John Riggi in Trenton in July 1969 for a New Jersey Crime Commission hearing.


John Riggi, Former Head of DeCavalcante Crime Family, Dies at 90

By SAM ROBERTS
The New York Times

John Riggi, a convicted New Jersey labor racketeer who was often mistakenly cited as an inspiration for the acclaimed HBO series “The Sopranos,” died on Aug. 3 at his home in Edison, N.J. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by the Corsentino Home for Funerals in Elizabeth, N.J.

Beloved locally for his charitable endeavors, including his support of Pop Warner football in Linden and that city’s Police Athletic League, Mr. Riggi was identified by state and federal investigators as the boss of New Jersey’s only indigenous crime family. He was said to have kept an iron grip on the construction industry as business agent of the Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 394 of Elizabeth.

“Not a nail doesn’t go through a wall that we don’t get a piece of,” he was said to have boasted.

The DeCavalcante crime family, which he led, was accused of demanding payoffs for labor peace, imposing no-show jobs and promoting loan-sharking, sweetheart contracts and gambling, among other things.

In 1992, when Mr. Riggi (pronounced RIGG-ee) was 67, he pleaded guilty to extortion and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, with additional terms tacked on for complicity in contract killings. His extended sentence might have amounted to a life term for many people his age, but he survived and was released in November 2012.

Giovanni Michael Riggi was born in Elizabeth on Feb. 1, 1925. After graduating from Linden High School as class president, he enlisted in the Army in 1943 and served in the Air Corps as a mechanic in Europe during World War II.

When he returned, he became associated with Simone DeCavalcante (known as Sam the Plumber) and eventually succeeded him as head of the DeCavalcante crime family. He was business agent for the union local until his retirement in 1987.

Mr. Riggi allied himself with the mob boss John Gotti to fend off encroachment by potential rivals in New York and Philadelphia. He went so far as to plan the 1989 execution of a Staten Island businessman whom Mr. Gotti feared might inform on an illegal, mob-related medical waste dumping operation. Mr. Riggi pleaded guilty and in 2003 was sentenced to 10 more years in prison. (Mr. Gotti died in prison in 2002.)

Mr. Riggi was also implicated in the murder of his successor, who was deposed after his girlfriend revealed that he was bisexual.

Mr. Riggi is survived by his sons, Emanuel, Vincent and John; his daughters, Frances and Toni Riggi, Therese Piasecki and Maria Morgan; 13 grandchildren; 13 great-grandchildren; and a sister, Phyllis Colicchio.

David Chase, the creator of “The Sopranos” and a New Jersey native, said in a phone interview on Tuesday that the show had actually been inspired by Richie Boiardo, a Newark mobster who lived in the same neighborhood as Mr. Chase’s mother. Mr. Chase said he had never heard of Mr. Riggi until he returned to New Jersey to film the show in the late 1990s.

He speculated on how Mr. Riggi had come to be credited as the show’s inspiration: “F.B.I. agents must have been listening to members of the DeCavalcante family saying, ‘Did you watch “The Sopranos”?’ and saying, ‘That must be based on us.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/12/ny...t-90.html?_r=0