02/06/2000

CAROL ROBINSON
The Birmingham News staff writer

Joe Dogs loves to tell this story:

A Catholic priest knelt over him, a Gambino family mobster beaten mercilessly by his peers. Weeping women huddled around the Florida hospital bed as the priest murmured last rites and readied sacramental oil.

Joe Iannuzzi - Joe Dogs, as he was known in The Family for his love of greyhound racing - was broken. His head was battered until its flesh puffed up around his skull, his nose was split open and crushed. His teeth were cracked. An ear dangled. His ribs were broken and his genitals swollen.

Through a fog of pain and prescription drugs, Iannuzzi heard the nurse pronounce him dead.

He bolted upright.

The priest called it answered prayers; the doctor, a miracle.

Joe Dogs called it a chance to even the score. Burning for revenge, he became one of the government's best weapons against organized crime.

Joseph Iannuzzi shouldn't talk about his days as a made member of one of New York's five infamous crime families. He shouldn't talk about the two years he spent secretly recording Mafia wiseguys or the dozen convictions his testimony won.

But he can't stop.

Since ratting more than a decade ago, Iannuzzi's life has become a succession of low-profile jobs in smaller cities - most recently Birmingham, where he worked for the past nine months as a security guard at one of the city's larger corporations.

Exiled from his past, his family and his failings, Iannuzzi trades on the story to win friends and earn a buck.

"People exploit me, but I'm having fun with it now," Iannuzzi said. "I get a kick. I love the attention."

Iannuzzi is leaving Birmingham for parts unknown.

"Where I'm going now, if I can keep my mouth closed, maybe I'll meet someone I could get close to and have some kind of a relationship with," he said wistfully. "Maybe I'll get away with it. For a week or two."

Not likely. His story is just too good. Born to be a wiseguy

You can see sadness in Joe Dogs. It's in those once-dark eyes that have faded with age. But there's humor, too. His laugh rumbles through years of cigarettes and Dewar's scotch. He's mobster from head to toe in his mock turtleneck shirts and loafers, dishing out twenties as tips and threats as advice.

"If anybody (expletive) with you or your daughter, don't go to the cops," he says. "You come to me. I know people."

And that accent.

Fuhgedaboudit. To hear him talk, he's Don Corleone.

This image, he contends, was his destiny.

Born in Port Chester, N.Y., in 1931, Iannuzzi was the son of a bookie. Every Saturday, the boy would accompany his father, a former middleweight, on his rounds to collect the bets.

"My father wasn't well-educated. He was almost illiterate. He was a hustler," Iannuzzi said. "He worked as a garbage man, in construction, and in defense when there was a war, but he always had his hands on the bookmaking end. Always."

The mobsters they saw regularly impressed him.

"I saw mob guys coming around, collecting money from him," he said. "I saw how they were treated and respected and everything. They were my idols. ... I wanted to be just like them."

As a teen, Iannuzzi and his buddies formed a gang called the Night Raiders. They printed up business cards and left them at joints they robbed.

His first pinch, or arrest, came in 1945 when he was 14. Afterward, he hitchhiked to California, where he slept on park benches, painted mailboxes, and stole dogs to collect the rewards.

His career as an L.A. dognapper lasted two months before the cops shipped him home. "I lied about everything, but they finally got my name," he said. "I just broke down and cried."

Several years later, he had fought in Korea, married and divorced. He worked odd jobs in construction or cooking, married twice more and had five children with his second and third wives.

It was during his third marriage that his mob ties strengthened.

"I was looking for an easy buck," he said. "They always had plenty of money, throwing around good tips, so I looked forward to being with them, waiting on them when I was a common man."

He hooked up with bookmakers loosely connected to the Colombo family. Since he was a whiz with numbers, they offered him a gig as a sheetwriter, keeping track of bets and debts.

