Milwaukee reporter investigates cousin’s 1978 automobile bombing dying
Florence Grady and Augie Palmisano reached the elevator doorways on the similar time.
Each had been tenants at Juneau Village Backyard Flats in downtown Milwaukee. And shortly earlier than 9 a.m. that Friday — June 30, 1978 — each had been heading to the basement of the condo advanced.
Grady was carrying a basket of garments to the laundry. Augie was going to the underground parking storage. They chatted concerning the climate and Summerfest.
Once they reached the basement, she went to the laundry room. He walked to his automobile, a 1977 Mercury Marquis.
Lower than a minute later, there was a large explosion. Grady thought the boiler had exploded. However when she regarded into the storage, she noticed Augie’s automobile in flames.
The blast shook the town. Work fell from partitions and books tumbled off cabinets. One girl stated her recliner lifted off the bottom. Tenants ran from the constructing as firefighters and police rushed to the scene.
Augie Palmisano was my cousin.
His homicide has by no means been solved.
We do not speak about Augie
I used to be instructed little or no about Augie’s life once I was a toddler. I heard even much less about his dying — besides when my father was attempting to scare me straight.
“Don’t fall in with the improper crowd. Look what occurred to Cousin Augie.”
“Don’t gamble. You don’t wish to find yourself like Cousin Augie.”
“Don’t discuss again to the improper particular person. You already know what occurred to Cousin Augie.”
I actually knew almost nothing about what happened to Augie. I was four years old when he was killed, and have no memory of ever meeting him.
The most I heard about Augie probably came from TV news in the early 1980s when reputed Milwaukee crime boss Frank Balistrieri was facing gambling and extortion charges. I remember a TV reporter talking about how Balistrieri was suspected of being involved in Augie’s murder. I hurried from the living room to the kitchen, where my mom was making dinner, and told her they were talking about Cousin Augie on the news. She looked mortified.
Through the years my siblings and I have heard various stories, typically passed on in hushed conspiratorial tones, about why Augie was murdered. In one version, he was killed over gambling debts. In another, he became some sort of Mafia kingpin. In yet another widely believed — and still often repeated — theory, he was an informant.
I had no idea which of those stories was true.
I was raised hearing stories about my grandparents and their families coming from Sicily to the United States, and how they rose to success through hard work and sacrifice. They were more than family stories to me. They were lessons in how to live.
But my father didn’t ever want to talk about Augie. He was the youngest of 13 in a Sicilian immigrant family, and I think he wanted to keep his own children out of trouble and far away from even the mention of organized crime.
After my dad died 11 years ago, I thought my Aunt Marjorie — the last survivor of the 13 Spicuzza siblings — might tell me why Augie was killed.
“Why do you want to talk about that?” she snapped, ending the discussion before it started.
Now an investigative reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, I mustered the courage to try to find out what happened to Augie, and why.
I turned to police files, FBI reports and newspaper articles — and tracked down former detectives, FBI agents, prosecutors and others who knew Augie, many of whom agreed to speak with me about the case for the first time.
What I found was a story about loyalty, jealousy, and power — and what some people are willing to do for it.
‘The King of Commission Row’
Agostino (August) Palmisano was born in 1928. He was the son of my great-uncle Giovanni (John) Palmisano and his wife, Angeline, making him my father’s first cousin.
Like many Sicilian Americans in Milwaukee, Augie’s story is rooted in the Third Ward.
The Third Ward – which lies on the southern fringe of downtown – was an Irish enclave for a lot of the nineteenth century. It got here to be generally known as the “Bloody Third” as a consequence of its tough status, thanks partly to the excessive variety of saloons and brawls.
After a large fireplace in 1892 destroyed greater than 400 buildings and left some 2,000 folks homeless, Italian immigrants moved into the neighborhood.
Most, together with my father’s household, got here from Sicily. And lots of of them made a residing within the produce enterprise, promoting vegetables and fruit – first from push carts, then horse-drawn wagons and ultimately vehicles. The Palmisano and Spicuzza households had been amongst them.
Augie grew up serving to at his father’s produce enterprise within the coronary heart of what was then generally known as Fee Row — a gritty stretch of Broadway that was full of fruit and vegetable retailers. One fading black and white {photograph} exhibits a John Palmisano & Sons Wholesale Produce truck with “AUGIE” painted on the motive force’s aspect door.
Augie graduated from Lincoln Excessive Faculty on Milwaukee’s east aspect, the place he ran cross nation, acted in performs, and was a supervisor for the soccer staff. I’ve been instructed so many Sicilian People attended Lincoln Excessive that at one level performs had been referred to as from the sideline in Italian. It was the identical college that Frank Balistrieri graduated from a decade earlier.
In 1952, Augie married Jean Rose Lassa. They’d 4 kids collectively and purchased a house for the household in Whitefish Bay. He labored second shift at American Motors whereas serving to run the household produce firm. After his father died in 1964, Augie took over the corporate, which by then was named Palmisano Produce.
Within the years that adopted, Augie began operating the tavern adjoining to Palmisano Produce. It was referred to as Richie’s on Broadway, however he ultimately renamed it Palmy’s.
Augie’s side-by-side companies – perched on the nook of North Broadway and East St. Paul Avenue – grew to become a gateway of types to Fee Row.
