LURED TO HIS DEATH
Cops suspect fake car crash drew Gambino boss to bloody slaughter
Frank Cali’s bloody handprints can be seen on side of his SUV (inset) after the Gambino boss was executed outside his Staten Island home.
The cold-blooded killer who gunned down Gambino crime boss Frank (Franky Boy) Cali likely lured his victim outside with a fake car crash — then blew him away in front of his Staten Island home.
Cali, 53, was having dinner with his family inside his Todt Hill house when a pickup truck smashed into his silver Cadillac Escalade SUV around 9:15 p.m. Wednesday — prompting the Gambino mobster to rush outside.
Video surveillance shows Cali briefly talking to a man who jumped out of the truck — until a muzzle flash and a barrage of shots sent the old-school wiseguy desperately scrambling for cover underneath his Cadillac.
It was too late, however. The shooter pumped at least six 9-mm bullets into the Sicilian-born made man — leaving him bloody and inert — before hopping back into the vehicle and speeding away. Cops combed surveillance footage of Staten Island’s bridges Thursday but found no trace of it leaving the borough.
The truck likely had already been dumped at a demolition site, a police source said. Cops did recover 12 shell casings at the scene.
Cali was declared dead at Staten Island University Hospital — and his murder has raised questions about the possibility of a civil war within the Gambino organization or, even worse, a mob war with another of New York’s five families.
Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea, at a press conference Thursday at police headquarters, said investigators were considering a variety of theories about Cali’s assassination.
“Certainly Mr. Cali’s prior dealings — he has been arrested prior by the feds — are a focal point at this point of the investigation. We are ruling nothing out at this point,” said Shea, who said the gunman was somewhere between 25 and 40 years old.
Some law enforcement eyes turned immediately to 73-year-old Gene Gotti, brother of ex-Gambino head John Gotti, who brutally whacked a rival crime boss in 1985 to take over the organization.
Gene Gotti — released from federal prison six months ago after serving 29 years for dealing heroin — might have wanted to take Cali out in a dramatic power play of his own, two police sources conjectured.
“It’s total speculation,” one of the sources said about a possible Gotti link. “But it’s also something to look out for. Was Gene trying to reclaim some of his business and Cali wasn’t going for it?”
Gotti couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday.
While Shea cautioned that the investigation is still preliminary, other early theories included a planned rubout by Cali’s underlings, a killer with a personal vendetta with the mobster or even a classic mob hit by the new wave of Russian and Albanian wiseguys looking to muscle into the family business.
“Looking at it from the outside, it makes no sense that Cali was killed — he seemed like the perfect guy to be the leader of a prominent family like the Gambinos,” said mob expert Howard Abadinsky, a criminal justice professor at St. John’s University.
“He was low-profile, born in Sicily and worked his way up the organization — he didn’t have to kill anybody to get there. He’s going to be very
hard to replace,” said Abadinsky. “It raises all kinds of questions about who authorized his murder. It makes sense to somebody, but who?”
What is unlikely, Abadinsky said, is that a rival New York crime family orchestrated the execution.
“We haven’t seen a mob war across the families since the 1930s, I think,” he said, adding it was more likely an internal hit. “Obviously someone made the decision that he should be killed, but it wouldn’t have been a oneperson decision — there would have been consultation. It was not spur of the moment.”
Mayor de Blasio weighed in as well Thursday, saying he was shocked by the violent death.
“We thought those days were over,” the mayor said. “Very surprising, but I guess old habits die hard.”
Cali has been the highestprofile hit in many years — but it’s far from the only mob murder to take place in the city.
Cali’s Gambino associate Anthony Padrella, 59, was busted Thursday for allegedly shooting dead a mob-connected loanshark, Vincent Zito, 77, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, last October.
Also in October, reputed Bonanno family associate Sylvester Zottola, 71, was shot dead at a McDonald’s drive through in the Bronx. A Bloods gang member was later arrested.
Less than three months before that hit, Zottola’s son, Salvatore, 41, was shot outside the family home in Throgs Neck but survived.
There were no apparent links between these incidents and Cali’s murder, sources said. But cops hadn’t drawn any final conclusions, Shea added.
Cali’s family on Thursday told the NYPD to “get lost” when cops came looking for their home-security footage, sources said. Authorities were forced to get a warrant to get the video.
Cali, who served on the Gambino family’s ruling panel for several years, was elevated to acting boss in 2015, replacing then 68-year-old Domenico Cefalu, authorities said.
Cefalu had taken over the Gambino family operation in 2011, after ousting the kin of John Gotti, the headlinegrabbing mobster who died in prison in 2002.
Cali’s ties to the mob ran deep, with strong links to his native Sicily.
His wife is the niece of Gambino capo John Gambino. His brother Joseph and brother-in-law Peter Inzerillo are reputed Gambino soldiers.
He rose quickly through the ranks of organized crime, becoming a powerful capo before the age of 40, less than a decade after he became an inducted member, according to court papers.
Federal authorities tried to put a stop to Cali’s rise in the late 2000s after he completed a 16-month sentence for an extortion scheme connected to a failed bid to build a Nascar track on Staten Island. It was his only arrest.
His former lawyer, Harlan Protass, said Thursday he had no theories about who killed Cali.
“As a client, Frank was smart, mild-mannered and low-key,” he said. “I feel terrible for his wife and children, who he loved very much.”