Charles Carneglia isn’t in the Mafia anymore. His hairdresser said so.
The accused Gambino hit man, known for his crazy eyes and a penchant for dousing enemies in acid, is using the so-called “withdrawal” defense at his ongoing murder trial in Brooklyn federal court.
He claims that he left “the life” in 2001, which means he’s allegedly outside the clutches of the five-year statute of limitations for racketeering.
“Everyone thinks I’m a gangster, and I’m not anymore,” he whined while he got his hair coiffed, according to testimony. Jurors will decide this week whether they buy it.
In the old days, mobsters didn’t even admit there was a Mafia, much less that they’d walked away from it. And they certainly wouldn’t tell their barber.
New York’s mob is going out like “The Sopranos” – not with a bang but a whimper. Their influence has declined through death – by natural causes and at each others’ hands – and prosecutions that put guys away for life.
They still make money in the traditional ways: union racketeering, prostitution, drugs, gambling, loan-sharking, concrete and construction, but their grip on these industries has changed from a stranglehold to, say, a tight hug.
But the thing that probably has the old dons spinning in their graves is the circus the mob has become.
While old-school gangsters serve out life sentences in prison, or hide out in witness protection, a new generation of what one law-enforcement officer calls “suburban mobsters” – derived from their cushy upbringing – desecrate the blood oaths their forefathers created and lived by.
“I’m sure some of the old dons are looking down – or up – from wherever they are and shaking their heads in disgust,” said chief of the FBI’s Organized Crime section Matthew Heron.
The “withdrawal defense” is just one example of the mob’s lost honor. Four of the five bosses of New York’s crime families are in prison, and the guys still on the street don’t want the title.
The fistfuls of money they’ll rake in won’t count for much when they get slapped with an inevitable life sentence.
The Luchese and Gambino families are ruled by three-person committees right now – a relatively new phenomenon meant to spread out the risk of prosecution, sources said.
The Gambinos lost their acting boss, underboss, consigliere and one of their most powerful capos in a federal sweep a year ago. Three old-timers – Danny Marino, Johnny Gambino and Bobby Vernace – have stepped in to fill the power vacuum, sources said.
The Colombos are in disarray since their street boss, Tommy “Tommy Shots” Gioeli was picked up on murder charges last year. And the Bonannos have a new street boss who’s only 37 years old.
Only the super-secretive Genovese family remains relatively unscathed.
Some blame the Colombo civil war in the early 1990s, which left bodies strewn on the streets of Brooklyn and brought law enforcement down hard. Others say John Gotti, former Gambino godfather, enjoyed publicity a little too much for everyone’s good.
He chatted up the press, wore expensive suits, killed without blinking and let surveillance teams catch him and his henchmen on film at his social clubs.
Law-enforcement officials speak with hushed reverence and a seeming nostalgia of Carlo Gambino, who ran the Gambino crime family in the ’60s and ’70s.
“He was a grandfatherly, quiet old man who was arrested once or twice in his life and died in his bed. He would kill you as soon as look at you, but he never attracted unnecessary attention,” said one source.
Not only is the Mafia lacking strong leadership – its ranks of made men are thinning. Lots of guys don’t even want to be inducted into La Cosa Nostra, sources said, because they have to kick up too much money and follow too many rules. They’d rather remain associates than become soldiers.
And while guys are still being “straightened out” each year, said the source, the talent pool is watered down.
Murder was once the mandatory price of admission. Now it’s optional.
The candidates themselves are not the same stock as their forebears – literally and figuratively.
For years wannabes to the secret society had to be Italian on both sides. Then, for a time, only their father needed to be Italian. Now either parent will do.
And aspiring mobsters are not pulled from the traditional, tight-knit, Italian enclaves that they once hailed from.
Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge aren’t Italian-only areas anymore, and the loyalties that would have existed in such close-knit neighborhoods don’t exist in the new Mafia.
“Communities have stretched out and broken up. The kids don’t see mobsters on the street corners like they would have 40 years ago. They aren’t drawn into it in the same way,” said a former federal prosecutor.
The new guys aren’t nearly as trigger-happy as their predecessors were.
In the last decade, the number of gangland slayings has dwindled to a drip, helped in part by a 1994 federal statute that makes murder in aid of racketeering a death-penalty eligible crime.
And while the rubouts are down, cooperation agreements have dramatically increased.
“When you take down a crew, it’s a footrace to the door to see who will cooperate first,” said Heron.
Traditionally a gangster would get pinched, do a five-year stint, then get out and get promoted up the ladder.
And they’d never break the vow of “omerta” – silence in the face of law enforcement.
But since the feds started prosecuting gangland cases using racketeering statutes, the sentences have gotten far stiffer.
Life sentences are a huge deterrent to committing murder – and offer great incentive to turn rat, sources said.
But it’s never a good idea to write the Mafia off, warned law enforcement sources.
Said one source, “People have pronounced the Mafia dead a million times. But it’s still here.”