The tavern was particularly well-liked with Fee Row’s produce employees. It had an extended bar, a pool desk, a few pinball machines, and a jukebox that often performed Frank Sinatra songs. A typical Friday evening included a barbecue that includes the catch of the day from Lake Michigan.
By many accounts, it was a wild place the place unlawful craps video games had been generally performed on the pool desk, folks would cease for cube or card video games, and some huge cash modified fingers.
Most nights, Augie held courtroom whereas tending bar, prepared with a witty comment or sensible joke, or simply to mortgage a pal some money or a sympathetic ear.
Behind the bar hung a portray that confirmed Augie and a bottle of Early Occasions whisky, each hovering bigger than life over his two companies. The artist who painted it stated it was meant to painting him as “the King of Fee Row.”
As his reliable companies grew, so did his playing operation.
‘A Harvard training within the hustle recreation’
One afternoon, I went to the now-shuttered Journal Sentinel printing plant in West Milwaukee to seek for extra info in our archives, recognized by folks within the business as “the morgue.” I discovered a number of small, musty-smelling manila envelopes and file playing cards with Augie’s title on them – all stamped “DEAD” in inexperienced ink – and lots of extra dedicated to Frank Balistrieri. I borrowed all of them.
The envelopes had been full of newspaper clippings and microfiche that provided extra glimpses into Augie’s life.
He first grew to become entrance web page information within the early Sixties.
“Playing Crackdown! 3 Arrested,” was splashed throughout the highest of the Milwaukee Sentinel – above the title of the newspaper – on March 23, 1962.
The entrance web page of The Milwaukee Journal that very same day featured {a photograph} of Augie along with his hand overlaying his face. It was the primary image I can bear in mind seeing of my cousin.
Augie was almost 6 toes tall and had a slender construct, which made him seem even taller. He had darkish brown eyes and black hair parted on the aspect. However within the {photograph}, it regarded like he was attempting to vanish beneath his left hand and hat. Solely his nostril and ear had been seen.
The articles detailed how Augie was accused of accepting bets on faculty basketball video games. He was ultimately convicted and fined $1,000.
By means of the clips — and tons of of pages of FBI data — I discovered that Augie grew his small playing actions into a pretty big bookmaking operation, one which reportedly spanned a number of taverns throughout the town. Though worthwhile, it additionally drew undesirable consideration from legislation enforcement, who seemingly had his tavern underneath fixed surveillance for months at a time.
Augie’s tavern was one in every of 9 places raided on Tremendous Bowl Sunday in 1974, when 60 FBI brokers searched places in and round Milwaukee. Within the raids, brokers confiscated piles of playing data, weapons and about $20,000 in money.
Brokers additionally discovered one thing else within the basement of Augie’s tavern – 93 sticks of dynamite stashed in a crawlspace. It was unclear how lengthy the dynamite had been there, and Augie stated he had no thought the place it got here from. The fees linked to the dynamite had been dropped, and he ultimately pleaded responsible to conducting a playing enterprise.
A Milwaukee Sentinel article concerning the case stated Augie’s legal professional argued he “comes from household, is the daddy of 4 kids, will get up day by day at 4 a.m. to begin operations at Palmisano Produce, works eight hours working a truck after which helps run his tavern.” The article stated Augie “had been working 12 to 14 hours a day, six days every week since he was a younger man.”
One in every of Augie’s former workers, who requested to not be recognized due to security considerations, instructed me he was “ dude” who “had his fingers in the whole lot.”
“I acquired a Harvard training working at Palmy’s,” the person stated. “I actually acquired a Harvard training within the hustle recreation.”
The best way he tells it, Augie was “greater than God,” and on the middle of all of it.
He, like others, described Augie as well-liked and humorous, someone who performed by his personal guidelines however would additionally lend folks cash or give them meals once they wanted it.
I requested the previous worker – who stated he fled city after Augie’s homicide – why my cousin was killed. His eyes full of tears.
“He was too large. He acquired too large,” he stated. “And Frank Balistrieri couldn’t put up with it.”
Fancy pants
Most Sicilian People in Milwaukee had nothing to do with organized crime.
The identical couldn’t be stated about Frank Balistrieri.
Born in 1918, Balistrieri graduated from Marquette College and briefly attended legislation college there. However by the Nineteen Fifties, the FBI had positioned him on its nationwide listing of “prime hoodlums.”
Balistrieri reportedly took over as Milwaukee’s organized crime boss by the early Sixties, and had a variety of authorized and unlawful enterprise pursuits: nightclubs, eating places, strip golf equipment, merchandising machines and playing.
FBI paperwork present that beginning round that point, Balistrieri determined bookmakers in Milwaukee ought to be required to provide him a lower of their earnings, and despatched his enforcers to gather.
And Balistrieri – who often carried out enterprise from a desk at Cosy’s restaurant on the bottom flooring of the Shorecrest Resort, which was owned by his household – grew to become a key determine in skimming cash from Las Vegas casinos, a narrative made well-known within the 1995 film “On line casino.”
Balistrieri was a brief man, however had an ominous presence. Franklyn Gimbel, a former federal prosecutor who gained a tax evasion case in opposition to Balistrieri in 1967, stated his eyes had been like “spotlights… from his cranium that penetrated the whole lot he checked out.”
