The Balistrieri Tapes, Part 9: "Undercover agent was target for Balistrieri's hit men"

“The Balistrieri Tapes” was a twelve-part series originally published in the Milwaukee Sentinel beginning October 31, 1988. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is republishing select excerpts from the series.

Frank Balistrieri died in 1993 and his son Joseph Balistrieri died in 2010. His son John Balistrieri was released from prison in 1989, after the publication of this series. In 2014, the Wisconsin Supreme Court denied John Balistrieri’s request to reinstate his law license despite the recommendation of a court-appointed referee who said his conduct had been exemplary since his release.

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An undercover FBI agent who intruded in the business of Frank P. Balistrieri nearly lost his life as part of the transaction.

And mobsters laughed about how close Gail T. Cobb came to being killed.

Referring to his attempt to establish a working relationship with Balistrieri, who headed organized crime here, Cobb said, "Had I known it would have gone as far as it did, I wouldn't have taken the job."

While he was undercover in Milwaukee, an associate of Balistrieri was dynamited to death and Balistrieri decided to kill Cobb, Cobb said.

In June 1978, when Cobb was trying to become a mobster in the vending machine business here, August S. Palmisano, 50, was murdered by explosion.

"It got my attention," Cobb said.

Palmisano was killed when he started his car, which was hooked to explosives. Cobb had met Palmisano briefly, but recalled no conversation with him.

"I knew it was unrelated to me," Cobb said of the bombing.

However, Cobb told Benjamin (Lefty) Ruggiero that he was concerned that people were being blown up. Ruggiero told him not to worry, Cobb said.

Nothing would happen to Cobb because Cobb was "with them," Ruggiero said, meaning the New York mob family to which Ruggiero belonged.

While undercover, Cobb depended on Ruggiero, a friendly, easygoing, likable man who told Cobb he had murdered his daughter's husband.

One thing was wrong with Ruggiero's reasoning that Cobb was safe: Balistrieri initially did not know that Cobb, who was trying to set up a vending machine business here, had the protection of the New York mob, Cobb said.

Three men were assigned to kill Cobb and they followed him around, but Balistrieri called them off when he found out Cobb was approved by the New York mob, Cobb said.

As a result of Cobb's undercover work and recorded conversations obtained by the FBI office here, Balistrieri and his attorney sons, Joseph and John, were convicted and sent to prison on charges relating to extortion in the vending machine business.

Cobb wasn't the first undercover agent whom Ruggiero had inadvertently befriended. A member of the Bonanno mob in New York City, Ruggiero had previously made friends with agent, Joe Pistone, who infiltrated the Bonanno family. Pistone introduced Ruggiero to Cobb, indicating Cobb could be trusted.

"I told him (Ruggiero) I was opening a vending business in Milwaukee and he says, 'Who's sponsoring you?' " Cobb said. "I said, 'Nobody's sponsoring me.' He said, 'You can't do that.' He said, 'Either they'll throw you out of there, or they'll kill you.'"

After checking with his New York bosses, Ruggiero was authorized to help Cobb get permission from Balistrieri to open a vending machine business in Milwaukee. The New York mob wanted a cut of the profits, Cobb said.

An introduction to Balistrieri was arranged through a Mafia family in Rockford, Ill., Cobb said. While waiting for the arrangements to be finalized, Cobb said, he and Ruggiero were told to stay at a Milwaukee area hotel and wait for a phone call.

After they waited about a week, a meeting was held at Snug's, 1962 N. Prospect Ave., a restaurant owned by Balistrieri's son, Joseph.

Cobb, who used the name Tony Conte in his undercover role, recalled how the meeting opened: "After about a minute - it felt like half an hour - Lefty was told to introduce his friend (Cobb)."

Balistrieri "was sitting directly across the table and we were about to shake hands, when Lefty says, 'Tony Conte.' And Frank brings his hand back.

"'Tony Conte?' he says. 'We've been looking for you all week.' He said, 'We were going to hit you. You've got the white Cadillac, an apartment in Greenfield, a store office out on Farwell.... ' He knew the whole thing."

Cobb was going to be killed because he was intruding in one of Balistrieri's businesses without permission, Cobb said. Balistrieri had been in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., because he didn't want to be in Milwaukee when Cobb was killed, Cobb said.

"What happened, I guess, they just told Frank, 'You have got to come back, these (New York) people are still waiting,'" Cobb said.

"He didn't realize that the Tony Conte he was going to kill was the Tony Conte involved with the New York people. If I hadn't been in the hotel, I think I would have been whacked," Cobb said.

Cobb thought it was an ironic coincidence that the men Balistrieri allegedly asked to kill him had trailed him to a meeting with Balistrieri, Cobb said. Balistrieri waved the hit men away, Cobb said.

Later, when Cobb was in his car with some hoodlums from Rockford, he was told how lucky he was that he wasn't killed.

"They're tying up Milwaukee, Rockford, Chicago, New Jersey and the New York mob," Cobb said. "Tying it together in a conspiracy. They're talking about the fact that he (Balistrieri) was going to kill me."

The mobsters were laughing and having a good, incriminating time that didn't send them to prison, because a tape recorder in Cobb's car malfunctioned, Cobb said.

At a hotel here, Ruggiero's wife and a friend talked about Cobb nearly getting killed.

"Louise, Lefty's wife, was a nice Italian girl, non-Mafia background whose family disowned her when she married Lefty," Cobb said. "But she was not sympathetic to the mob.

"Mary Elena (Louise's friend) was raised with the mob .... There were several members of her family that were captains and bosses in New York.

"I came in and they said, 'Tony, what happened?' And I said, 'If Lefty wants you to know, he'll tell you.' So he came in and they said, 'Lefty, what happened?'