By the 1960s, he was taking in about $700 a week, tax-free. He worked bookie jobs and ran the grill at a diner. "I became more and more involved." Living the high life

Joe Dogs still toiled in the minor leagues, but he was turning pro. He left New York in 1968 and headed to West Palm Beach. A recession was on and money was tight, but Iannuzzi took work with a drywall contractor. His unofficial job title was slugger and his duties were to shake down subcontractors. He pocketed $600 to $800 a week.

"Sometimes I was hired out just to provide a little muscle," he said. "I never minded smacking a guy."

Iannuzzi had friends in both the Colombo and Gambino families and did jobs for both.

But around 1970, Joe Dogs had a meeting that changed his life. That's when a pal introduced him to a tough-talking, sharp-dressed mobster from the Gambino crime family.

He was Tommy "T.A." Agro, who ran most of southeast Florida's mob operations as a Gambino soldier.

"My idol. I loved him. Fuhgedaboudit," Iannuzzi said. "Sharp dresser. A lot of money. He acted like a real big-time mobster. We became good friends and close."

Agro immediately staked his claim on Joe Dogs.

"He was my instructor. My mentor. And I learned fast," Iannuzzi said. "I used to walk into a place with a strut on me, fuhgedaboudit. I'd never been in the place before and people thought I owned the (expletive) place."

Iannuzzi was no longer just a sheetwriter. He was a thug and a bully. He beat people and admits to being in the presence of more than one corpse, though he doesn't like to talk about those things. Ask if he's ever killed a guy, and you'll learn a little mob etiquette:

"That's a rude question."

The FBI watched Iannuzzi 24 hours a day. It was no secret. His landlord kicked him out of the apartment when agents told him he was renting to a Mafioso. Iannuzzi moved to a duplex up the street and so did the FBI.

Iannuzzi particularly intrigued West Palm Beach FBI Special Agent Larry Doss.

"When I first came to south Florida, he was about the only organized crime figure around," Doss recalled. "My first assignment was to put Joe in jail."

One morning, Doss and another agent knocked on Iannuzzi's door and identified themselves. The agent and the mobster hit it off. They talked about 45 minutes and Iannuzzi even put away the rifle and three pistols he'd taken out for the occasion.

"One thing you have to understand about the mobster life: We were always talking to feds. Nobody ran from them," Iannuzzi wrote in his book Joe Dogs, The Life & Crimes of a Mobster published in 1993 by Simon & Schuster. "It was kind of an unwritten rule throughout the Famiglias: If the Eye approached, tell them what they want to hear, just don't tell them nothing.

"There wasn't a wiseguy worth his button who wasn't polite and blandly accommodating whenever the G (government agents) came around."

Iannuzzi's relationship with the FBI flourished. He tossed them morsels of information, enough to keep them happy but not enough to hurt himself or his buddies. But his relationship with Agro was deteriorating.

Iannuzzi had borrowed $60,000 from Agro and reloaned the money at a higher rate, paying off Agro and keeping the spread. He got behind in his payments because he was having trouble collecting money on his own loans.

That was something he didn't tell the feds, but there was no way to hide it after Jan. 19, 1981.

Agro, along with two of his crew members, was tired of waiting for his money. It was time to make an example out of Joe Dogs.

Agro summoned Iannuzzi to a friend's Singer Island pizzeria. Iannuzzi went to shake Agro's hand and darkness engulfed him.

"The last thing I remember was Agro himself drawing back his legs and digging his dainty little alligator loafer deep into my ribs," Iannuzzi wrote in his memoirs.

Iannuzzi remembers little about the beating. Doss won't ever forget it. He got to the hospital as soon as he heard.

"He's unconscious. His head looks like a melon. I figured I got this guy killed," the agent said. "His brains are mush."

It took Iannuzzi months to recover. When he did, hate consumed him.

In his mind, there was only one way to exact revenge. A rat is born

Agro phoned Iannuzzi in the hospital and kept on calling, demanding money. Agro's audacity enraged Iannuzzi. He taped Agro's calls and played them for the FBI.