Some referred to as him “Frankie Bal,” “Mr. Massive,” or “Mr. B.” He was often known as “Fancy Pants” as a consequence of his hand-tailored, custom-made fits. That nickname was particularly well-liked amongst individuals who did not like him.
Balistrieri demanded respect, and was notoriously ruthless when it got here to getting it.
Longtime Milwaukee Sentinel investigative reporter Mary Zahn and columnist Invoice Janz once reported that Balistrieri’s willingness to resort to violence even drew criticism from his father-in-law, John Alioto, who preceded him as Milwaukee’s crime boss. Alioto pleaded for extra merciful options after Balistrieri threatened to kill two males throughout an argument secretly recorded by the FBI.
“L’amazzari,” Balistrieri said in Sicilian. I’ve got to kill them.
He was suspected by law enforcement of ordering a string of murders in and around Milwaukee, none of which had been ever solved.
In 1960, nightclub proprietor Isadore “Izzy” Pogrob was shot to death and left in a ditch in Mequon. The homicide reportedly occurred quickly after Balistrieri acquired a cellphone name at one in every of his taverns, glanced over at a number of of his associates, and slid his index finger throughout his throat.
In 1963, the physique of Anthony Biernat, a jukebox distributor, was discovered within the basement of a vacant farmhouse close to Kenosha. He’d been tied up and overwhelmed to dying, and his physique was coated in lime in an obvious effort to hurry decay.
In 1972, Louis Fazio was shot several times with a .38-caliber gun outdoors his residence. Balistrieri was later heard gloating about Fazio’s dying.
In 1975, August Maniaci was murdered outdoors his East Aspect residence by somebody with a .22-caliber pistol geared up with a silencer. Maniaci had brazenly feuded with Balistrieri.
Quickly after, an informant instructed the FBI that Balistrieri thought Maniaci’s brother Vince would possibly attempt to get revenge. Balistrieri reportedly put out the phrase that Vince “ought to be killed like his brother.”
Balistrieri was by no means charged in any of the murders.
Vincent Maniaci
Vincent Maniaci was my cousin’s greatest pal. They had been so shut, they had been like brothers, a former FBI agent instructed me.
Vince ran a bar on Water Road named Little Caesar’s Cocktail Lounge, later generally known as Underneath the Bridge. He was additionally an everyday at Augie’s tavern, typically seen laughing and joking with my cousin as he tended bar.
Like Augie, Vince had some run-ins with the legislation. The identical yr his brother was murdered, Vince was despatched to jail for fencing 4 stolen mink coats and threatening somebody who owed him cash.
When he was launched from jail, the FBI was so satisfied someone wished Vince useless that brokers began following him all over the place he went.
The morning of Aug. 17, 1977, Vince tried to begin his automobile however may inform one thing was improper. The accelerator was so stiff he couldn’t push it right down to the ground. He drove 15 to twenty mph – as quick as it could go – from the north aspect midway home the place he was staying to the East Aspect.
After a short cease he went to his mechanic, who opened the hood and instantly noticed a bundle with wires popping out of it. “I’m going to name police,” he instructed a shaken Vince. “It appears like a bomb.”
Vince ran for canopy and was picked up by the FBI brokers who’d been following him. They took him to an agent’s home, the place he had a stiff drink and instructed investigators he had no thought who would need him useless. Quickly afterward, federal officers despatched Vince again to jail for his personal safety.
Members of the Milwaukee Police Division bomb squad discovered a taped-up grey bundle positioned close to the engine on the motive force’s aspect of Vince’s automobile, jammed close to the accelerator and wired to the ignition with alligator clips. The bomb had 20 sticks of dynamite and a booster however fortunately didn’t detonate, presumably as a consequence of defective wiring.
A police report described the system as an “overkill bomb” designed to “destroy all traces of potential proof that might join anybody” with the crime.
Donnie Brasco
Not lengthy after somebody planted a bomb in Vince’s automobile, the FBI introduced in an agent named Joseph Pistone to assist infiltrate the Balistrieri crime household.
At this time, Pistone is healthier recognized by his undercover title: Donnie Brasco.
He wrote about his expertise in a e book, which impressed the 1997 film starring Johnny Depp as Pistone and Al Pacino as New York crime family member Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero.
One scene from Pistone’s e book particularly caught with me – the sturdy response Ruggiero had when Pistone talked about Milwaukee. Ruggiero didn’t realize it on the time, however “Donnie” was attempting to assist one other undercover FBI agent who was posing as a brand new merchandising machine firm proprietor in Milwaukee.
“He’s loopy, Donnie. Doesn’t the f—— man know you possibly can’t function a merchandising enterprise anyplace with out connections? Particularly Milwaukee. They’re loopy on the market. It ain’t like in New York, Donnie, the place they could simply throw you a beating to chase you out. On the market they’re vicious. They reply to Chicago, you understand. They blow folks up. Donnie, if this man’s a pal of yours, you higher inform him to get the hell out of that city.”
When I reached Pistone, he was gracious along with his time, affected person, and had a formidable reminiscence.
On the time, organized crime in Milwaukee wasn’t as well-known because the Outfit in Chicago or the Mafia in New York. However Pistone stated Balistrieri was a “very well-known” Mafia boss all through the U.S. who was intently aligned with the Chicago Outfit — and infamous for his brutality.
