LEXINGTON — Bob Friedrick helped encourage the Cleveland witness who brought down mob bosses in New York City and elsewhere around the country, sending shockwaves in the country’s organized crime world.
The former FBI agent — speaking during a presentation Sunday evening at The Local at 97, told the story of organized crime leader Angelo Lonardo — who became the first sitting American Mafia don to become a witness for the government.
Dressed in a long-sleeve, button-down white dress shirt with a subtle check pattern, Friedrick was armed with a laptop and projector Sunday, rather than the likely standard-issue Smith & Wesson Model 13 revolver he could have carried on the banks of the Cuyahoga River in the 1980s.
But the former U.S. Marine spoke as directly as he did when he worked the streets of Cleveland, which became known as “Bomb City USA” during the height of gang wars that included infamous gangster Danny Greene, whose death Friedrick investigated.
Lonordo wasn’t the first member of “Cosa Nostra” to break the mob’s omertà, a code of silence that traditionally requires members and associates to never cooperate with cops, never testify against other members and never discuss the organization’s activities with outsiders.
The first to break the code that originated in Sicily was Joseph Valachi, who testified before Congress in 1963, changing the minds of many who doubted the existence of a nationwide Mafia.
But Lonordo was the highest-ranking member of the organization to speak openly about the Mafia, rather than spend the rest of his life in prison.
(Below are photos taken Sunday evening during former FBI agent Bob Friedrick‘s presentation at The Local at 97 in Lexington about investigating organized crime in Cleveland in the 1970s and 1980s. The story continues below the images.)
‘Judge, I’m 67 years old. I can’t do 103 years.’
Friedrick, now 82, recounted how Lonardo, aka “Big Ange” had been sentenced to 103 years in federal prison in 1983 by U.S. District Court Judge John Manos after his racketeering and drug trafficking convictions.
“Angelo says to the judge, ‘Judge, I’m 67 years old. I can’t do 103 years.’
“Judge Manos, with a very straight face says, ‘Just do your best,'” Friedrick told a small group gathered to hear his memories of investigating organized crime in Cleveland in the 1970s and 1980s.
Lonardo was sent to Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. Friedrick, a former supervisor of the FBI’s organized crime squad in Cleveland, went to visit the mobster after a conference in Chicago.
“I had talked to Angelo several times (in the past). So I went in there and he was the most depressed guy I’ve ever seen in my life. He was really depressed. I gave him my card and we talked for about a half an hour.
“I said, ‘Angelo, you think you need some help in all of this and you want to get out while you’re still alive, give me a call.’
“Two weeks later, he gave me a call,” Friedrick said. “We pulled him out of jail as a result of him cooperating.
“It was phenomenal what he could do (as a witness).”
Lonardo went into witness protection, but later returned to Cleveland where he eventually died in his sleep in 2006.
What made Lonardo different?
Lonardo wasn’t a low-level associate. He was the underboss of the Cleveland crime family and had been a member of the Mafia for decades. According to themobmuseum.com, Lonardo’s Mafia lineage dated back to Prohibition.
“His father, Joe, was the first boss of the Cleveland Mafia, slain in 1927 by his second-in-command, Salvatore “Black Sam” Todaro. The younger Lonardo, only a teenager, retaliated by killing Black Sam two years later, luring him to a meeting with his mom in June 1929 and shooting him to death in broad daylight,” according to the mob museum website.
Also, Lonardo was a part of the inner leadership circle under boss James Licavoli and he was involved in meetings with leaders from multiple Mafia families throughout the Midwest and beyond.
As underboss, he knew the identities of made members and associates. He was involved in gambling, loansharking, and labor racketeering operations. He had relationships with families in NYC, Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee and elsewhere. Lonardo knew details of major drug trafficking operations.
Friedrick described the impact of Lonardo’s testimony.
“What he did was (say) that, ‘I’m in the Mafia and these guys that you see sitting here at these (defendant) tables, they’re in the Mafia, too, because I know them. I’ve met them,'” the former FBI agent remembered.
“He established the (organized crime) enterprise,” Friedrick said.
Lonardo’s testimony helped convict Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno of New York’s Genovese family; Joseph “Joey Doves” Aiuppa in Chicago; Nicholas “Nick” Civella of Kansas City; and other Cleveland mob figures tied to the Carmen Zagaria drug ring and the family’s leadership structure, including Lonardo’s own brother-in-law, Morris “Maishe” Rockman, a prominent gambling and racketeering figure.
Lonardo’s cooperation, aided by Friedrick’s efforts, marked a turning point in the government’s war against organized crime.
