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BRUTAL AND GRISLY TRUTH OF GARDEN STATE’S REAL ‘SOPRANOS’

The real Sopranos – the crime family of Ruggerio “Richie the Boot” Boiardo – were less introspective, more violent and a lot less glamorous than Tony’s fictional mob, according to thousands of pages of FBI files, surveillance tapes and investigations, one of which is recounted in a 20-year-old HBO documentary called “Confessions of an Undercover Cop.”

“Sopranos” creator David Chase had learned of this Jersey mob as a child. Visiting relatives in Newark’s predominantly Italian-American North Ward, Chase met a cousin who, he said, had “fuzzy connections to a prominent mob family in Livingston,” an exclusive suburb where Boiardo had moved. Chase said in a 2002 interview with New Jersey Monthly that while “90 percent of [the show] is made up . . . it’s patterned after this [family].”

Boiardo, known simply as “The Boot” around Newark, began running numbers while working as a milkman before Prohibition, and he quickly figured out that crime paid better than dairy. He moved up the racketeering ranks and during Prohibition competed with another prominent Newark mobster, Abner “Longy” Zwillman, to smuggle booze through Newark.

Working independently, the pair supplied much of the eastern half of the United States. Their contending rackets got so big that, according to FBI files, Al Capone himself journeyed to Newark to settle a feud between them when it threatened to disrupt the flow of illegal booze.

There was little mystery about The Boot’s rise. Like the fictional Vito Corleone, he was brutal and had a knack for surviving. He earned his nickname from his habit of stomping his enemies to death, and he consolidated his power in Newark after a hit by a rival gang left him full of bullets but defiantly alive.

The Boot, moreover, passed his viciousness on to his son, Anthony “Tony Boy” Boiardo, and recruited other like-minded hoods. Not only did these guys dispose of their enemies as sadistically as anyone in “The Sopranos,” but rather than brood over their bad deeds as some characters in the HBO series do, the real Sopranos actually recounted their nastiest killings with relish.

In one FBI surveillance tape, for instance, Tony Boy declares, “How about the time we hit the little Jew?” An associate adds, “As little as they are, they struggle.”

Then Tony Boy finishes describing the scene: “The Boot hit him with a hammer. The guy goes down and he comes up. So I got a crowbar this big . . . Eight shots in the head. What do you think he finally did to me? He spit at me.”

In another tape, the mobsters recall with equal delight locking a victim in a car trunk and setting it afire. “He must have burned like a bastard,” one mobster says.

As in “The Sopranos,” The Boot joined the flight of Italian-Americans out of Newark to the Essex County suburbs, where he built an opulent, walled-in retreat in Livingston. But unlike Tony Soprano’s modern McMansion, The Boot’s estate was more like some European fortress, described by Life as “Transylvanian traditional” in its architectural style, with busts of famous Romans dotting its grounds. Another particularly noteworthy feature: a large furnace, rumored to be where The Boot’s crew disposed of his enemies’ remains.

Like other mob figures of that era, Boiardo attracted celebrities. Joe DiMaggio, for one, was a regular at The Boot’s restaurant, Vittoria’s Castle. Eventually, Boiardo grew so powerful that he had dozens of Jersey politicians in his pocket. He even helped fix the 1962 Newark mayoral race for then-Rep. Hugh Addonizio – turning Jersey’s biggest city into a virtually mob-run town.

By the time “Confessions” takes up this gang’s story, in the mid-1980s, Boiardo had recently died – and so, unexpectedly of a heart attack, had his son and heir apparent, Tony Boy. That left what remained of the crew to their lieutenants.

Most of these hoodlums had also by now decamped to Newark’s suburbs – places like North Caldwell, Roseland and Bellville, all mentioned frequently in “The Sopranos.” But unlike Tony’s crew, the real Sopranos still used Newark’s decidedly unglamorous and largely gritty North Ward as their base of operations.

The investigation at the center of “Confessions” begins by chance, when a retired East Orange, N.J., cop named Mike Russell is driving down Bloomfield Avenue in North Newark and sees two young guys attacking an older one.

Russell goes to the aid of the older guy, driving off the attackers. He discovers that the guy he has helped is Andrew “Andy” Gerardo, reputed boss of Boiardo’s old gang.

Gerardo invites Russell into his hangout, a coffee shop on the avenue just a few steps from a monument honoring Christopher Columbus and the Italian-American contribution to America. There, Russell meets other key members of the crew, who treat him like a hero and befriend him.

Russell then contacts a friend in the State Police, who asks him to begin surveillance on the crew. Incredibly, the mobsters invite Russell to move his oil-delivery business into a storefront adjoining their Newark headquarters, figuring he’s friendly, and from there the investigation takes off. But unbeknownst to the State Police, Russell enlists a cameraman and begins his own videotaping of the Jersey crew, which provides most of the material for the HBO documentary.

The footage illustrates the gap between Hollywood and mobster reality. The Boot made his real headquarters inside a candy shop on Roseville Avenue in North Newark, transformed by the time of “Confessions” into a rinky-dink pizzeria and dimly lit adjoining cocktail lounge called The Finish Line.

One look inside The Finish Line and it’s clear that for this real mob crew, style took a back seat to earning money.

Most of the action that Russell investigates takes place in even less glamorous social clubs around North Newark – little more than storefronts sporting linoleum floors, faux-wood paneling, folding chairs and card tables. From these motley locations, which could be had cheaply in Newark once rising crime and white flight eroded the city’s retail base, the crew ran nightly card games that netted them about $1 million a week.

Russell’s investigation resulted in 48 arrests and more than 30 convictions or guilty pleas for gambling, loan-sharking and racketeering, which effectively broke the back of the Genovese family in Jersey.

At the end of “Confessions,” we see the crew making a perp walk as they head to court, and it’s clear just how unsympathetic and crude such mobsters really were – nothing like the strangely appealing Tony Soprano.

As the reporters badger them for a statement, one of the crew’s top soldiers tells the newsmen: “Fuhgeddaboutit. Go get a job.”

That’s about the level of sophistication of the real mob.

Steven Malanga is senior editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.