Pistone recalled one evening when Balistrieri took him and others to a charity banquet on a whim. Pistone stated folks scrambled to clear a desk in a major spot for Balistrieri and his entourage.
“It needed to be a pair hundred folks. Every thing simply stopped once they noticed him. The maitre d’ came visiting and stated, ‘Oh, Mr. Balistrieri, I did not know you had been coming,'” Pistone remembered. “It was like, you understand, should you had been in another country, a president strolling in. Or the queen walked in, I imply, you might see that that everyone knew who he was. And both they had been terribly afraid of him or revered him.”
“However he was the person,” Pistone stated. “He was the person in Milwaukee.”
Regardless of Pistone’s encyclopedic information of the Mafia, he didn’t have plenty of solutions when it got here to Augie.
Pistone instructed me he doesn’t imagine he ever met my cousin, however clearly remembers his homicide – which he additionally wrote about in his e book.
“He wasn’t a boss,” Pistone stated. “I believe he in all probability was concerned in bookmaking operations.”
He did recall Balistrieri claiming that Augie was “a snitch.”
“Whether or not he was, I do not know,” Pistone stated, including that he made it some extent to not know.
“It is human nature,” he stated. “You’re going to behave in a different way if you understand that someone, you understand, is in your aspect.”
Pistone’s work in Milwaukee in 1978 would ultimately assist dismantle organized crime right here. However not earlier than it claimed one other life — Augie’s.
Closing time
Augie spent his final hours like he did much of his life. He was working.
He closed his tavern at 2 a.m., then spent 20 minutes cleaning up with his 24-year-old son, John, before they left together.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Augie told his son as he walked toward his car.
Augie stopped at Pitch’s Lounge and Restaurant on the East Side, where he joined an old friend known as “Teach” for breakfast. “Teach” would later tell police Augie came and left alone, but that he was too drunk to remember the exact time.
Augie’s routine was to stay awake after closing his tavern long enough to go back to the Third Ward and check on the day’s produce delivery, which typically arrived at 4 a.m. It was Friday, an especially busy day at work, so he would often sleep for only a few hours at his apartment before heading back to work on Commission Row.
That’s where he was going when he stepped into the elevator with his neighbor, Florence Grady.
She was the last person to see him alive.
The seat of the blast
Augie’s car was still engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived.
The explosion mangled the overhead door to the parking garage so badly that firefighters had to pry it open and prop it up with wooden beams. The blast also shattered the lights, leaving it almost pitch-black inside. The air was heavy with smoke, and the garage was flooded from the sprinkler system and water streaming from burst pipes in the ceiling.
The front of Augie’s Marquis was essentially gone, and parts of his car lay scattered across the garage. The damage spread to 28 nearby cars, but miraculously no one else was injured because Augie was alone in the garage that morning.
It wasn’t until firefighters extinguished the flames that they found Augie’s body. His right foot was missing — investigators determined it had been incinerated by the blast. His face was so badly burned that police identified him through fingerprints.
He was 49 years old.
Those who responded to the crime scene that morning included about 25 firefighters, members of the Milwaukee Police Department bomb squad, the state fire marshal, and Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann, as well as numerous police officers and FBI agents.
Notably absent, according to police reports: longtime Milwaukee Police Chief Harold Breier, who famously said there was “no prosecutable evidence of organized crime” in the city.
“We demand honest government in Milwaukee,” Breier said in that 1975 TV interview. “Our city wouldn’t stand for it. We’re different. We’re quite a community.”
Ted Engelbart, then a new member of the bomb squad, was at the crime scene that morning. He told me that they quickly realized it wasn’t an accidental fire.
Engelbart said they determined the “seat of the blast” was in the front of the car, and the bomb was placed near the engine. The explosion followed the path of least resistance – right toward Augie.
The bomb even moved the foundation of the apartment building. Had it exploded outside, the damage would have extended several city blocks, said Engelbart, who’s now retired.
“That is sending a message,” Engelbart said. “Something like this tells other people, ‘Oh, watch your ass.’”
The bomb likely had numerous sticks of dynamite and a booster, much like the one found in Vince’s car. Among the debris, investigators found a key component: an alligator clip just like the one in the bomb that nearly killed Augie’s best friend.
McCann, the former DA, told me that the incident was “clearly no act of passing violence.”
John Palmisano
The explosion woke up Augie’s son, John, who like his dad had an apartment at Juneau Village.
After the building manager knocked on John’s door and told him Augie’s car was on fire, John called Palmy’s, then drove to Commission Row to look for his dad. Somebody said they thought they’d seen Augie early that morning, but nobody knew where he was.
After John returned to the apartment building, an officer showed him a silver watch with a broken band found near the mangled car. John recognized it as his father’s watch.
Police who stopped at Palmy’s later that day found a locked door with a note that read: “Sorry, the tavern is closed. My father died today.”
‘Augie got put on a troublemaker list’
In the aftermath of Augie’s murder, Milwaukee police detectives interviewed nearly every resident of Juneau Village Garden Apartments, talked to business owners and workers along Commission Row, and spoke to Augie’s friends throughout the city, according to police reports from the time.
