Sam DeCavalcante

Simone Paul Rizzo DeCavalcante (April 30, 1912 – February 7, 1997), known as "Sam the Plumber", was an Italian-American mobster who was boss of the DeCavalcante crime family of New Jersey.

Claiming descent from the Italian royal family, DeCavalcante was nicknamed "The Count".

The McClellan hearings later named the New Jersey Mafia the DeCavalcante crime family since he was the boss of the family at the time of those hearings.

The son of Italian immigrants Maria Antoinette (Occhipinti) and Frank Rizzo Di Cavalcante, Simone Paul Rizzo DeCavalcante was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York City and raised in Trenton, New Jersey.

His birth date has been reported as April 30 of either 1912 or 1913.

He and his wife Mary (née Abrams; 1912–1988) had three sons, Frank (1942–2020) Robert (1944–1995), and Carl.

He later resided at 1015 Mercer Street in Princeton.

DeCavalcante's ownership of a plumbing supplies store earned him the nickname "Sam the Plumber", although his preferred sobriquet was "The Count", which derived from his claims that he was the son of an Italian marquis.

Another nickname of his was "the Claw", as he had a reputation as a usurious loan shark.

Among the eight murders discussed by DeCavalcante and his associates were the 1951 shooting of Willie Moretti in Cliffside Park, and the 1962 hand grenade killing of Charles "Cadillac Charlie" Cavallaro in Youngstown, Ohio.

After the retirement of family boss Nicholas Delmore (real name Nicholas Amoruso) between 1960 and 1964, DeCavalcante replaced him.

Shortly after that, he acted as a liaison between the Mafia Commission and the Bonanno crime family after the beginning of the Bonanno War between the New York Five Families.

Under DeCavalcante's leadership, the New Jersey Mafia was transformed from a dysfunctional group of ever-warring factions into a cohesive and profitable crime family.

He also doubled the number of "made men" in the family.

DeCavalcante altered longstanding parts of the Mafia initiation ritual, abolishing the use of a gun, a knife and a burning holy card when "making" new members of his organization as "he did not feel it was necessary", according to Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo.

Despite this, he insisted there was no difference between the New Jersey Mafia and the Five Families on the other side of the Hudson River and declared: "Cosa Nostra is Cosa Nostra. An Amico Nostro is an Amico Nostro".

DeCavalcante oversaw illegal gambling, loansharking, and labor racketeering in New Jersey.

He also had interests in lucrative pornography businesses in two states.

Living in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, but working in Newark, DeCavalcante commanded an organization of around 60 "made" members active in the tri-state area of New Jersey, New York and Connecticut.

The DeCavalcante crime family, as it came to be known, operated primarily in New Jersey, with interests in Connecticut, Troy, New York, and suburbs of New York City.

DeCavalcante's legal business front was the Kenilworth Plumbing and Heating Co., a plumbing supply store in Kenilworth.

From 1961 to 1965, DeCavalcante was the subject of a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigation known as the "Goodfella Tapes" or the "DeCavalcante Papers".

The FBI used wiretaps and bugs at four locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including the office of DeCavalcante's Kenilworth plumbing supply firm, to record conversations among DeCavalcante and his associates which revealed detailed information on the day‐to‐day operations of the Mafia and crimes including labor racketeering, corruption, loansharking and murder.

The other locations where electronic surveillance was utilized were the Best Sales Co., a company in Newark controlled by Gerardo Catena, the Penn Jersey Vending Co. in Philadelphia, owned by Angelo Bruno, and a building known as "the Barn", located at the rear of a restaurant on U.S. Route 22 in Mountainside.

The investigation confirmed claims by cooperating witness Joe Valachi, provided crucial information on La Cosa Nostra, and revealed the existence of the Mafia Commission.

One Justice Department official described the "DeCavalcante Papers" as a report just as crucial as Valachi's disclosures.

During these conversations, DeCavalcante repeatedly referred to himself as the "father" (boss) of his "borgata" (crime family).

However, since no court order was issued for the wiretaps, none of tapes could be used to indict DeCavalcante.

In one conversation, involving DeCavalcante and three others on February 23, 1963, DeCavalcante agreed with Angelo DeCarlo that the method of Moretti's murder was distasteful.

Each of the four men were also critical of the method used to assassinate Cavallaro as his 4-year-old son was also killed in the explosion.

It was indicated that the use of hand grenades had since been forbidden by the Mafia.

In another conversation in 1964, DeCavalcante and two others discussed methods of body disposal, with a car crusher, a garbage compactor and a device capable of turning a human corpse into a "Meatball" being mentioned.

Days before Thomas G. Dunn was elected Mayor of Elizabeth, he visited DeCavalcante at his Kenilworth office on October 23, 1964.

Dunn said to DeCavalcante: "If you have any way of getting to [two redacted names] tell them to keep their lousy mouths shut... Because this thing could cream me at the last minute. So if you can in some way get to these two guys – tell them to keep this thing out of the papers".

DeCavalcante promised Dunn support in his mayoral campaign and asked: "Do you think we could get any city work?", to which Dunn laughed and replied: "Well, maybe".

In 1965, he forbade the killing of an African-American construction worker who had assaulted the son of a Mafioso with a shovel in a fight because the construction worker was a Black Muslim and DeCavalcante feared a war between the Nation of Islam and the Mafia.

In addition to murder, the tapes revealed political corruption and links between mobsters and New Jersey public officials.

In a statement issued on June 10, 1969, Dunn claimed that at no point during the meeting had DeCavalcante asked him "to do anything irregular or illegal", and that he had had no contact with DeCavalcante since.

He also denied that DeCavalcante had any influence over his administration and claimed that he had not been aware of DeCavalcante's underworld associations.

Other public official implicated by the tapes included Cornelius Gallagher, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.