That's how the feds got what they now call Tape 25 - nearly a half hour of Agro spewing about beating up Joe Dogs. There's not one sentence on that tape fit for print, but it would later make a huge impact on a jury. "When we made this tape, we knew we had him" for attempted murder, Doss recalled. "After this tape, I confront Joe. Now he tells me the whole bloody truth. And he wants to get even."

The FBI fronted Iannuzzi money to repay Agro and the two men patched things up, or so the mobsters thought.

Operation Home Run was off and running.

For the next two years, Iannuzzi recorded every mob meeting. He and the feds were inseparable.

Iannuzzi and undercover agent John Bonino, posing as John Marino, set up and ran a mob nightclub. The Gambinos didn't know it was bugged to the rafters. Their sting was so convincing that the Gambinos inducted Bonino as a mobster in the midst of the operation.

"We didn't know where this case was going," Doss said. "It had a life of its own."

The case lived until September 1982, when the government decided to end Operation Home Run. It wasn't long after that Iannuzzi's cover was blown. An overly ambitious FBI agent in New York cornered Agro and tried to bait him into becoming an informant by telling him of Iannuzzi's cooperation.

"It goes through the whole Mafia within a matter of hours that Joe is a rat," Doss said.

During the next 10 years, Iannuzzi testified in 12 trials.

The FBI paid him $3,800 a month and moved him from city to city, state to state.

"He was good. The proof of the pudding is do you convict?" Doss said. "For all of Joe's shortcomings, his strength was the truth. One thing Joe never did was lie."

Iannuzzi's testimony sent more than a dozen people to prison. In 1986, Agro pleaded guilty to loan-sharking, extortion and attempted murder and was sentenced to 20 years in the Florida State Penitentiary. In 1987 he was granted a medical parole to die at home, which he did that June from brain cancer.

Among the others Iannuzzi sent away were Colombo boss Carmine "The Snake" Persico; Gambino capo Andrew "Fat Andy" Ruggiano, released from prison last year and a contender to take over the Gambino Family; Riviera Beach, Fla., Police Chief William Darden; Agro sidekick Bobby "Skinny Bobby" DeSimone, whose brother Tommy was played by Joe Pesci in the movie Goodfellas; and a list of other Gambino and Colombo capos, crew members, and sluggers.

"Some nights, after sitting in that witness stand putting my old pals away, I went back to my room and cried," Iannuzzi said in his book. "I got into the whole thing for one reason. I wanted revenge on Tommy Agro." Life on the run

Iannuzzi got his revenge, but at a price.

"New towns, new places, new faces, and new lies I had to tell," he says. Under an assumed name, Iannuzzi moved around the Southeast and even opened a small bagel shop in Florida. It went under during one of the longer trials. Iannuzzi begged to get into the witness protection program, but the process was lengthy.

In 1992, in southern Florida, his past caught up. The daughter of a man he put away spotted him at a convenience store. Not long after, as he drove along Interstate 75, a dark sedan passed him. He saw two arms emerge from the front right and rear window with guns. Shots rang out.

"My life flashed before my eyes. The good times. The bad times," he said. "I kept seeing my children's faces, their cries."

Iannuzzi ducked and slammed on the brakes. Bullets pelted his car and bounced off the pavement.

"They almost got me," he said.

Days later, he was in the witness protection program.

"I stayed in hotel after hotel for about six months. Different cities, different states," he said. "I wound up in Memphis. I stayed there for a year and a half."

Iannuzzi is not a fan of the protection program.

"You go to get a job; you got no references, and they're not going to lie for you," he said. "They don't help you get references for an apartment. You have to go out and muscle it yourself."

Despite the program's requirement of anonymity, Iannuzzi also began muscling his way to public attention.

He sold his autobiography for $250,000 to Simon & Schuster and in 1993 published his Mafia Cookbook. He was offered a spot on the David Letterman show to promote the compendium of high-cholesterol recipes and gory war stories.

He says he told the feds he was going to do the show, and no one told him fuhgedaboudit. Iannuzzi made it to the set, but his segment was canceled at the last minute.

Nonetheless, a New York newspaper caught wind of the story.

