Introduction
Joseph "Little Joe" DeFede (1934 – July 15, 2012) was a former New York City mobster and acting boss of the Lucchese crime family who eventually turned informant.
Life and career
DeFede was born in 1934 and grew up in the Queens borough. In his early days, he operated a hot dog vendor truck in Coney Island, Brooklyn, running numbers rackets on the side.
A close friend and handball partner of Lucchese leader Vittorio "Vic" Amuso, DeFede was inducted into the family in 1986 after Amuso became boss. However, DeFede's rise and fall in the New York mob can be attributed to Amuso, who was convicted of federal racketeering and murder charges and sent to prison for life. In 1994, Amuso was convicted of federal racketeering and murder charges and sent to prison for life. Amuso then named DeFede his acting boss to replace Alphonse D'Arco with a weaker and more controllable man at the top, after Amuso began to suspect D'Arco of being a government witness against him.
On April 28, 1998, DeFede was indicted on nine counts of racketeering stemming from his supervision of the family rackets in New York's Garment District from 1991 to 1996. The prosecution claimed that the Lucchese family had been grossing $40,000 per month from Garment District businesses since the mid-1980s. In December 1998, DeFede pled guilty to the charges and received five years in prison.
During the late '90s, Amuso's relationship with DeFede began to sour. Suspecting that DeFede was hiding money from the family, Amuso replaced him as acting boss with Steven Crea, head of the family's powerful Bronx faction. Once Crea took over, family profits rose enormously. That was enough to convince Amuso that DeFede had been skimming profits; Amuso reportedly decided to have him murdered.
On February 5, 2002, DeFede was released from a Lexington, Kentucky prison medical center. Having heard of Amuso's plans to kill him, DeFede immediately became a government informant. DeFede provided details concerning the Garment District rackets and the protection rackets in Howard Beach, Queens. He also provided information leading to the convictions of Crea, Louis Daidone, Dominic Truscello, Joseph Tangorra, Anthony Baratta, and a number of family captains, soldiers, and associates. While testifying against Gambino crime family boss Peter Gotti, DeFede testified that he only earned $1,014,000, or approximately $250,000 per year, during his tenure as acting boss. DeFede also estimated that a low-ranking family soldier would make on average $50,000 per year.
DeFede entered and left the Witness Protection Program, moving to live in Florida under an assumed name. He and his wife reportedly lived on $30,000 a year and a modest annuity provided by the U.S. Marshals Service, their assets having been depleted by legal bills and the cost of creating new identities.
Death
DeFede died from a heart attack on July 15, 2012. He was 78.