New Mafia Killer: A Silenced .22

The FBI had a surprise for urban and suburban dwellers fending off muggers, sluggers and druggers when it announced that for the first time in four years, the U.S. crime rate has not increased. The number of violent crimes in 1976 actually declined by 5%.

Now for the bad news:

It seems improbable that a brotherhood as violent as the Mafia is becoming still more savage. It also seems unlikely that teams of professional hit men armed with silencer-equipped .22-cal. automatic pistols are roaming the land, with at least 20 "executions" to their credit in the past two years. Finally, it seems unthinkable that the case of the .22 hits could be a direct challenge by the Mob to the U.S. Government.

But the FBI fears all this is true, with good reason. Two of the victims were FBI informants. Four others were potential prosecution witnesses. Two of the killings -- five months apart -- were committed with the same gun. Says an FBI agent: "Keeping a murder gun is risky business. The Mafia has a reason for doing that. They're giving us a message."

Mafia Hot Line. Detective fiction has it that the .22-cal. pistol with its tiny one-ounce slug is a gnat swatter, at its worst a woman's weapon snatched from a purse to dispatch an errant lover. No self-respecting all-pro killer would carry one. The facts, however, are otherwise. The CIA has long preferred the .22. The agency's predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, developed a silencer-equipped Hi-Standard .22-cal. automatic pistol during World War II. It turned out to be the only production-model handgun that can be effectively silenced, and it has been the favorite of spooks ever since. Now, says the FBI, the .22 has found new fans.

The Mob's change in execution methods is exemplified by February's killing of Mafia Consigliere Frank ("Bomp") Bompensiero, 71. Shortly before 8 p.m. on Feb. 10, Bomp walked from his San Diego home to a nearby public telephone booth, which he used as an office in order to avoid wiretaps. In his pocket was a notebook containing coded balance sheets of loan-shark usury payments and lists of coded phone numbers. The numbers turned out to be those of other public telephones scattered through California and Nevada. The phones constitute a West Coast Mafia hot-line system.

At designated hours on specified days, Bomp would call a San Francisco number to chat with a sidekick named Jimmy Fratianno; at other times he would dial a Las Vegas booth for messages from Tony Spilotro, a Chicago gang heavyweight. He also received calls at the booth. A Mafia member for 40 years, Bomp was a consequential figure in the Mob hierarchy. He was also an informant for the FBI, the highest-placed Mafioso in that role.

Popping Noise. The FBI has no idea whom Bompensiero telephoned that night, but they know one of his callers fingered him for execution. The old man was an easy target. As he walked away from the phone booth toward his home, he was dropped by a .22-cal. slug that entered his neck near the spine. The coup de grace was a second shot near the right ear. No shots were heard.

When the body was found, the notebook was missing.

Nineteen other victims are listed by the FBI in the case of the .22 hits. Almost all were dispatched with multiple shots to the head from a .22-cal. automatic pistol. All had in some way crossed the Mob. The most noteworthy:

> Sam Giancana, 66, retired Mafia boss, who was shot in the basement of his Chicago home in June 1975. Investigators believe Giancana was slain for refusing to share the take from Caribbean gambling ships, a fringe benefit that he acquired in the early 1960s.

> Jack Molinas, 43, master fixer of college basketball games in the nationwide point-shaving scandal of 1961, and later the producer of hard-core sex films. He was shot in the head in his Hollywood Hills home in August 1975 for cheating Mafia loan sharks.

> Tamara Rand, 54, San Diego businesswoman, murdered at home in November 1975 to keep her from telling what she knew about Mob-dominated gambling casinos in Las Vegas.

> Edward Lazar, 40, accountant and mortgage-company president, gunned down in February 1975 in a Phoenix parking garage the night before he was to appear before a grand jury investigating land speculation.

> Augie Maniaci, 66, Milwaukee swindler, who was executed in September 1976 in an alley behind his home. Maniaci was an FBI informant.

> Vincent Capone, 39, a small-time gambler and loan shark slain in Hoboken, N.J., in August 1976 while his Cadillac was stopped for a red light. Two killers hit him with 15 shots. He was reportedly about to turn state's evidence in an investigation of New Jersey Mobster John DiGilio.

> Frank Chin, 48, professional wiretapper gunned down with six bullets to the head in a New York City apartment building Jan. 20. Also a potential state's witness against the Mob, Chin (TIME, Feb. 21) had been hired by DiGilio to screen the gangster's offices for police eavesdropping devices.

> Arthur Milgram, 48, head of a company that sells New York State lottery tickets through vending machines, executed on Feb. 8 in a Queens parking lot. Milgram was reportedly about to squeal on Mafia loan sharks who were trying to take over his business.

The grim prospect of a professional coast-to-coast gang methodically exterminating potential court witnesses and FBI informants has led the bureau to assign agents in 20 field offices to the case. Findings so far have strengthened the FBI'S hit-team suspicions. Two .22 pistols discarded after killings were traced to a Miami sporting-goods store that went out of business a few months ago. FBI lab tests show that the .22-cal slugs that killed Capone and Chin came from the same weapon --which has not been found. But both men were also linked through their mutual connection with DiGilio. The New Jersey gangster is currently appealing a prison sentence for conspiracy to rifle the files of the FBI's Newark field office --files that some officials think may have tipped off the Mob that Bompensiero and Maniaci were informants.

The identity of the hit men is a mystery to most of the Mafia too. Some Mob insiders believe they are a squad of "greenies"--gunmen lately brought illegally into this country from Sicily. Others say the .22 hits are the work of young Viet Nam War vets. Still other sources pin the killings on two seasoned triggermen of New York Drug King Carmine Galante. Whoever they are, they have brought the silenced .22 loud notoriety.

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