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Club In Holiday Became Focus Of FBI Probe

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By ADAM CAROZZA, Tribune correspondent

Published: October 20, 2007

Donnie Brasco is legend in southwest Pasco County.

In the early 1980s, Brasco - in reality, undercover FBI agent Joe Pistone - and the King's Court bottle club brought Holiday into the public eye. Holiday, more than 1,000 miles from New York City's Mulberry Street, became the temporary home to members of the Bonanno crime family.

Pistone came here to forge an alliance with the Trafficante family of Tampa in hopes of partnering in an illegal gambling operation. Members of three of the five New York mafia families had come to Florida in the 1970s to take over the garbage industry and to try to set up a dog track in Pasco, according to The New York Times.

Dominick 'Sonny Black' Napolitano and Benjamin 'Lefty' Ruggiero, both members of the Bonanno family, became co-owners of the club, along with Pistone and fellow agent Edgar Robb, who worked under the name Tony Rossi. They fronted the money for the loan-sharking and gambling operations run out of King's Court.

Brasco arranged sit-downs between Napolitano and Santo Trafficante Jr.

In August 1979, New Port Richey lawyer Richard Milbauer leased Robb the octagonal building that became King's Court. The social club blended inconspicuously with other businesses along U.S. 19. People driving up and down the highway would never have suspected the 'extra benefits' it offered after hours.

Anyone could join the private bottle club as long as they paid the membership fee. People had to bring their own alcohol and pay the club for set-ups.

The real action happened in the back room. In his book, Pistone said he paid Pasco County sheriff's Capt. Joseph Donahue to keep the police away from the club's crap tables, roulette wheels and blackjack games.

'His job was to keep all the cops under his command off our backs while we operated our illegal gambling and drug distribution out of King's Court Club,' he wrote.

Nevertheless, during a 'Las Vegas night' on Jan. 17, 1981, deputies raided King's Court, arresting Napolitano and three undercover FBI agents for running an illegal gambling operation.

The club reopened for a short time, but the FBI closed down its operation in July 1981, having collected the 'considered necessary' information. Pistone disappeared that same month, resurfacing the following year to testify in court.

Of the 12 people indicted through the undercover operation by a federal grand jury in Tampa, only Trafficante and Donahue escaped conviction. The case against Trafficante, whom agents never managed to tape, was dismissed by a federal judge in 1986 for lack of evidence. He died the following year during heart surgery. Donahue, videotaped while taking payoffs, was found shot to death in 1983, not long after his indictment. His death was ruled a suicide, as was Milbauer's death in 1981.

Napolitano vanished after Pistone's identity was revealed. In August 1982, he turned up dead on Staten Island, with his hands chopped off - a sign that he'd violated mob security, according to Pistone's book.

Ruggiero was sentenced to 20 years in prison but died of cancer before finishing his term, Pistone said in an interview last year.

Pistone, who retired from the FBI in 1986, gathered evidence working undercover that led to more than a hundred arrests. Johnny Depp portrayed him in the 1997 movie 'Donnie Brasco,' based on his book, 'Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia.' A TV series, 'Falcone,' also was based on Pistone's tales of working undercover.

As for King's Court, a developer bought the building in 1988, donated it to a church and moved it to its present location on Darlington Road, about a half mile east of U.S. 19. Today, the building serves as a chapel during the week for New Covenant Christian School and as New Covenant Family Church's Sunday sanctuary. Church leaders say the building is still the 'King's Court,' but a different king presides there now.

Information from The New York Times and Tribune archives was used in this report. Adam J. Carozza, a 30-year resident of New Port Richey, is a Florida historian and the author of 'Images of America: New Port Richey.' He would love to hear about your west

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