Cookbook sales soared. Joe Dogs was booted out of the witness protection program. The government gave Iannuzzi $7,500 and a kiss-off.

He moved to Charlotte, N.C., on his own and stayed six months.

"I would walk my dog. Go to a bar. Meet friends. I had money, you know. Money from my book," he said. "Then I got tired of that. I heard about Birmingham having a racetrack."

Iannuzzi settled in a Hoover apartment in January 1994, but despite proximity to greyhounds and betting windows, life was no better. "I was in a shell for 2

½ years," he said. "Nobody knew who I was."

For a guy like Joe, that's real punishment.

"I was very depressed," he said. "My phone bills were astronomical. I was reaching out for anybody to talk to."

He called people he hadn't talked to in years.

"They were glad to hear from me, but, you know, I made my own bed. I hadda sleep in it," he said. "And then I got to be like a pain ... to them. They never said that, but I know."

Iannuzzi decided to leave Birmingham about 1997. He had started to make friends and, because he thought he'd soon be gone, he let a few of them in on his secret. And then, Iannuzzi agreed to talk to an over-the-mountain civic club about his adventures and his books.

"From then on, everybody started to know who I was," he said. "It was my own fault really."

Iannuzzi sometimes hires out to his new friends, or their friends, cooking one of his lavish multicourse dinners for small parties of some of Birmingham's wealthier residents. The shtick goes like this: While Iannuzzi's in the kitchen, the host shows a videotape of Joe Dogs' interviews with A&E or the Discovery Channel's recent special, The Rise and Fall of The Mafia. Then, he emerges from the kitchen and the delighted guests find out their chef is a real, live former mobster.

"People get off on it," he said. "You know, they say, 'Hey Joe Dogs, I got somebody I want you to whack' or 'Hey Joe Dogs, I wish you'd been there ...'

"I'm glad I wasn't there because they'd have to see Joe Dogs ain't what he used to be."

Habits remain. At a recent dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House, Iannuzzi gave the maitre'd $20, and then the hostess another $10 for escorting him about 10 feet to his table.

"What I miss about what happened before was the glamour," he said. "I don't miss smacking people around or taking advantage of people."

Iannuzzi replays those times in his mind.

"At night I'm alone with nothing to do but think about my past. All the bad things I did. All the good times I had."

Iannuzzi believes the threat to him persists, though more mob snitches are going public with their stories. He always has a gun in his front right pocket. In his right rear pocket is a worn leather glove with sand sewn into the knuckles.

"When I wake up in the morning, I look around. I first look to see where my dog is," he said.

Doss agreed that Joe Dogs is still, and will always be, in grave danger.

"Joe needs to have a lot of luck and hope that he's not in the wrong place at the wrong time," the agent said. "If that ever happens, he's a dead man."

Birmingham has been home to Joe Dogs longer than any other city in the past two decades and his stint as a security guard is the longest he's ever held a legitimate job.

"And now I have to leave. I'm very sad about that," Iannuzzi said. "I get up at 5:30 a.m. to be at this job. Please. When I was mobster, I used to come home at 5:30 a.m."

Iannuzzi knows he needs to keep his mouth shut. He's got to stop telling the story.

"It's so hard for me to do it. I'm my own worst enemy, sure," he said. "That's why I gotta move again."

And he's got to make people like him all over again. That's his life.

"I try to buy my friendship with a lot of people," he said. "Some people resent it. Some people take advantage of it.

"But I want to be liked. It's a nice feeling to be liked."

Joe Dogs packed up his life in a few cardboard boxes last week. He didn't say where he was going because he wants to shoot for anonymity this time.

But asked what he told his supervisor when he gave notice, he hesitated.

"I told him who I was," Joe Dogs reluctantly admitted. "Then I went to my car and got him two cookbooks out of my trunk."

© 2000 The Birmingham News. Used with permission.

AmericanMafia.com
div. of PLR International
P.O. Box 19146
Cleveland, OH 44119-0146
216 374-0000

Copyright © 2000 PLR International