Anthony Casso - Early Life

Early Life

Born in South Brooklyn, Casso was the youngest of the three children of Michael and Margaret Casso (née Cucceullo). Each of Casso's grandparents had emigrated from Campania, Italy, during the 1890s. His godfather was Salvatore Callinbrano, a made man and captain in the Genovese crime family, who maintained a powerful influence on the Brooklyn docks. Casso dropped out of school at 16 and got a job with his father as a longshoreman. As a young boy, Casso became a crack shot, firing pistols at targets on a rooftop which he and his friends used as a shooting range. Casso also made money shooting predatory hawks for pigeon tenders. Casso stands at 5'6 and weighs 185 pounds.

Casso was a violent youth and member of the infamous 1950s gang, the South Brooklyn Boys. In 1958, he was arrested after a "rumble" against Irish-American gangsters. Casso later told Philip Carlo that his father visited him at the police station and tried in vain to scare his son straight.

Casso soon caught the eye of Lucchese capo "Christie Tick" Furnari. Casso started his career with the Cosa Nostra as a loanshark. As a protégé of Furnari, Casso was also involved in gambling and drug dealing, in addition to loansharking. He was arrested for attempted murder in 1961, but was acquitted when the alleged victim refused to identify him. He would not see the inside of a cell again for over 30 years.

Over the years, there have been various stories of how Casso got the nickname "Gaspipe" – Casso himself claims it is from his father, a mob enforcer who used a gas pipe to threaten union dissidents and other victims, however others say it is because his father hooked up illegal gas connections. Even though Anthony detested the nickname, it stuck to him for life and though few would say it to his face, he allowed some close friends to call him "Gas".

During the 1970s, Casso was one of a string of Mafia associates who were suspected of cooperating with the Federal government. In 1974, at age 32, Casso became a made man, or full member, of the Lucchese family. Casso was assigned to Vincent "Vinnie Beans" Foceri's crew that operated from 116th Street in Manhattan and from Fourteenth avenue in Brooklyn.

Shortly after becoming made, Casso became close to another rising star in the family, Vic Amuso. It was the start of a partnership that would last for two decades. They committed scores of crimes, including drug trafficking, burglary and the murders of informants. When Furnari became the Lucchese consigliere, he asked Casso to take over his old crew. However, Casso declined, and he instead opted to become Furnari's aide; a consigliere is allowed to have one soldier work for him directly.

In December 1985, Casso was approached by Gambino capo Frank DeCicco regarding a planned coup in his own family. John Gotti, another Gambino capo whose crew had been implicated in drug deals, was planning to kill his boss Paul Castellano and take over the Gambino family, and was looking for support among the acting bosses-in-waiting of the families affected by the Commission case. According to Sammy Gravano, another of Gotti's co-conspirators who would later turn state's evidence, Casso offered the conspirators his support. Casso himself would claim he tried to talk DeCicco out of participating in the coup, warning him that, without official sanction for the Commission, all the participants would be murdered in revenge. The hit went ahead regardless on December 16; Casso would later denounce Gotti's actions to biographer Philip Carlo as "the beginning of the end of our thing."

As Casso had warned, Lucchese boss Anthony Corallo and Genovese boss Vincent Gigante decided to kill Gotti and DeCicco, his new underboss, in revenge. Amuso and Casso were chosen to handle the assassinations, and were instructed to use a bomb to try and shift suspicion from themselves; while American mafiosi didn't use bombs due to the risk of collateral damage, Sicilian mafiosi did. Amuso and Casso made one attempt on the lives of Gotti and DeCicco, planting a bomb in DeCicco's car when the two were scheduled to visit a social club on April 13, 1986. Gotti cancelled at the last minute, however, and the bomb instead only killed DeCicco and injured the passenger they had mistaken for Gotti.