Just hours after the bombing, an anonymous caller reported seeing a late model white Cadillac with Ohio license plates occupied by people “who appeared to be gangster types.” The FBI traced the license plate number to a car dealership, whose manager said the sedan had been leased to a “self employed contractor” named Larry John. The reports don’t say whether investigators found him or determined if that was the getaway car.
Several days after the murder, a detective stopped at a halfway house to question Anthony Francis Pipito, a Balistrieri employee who’d been convicted of armed burglary and other crimes. Asked whether he had any information about Augie’s murder, Pipito told the detective he wouldn’t give him “any information regarding Frank Balistrieri.”
Asked why he brought up Balistrieri, Pipito refused to answer.
Others dropped similar hints. When detectives went to the Iron Horse Diner in Glendale to interview its owner, Anthony Fazio, he told them that only four or five people in Milwaukee “would be able to hire a bomber.” He added that police “should probably start looking on Prospect Avenue.”
The detective wrote, “Probably meant Snug’s bar – Frank Balistrieri.”
Fazio, whose brother Louis was murdered six years earlier, told detectives he and others believed “that some people in the Milwaukee Police Department are on the take and therefore we are not conducting a proper investigation into this homicide,” the report said.
He also warned them people “who might have information regarding this murder are afraid to come forward because they fear for their lives.”
A newspaper article about the murder quoted a Palmisano Produce truck driver who said Augie was “good to bums, paupers, rich men and poor men” and would feed people off the street. The owner of the building described Augie as a “nice fellow” who always paid his rent on time and slept very little, often starting work before 5 a.m.
But the narrative that Augie was a Mafia leader or suspected informant seemed to stick.
One front-page article, quoting police sources, described Augie as a “substantial figure in organized crime in Milwaukee,” and said that “somebody thought he was going to talk.”
Another said his killing was “part of a long standing feud between criminal factions in the city.”
Yet another said Augie “had been branded as a troublemaker by organized crime leaders” for protesting too publicly about the attempted bombing of his close friend, Vince Maniaci.
“Augie got put on a troublemaker list,” a source told The Milwaukee Journal.
The Satin Doll
One person didn’t hesitate to name Balistrieri as a suspect in Augie’s murder: lounge owner Minnette Wilson.
Today, a fading Schlitz sign still hangs over the lounge Wilson owned on West Fond du Lac Avenue. The concrete walls of the now-shuttered tavern are covered in graffiti, and weeds grow through cracks in the parking lot.
But in 1978, Satin Doll’s Lounge was a hotspot for jazz, vice and wild characters. And few were wilder than its owner. Wilson was a stunning former dancer who performed with Duke Ellington and claimed to have inspired his hit song “Satin Doll.”
She often went by the Satin Doll, or just the Doll.
When a pair of detectives first went to the lounge to interview Wilson about Augie’s murder, she was visibly distraught. The lounge was packed, and she told them she was too busy and upset about her old friend’s death to talk – noting Augie’s funeral had just been held.
Detectives spotted two large portraits of Augie hanging on the back walls of the lounge and suggested a follow-up interview.
“It is apparent that she is more than just a close friend of the deceased,” they wrote in their report. “We were unable to determine at this time just how close the relationship was.”
But there’s nothing else that might indicate they were romantically involved.
Wilson told another pair of detectives who returned the following night that she and Augie had dinner together a couple of times in the days leading up to his murder, and he didn’t show any signs of concern about his safety. But she added he was “the type of person that if something was bothering him, even though it would be quite serious, he would not tell anyone else about it,” the police report said.
“She several times stated that she feels that one Frank Balistrieri, otherwise known as Frankie Bal, was responsible for having August Palmisano killed,” detectives wrote.
As they were leaving, Wilson told detectives: “Frankie Bal has gone too far this time.”
‘I am in plenty of hassle’
Detectives saved getting hints Balistrieri was behind Augie’s homicide, however they struggled to search out particulars a few motive.
A portray present in Augie’s condo led them to his shut pal, a stockbroker named Sante DiAntoni, who glided by Sam Denton. Denton instructed police that when he and his spouse came upon Augie was murdered, they each sat on their mattress and cried.
After what detectives described as a “lengthy dialog,” Denton revealed extra. He stated about six months earlier than the homicide, Augie confided in him that he’d been threatened over his friendship with Vince Maniaci, who by then had fled city for Hawaii.
“I believe I’m in plenty of hassle,” Denton recalled Augie saying. “I used to be instructed if I assist Vince, I might be in additional hassle – that I ought to avoid Vince perpetually.”
Three months later Vince determined to return again to Milwaukee, and Augie went to choose him up on the airport, Denton stated. Augie waited for 3 hours however Vince by no means confirmed up. Augie later came upon that Vince had arrived in Milwaukee however instantly took a flight again to Hawaii. Denton instructed police that Augie was very upset and frightened, and thought Vince could have been threatened when he arrived on the airport.
Then, a month earlier than the homicide, Vince once more referred to as Augie and instructed him that he was having hassle discovering a job, and wished to return residence to Milwaukee.
“It’s higher so that you can keep the place you might be, and I’ll keep the place I’m. That will likely be greatest for each of us,” Denton overheard Augie inform Vince.
Denton instructed detectives he hoped they’d clear up the case, however stated he didn’t suppose it could be potential.
