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News and Features about Organized Crime, Mafia and La Cosa Nostra taken from National and Local News Sources. In an attempt to get you this type of coverage in a timely manner we can not be responsible for the content of the following material. |
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1-23-00 Raul Charbonier, linked to gangland turncoat, dead at 73. JANET LEISER, The Tampa Tribune January 23, 2000 TAMPA - The late Raul Charbonier's involvement in a 1970 abduction earned Tampa a few seconds of fame. Raul Charbonier, a Tampa man convicted in 1972 of extortion along with New York mobster Henry Hill - whose life was the subject of the movie ``Goodfellas'' - died Jan. 15 at Vencor Hospital. He was 73. Charbonier's name wasn't mentioned and his face wasn't shown on the big screen, but his involvement with the Brooklyn-born mob turncoat won Tampa a 30-second spot in the 1990 movie. It was October 1970 when Hill and three other ``enforcers'' traveled to Hillsborough County from New York at the invitation of Charbonier and brother Luis. The brothers wanted help in the collection of a gambling debt. Hill and the others abducted Gaspar Ciaccio from his Temple Terrace bar and took him to the Char-Pal Lounge, owned by the brothers, where he was beaten and pistol-whipped throughout the night, court testimony showed. If the beatings weren't enough to force Ciaccio to pay the debt from betting on baseball games, Hill threatened to drown him in a Busch Gardens pond, near the Char-Pal, to stuff his children into a refrigerator, and to force his wife into prostitution. When the movie came out two decades later, a scene portrayed the incident as taking place in a zoo, where Ciaccio was thrown into a cage with lions. In real life, the high-profile criminal case made headlines for several years. Eventually, Raul and Luis Charbonier and Hill, along with two associates, were convicted of extortion and gambling, and were sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. A fifth defendant, Cosmos ``Casey'' Rosado, died of a heart attack before trial. In 1978, Raul Charbonier, a Tampa native and the son of Cuban immigrants, was released from the Atlanta penitentiary after three years and seven months. His wife, Laura, declined comment Saturday, except to say the case was never portrayed accurately by the media. Tampa lawyer Barry Cohen, who represented Charbonier and the others, said it was his first federal case. And as far as he knew, the men seemed like gentlemen. ``I was just a kid,'' Cohen said. ``I thought I was a big shot hanging around with them.'' Cohen recalled how Hill and the others received the best seats in restaurants. When they would arrive at a restaurant, he said, they would walk up to other patrons and tell them they were in their seats. ``People got the message very quickly that they were no-nonsense,'' Cohen said. While Charbonier avoided the limelight since his release from prison, Hill has remained in it. A member of the Lucchese crime family, he became an FBI informant and joined the witness protection program in 1980 as Martin T. Lewis. His autobiography, ``Wise Guys,'' written with crime writer Nicholas Pileggi, told of his mob exploits, including the $5.8 million 1978 Lufthansa heist at New York's Kennedy Airport. In addition to his wife, Laura, Charbonier leaves a son, Raul III of Tampa; a daughter, Gisele of Tampa; two brothers, Luis and Mario, both of Tampa; a sister, Ida Gonzalez of Tampa; and three grandchildren. Arrangements were handled by National Cremation Society. __________________________________________________
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