Salvatore Ruggiero

Salvatore Ruggiero, also known as "Sal the Sphinx" and "Sally", born (July 20, 1945 East New York, Brooklyn - May 6, 1982 Savannah, Georgia) was a Gambino crime family mob associate and drug trafficker who was the older brother of Angelo Ruggiero and ringleader of "The Pleasant Avenue Connection."

Biography

Salvatore Ruggiero was born in East New York, Brooklyn to John Ruggiero Sr., a first generation Italian immigrant from Torre de Ruggiero in Catanzaro, Calabria, Italy and an Italian-American woman named Mary Dellacroce, the sister of Gambino crime family underboss Aniello Dellacroce. It is unknown if his father John Sr. was a member of organized crime and served under Albert Anastasia or Carlo Gambino. Salvatore became involved in criminal activity at a young age and joined the powerful Fulton-Rockaway Boys gang member like his younger brother Angelo Ruggiero and John Gotti. He was a sphinx compared to his brother Angelo. It is suggested by John Volkman and Ernest Cummings that Salvatore remained quiet and subdued because he had no hope of ever getting a word in with his brother Angelo around. He preferred to invest his energies in a mad quest for speed. Despite two serious injuries suffered in accidents on stolen motorcycles, Salvatore loved anything that he could propel at great velocity. Said to be a maniac behind the wheel of an automobile, he taught himself to drive at the age of thirteen, and like to roar around deserted areas of Brooklyn in stolen cars. Salvatore, like his brother, appeared to be of mixed Amerindian, Afro-Venezuelan and Spanish descent because of his dark Mediterranian tan, and not Italian-American. Salvatore was not close to his uncle or younger brother, and strived to be more than a street-level hood which Angelo would later become. He later married an airline stewardess named Stephanie who bore him a son, Salvatore Ruggiero Jr., who followed his father and uncle into organized crime. Salvatore is the paternal uncle of Gambino crime family mob associates Angelo Ruggiero Jr. and John Ruggiero Jr. His uncle Aniello Dellacroce had an affair with his son-in-law Gambino crime family capo Ernest Grillo Jr.'s Irish-American housewife Rosemary Connelly-Grillo, who bore Dellacroce two illegitimate children, Shannon Connelly and Sean Connelly and cousin of Ernest Grillo, the son of Ernest Sr. He is also the cousin of Armando Dellacroce, the only legitimate son fathered by Dellacroce. By 1975, resulting from several serious injuries that led to hospitalization, Salvatore was cured of his addiction to high speed. Then, too, he had very little time for such pursuits, for Salvatore was a very busy millionaire "businessman" (as he preferred to call himself). He was dealing in multi-kilos of heroin that made him one of the largest and wealthiest dealers in New York. Despite his long friendship with John Gotti, Salvatore did not seem consumed with the ambition to become a major Mafia powerhouse as did his brother, Angelo, and their mutual friend. Instead, he appeared content to stay on the fringes of the Gambino crime family organization and the Bergin crew as some sort of vague associate, although no one seemed quite certain what he did. The vagueness was deliberate, for Salvatore by 1970 was deeply involved in heroin trafficking, and by La Cosa Nostra regulations, that was strictly forbidden. So the fiction had to be mantained: Ruggiero moved heroin while officially neither his capo Carmine Fatico, nor John Gotti, nor Carlo Gambino knew anything about it. All the while, Fatico accepted a share of the heroin sales' proceeds from Sal, with the facade further mantained by both men's bland insistence that the money was the result of some successful transport truck hijackings from John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Death

He died in a plane crash with his wife Stephanie after their Lear Jet nose dived into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Savannah, Georgia. His children were not with their mother and father at the time of the plane crash.

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