A gathering at FBI headquarters
Lower than every week after Augie was killed, a bunch of federal brokers met with Milwaukee police detectives at FBI headquarters in downtown Milwaukee.
There had been stress simmering between the FBI and Milwaukee Police Division for years, with some officers accusing brokers of not sharing sufficient info with them. A number of former FBI brokers instructed me they knew some officers had been on Balistrieri’s payroll and had been apprehensive about corrupt cops leaking info — considerations additionally documented in FBI stories from the time.
However that day, the brokers had info to share. They instructed detectives the FBI was considering a grand jury investigation centered on the tried automobile bombing of Vincent Maniaci in addition to Augie’s homicide, and stated the company is perhaps keen to provide out immunity in some instances with the concept of “shaking unfastened info not forthcoming presently.”
The brokers then instructed police they’d recognized a potential hit man within the Maniaci automobile bombing case, and stated he was additionally a suspect in Augie’s homicide. His title was Nick George Montos, a profession legal who escaped from jail 5 occasions and was the primary particular person to make the FBI’s Ten Most Wished listing twice.
FBI brokers conducting surveillance had noticed Montos following Vince Maniaci earlier than somebody tried to kill him.
Gary Magnesen, one of many FBI brokers on the assembly that day, instructed me they nicknamed Montos “The Mope” as a result of he regarded so unremarkable.
“A automobile pulled up nearly proper in entrance of us – a black sedan – and a brief little man wearing grey work garments acquired out of the automobile,” Magnesen stated. “He was a Chicago man. They’d used him fairly a bit. He was not Italian and he was not a part of the mob, however he was a man that was an skilled in bomb making.”
Retired FBI Agent Bob Walsh instructed me he additionally noticed Montos in Milwaukee when he observed him trailing Vince right into a McDonald’s shortly earlier than the tried bombing.
However neither police nor FBI knew whether or not Montos was in Milwaukee the day Augie was murdered.
The FBI additionally requested about similarities within the explosives used within the two bombings. They suspected each bombs had been intently linked, and sure constructed by the identical particular person.
No reply
A couple of weeks later, Milwaukee police detectives tried to speak to Frank Balistrieri at his giant Shepard Avenue residence on Milwaukee’s East Aspect. Detectives stopped a number of occasions someday, noting the automobile within the driveway.
“Nobody would come to the door,” they wrote of the go to. “Nonetheless, it appeared as if somebody was current within the residence.”
In addition they went to the house of Peter Balistrieri, Frank’s brother. No one answered there both.
“As well as, we checked on the Shorecrest Resort,” the report stated. “However discovered that neither one of many Balistrieri brothers had been in.”
It seems the officers by no means returned.
Over time, ideas coming into the Milwaukee police slowed to a trickle.
One nameless caller instructed police that somebody utilizing the title “Michael Block” had moved into Juneau Village shortly earlier than Augie was killed and hadn’t been seen for the reason that homicide. He reportedly left behind an costly razor and good clothes.
One other tipster instructed police the killer was a Mafia hitman named Richard Montey, who’d since gone into hiding utilizing the alias “Dick Montage” and was residing in a cabin behind a tavern close to Athens, in northern Wisconsin.
Yet one more referred to as police and stated their son’s pal, a person nicknamed “Dough Pop,” would get excessive on cocaine and brag that he had one thing to do with Augie’s homicide.
Police hit one useless finish after one other. However the feds had been simply getting began.
‘He called me a name to my face’
Frank Balistrieri had been on the FBI’s radar for years. Augie’s murder helped inspire an all-out crackdown, former agents told me.
“Now we had a crime, a very serious crime – a homicide – to tie him to,” Magnesen said. “Once those murders began, we knew he was behind it. The problem was to prove it. So that’s when we started pushing really hard.”
Just weeks after the meeting at FBI headquarters, undercover FBI agent Gail Cobb, who was posing as a new vending machine company owner named Tony Conte, was summoned by Balistrieri to a meeting at Snug’s restaurant in the Shorecrest Hotel.
He went with New York Mafia member “Lefty” Ruggiero, who was helping him work out an arrangement between the New York and Milwaukee crime families over vending machine profits with the help of undercover agent Joe Pistone posing as “Donnie Brasco.”
It was July 29, 1978 — almost a month after Augie’s homicide.
Balistrieri, sitting throughout the desk from Cobb, had reached out to shake his hand when Ruggiero launched him as Conte. Balistrieri recoiled in shock.
“We’ve been in search of you all week. We had been going to hit you,” Cobb remembered him saying. “We figured you had been the G.” (The G, or G-man, is brief for a authorities agent.)
Balistrieri reportedly laughed as he defined that he’d had three guys following Cobb. The would-be hit males had even trailed Cobb to the assembly and had been nonetheless ready till Balistrieri waved them away.
After Ruggiero reassured him Cobb wasn’t an informant, Balistrieri made it clear the merchandising machine enterprise in Milwaukee belonged to him.
Then the dialog turned to Augie.
“He was arrogant. He called me a name to my face,” Balistrieri said, touching his fingers to his face.
He added: “Now they can’t find his skin.”
There was no recording of the exchange. It would have been too dangerous for Cobb to wear a wire to the Shorecrest that night.
Shortly afterward, a shaken Cobb told Pistone: “First thing I’m going to do is put a remote starter in my Cadillac.”
