appraiser Ron Alderman was tied to another of the purported mobsters in Tribune news accounts last fall. His office gave the man property tax breaks, while he approached elected appraisers in two other counties on the man's behalf. Further review has found there was an initially low assessment on the man's Italian restaurant.
That man, restaurateur and developer Joseph Di Gerlando, also has had business or social relationships with three Tampa city councilmen and a county commissioner, dating back to 1979.
For instance, Di Gerlando agreed to build then-Commissioner Charlie Bean a house in Carrollwood for just the cost of materials and direct expenses, after arriving at the unwritten arrangement following a Tampa Sports Authority meeting. Both men sat on that influential board.
"It's good-old-boy politics," explained Bean, who's now a Tampa contractor's marketing director.
Despite the Mafia allegations, and despite the city's reputation as a base for the Trafficante crime family during its heyday, top criminal justice officials here say they have seen no outward signs of mob activity.
"If they've got information and the federal government and law enforcement believes they're Mafia, then fine," said Hillsborough Chief Judge F. Dennis Alvarez, who counts among his friends and acquaintances suspected mobsters Lo Scalzo, Di Gerlando, Frank Albano and the late Trafficante's nephew, Santo Jose Trafficante. "But as far as those people showing to me what I've seen as an outward sign that they're Mafia, I'd have to tell you no."
And Harry Lee Coe III, a judge for about two decades before becoming state attorney in January, evaded the question altogether, saying, "I'm not going to say that there is or isn't [a Mafia]."
As the county's chief prosecutor, Coe recently oversaw handling of charges resulting from last year's state-federal racketeering investigation involving the Key Bank of Florida.
In that investigation - derailed by the leak of a target list, police errors and legal questions over wiretaps - at least four of Tampa's nine suspected organized crime figures were said to have used the small community bank at various times for business activities.
Among them, Trafficante was described as a sacred cow there and Lo Scalzo borrowed money from the bank for liquor establishments, including his Brothers Lounge.
Portions of a confidential state police criminal intelligence assessment, obtained by the Tribune, allege that the 56-year-old Lo Scalzo has gained control of the crime family reputedly headed by the legendary Santo Trafficante up until his death in 1987.
Lo Scalzo's alleged colleagues are:
Albano, 54, who works for a vending machine company.
Di Gerlando, 55, a restaurateur and developer.
Salvatore "Sam" Carollo, 55, a one-time Pasco real estate mogul.
Santo Jose Trafficante, 55, a wealthy citrus grower.
James J. Valenti, 62, a vice president of a liquor distributor.
Diecidue, 78, still the reputed underboss, or second in command.
Salvatore "Silent Sam" Lorenzo, 66, a convicted drug smuggler.
Henry Trafficante, 68, a younger brother of the late Trafficante.
Each of the men contacted either refused comment or denied involvement in a Mafia and any illegal activities.
"There's no such thing as a crime family," said Santo Jose Trafficante, during an in-depth interview with the Tribune. "When [Santo Trafficante] was alive, there was no crime family. After he died, you people made him a crime family." SH "A hard town'
In the past, state and federal investigations even have hinted of Mafia-linked public corruption in Tampa. But few charges have ever been made to stick, much to the chagrin of some law enforcement officials and former prosecutors.
These probes have ranged from a U.S. Senate panel that shamed local leaders in 1950 with embarrassing allegations of payoffs, to a lone vice cop's pursuit of narcotics dealers that ended in his murder by minor mob figures in the mid-1970s, to the abortive racketeering case involving the Key Bank last year.
When the famous organized crime commission of U.S. Sen. Estes Kefauver came to town in 1950, it revealed a series of unusual transactions involving Tampa's then-sheriff, its state attorney and alleged underworld figures.
In 1972, after the Hillsborough state attorney failed to act, federal prosecutors indicted a county commissioner and a former elections board member on bribery charges involving kickbacks and payoffs surrounding the buying and selling of voting machines.
