(Originally published by the Daily News on May 31, 1990. This story was written by Ruben Rosario and Joseph McNamara.)
Vincent (Chin) Gigante, boss of the Genovese crime family, face the bar of justice yesterday in the same blue bathrobe, striped pajamas golf cap and “crummy” brown shoes he wears around Greenwich Village.
Gigante, 62, was called mentally incompetent by his brother, Bronx priest Louis Gigante, in a court action last year, and psychiatric tests were ordered by Manhattan Supreme Court. Then action was dropped in February with the priest declaring he wanted to spare the family “a circus-like atmosphere.”
Authorities saw the psycho suit as an attempt to duck future prosecution. Gigante avoided a 1973 bribery charge in New Jersey on a mental incompetency plea.
Yesterday’s federal racketeering bust was the first arrest for the ex-pug in more than 30 years, the earlier collar costing him the years 1959-64 in stir for heroin trafficking. A more memorable pickup was in 1957, for the shooting of Mafia don Frank Costello. Chin walked on that one when Big Frank declined to say who creased his scalp.
Gigante was awakened at his Village digs, 227 Sullivan St., at 7 a.m. yesterday by FBI agents with a battering ram.
“He took so long answering agents thought he might be trying to escape,” said Jim Fox, director of the New York FBI office. “They started to knock the door down and he finally answered in his pajamas. He refused to put clothes on.”
As he was whisked to Brooklyn Federal Court for arraignment, the 6-foot, 200-pound Gigante asked an agent, “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to see the judge,” the fed replied.
“Oh,” replied Gigante.
In a holding cell he stomped his feet, “as though stamping out cockroaches,” said one U.S. marshal. Gigante’s attorney, Barry Slotnick, said his client thought “he was in the hospital.”
The Chin, a sloven shuffler, ankles around the Village in his nightclothes, plays cards at a local club and mumbles.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg O’Connell of the Eastern District, who will prosecute the case, was more specific: “If he’s competent to run the (Genovese) family, he’s competent to stand trial.”
“He acts crazy in order to avoid arrest,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Rose said at Gigante’s arraignment.
Gigante’s behavior has been bizarre. A subpoena server in the mid-’80s found him in his shower, naked with an umbrella over his head.
One of five sons of Naples immigrants, Gigante grew up near where he lives now. In youth he was a light-heavyweight club boxer, evidenced by his pudgy lips and battered nose. He won 21 bouts and lost four.
His Mafia roots apparently go back to the early days of the Genovese family, started in 1931 by Charles (Lucky) Luciano. Gigante reportedly took over as boss in 1986.
Chin has a wife, Olympia, and three children in old Tappan, N.J., and a mistress, also named Olympia, living on E. 77th St., with whom he plays cards when not at the Village social club.
No one remembers Gigante losing at cards. One cohort recalled Gigante once picked up the cards he had been dealt and shouted: “Rummy!” No one challenged him.