It demonstrated that even top Mafia leaders could be persuaded to break omertà. His decision helped pave the way for later high-ranking cooperators, including Sammy “The Bull” Gravano and others, who further weakened the mob’s influence in the United States.
For Cleveland specifically, Lonardo’s testimony provided one of the most detailed public records ever created about the inner workings of the city’s Mafia family, making him one of the most important organized-crime witnesses in FBI history.
Murder of Danny Greene led to later cases
Ironically, Friedrick was originally from New York and came to Cleveland as an FBI agent. After settling into the city with his wife and family, he later declined an offer to return to New York City.
He said Cleveland, despite the gang violence he was working to quell, was a better place to raise a family. And tickets to then-Cleveland Indians baseball games were a lot cheaper than prices in the Big Apple.
One of his most interesting cases was investigating the death of Greene, a self-described “Celtic Warrior” who battled against the Italian bosses in Cleveland.
Greene had returned to Cleveland after his own stint in the U.S. Marines. Friedrick said Greene came home eager to settle some childhood scores.
“They picked on him pretty good (growing up). He’s a short guy, but he went in the Marine Corps. When he came back, he was going to get his licks in,” Friedrick said.
Roughly, and somewhat inaccurately depicted in the 2011 film, “Kill the Irishman,” Greene made money for the mob, largely as an enforcer, before a dispute over a borrowed $70,000 led to a break.
The Cleveland mob bosses tried several times to kill Greene, including blowing up his house, according to Friedrick.
It was a war that ended for Greene in 1977 when “The Irishman” was assassinated by a car bomb in the parking lot of the Brainard Place office complex in Lyndhurst, just east of Cleveland, after leaving a dental appointment.
A witness to the bombing got a good look at the driver of a car leaving the area after the bombing, which was set off by remote control in a vehicle parked next to Greene’s. She copied down the license plate number and later drew a sketch from memory.
The woman was the daughter of a local police detective and was also an artist, making her observations especially valuable. Her sketch led investigators to a familiar organized-crime suspect: Ray Ferritto from Erie, Pa.
Friedrick worked the case with local police. They found the car used as the “bomb car” was a Chevrolet Nova and the vehicle whose license plate the woman recorded was tied to Ferritto.
Registration records showed the Nova and Ferritto’s car had been registered consecutively at the same license bureau, linking the vehicles to the assassination team, according to Friedrick.
He said a search of Ferritto’s home later uncovered material showing he had been tracking Greene, including a magazine photo used to help identify his target.
Armed with strong evidence that could put the suspect in jail for life, investigators convinced Ferritto to talk. His cooperation helped prosecutors build cases against several Cleveland organized-crime figures.
One of the six arrested for the bombing of Greene was Lonardo. Three of the five men were acquitted by a jury in the state murder case and charges were dropped against another.
One of the men acquitted was Lonardo, but the case raised his profile with the feds, who successfully went after him a few years later with the then-relatively new racketeering laws.
Friedrick not a fan of the movie version
Friedrick was not a fan of the “Kill the Irishman” movie, nor the book upon which it was based, written by Rick Porrello.
“Porrello never talked to any FBI guys and we were the ones that did the investigation. He talked to a couple of other people. It just wasn’t that accurate,” he said.
Thought it got a lot of attention, it was also just one of many mob-related homicides and other criminal cases Friedrick and FBI agents in Cleveland worked.
There were eight to 12 major confirmed 1970s mob-related murders tied to the Greene/Mafia conflict.
There were dozens of car and building bombings during the peak years, including a reported 36 in 1976, earning the city its nickname of “Bomb City USA.”
Among the worst of the mobsters were Hans “The Surgeon” Grawe and his brother, Fritz, who became key members of a criminal enterprise that united factions of Cleveland’s underworld after the Greene era. Federal prosecutors identified him as a significant participant in gambling, narcotics trafficking, extortion and violent crimes, including murder.
It was a time when bodies were being found dumped in quarries and other bodies of water in northeast Ohio.
Friedrick didn’t hesitate in identifying Hans Grawe as the worst killer he ever encountered.
“Hans just enjoyed killing people. For fun, he’d get in his car and drive down Lorain Road to one of the poor sections. People would be walking their dog and he’d just shoot and kill the dog (for fun),” Friedrick said.
Through it all, Friedrick had many conversations with organized crime figures he helped to bring down.
The former FBI agent said one of the mob figures once criticized to him the way the American legal system operates.
“He said, ‘You guys, you settle all your arguments with civil cases. You sue each other. It takes forever.
“‘We just use knives and guns and it’s done.'”