That investigation resulted in the criminal conviction of Lo Scalzo's father-in-law, Joe Di Stefano. Lo Scalzo's father, Angelo, had turned up in a national probe as a "ranking" member of Tampa's Mafia in 1963.
And in 1984, then-Chief Assistant State Attorney Norman Cannella was accused of soliciting money from Angelo Bedami, the ringleader of a drug cartel and son of long-missing Trafficante crime family member Joe Bedami. But a federal judge, declaring that the prosecution hadn't produced enough evidence to warrant jury consideration, threw out the drug-racketeering charges against Cannella.
Last year, Lo Scalzo himself was referred to in documents released in the ill-fated racketeering probe at Key Bank, a local institution founded by prominent civic leaders here in 1974.
A then-sheriff's deputy who was accused of obstructing that investigation by leaking a target list had a casual relationship with the alleged Mafia leader, the Tribune reported Wednesday.
Traditionally, organized crime observers say, undercover investigations have been more difficult here partly because of the deep roots of the reputed crime family.
"It's a hard town to work undercover in because everybody grew up together," said Dave Green, an organized crime specialist with the Broward County Sheriff's Office from 1985 until March of this year. Green now works for a sheriff in another state but asked that his location not be disclosed.
He also worked undercover in an FDLE gambling sting in Tampa during the mid-1980s, while Tampa lawyer Bill James was capping a career with the federal government. James, like Green, had explored the family and friendship links of the Trafficantes.
Working in the U.S. Department of Justice a total of 19 years, first as an FBI agent, then as an assistant U.S. attorney and finally as a prosecutor with the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section in Tampa, James directed investigations of narcotics, gambling, arson, racketeering and murder.
"These ties go back for years, sometimes generations - and they're not broken lightly," said James, who also served as local state attorney from 1985 until his election defeat by Coe last November. SH Accidents of birth
Some of the nine suspected mobsters have been linked to people in power not necessarily because of individual effort, but sometimes by accident of birth.
For example, reputed "underboss" Diecidue - an alleged pioneer of the Mafia in Tampa - is the uncle of Paul Antinori Jr., who was Hillsborough state attorney in the mid- and late 1960s. Antinori's grandfather and another uncle were underworld figures and both were among the 23 victims of Tampa's gangland slayings from 1928 to 1959.
Antinori testified on behalf of Diecidue at a bail hearing in 1976 when he was facing bombing, explosives and cocaine-related charges in a case that developed after the former Tampa vice cop was killed by minor mob figures.
"I am related to the defendant Frank Diecidue," Antinori told the court. "He is my uncle. He is my mother's brother. ... I know him individually as a very gentle person, a very friendly person."
In an interview, the former state attorney said there's no Mafia in Tampa; there's never been a mob in Tampa. "It's the byproduct of imaginative media and law enforcement," he said. "I defy anyone to prove there is a Mafia."
Joseph H. Ficarrotta, a Tampa native and another attorney to Lo Scalzo, said people who aren't from Tampa, including some law enforcement officers, often misinterpret the close relationships among members of the city's Latin community.
"Tampa's very unique in this sense," Ficarrotta said. "A lot of people are related by marriage. A lot of people came from Italy and Sicily years ago. They all came from a very small area there."
Ficarrotta's cousin, Gasper J. Ficarrotta, is a Tampa judge. And the judge's brother-in-law is Valenti, the liquor distributor.
Valenti last year was identified in records of the Key Bank probe as part of the Trafficante crime family - an allegation he has denied.
The judge declined to comment on allegations concerning his brother-in-law.
"You realize [Valenti] is a family member of mine," he said. "I think you can use your imagination to get to my feelings about that."
Judge Ficarrotta also co-owns a piece of commercial property with six others, including James and Mary Lumia, the son and widow of Jimmy "Head of the Elks" Lumia, a reputed Tampa Mafia leader assassinated in 1950.
James Lumia is one of his closest friends, the judge said. Mary Lumia is the sister of the Trafficante family's longtime reputed underboss, Diecidue.
"I don't want to think about things long in the past," said Mary Lumia, when contacted recently. SH Circles of power
Lo Scalzo, the son of a deceased "ranking" figure in the crime family, has been known for years by judges, a school board member and other leaders.
