Celebrity Chef David Ruggerio Admits He Was A Mafia Soldier

The famous chef, who once ran a restaurant in New York, admitted to being an active member of the Gambino crime family and committing shocking crimes at the height of his powers in the 1980s and 1990s.

David Ruggerio, 59, who once ran the kitchens at La Caravelle, Maxim’s and Le Chantilly, one of Manhattan’s best restaurants, made a shocking confession in an interview. vanity fair Posted Thursday.

Ruggerio, a former Food Network star who largely disappeared after being arrested in 1998 on credit card fraud charges, admitted in an interview to an impressive array of crimes, including heroin trafficking, truck hijacking, loans and bets. Extortion and even participation in gang murders.

When he lived a secret double life, few realized he was actually related by blood to “Boss Boss” Carlo Gambino, though the FBI was unaware of his connections, especially after he performed “Teflon Don” on John’s 50th birthday. . Gott. . Party in Maxim’s luxurious dining room.

Now, while refusing to talk about the crimes of other living mobsters, Ruggerio breaks Omerta’s seal, the mob’s code of silence, and says he regrets his life of crime.

“I didn’t want anyone in my life. I hate sleeping. The nights are very long and full of nightmares,” she told Vanity Fair.

Although little known, Rogério had ties to the Gambino family since his birth in 1962 in Brooklyn.

Ruggerio’s birth name was Sabatino Antonino Gambino, and his father of Sicilian descent, Saverio Gambino, was a cousin of notorious mob boss Carlo Gambino.

“I’ve lived two lives,” Rogério said in an interview.

Ruggerio said that in 1977, as a teenager, his father took him to Sicily to become a “made man”.

He recalled that the ceremony took place in the basement of a cafe in Castellamare del Golfo, his family’s ancestral town, where a man used a needle in a fire cross on his right shoulder to deliver Uomo de Fiducia in Italian. A trustworthy man.”

The most shocking confession in the long article concerns the murder of several mobs in which Ruggerio claims to have participated.

or said that In March 1978, he assisted in the torture of Gambino capo Egidio ‘Ernie Boy’ Onorato and killed a 56-year-old Genoese and Columbus associate named Pasquale ‘Paddy Mac’ Macchirole at a tire repair shop in Jonkers, New York. .

Ruggerio said Makirol’s body was left in the trunk of a car in Brooklyn. Modern reports confirm that McChirol’s body was found by police in March 1978.

“Ernie was younger than my father and weighed about 155 kilos, but he was the most ruthless gangster I’ve ever seen,” Rogério told the magazine.

In another shocking incident in the summer of 1980, Ruggerio says he saw Onorato beat up his friend Joey ‘Sketch’ Canizaro, a 22-year-old rookie comedian, with a lead pipe.

Ruggerio said Onorato, who died in 1999, was outraged when Kanizaro beheaded himself to please his Jewish girlfriend and wore his severed tremor on a gold chain around his neck.

Ernie took the lead pipe and got angry. He beat this boy to the point where you couldn’t recognize him anymore. “Ernie was walking and I thought, ‘So they’re going to kill me,’” Rogerio recalled.

He placed the tube an inch from my face. There was blood. He says, “You brought this smart boy! He’s your teasing problem. “So we started wrapping Skeetch’s body in the old rug,” he told the magazine.

“That’s when I heard the squeak of a sketch. “Turns out he was alive,” Rogério said, admitting that he later weighed Canizaro’s body with bulletproof vests and threw him into the water near Sheepshead Bay.

Violent incidents forced Ruggerio to divorce Onorato’s team and work for another Gambino capo, Carmin Lombardozzi, known as the “King of Wall Street” for his bomb and eviction schemes.

Lombardo had a strict rule for his crew: everyone had to have a legitimate working day to avoid the suspicions of the powers of the order, which led Rogerio to work in the kitchen of La Caravelle, one of the best French restaurants in the city at this moment.

Ruggerio never told the restaurant staff about his mafia connections, trying to separate their two worlds. But he continued to work for the crime family.

“I would often go to small brokers with Carmen with the kids and trust the brokers,” Ruggerio recalls.

In the meantime, he rose through the hierarchy of catering, trained in France and, at the age of 26, became the executive chef at La Caravelle.

He later ran Maxim’s outpost at French fashion designer Pierre Cardin in New York, as well as Le Chantilly, where he became a partner with Gambino kingpin Daniel Marino.

In October 1990, Rogerio was invited by notorious Gambino chef John Gotti to host his 50th birthday at Maxim’s.

Ruggerio says he closed the windows so the FBI agents who were tracking Gotti couldn’t look inside to see the meeting of the city’s 25 most powerful mobsters.

Ruggerio made televised deals with PBS and the Food Network in the 1990s, but that all fell through in 1998 when he was accused of stealing $190,000 from a credit card company by falsifying credit card receipts.

Prosecutors said he defrauded credit card payments by exploiting tips left by 26 customers at his restaurant in one case. Up to $30,000.

Although Ruggerio still denies the charges, on the advice of his lawyer he got a plea deal and underwent parole and community service.

After the scandal, Rogério lost restaurants, a television contract and became the center of public attention, discreetly running a donut shop and other small businesses.

But after his gangster son died in 2014 of a drug overdose, Ruggerio says he reached his breaking point when his former mob partner Marino refused to attend the funeral.

When Danny didn’t come, that’s when I told him so. “I’m done,” Rogério told Vanity Fair.

Now he says he regrets his life of crime and is working on his memoir.

“I did something when they pressured me that I wasn’t proud of,” he said. But to really be on the streets, you must have a black heart. When you flip that switch, there can be no emotion. You won’t be bored. You just have to do it. ‘