Cardiologist to the Mafia: reflections of a former prison doctor

The musical Jersey Boys, and the subsequent movie, featured a real-life Mafia mobster and brought back memories of a time over 45 years ago when I was one of his doctors.

Desiring to get subspecialty training before entering military service, I wasn't fortunate enough to get the Berry Plan, but did pass an exam and qualified for the Public Health Service. My top choice, the Center for Disease Control, was filled. My other options included a Leprosy Center, the Indian Health Service, and the Bureau of Prisons. I chose the latter.

I had completed a year of cardiology fellowship under Eugene Braunwald, MD, in San Diego. I was assigned to the prison hospital at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but petitioned to be switched to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary (Figure 1a), since it was the referral center for inmates who had cardiovascular issues, given the proximity of Grady Hospital. Amazingly, my petition was accepted. I purchased a uniform and became a lieutenant commander (Figure 1b).

Figure 1.

(a) The Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. (b) The prison doctor with his daughter, Kelly.

The Atlanta prison had a number of Mafia patients. Two of the most notorious were Angelo (Gyp) DeCarlo and Sam (the Plumber) DeCavalcante. I tried to take good care of the Mafia, as I like to start my car in the mornings without awakening all the neighbors.

ANGELO DECARLO

DeCarlo (Figure 2) was overweight, balding, and seemed like a mild-mannered grandfather. I never had any problems with him, nor did he ever ask me for any special favors.

Figure 2.

Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo.

I did get a glimpse of his other self one day, when I was around the corner of the hospital ward and heard him addressing another inmate. It sent chills up my spine to hear what would happen to the inmate if he crossed DeCarlo again.

In one wire tap, DeCarlo showed that he had a soft spot. A humane “hit” to him was to shoot someone in the heart, as it was a quick and relatively painless way to die.

One of my young physician colleagues, Harvard-trained and more liberal than I, seemed more involved with Gyp. One day the physician asked me to review DeCarlo's file as it seemed to him that DeCarlo had been treated unfairly in his trial. I agreed to do so and got as far as when an informant to the FBI, Louis Saperstein, was about to expose DeCarlo, but died suddenly of arsenic poisoning.

DeCarlo had been diagnosed with prostate cancer while in prison, and it had spread. He learned that one could apply for parole on humanitarian grounds in the presence of metastatic cancer. One of the other doctors did the paperwork, and the parole was granted. DeCarlo told the doctor that he had made him very happy, and now Gyp wanted to return the favor by having $25,000 cash deposited on the physician's front doorstep. The doctor assured him that he couldn't be happier and turned down the gesture.

The pardon, by then President Richard Nixon, was questioned. One rumor involved Vice President Spiro Agnew and his friend, singer Frank Sinatra, who allegedly had ties to organized crime in New Jersey. Special Watergate Prosecutor Archibald Cox investigated the pardon and concluded that it was legitimate.

SAM “THE PLUMBER” DECAVALCANTE

I was home one night, on call for admissions to the prison hospital, and tuned into the late news. I had just heard that a notorious Mafia don, Sam “The Plumber” DeCavalcante, had been transferred to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary when my phone rang, informing me of a new patient I needed to admit. “Is it The Plumber,” I asked? “How did you know?” was the response.

Sam (Figure 3) was a handsome man, dapper even in prison garb, with a full head of gray hair and a trimmed moustache. He got his nickname from the plumbing supply store he owned in Kenilworth, New Jersey, but preferred the nickname, “The Count,” claiming that he was a descendent of a royal family in Italy. One of the inmate nurses pulled me aside, before I started the workup, to inform me of the patient's importance. I responded, “I don't care if he is the president or the head of the Mafia; I try to treat them all the same.”

Figure 3.

Sam “The Plumber” DeCavalcante.

In the ensuing months, Sam was always cordial and never demanding. I recall once when he told me it was his son's birthday. He had asked the boy to name any gift he wanted. His only request was for his dad to stop his four-pack-a-day smoking habit (which he did, probably one reason he lived to age 85).

Like DeCarlo, DeCavalcante could turn vicious “when his authority was challenged.” In one instance, he had a fellow mobster brutally beaten when he “had failed to come in for a chat when summoned.”

FOLLOW-UP

DeCarlo died within a year or so after his parole, most likely from the metastatic prostate cancer. His burial, scheduled for an afternoon, was switched at the last minute to a quiet morning event because “the Family just didn't want any more publicity.” When the movie about Frankie Valli and the “Jersey Boys” came out, the DeCarlo loan-shark character had a prominent role, played by actor Christopher Walken.

The DeCavalcante crime family consisted of around 60 Mafiosi. The television show “The Sopranos” was modeled after it. “The Plumber” was released from prison in 1976, 4 years after I met him, and turned control of his Mafia family over to Giovanni “John the Eagle” Riggi, in 1980. He then returned to Miami Beach, where he died in 1997 of “natural causes.”

I left the Public Health Service in 1972 and completed my cardiology fellowship training at Emory, under J. Willis Hurst. The first day of fellowship, the new doctors were asked to stand and state where they had just come from. The responses were impressive: Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and the like. I stated simply that I had just gotten out of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Everyone laughed, thinking I was joking.