He also was the son-in-law of the late Di Stefano, a political fixer and local civil service official who was at the center of the voting machine scandal in the early 1970s. Di Stefano was convicted of bribing a public official to buy unneeded voting machines.
Lo Scalzo's marriage to Di Stefano's daughter, Bessie, made him at one point the brother-in-law of a school board member. That school official, Raul C. "Sonny" Palomino, was his lawyer in a 1984 liquor license case. Serving on the school board from 1980 to 1988, Palomino also handled the discharge of a guardianship case for Lo Scalzo that went before Judge Alvarez. Lo Scalzo had legal custody of his deceased brother's two sons.
Palomino dismisses any suggestion that Lo Scalzo is a mobster: "For some reason or another, somebody has decided that he's something that he isn't."
In the early stages of the guardianship case, Lo Scalzo was represented by the law firm of Charles B. Corces, a well-known Tampa lawyer and friend who more recently made news as a central figure in a local courthouse corruption probe.
Prosecutors have accused Corces of getting $35,000 from another lawyer to bribe an assistant state attorney to fix a Tampa murder case. Once a high-powered attorney whose clients included Frank Ragano, a lawyer for the late reputed Mafia boss Santo Trafficante, Corces now is awaiting trial.
When he was secretly taped by investigators before his arrest in 1991, Corces boasted of knowledge about public officials.
Lo Scalzo, who has lived in Tampa some 40 years, has been an officer in Ybor City's Italian Club and a member of the Latin community's prestigious Krewe of the Knights of Sant' Yago. He's served as chairman of the Krewe's "Festa Italiana" celebration.
Selection to that cultural organization has always been a point of honor among many of the city's Latin elite. Among its members are Chief Judge Alvarez and Judge Vincent Giglio, according to a spokesman.
A candidate, among other things, must have distinguished himself in the area of community service and received approval from the board of directors, he said.
"Vincent [Lo Scalzo] was a member of the Krewe in good standing until he took a job in Miami," said Phil LoCicero, the Sant' Yago baron, or chief officer. "He wrote me a note and told me he was now working in Miami and he applied for a leave of absence."
That was in mid-March, he said. SH Cocktail hour
In the early 1980s - just as he was allegedly ascending the ranks of the only Florida-based Mafia family - Lo Scalzo supplied liquor for a statewide judges' conference being held in Tampa.
The liquor was bought by Judge Hinson, who at one time was involved in property with an alleged Lo Scalzo associate later convicted of drug trafficking.
"They needed alcohol for the conference of county judges, right?" Hinson said. "You know, they have the cocktail hours. So they asked me would I purchase the alcohol? And I'd learned that [Lo Scalzo] was in the business and he would deliver the stuff and keep an inventory. Then we would return what we didn't use and we would pay for what we'd used. It was paid for with a check from the conference of county judges.
"I honestly don't remember how I met him," Hinson said. "You're trying to make it look like we're buddy buddies or something. ... This guy was such a distant person that I attached no significance to my knowledge of him."
One of Lo Scalzo's alleged associates, bar owner Michael R. Napoli, did carry a bit more significance for Hinson.
Linked in federal court records to the Trafficante crime family and New York's Gambino family, Napoli and another man owned a rental property with the judge from May 1984 to September 1985. A county judge at the time, Hinson gave Napoli, whom he'd known at least since 1979, power of attorney to sign the judge's name to sell the property that September.
About nine months before that, a reliable confidential informant had told the FBI that Napoli had claimed to be a mobster and drug dealer.
In 1989, Napoli was arrested by federal agents after he was connected to a cocaine drop in the parking lot of a local department store. He allegedly had told another informant about laundering $100,000 monthly in cocaine profits at his bars, one of which he had bought from Lo Scalzo.
He was "fronting" for Lo Scalzo in the narcotics, gambling and money laundering businesses, according to a third FBI informant's statement filed in federal court.