A few weeks later, Cobb and Pistone were at a bar with Balistrieri when they ran into Peter Picciurro, the owner of Pitch’s Lounge & Restaurant, where Augie had his last meal.
Balistrieri reportedly laughed as he told the two men that Picciurro hadn’t talked to him since “the guy had his accident” and “got blown up.”
“They were buddies — goombahs — real close,” Balistrieri added.
That same night, Balistrieri bragged to the undercover agents that nobody had ever lived to be a witness against him.
Only in this case, if Balistrieri was trying to gain power by making an example out of Augie, he may have instead set in motion his own downfall.
A full-court press
In October 1978, Cobb was frozen out by Balistrieri, who reportedly had discovered that he was an undercover agent. But by then he and Pistone had already gathered extensive information about Balistrieri’s gambling ring and extortion activities.
The FBI’s investigations into Balistrieri and his associates would ultimately involve a federal grand jury, subpoenas, search warrants, wiretapping and other physical and electronic surveillance.
“We call it a full-court press,” said Magnesen, the longtime FBI agent who’s now retired.
The FBI targeted several locations for surveillance, including the Shorecrest Hotel. After obtaining blueprints to the Shorecrest and a search warrant, a group of FBI agents broke into the building one evening. They had been in a position to slip in by means of the entrance door after two brokers pretended to make out in entrance of the doorway — blocking the door from view as an FBI lock skilled lower a key in actual time.
Magnesen, one of many brokers who broke in that evening, stated he nonetheless remembers the concrete mud falling on them as they drilled a gap within the basement ceiling. They then positioned a listening system underneath the carpet.
It turned out that they had put the microphone within the improper place, and needed to enter the Shorecrest for a second time to maneuver the microphone.
Magnesen stated one of many conversations brokers heard due to that microphone was a apprehensive dialogue a few subpoena served to Nick Montos, who Balistrieri warned had “actual, actual, actual good info” on what he referred to as “the growth.”
That quote was one in every of a number of glimmers of hope that prosecutors would have the ability to cost Balistrieri with the murders they believed he’d ordered.
Regardless of Balistrieri gloating concerning the deaths, officers by no means felt like that they had sufficient proof to win a murder conviction.
In 1980, after months of around-the-clock surveillance, the FBI broke down Balistrieri’s entrance door with a sledgehammer. He was later charged with playing, tax evasion and extortion.
John Franke
One September afternoon, former federal prosecutor John Franke led me down the staircase to the basement of his suburban Milwaukee home, stopping at a stash of bankers boxes.
“They sat in storage in different houses for the last, what is it, 40 years?” he said.
Franke peered inside one of the boxes, which was filled with court documents, FBI wiretap transcripts, notebooks and other files from the years he spent working to win convictions against Balistrieri and his associates.
As Franke flipped through a manila folder, an old black and white photograph caught my eye.
“Is that Augie?” I asked.
“That might be your cousin. Yeah, it probably is,” Franke said, turning it over and reading the name on the back. “Augie Palmisano.”
The file also held pictures of Balistrieri, including a booking photo and another of him dressed in one of his custom suits.
“Fancy Pants,” Franke said. “Well-dressed as always.”
Frank Balistrieri had proven to be slippery in the past. About a decade before Franke joined what was known as the Organized Crime Strike Force, a federal tax evasion case against Balistrieri was nearly derailed when Balistrieri discovered the FBI had illegally planted microphones to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant.
To prepare for the Balistrieri trials some 10 years later, Franke and others on the Organized Crime Strike Force spent weeks listening to hours of conversations between Balistrieri and his associates that had been secretly — but this time, legally — recorded by the FBI.
“I don’t know how many hours I spent in that room with those big old reel-to-reel tapes running,” Franke told me.
In 1983, Balistrieri was convicted of gambling and tax charges. The following year, he and his two sons were convicted of extortion. At the trials, former undercover agents Pistone and Cobb were among those who testified.
Franke said one thing that “caught everyone’s attention” was the explosion that killed Augie. While he was prosecuting the case, people would tell him where they were when the bomb went off, he said, because it could be felt from blocks away.
“That was a pretty dramatic moment in terms of, creating the sense in the community that maybe there is organized crime here, and maybe it’s something that we should actually worry about,” Franke said. “Because it’s not just, you know, gangsters gunning down gangsters. It’s people doing things that could kill innocent people easily.”
When I asked if he thought Balistrieri got away with murder, Franke fell silent.
“The most compelling statement from Frank was not recorded,” he said after a long pause. “That would be ‘they can’t find his skin. He was arrogant to my face.’”
But it was clear he was reviewing the case in his mind.
“Look, you’re making me pause. Because I’m sure if we thought that was enough, we would have pursued it. But, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that he ordered it just because he was gloating about someone’s death,” Franke said. “I don’t know. Maybe we missed something. But it really probably wasn’t enough to convince a jury.”
Bad blood
The convictions of Balistrieri and his associates dealt a massive blow to organized crime in Milwaukee, and the investigations that led to them are broadly thought of to be among the many best success tales for the FBI right here.
For his crimes in Milwaukee, Balistrieri was sentenced to 13 years in jail.
Two years later, in a separate federal case involving skimming money from Las Vegas casinos, Balistrieri pleaded responsible and was sentenced to a concurrent 10 years.
