CRIME: Consolidating the Clans

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The pattern of death in New York's protracted mob war became clearer last week as one of the city's highest-ranking Mafiosi became victim No. 18 in more than a year of gangland slayings. Found on a Brooklyn street with five .32 caliber wounds in his head was Thomas (Tommy Ryan) Eboli, 61, a top leader of one of New York's five Mafia families. Federal officials now believe that much of the bloodshed is part of a clever and brutal drive by the nation's most powerful Mafia commander, Carlo Gambino, 73, to seize firm control of all of the New York clans and establish himself as undisputed Boss of Bosses.

A small (5 ft. 7 in., 150 Ibs.), feisty man who once managed boxers, Eboli apparently was lured to a post-midnight meeting far from his Fort Lee, N.J., home by other mobsters on a pretext of discussing some urgent gang business. His burly chauffeur, Joseph Sternfeld, told police that Eboli was approaching his waiting car after the meeting when a truck sped past, shots erupted from it, and Eboli fell dead. Sternfeld said he did not see the killers. But he did not explain the contradictory fact that there were bloodstains on the inside of Eboli's car, and authorities held him as a witness under $250,000 bail. Eboli, freshly barbered and wearing a gold crucifix around his neck, was found with $2,077 in a pocket of his blue sports jacket.

Eboli had worked in the rackets for at least 40 years, mainly in New York's Greenwich Village. Although long considered too rash for high command, he was once summoned to his native Italy to receive the personal praise of his deported boss, Lucky Luciano, for jumping into a Madison Square Garden ring and slugging the referee after one of his fighters, Rocky Castellani, was beaten. He climbed steadily in the family of Luciano's successor, Vito Genovese, partly by shooting straight. He reportedly carried out a contract in 1962 to gun down Anthony Strollo, another rising Genovese aide, who had insisted on dealing in narcotics against the family rules. Eboli fell out of mob favor for a time when he was so brash as to distribute a "wanted" poster for an FBI agent who was investigating his vending machine and jukebox business—and the FBI responded by assigning dozens of agents to dog the Genovese family.

Eboli nevertheless became one of three men to inherit the command of the family when Genovese died in 1969. Of the others, Gerardo Catena has since been imprisoned for refusing to answer questions from a New Jersey crime commission, and Mike Miranda is too old, at 78, to want to wield top power. Eboli's murder gives the aging Carlo Gambino effective control of the Genovese family.