They're called 'wiseguys' for reason By Guy Sterling 2001/08/07 © The Star Ledger 1996      "Philip "Philly Faye" Casale and Pete "The Crumb" Caprio had a lot in common, most of it bad and bloody.      In their long careers, they shot people in cold blood, ran numbers in poor neighborhoods, bet over their heads, lent or borrowed money at exorbitant rates so they or others could gamble illegally, sold stolen property from the trunks of cars and consorted with bigtime hoods.      In the end, they were both nailed by authorities and, after a lifetime of living by their wits, the two gangsters had only one thing left to deal: each other.      This is the story of how one eventually outsmarted the other in a high-stakes game. The winner stood to enter the federal witness protection program, living in relative ease with government support, while the loser could anticipate spending the rest of his life in prison.      Casale was born in Newark in February 1944, the youngest of three children and the only boy. Named after his father, he would follow his namesake into a life of crime and associations with mobsters. A longshoreman with a lengthy arrest record, the older Casale once served time for operating a still.      The son showed little interest in studying and, when he was 16, left vocational school in Newark to find a job. In time, Casale would be hired by Newark's sanitation department, for which he drove a street cleaner. The garage where he worked was a stone's throw from the social club that Caprio owned on Hudson Street in Newark for years.      At 5 feet, 10 inches, Casale was known as a physical fitness enthusiast, working out on a steady basis. But that's not all he did regularly. He also liked to gamble, and was known to visit a loanshark or two, if necessary, to keep his habit going. Casale's gambling debt led to one of his first major brushes with the law.      Armed with a gun, he walked into a bank on Broad Street in Elizabeth one day in May 1971 and passed a teller a note demanding money, court records show. The note warned her not to give him any coins, otherwise he would blow her face apart. His haul was $7,500.      Five months later, he was apprehended for an attempted armed robbery of a doctor in Montclair, an incident that ended with Casale getting shot in the chest by his intended victim as he jumped out of the bushes during a surprise attack. After his arrest, Casale was also charged and convicted in the bank job, landing him a 12-year federal prison sentence.      Gambling was only part of Casale's dark side. He was also a sexual deviant. Arrested several times for sexual offenses over the years, he was convicted and sent to prison for luring a 10-year-old girl into an abandoned building in Newark in 1976, sexually assaulting her and beating her to within an inch of her life.      Casale denied committing the crime, even though he was found with the girl's Mickey Mouse watch. Released in 1985, he turned to the mob to make a living. One of those he sought out was Caprio, his old acquaintance from Hudson Street who also had been a friend of his father's, investigators say.      Ultimately, two jobs he pulled for Caprio led to his undoing more than a decade later. In November 1999, Casale admitted to a federal judge in Newark that he murdered two men who worked for the Philadelphia mob, Joseph Sodano and his right-hand man Willie Gantz.      Sodano, the Philadelphia family's captain in North Jersey, was killed in 1996, Gantz two years earlier. Both men were shot in the head, their bodies found in Newark.      The Sodano slaying was especially noteworthy because he was considered a big money-maker for the Philly mob. Police theorized he was killed because he had snubbed his Philadelphia superiors, even refusing to drive down the Turnpike to meet with them.      Casale, now 57, confessed the murders to federal investigators, as several law enforcement agencies were closing in on him. A detective with knowledge of the scenario said Casale "rolled over" the same day he was confronted with the evidence against him. As part of a deal, Casale agreed to be truthful in his dealings with federal officials and, if required, testify at trial.      In return, he would face a sentence no greater than 20 years for the shootings. Federal prosecutors agreed to write a letter telling the judge of his cooperation and asking for a break at sentencing if he held up his end of the bargain. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark was also to sponsor his entry into the witness protection program after he had served time.      Organized crime figures, who cooperate fully, can often get dramatically reduced sentences. For helping put former Gambino mob boss John Gotti behind bars, hitman Sammy "The Bull" Gravano received only a 5- year sentence despite confessing to more than a dozen murders.      