Napoli now is serving out a 6€-year term in federal prison. He declined to be interviewed. A Lo Scalzo lawyer, former prosecutor Cannella, said the "fronting" allegations regarding his client were "absolute non-fact."
Hinson, now a circuit judge, abruptly cut off one telephone interview with the Tribune, saying he would talk further only in the presence of an official court reporter. But he balked when the newspaper agreed.
The judge's wife also had a land dealing with an alleged mobster. In 1985, she was co-owner of a piece of property sold to S&R Inc., whose president was Santo Jose Trafficante.
Hinson's wife said she had no direct involvement because her partner handled the deal. She didn't even go to the closing, she said.
As for her husband, she added, the judge was unaware of the informant's allegations that Napoli was involved with drugs and organized crime.
In his interview, Trafficante said that he'd never met the judge or his wife prior to that sale, and that a business associate of his had attended the real estate closing without him. "I went to the fat farm," said Trafficante, who tips the scales at about 300 pounds.
"I wish I could give the judge back his property," he added. "I'd give him something to keep it, to get it away from me."
Trafficante said he paid $125,000 in 1985 for property that's worth $86,000 today.
In June, the bank filed a lawsuit to foreclose on the property.
Among Trafficante's other interests in the mid-1980s was the Cafe Sevilla restaurant.
Then-Tampa Mayor Bob Martinez, who would become Florida's governor and U.S. drug czar, closed the eatery amid slow business and sold it in July 1983. It was bought by two friends of Trafficante, and one of them later asked Trafficante to get involved, the alleged mobster said.
Two others had "purchased it from the governor, not me," Trafficante said. "I had nothing to do with the governor.
"He came there one night," Trafficante recalled. "I've known Bobby since I was a kid.
"I said, you know, his wife smiling, what's her name, Mary, I said, "I've got your picture in my room.' She said, "Why do you have Bobby's picture in your room?' I said, "I use it as a dart board. Every night I throw darts at it.' They stuck me with this restaurant. They were killing me.
"She laughed. She didn't know what to say."
Martinez, now a management consultant in Tampa, said he never went to the restaurant after he sold it and didn't recall any such encounter with Trafficante.
For part of 1984, state police agents kept the Cafe Sevilla under surveillance while conducting a major investigation of gambling and sports bookmaking.
The agents reported that Trafficante on a number of occasions had suspected gamblers inside his establishment.
He and others were charged with conspiracy to commit bookmaking in December 1984, and administrative charges were filed against his now-closed Cafe Sevilla and seven other area bars and restaurants.
Represented by Henry Gonzalez, a well-known Tampa attorney whose clients have included Albano and the late Santo Trafficante, he was acquitted by a circuit judge.
"I had nothing to do with the gambling," Trafficante said. SH "Good government'
"I've been interested in good government in my years in Tampa," alleged mobster Di Gerlando once said. "I support a lot of people in government."
And over the years, Di Gerlando's civic pride has coincided with relationships with local politicians who have had the ability to favor him on a variety of matters.
The office of Hillsborough's property appraiser, Alderman, gave tax breaks on some Di Gerlando properties and Alderman approached elected appraisers in two other counties on the developer's behalf.
Tax records show Di Gerlando also temporarily benefited from a low tangible tax assessment on his Italian restaurant, Joe Di's Reginella Ristorante.
He should have paid about $28,900 in 1990 taxes. Instead, his equipment was assessed at only $1,000. The rest wasn't billed until some two years later - due to what one of Alderman's division directors now calls an "oversight."
News accounts last fall about Di Gerlando's property tax assessments from Alderman's office led to a joint state police and Department of Revenue review of the appraiser's methods of taxation, the outcome of which is pending.
Alderman's staff backed two assessment reductions for Di Gerlando resulting in $574,078 worth of property value being removed from the tax rolls, which both Alderman and Di Gerlando attributed largely to the economic recession.
Alderman says he did nothing improper by arranging a meeting for his constituent, Di Gerlando, with the Pinellas County appraiser, or by bringing up his property taxes with the Pasco appraiser.
