1. The son of Italian immigrants Maria Antoinette and Frank Rizzo Di Cavalcante, Simone Paul Rizzo Sam DeCavalcante was born in the Brooklyn borough of New York City and raised in Trenton, New Jersey.
33 Facts About Sam DeCavalcante
1. 2.
Sam DeCavalcante doubled the number of "made men" in the family.
3.
Sam DeCavalcante oversaw illegal gambling, loansharking, and labor racketeering in New Jersey.
4.
Sam DeCavalcante had interests in lucrative pornography businesses in two states.
5.
Sam DeCavalcante later resided at 1015 Mercer Street in Princeton.
6.
From 1961 to 1965, Sam DeCavalcante was the subject of a Federal Bureau of Investigation investigation known as the "Goodfella Tapes" or the "Sam DeCavalcante Papers".
7.
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 Sam DeCavalcante feared a war between the Nation of Islam and the Mafia.
8.
Sam DeCavalcante denied that DeCavalcante had any influence over his administration and claimed that he had not been aware of DeCavalcante's underworld associations.
9.
Two police chiefs named by Sam DeCavalcante were John Ellmyer Jr.
10.
Sam DeCavalcante was recorded expressing some bitterness at Carlo Gambino's decision to appoint Joseph Colombo of the Colombo crime family to the Commission as he had hoped that his own "family" would be given the opportunity to join the Commission as the Sixth Family.
11.
The bug planted in Sam DeCavalcante's office revealed affairs he was having with his secretary and other women.
12.
Sam DeCavalcante is reputed to have masterminded a plot to extort thousands of dollars over a six-week period in 1966 from the operators of an illegal dice game in the Philadelphia suburb of Trevose, Pennsylvania.
13.
On September 28,1966, he allegedly sent two Brooklyn Mafiosi, Daniel Annunziata and Gaetano "Corky" Vastola, to the game with the intention of feigning surprise at discovering that the dice were loaded, then staging a holdup, demanding $20,000 and suggesting that Sam DeCavalcante arbitrate the matter.
14.
Sam DeCavalcante was eventually paid $3,800 by the robbery victims as the adjudicator.
15.
Alongside Philadelphia crime family boss Angelo Bruno, Sam DeCavalcante appeared at Trenton Municipal Court on December 13,1967, to answer to charges that they falsified applications for New Jersey driving licenses.
16.
Sam DeCavalcante was taken into custody at his Kenilworth plumbing and heating firm, where FBI agents seized three pistols and a shotgun from his office.
17.
Sam DeCavalcante was among 55 men and women indicted by a federal grand jury on December 16,1969, in connection with a $20 million-per-year interstate numbers racket centered in Newark and Troy, New York.
18.
Sam DeCavalcante was formally charged with gambling offenses on January 2,1970.
19.
Sam DeCavalcante maintained throughout the trial that he had been "framed" and that he had only served as an impartial mediator in a gambling dispute.
20.
On September 24,1970, following an eight-day trial, Sam DeCavalcante was convicted by a federal jury in Newark on three counts of conspiracy to extort money from the operators of the Trevose dice game.
21.
Sam DeCavalcante "received the verdict impassively", according to The New York Times.
22.
Sam DeCavalcante's bail was set at $50,000 by US District Judge Lawrence A Whipple.
23.
Sam DeCavalcante was sentenced on October 2,1970, to the maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.
24.
The ruling reversed two of the charges against Sam DeCavalcante and ordered a new trial on the third charge.
25.
Sam DeCavalcante subsequently requested immediate freedom from the Federal House of Detention in Manhattan, where he had been held since his sentencing in October 1970.
26.
On March 15,1971, Sam DeCavalcante was sentenced at Newark Federal Court to five years' imprisonment on the gambling conviction.
27.
Sam DeCavalcante was re-indicted by a Union County grand jury on August 17,1971, on the state charges of receiving the stolen pistol which was seized by the FBI in 1968.
28.
Alderote wrote in a report that Sam DeCavalcante "has proven to be one of the best inmate nurses that I have had under my supervision in the three years that I have been there", and described him as someone who had taken "sincere interest in chronic nursing type cases of elderly patients that we have in the hospital".
29.
On July 16,1975, Judge Marius Grosso denied a third postponement due to illness because a State Trooper claimed to have seen a supposedly ill Sam DeCavalcante driving and apparently looking well.
30.
Sam DeCavalcante did not attend the hearing at which Grosso fined him $12 for speeding and an additional $10 for court costs.
31.
Sam DeCavalcante started planning to build a legitimate resort casino in South Florida; however, the project did not proceed after voters rejected casino gambling in a 1986 referendum.
32.
Sam DeCavalcante died of natural causes at age of 84, at a hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on February 7,1997.
33.
Sam DeCavalcante is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Hamilton, New Jersey.