The feds wanted far more than testimony from Casale. They asked him to secretly record conversations and help prosecutors make cases against his old mates. His sentencing was put off while he began his clandestine assignment.      According to Craig Mitnick, his lawyer, Casale made more than 150 tapes. The biggest fish reeled in from the tapes was Caprio, who was arrested in March of last year for his role in the Sodano and Gantz slayings.      Casale's taping of Caprio was "a shocker to everyone who knew the relationship," said Robert Sarcone, a former criminal prosecutor in Essex County who has represented both men in private practice.      With the death of Sodano, Caprio ascended to a position of power and prominence within the Philadelphia crime family's ranks, taking control of its operation in North Jersey.      "It was two steps higher up the organized crime ladder than he ever could have hoped for," said Robert Buccino, the state's former lead mob investigator, of Caprio. "But there was a void to be filled."      Unlike Casale, Caprio enjoyed close working relationships with organized crime. Those ties eventually earned him a place as a "made" man inside the Philadelphia family headed, at the time, by Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo. The swearing-in took place some 20 years ago at a restaurant in South Jersey.      "Nicky Scarfo wouldn't have known Pete if he fell over him," said an organized crime investigator. "But Pete had the right sponsors."      Impish and sometimes unkempt, Caprio, now 71, looked more like somebody's senile grandfather than a mobster. But he had the pedigree. Earlier this year, at the trial of Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, Philadelphia's latest mob boss, he testified his gangster father would wheel him through the streets when he was an infant, running his gambling operation out of the carriage to avoid detection.      Years later, detectives would watch as Caprio's numbers runners converged on the Hudson Street club to drop off the day's receipts.      When informed he'd been fingered for recruiting Casale to carry out the Sodano and Gantz slayings, Caprio sought to swing his own deal. Within days of his arraignment, Caprio entered into a plea deal with the government.      He, too, was required to be truthful and be prepared to testify. But in recounting his life of crime to FBI agents in May 2000, Caprio let loose with the last thing that Casale would ever have wanted them to find out - that Casale had concealed at least three other murders from investigators.      In a letter to U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise in June, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Kaplan identified the victims as Larry "Larry Day" Scolovano, William "Billy" Shears and Bobby Matonis, all associates of Casale. She said Casale eventually admitted his involvement in the killings, but she didn't stop there.      "As if this were not bad enough, Casale failed to advise the FBI and this office about his commission of a fourth murder - that of Harry Serio in 1989," Kaplan wrote.      Harry Serio was a 68-year-old former pro boxer and high-ranking Teamsters official found shot to death in his office in Union Township on Route 22 in October 1989. His murder generated headlines but had gone unsolved for 11 years.      Later in her letter, Kaplan contended government attorneys may have dealt with Casale in a completely different manner had they known about the other slayings from the start.      Those admissions were enough for the government to wash its hands of Casale, forever tainted as a witness. Now there would be no witness protection. Bail was revoked and all hope of leniency went down the drain.      Two weeks ago, Judge Debevoise sentenced Casale to 20 years behind bars. In imposing the punishment, the judge said it could well have been harsher but for the 20-year cap in the plea agreement. Just as serious is a possibility that Casale will be brought up on charges for the other murders.      While Philly Faye Casale does time, Caprio continues as a protected witness, location unknown. Those who know Caprio say human nature is such that he must be gloating over evening the score with his old running partner. Jean Barrett, his lawyer, isn't so sure.      "Is there irony? I don't know, I guess so," Barrett added. "But who knows? He was just telling the truth."      The turnabout, however, came as no surprise to mob experts. Once Casale joined forces with the feds, whatever he got in return was fair play by the mob's code.      "All the rules go out the window when there's cooperation with law enforcement, especially with that crime family," said Buccino. "It's every man for himself at that point (2001/08/07 Tuesday Page: 001 Section: NEWS Edition: FINAL Size: 1608 words)." (1998/11/07 Saturday Page: 018 Section: NEWS Edition: ESSEX Size: 247 words, Robert Rudolph)"