"I have no problem," he said of the state's review of his office. "There's nobody here that's done anything wrong."
Di Gerlando declined in a letter to comment for this series, reiterating a previous statement that the Mafia allegations are untrue. "He doesn't want to discuss these matters," said his attorney, Nelson Blank of Tampa.
In an interview last fall, Di Gerlando said he supported Alderman's first election bid in 1988 because he's interested in good government.
"It started when Nick Nuccio was mayor [of Tampa during the early 1960s]," he said. "I like to be involved in choosing the guy who can do the best job for the community.
"I'm not getting any special access." SH "Willing to help'
Besides Alderman, Di Gerlando counts a number of other public officials among his friends and acquaintances.
One well-connected acquaintance is former veteran City Councilman Tom Vann, a racquetball partner of Di Gerlando's and a beneficiary of the developer's campaign help.
"I'm always willing to help the underprivileged person who would like to learn how to play racquetball," said Vann, who left the council and lost a 1988 election for Hillsborough County Commission.
Vann also was listed as an honorary pallbearer at the 1985 funeral of Di Gerlando's son Vincent. He wasn't able to attend the funeral, he said, because of a government meeting. Also among the honorary pallbearers were two of Vann's colleagues on the city council at the time - Lee Duncan and Eddie Caballero.
Others among the select group of honorary pallbearers were alleged mobsters Lo Scalzo and Albano.
Duncan, who was arrested last year but then later had his two fraud charges dropped in the aftermath of the Key Bank investigation, once rented office space for his insurance business from a Di Gerlando partnership.
In 1986, he voted for a controversial Di Gerlando rezoning for town houses in the Egypt Lake area of Tampa. Opponents had complained of feared drainage problems and traffic congestion by changing the project to 13 condominiums instead of 10 single family homes.
One resident who lived near the project complained that Duncan should have withdrawn his vote because he leased the office space from Di Gerlando at a reduced rate. Duncan got permission from the city council's attorney, David Carr, who said it was no conflict.
"Certainly, it was a good deal," Duncan said of his old lease. "[But] I was paying Mr. Di Gerlando ... a fair rate."
Though he said he couldn't recall the specific vote, Duncan said he has known Di Gerlando about 20 years. He sat on the Tampa Sports Authority alongside Di Gerlando, whose tenure on that board was from 1975 to 1983.
Duncan, who sits on the authority now, said he'd "rather not comment" on allegations that Di Gerlando is a mobster.
Another prominent tenant of Di Gerlando's was City Councilman Caballero, who co-owned a beauty shop with his wife that rented space on West Hillsborough Avenue.
Caballero has received campaign contributions over the years from Di Gerlando and other alleged mobsters.
In one campaign, he received $450 from Di Gerlando or his companies, and $100 each from purported mob boss Lo Scalzo and a company of Albano's.
In another, he received a total of four cases of liquor worth $500 from one of Lo Scalzo's relatives and from Napoli, who was later convicted on the federal drug charges.
Di Gerlando is a second cousin of Caballero's wife, the city councilman said, but he hasn't seen him in quite some time.
Caballero said he has done business with at least two of the companies of men labeled as having Mafia ties by authorities. Selling coffee to local restaurants and other establishments, Caballero said he has accounts including Lo Scalzo's Brothers Lounge and a liquor distributorship where alleged mobster Valenti is a vice president.
The councilman also went to the same high school as Albano and knows Santo Jose Trafficante.
Personally, Caballero said, he doesn't believe allegations that they're involved in the Mafia.
"Knowing these people, they've never asked me to do anything illegal in one form or another, in any way," he said. "I just can't believe that." SH Soured deal
Another prominent politician in a more unusual relationship was a former Hillsborough commissioner and Sports Authority member, Bean, who later became a chief witness in a massive federal corruption investigation of the Hillsborough County Commission.
In 1979, Di Gerlando began building Bean a house in Carrollwood Village for just the cost of materials and direct expenses, after arriving at an unwritten arrangement in the Sports Authority's parking lot.
