Taylor - Sins of the Father: The True Story of a Family Running from the Mob

Thank you for purchasing this Pocket Star eBook.

Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Pocket Star Books and Simon & Schuster.

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

PRAISE FOR SINS OF THE FATHER

A vivid portrait of a New York mobster turned government witness.... The many sides of Sal Sr.his charm, disregard for the law, devotion to his kids, and selfishnessare what really fascinate.

Kirkus Reviews

Sal Polisi has cheap hood written all over him, but in Sins of the Father, Nick Taylor peels back the layers of flashy clothes and gold jewelry to show us a man whose love of his sons is so obsessive that he will do anything to protect them.... With convincing detail and the powerful clarity of his prose, Nick Taylor tracks Sal... as he disappears into America with a new identity.

Stuart Woods, New York Times
bestselling author of Son of Stone

The portrayal of life in the Mob [is] accurate, and the story of one familys problems trying to live in the Witness Protection Program is very moving.

Joe Pistone, New York Times bestselling author of
Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia

Compelling.... The contradiction of a mad-dog criminal/good father used by Mario Puzo in The Godfather is even more effective here because Polisi is real and this story is true.

Booklist

An intriguing, engrossing, and fascinating story of the end of a wiseguy and the rebirth of a wise man. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Bob Leuci, author of All the Centurions: A New
York City Cop Remembers His Years on the Street

Pocket Star Books

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1989 by Nick Taylor
Afterword copyright 2012 by Nick Taylor

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Pocket Star Books paperback edition February 2012

POCKET STAR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com .

Designed by Jacquelynne Hudson

ISBN: 978-1-4516-6849-0 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6867-4 (eBook)

This book
is for
Barbara Nevins Taylor

M y heartfelt thanks go to a number of people whose assistance was vital to the preparation of this book:

First, to Sal Polisi junior and Joseph Polisi for the insights they shared about their father and about their unique displacement; to Rose Marie Polisi for her patience, trust and candor; to Sal Polisi for his enthusiasm and memory and good humor; and to the entire Polisi family for their courage.

To the Noto family, and especially Phyllis Noto, for her memories of a difficult time.

To the friends of the Polisi family in Port Jervis and Orange County, New York, for their recollections and support of the Polisi family, and especially to Linda Miller for the letters and memories she shared.

To the men who coached Sal junior and Joseph PolisiBrian Seeber, Joe Viglione and Tom Goddard and more recent coaches who must go unnamedwho recognized, described and helped develop their potential.

To those in law enforcement who knew and worked with Sal Polisi and who contributed valuable information, anecdotes, opinions, recollections and advice; to Dan Russo of the Federal Bureau of Investigation most of all, to John Limbach of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and also to Lieutenant Remo Franceschini of the Queens district attorneys organized crime squad of the New York Police Department; to Edward A. McDonald of the federal Organized Crime Strike Force for the Eastern District of New York, and to Ethan Levin-Epstein, then assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District.

To Dick Babcock at New York magazine, where Sins of the Father first appeared as an article, for his initial interest and deft editing.

And to many, many others whose names are too numerous to mention, but without whose contributions Sins of the Father would not have been possible.

I thank you all.

Note: I interviewed dozens of people during the preparation of this book. One of them asked that I change his name for the protection of his family, so I did. My subjects almost always were kind enough to share not only their recollections of what happened, but their thinking at the time. These internalized thoughts and feelings, revealed as they are in passages of Sins of the Father, are owed entirely to the generosity and candor of my sources.

We were a family to be envied, real Americans. Or so it must have seemed. We certainly tried to put up the appearance of a family that lived a normal life.

This is what people knew: that I was a high-school senior looking forward to a college football scholarship; my brother Joe, just a sophomore, looked like he could be a college player also, maybe even a big star; Mom was a fabulous cook who had been asked to be a substitute home economics teacher at our high school. Dad, the smart, funny guy who everybody liked, was back East, looking in on our jewelry business in New Jersey.

The truth, that fall in 1986, was that my father was in New York City testifying against John Gotti, the most famous mobster in the country. Nobody connected the name of the witness Sal Polisi to our family. But Dad and John Gotti had been friends once, in the old days when Dad was hijacking trucks and robbing banks and nobody knew John Gottis name, let alone feared him. A few years later, Dad had tried to make a break from crime, but he lost his money and started dealing drugs again, and that got him in a jam. Which was how we ended up where we were.

We arrived with a vague history, new names and a made-up family tree. Nothing in our past survived our entry into the witness protection program. My girlfriend, Joes kart racing trophies, Moms family, even our dogall discarded on the heap of memory. Nothing survived, that is, except Dads past. That was our secret that we couldnt put behind us.

Every night on cable while he was away, there was a story about Sal Polisi testifying at the Gotti trial. Sal Polisi the Queens hoodlum turned informant. The convicted bank robber with a history of psychiatric problems. The gambler. The hijacker. The drug dealer. The witness who said the penalty for witnesses was death.

Dad came home from New York on a Thursday night. I went to the airport to meet him. He was built chunky and strong, with a round face and curly black hair, and he almost always had a restless sort of energy. But when he got off the plane he was red-eyed and exhausted and all he had to offer was a tired smile. They took it to me, son, he said. He told me on the way home that John Gotti had pointed a finger at him like a pistol.