"He started laughing. He said, 'They were going to kill him. If he wasn't here with us, he'd be dead now.'

"And Louise was upset and said, 'You're all animals. You were going to kill him and not even warn him or anything.' She went in the room and slammed the door and Lefty's laughing at her.

"Mary Elena said, 'Louise is right. They should have warned him first. They shouldn't hit him without warning him. If they warn him and then he doesn't do it, then they should hit him.'"

Mary Elena was for proper procedure.

Tall, slender, rugged-looking, frequently talking in street slang, Cobb sometimes seemed to enjoy acting as a hoodlum. But being forced to contemplate his own death wasn't one of those times.

At their first meeting, Cobb heard Balistrieri refer to Palmisano and say, "He called me a name to my face. Now they can't find his skin."

An FBI informant said that he heard Palmisano and Balistrieri arguing about Balistrieri hiring a relative Palmisano had wanted to hire.

Balistrieri told Palmisano he would "make chopped meat of you" and "write your name in blood," the informant said.

Cobb mentioned another threat that was made when Frank Balistrieri; his brother, Peter; Steve DiSalvo, a close associate; Ruggiero; and Cobb were at the Peppercorn restaurant, which was operated by John Fazio.

"Steve took John in the back and threatened him," Cobb said. "See, Frank had been wanting a piece of the Peppercorn and John wouldn't give it to him. So he (DiSalvo) took him in the back and said, 'You know what happened to your brother.'"

Louis Fazio, a former associate of Balistrieri who had served nearly dozen years in prison for a gangland slaying, was shot to death outside his home in 1972.

"Five times .38," Balistrieri once said during a conversation in which he laughingly described to another undercover agent the multiple gun­shot wounds that killed Louis Fazio.

His body was found next to his car in which a bright red ribbon was tied around the rear-view mirror. Some Sicilians wear red or tie red cloth to objects in their homes and cars to keep evil away.

The ribbon hadn't helped.

Not knowing DiSalvo had just threatened John Fazio at the Peppercorn, Cobb inadvertently added to the threat.

"John comes walking up to me and just to make conversation – his son is tending bar – and I said, 'John, you've got a nice kid there. You ought to take care of him, watch out for him, make sure nothing happens to him.' "

Cobb said Fazio looked as if "he died. So now John is thinking I am saying I'm going to kill your kid."

Unfortunately, it was a threat that the Fazios lived with for a while.

During the vending company negotiations, Cobb met with Joseph and John Balistrieri, who drew up an option that would permit them to purchase 50% of his company at some future date, Cobb said.

Joseph Balistrieri told Cobb not to put the agreement in a safety deposit box but use a more convenient depository, which Joseph suggested could be a pipe in Cobb's basement, Cobb said.

The contract was designed to hide their father's interest in the company and to allow them to take over in the future, Cobb said.

"Joe was into it up to his butt,” Cobb said. "So was John. Joe was… too much splash, too much social, too much concerned about his personality, very egotistical, very well liked.”

"See, ordinarily he would have taken Frank's spot, but he isn't built that way, so John is going to be next in line. John is Frank Balistrieri over exact. John was always in the back seat. Joe was always the one out in front, but Joe made sure John was asked, 'Is this OK.' Joe wrote out the contracts, but he had to run them by John."

Frank Balistrieri, who had a big ego, enjoyed the possibility of doing business with a New York family, Cobb said.

"One of the things that used to gripe the hell out of Balistrieri," Cobb said, "was the fact he felt himself a czar of Las Vegas and he couldn't even go to Las Vegas," where for years he had had business deals in which he received skim money.

"There's a law in Las Vegas which they enforce. If you go to Las Vegas and you're a convicted felon you have to report to the police and say, 'I'm here.' As a result, the mob says, 'You guys with convictions will not go to Las Vegas.'"

Balistrieri, who had served time for tax evasion, was so upset with the Las Vegas law that "smoke would come out of his ears," Cobb said. Occasionally, Balistrieri would use an assumed name and go to Las Vegas, Cobb said.

Cobb had problems with cops, as well as robbers.

When Cobb was fingerprinted for a vending machine license under the name of Tony Conte, he forgot that he had been fingerprinted years ago after applying for a job under his real name.

Cobb was called into the police department and a vice squad officer asked him to explain why there were two sets of the same fingerprints – one for Tony Conte and the other for Gail T. Cobb.

“I'm thinking, ‘I'm going to blow the whole thing now,'" Cobb said. "I spent probably 20 minutes saying, 'I don't know who Gail Cobb is, I don't know what you're trying to pull here, I don't know what's going on.' And he's not buying It."

Finally, Cobb asked to see Police Chief Harold A. Breier. Cobb explained the situation to Breier and Breier assured him that everything would remain confidential, Cobb said. Breier put the two sets of fingerprints in a safe in his office.

With his secret locked up, Cobb returned to his mobster job, which was sometimes highly unsettling.

For example, Ruggiero once warned Cobb that Balistrieri might order Cobb to kill someone before he would be accepted in the Milwaukee mob.

"Don't you worry about it," friendly old Ruggiero said. According to Cobb, Ruggiero said he would do the killing and give Cobb the credit.

That's the world in which Cobb worked: Palmisano dead, Louis Fazio dead, Auggie Maniaci dead, and his brother, Vincent, lucky to be alive.

In 1977, two years after Auggie was murdered, an attempt was made on the life of Vincent, whom Balistrieri also didn't like. However, loose wiring prevented dynamite from exploding in his car.

When a cop asked Vincent if he knew who attached dynamite to his car, he shrugged. "Kids," he said.

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Read the next selected excerpt: The Balistrieri Tapes, Part 11: "Lure of casino funds outweighed hatred"

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Balistrieri Tapes, Part 9: "Undercover agent was target for Balistrieri's hit men"