Bean said he had pledged his support to Di Gerlando in his bid for the influential post of chairman of the authority, which among other things operates Tampa Stadium and awards lucrative concession contracts there.
But the deal - which Bean said was unrelated to the house building arrangement - went sour. After Di Gerlando lost his bid for the chairmanship by a single vote, his company sued Bean over the house.
"On a particular Monday morning," Bean testified in a deposition, "he called my office and demanded that I pay. And he quoted a dollar figure that was in the neighborhood of $14,000. ... I explained to him that that was impossible.
"Mr. Di Gerlando got quite upset about that."
He was "upset' enough to sue Bean and his then-wife, Reta, contending all the bills weren't paid for work that was done on the house. Bean, in a counterclaim, argued that not all the labor was performed, and that some of it was shoddy.
The court ruled that Bean and his wife were in default and indebted to Di Gerlando's Building Products Corp. for about $13,700.
A couple of years later in an unrelated matter, Bean admitted to taking zoning bribes as a county commissioner. He testified as a government witness in a federal corruption probe that led to his conviction and that of three suspended commissioners.
He served four months at the Eglin Air Force Base prison camp.
"[The house deal] was good-old-boy politics," Bean recalled in a recent interview. "He expected me to be his friend and vote favorably on things that came before the board."
Bean remembered that Di Gerlando would frequently wine and dine him, buying him lunches and dinners. On one occasion, the former commissioner recalled being introduced to Lo Scalzo, who was accompanying Di Gerlando to a racquetball game. SH "Part of Pasco County'
Another alleged member of the Trafficante crime family, Carollo, also is acquainted with a few well-known Tampa area figures, including a former Pasco County commissioner.
Known for his land dealings just north of Tampa, Carollo once hired former Commissioner Mike Ledbetter as a consultant on a zoning matter. Ledbetter said he met Carollo through a guy he had worked for who had bought a house in a Carollo-marketed subdivision.
"I represented them to some of the county departments a couple of times [and] to some of the state departments," Ledbetter recalled. "I did some work with the state division of land sales and condominiums."
That was in the early 1980s.
Still a consultant in Pasco, Ledbetter said in a recent interview he was unaware Carollo was alleged to be a part of the Trafficante family.
Over the years, Carollo also has contributed to a number of candidates for public office.
"I'm part of Pasco County," Carollo boasted. "I used to donate money to everybody."
At one time, he did operate the Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club.
"I had a lot of people in Hillsborough County supporting my country club," he said. "You know, people from Tampa supported my country club. Why shouldn't I support [candidates]?
"If they ask me to support somebody, I'm going to." SH Favors?
A 1992 lawsuit in Pasco reveals that the alleged mobster was a longtime acquaintance of a state agriculture department official, who managed the agency's Tampa regional office until his recent retirement.
The official had bought a Quail Hollow golf course lot through Carollo, whom he'd known about 18 years.
But Lake State Bank filed suit against the official and his wife last year contending they failed to make installment payments on the 1989 purchase. A judge recently ordered that they owe the bank $50,000.
The official, Sam N. Romano, testified in one deposition in that lawsuit that he didn't have all the money for his dream home site, so Carollo agreed to help him.
At first, Romano said, Carollo required him to pay only half of the $15,000 down payment for the lot.
"What had happened is, I had done a few favors for him, a few things for him," Romano explained. "He told me, he says, "I can't ever pay you for what you've done for me. So I'll put in half the money and you put in half the money.' "
But in a second deposition, Romano testified he paid the entire $15,000 himself - only in two installments.
In a recent interview, he said he misspoke about any "favors" he may have done to warrant Carollo's help.
"He had a problem one time with the golf course," Romano said. "I can't remember exactly what it was.
"And I called somebody and they called him and they worked out the problem."
Carollo, when asked during an interview about any favors, replied: "Everybody's done favors."
He said a lot of people say they've done somebody a favor, even if it's some "stupid thing."
"What kind of favors did he do for me?"
Cutline: Vincent Lo Scalzo <FILED: LO SCALZO, VINCENT SALVATORE>