He was launched from jail early as a consequence of his failing well being in 1991, and died two years later at age 74.
Nick Montos had an extended legal profession and spent years as a fugitive. In 1995, he tried to rob a Massachusetts vintage retailer, the place he tied up the 73-year-old Jewish proprietor and referred to as her an antisemitic slur. She was in a position to escape and struggle off Montos, then 78, with a baseball bat. He was nonetheless a prisoner when he died at age 92.
Montos was by no means charged in Augie’s homicide or Vince’s tried automobile bombing. However to today, retired FBI brokers Magnesen and Walsh instructed me they imagine that Montos constructed the bomb that killed my cousin on the orders of Balistrieri.
As for motive? Magnesen stated it was well-known Augie “had contempt” for Frank Balistrieri. And he wasn’t the one one.
“The entire troopers and so forth despised (Balistrieri) as a result of he didn’t have cred. He was a no one actually. He had by no means actually proven himself to be legal or something like that. So that they didn’t like him,” Magnesen stated. “And Augie Palmisano – though he was not a made member – he didn’t like (Balistrieri) in any respect both. And would speak about him on the road.”
Magnesen stated Balistrieri, by means of his enforcer, put strain on Augie to pay a proportion of his playing winnings to him — “or else.” That enforcer was noticed by one other FBI agent in a giant argument with Augie shortly earlier than he was murdered, he added.
Magnesen confused that my cousin was neither a made member of the Mafia nor was he a “rat,” as Balistrieri had claimed.
“Palmisano was not an informant. However (Balistrieri) instructed the Chicago folks he was, and due to this fact a risk to him and due to this fact a risk to them,” Magnesen stated. “He simply lied. He did the whole lot he may to get them to do his soiled work.”
FBI paperwork corroborate that there was dangerous blood between the 2, together with a July 1978 report stating that Augie had “brazenly confirmed his disgust with Balistrieri for having a bomb positioned in Vincent Maniaci’s car.”
The report additionally stated that Balistrieri had beforehand accused Augie of working a bookmaking enterprise with out paying off “the LCN,” or La Cosa Nostra.
Household historical past suggests the dangerous blood could have began years earlier, when Augie’s brother married Balistrieri’s sister, in opposition to the Palmisano household’s needs. The connection reportedly acquired worse when Balistrieri and Augie started feuding over a shared relative they each wished to rent who’d taken a job as a bartender at Augie’s tavern.
Former FBI Agent Bob Walsh stated Augie and Vince refused to take orders from Balistrieri.
“They had been kind of outsiders,” Walsh stated. “He couldn’t management them. They had been form of on their very own.”
He believes Balistrieri used them for instance to scare others into doing as they had been instructed.
“I believe he wished to point out that he’s in cost right here,” Walsh stated. “And each every now and then, you’ve acquired to flex your muscle tissue and put someone down.”
Chasing ghosts
Within the greater than 4 many years since Augie’s homicide, the Third Ward has undergone a seismic shift. What was as soon as the working-class stretch generally known as Fee Row has been changed by posh boutiques, eating places, bars and different high-end companies that now line Broadway.
The constructing that was residence to Palmisano Produce and Richie’s on Broadway, or Palmy’s, is now Café Benelux. The boards that used to cowl the home windows are gone, as is the pool desk. Now the bar serves Belgian beers and craft cocktails, and a staircase results in a rooftop patio.
As for me, attempting to report on the 45-year-old unsolved homicide of a cousin I by no means knew has felt a bit like chasing ghosts – or attempting to place collectively a puzzle with too many lacking items.
Lots of the key figures concerned have died. Some would solely discuss anonymously as a result of they had been nonetheless afraid of the attain of organized crime, or just didn’t return my cellphone calls. Others declined to be interviewed, like Frank Balistrieri’s son, John. Augie’s kids didn’t reply to interview requests.
It’s been a reduction to study that Augie was not some assassin or Mafia kingpin – nor was he a “made” member, in line with the FBI brokers I interviewed who knew him. Those self same brokers stated that whereas Augie was no angel, he was humorous, charismatic and nicely favored. And lots of of his playing actions that had been front-page information many years in the past are actually mainly authorized.
Months spent poring over tons of of pages of police stories, FBI information, courtroom data and wiretap transcripts made me notice that in a way I’d been blaming Augie for his personal homicide – or at the least attempting to determine what he did that led to the automobile bombing.
Franke observed I used to be nonetheless struggling to make sense of the homicide once I referred to as him months after our preliminary interview to ask about further paperwork that will shed some mild on the case.
“Mary, I do know you’re attempting to know what your cousin did or didn’t do this led to his dying,” Franke instructed me. “However this was about energy.”
He was proper. Augie could have been a gambler who refused to provide Balistrieri a lower of his earnings, and criticized the tried homicide of his greatest pal. And he in all probability even referred to as Balistrieri a reputation to his face. However he did not should die the best way he did.
He was a businessman and a hustler. A convicted gambler and a faithful pal. A insurgent who bucked authority. He was adored. And he had some highly effective enemies.
His title was Augie Palmisano, and he was my cousin.
Contact Mary Spicuzza at (414) 224-2324 or mary.spicuzza@jrn.com. Comply with her on Twitter at @MSpicuzzaMJS.