[citation needed] Angelo Salvatore Ruggiero was born at Lutheran Hospital and raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn.

A high school dropout, Ruggiero was arrested in the 1950s for street fighting, public intoxication, car theft, bookmaking, possession of an illegal firearm, and burglary.

On May 22, 1973, Ruggiero, Gotti, and a Gambino gunman, Ralph Galione, killed mobster James McBratney in a Staten Island bar.

Law enforcement later speculated that Dellacroce’s personal affection for Ruggiero and Gotti played a crucial role in their elevation within the organization.

To comply with his parole conditions, Ruggiero was employed from 1977 to 1984 in a no-show job as a salesman for Arc Plumbing and Heating Corporation, which was owned by Gambino associates Anthony and Caesar Gurino.

Mobster turned government informant Wilfred Johnson provided investigators with the layout of Ruggerio's home so that they could install four bugs and wire taps.

He followed up by pressuring the American Mafia Commission to issue a firm Mafia-wide ban that would also carry an instant death penalty.

Castellano hoped that these and a number of other politically motivated moves in the crime family would break the sudden, ambitious ascent of Ruggiero and John Gotti.

Authorities later commented that, judging by appearances, however, both Ruggiero and John Gotti seemed blithely unconcerned by a second consequence of the Ravenite Social Club wire tapping operation, a grand jury subpoena calling forth Ruggiero, John Gotti, and ten other habitués of the Ravenite to discuss certain aspects of organized crime, as revealed by the successful Operation Acorn.

Gambino crime family capo John Carneglia often complained about Ruggiero to fellow criminals stating, "Dial any seven numbers, and there's a fifty-fifty chance that Angelo will answer the phone."

On December 16, 1985, two weeks after Dellacroce's death, Castellano and his new underboss Thomas Bilotti were murdered outside Sparks Steak House in Manhattan.

This was possibly caused by the legal troubles Angelo Ruggiero Sr. brought upon John Gotti and the Gambino crime family after having his house tapped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Justice.

Despite being an informant, Johnson deliberately excluded John Gotti from his discussions about the Bergin crew's narcotics operations, telling the FBI that he knew little about the subject.

The FBI suspected this was untrue, but Johnson still provided them with detailed floor plans of Angelo Ruggiero's home in Cedarhurst, New York, along with recommendations for the optimal locations to plant a wire transmitter.

When the FBI successfully installed the bug in 1982, it yielded what many in law enforcement now regard as one of the most significant oral histories ever captured, documenting the inner workings of a major criminal conspiracy.

Ruggiero later helped murder Gambino crime family street soldier Anthony Plate, with John Gotti and Wilfred Johnson, for his uncle Dellacroce in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Citing Wilfred Johnson, James Cardinali, Mark Reiter, and George Yudzevich, FBI informants, the FBI's "Gambino Squad" in Queens, New York, received permission from the United States Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., to seek a wiretap order on Ruggiero's home phone, which was granted November 9, 1981.

The notes told him that FBI Agent John Conroy was not all he cracked himself up to be and that attorney Michael Coiro was not wired into the Eastern District as he[who?]

Critically, the FBI working papers confirmed the depth of the probe and the fact that it was supported by a three-bug invasion of Ruggiero's home.

Sources advised Ruggiero became scared to death because he had been lying systematically to Paul Castellano and his uncle Aniello Dellacroce, insofar as he had constantly told them that he had not been dealing in drugs by himself, but merely cleaning up loose ends of his brother Salvatore's narcotics operation.

In fact, pen registers at the Our Friends Social Club had disclosed several calls to his home in Cedarhurst, and FBI agents were watching on the day Ruggiero moved in.

After Castellano was arrested for racketeering and other crimes, he learned for the first time that his home had been bugged by the FBI, and that the Ruggiero tapes were the legal basis for it.

Insulted, Ruggiero decided to have Casso murdered, a task entrusted to Michael Paradiso, one of John Gotti's oldest friends.

Paradiso, in turn, assigned the actual task of killing to three hoodlums, including a Staten Island thug named James Hydell, a nephew of Gambino crime family capo Daniel Marino.

A few months earlier however, hoping to catch up with his elusive brother and to gain evidence to indict John Gotti, the FBI's Gambino Squad had thoroughly wired Ruggiero's home.

The talk of heroin in the wake of Salvatore's death and the connection to a Gotti family relative seized the attention of the investigating FBI agents.

Unlike his brother Salvatore, who became a multi-millionaire from his successful large scale drug trafficking operation, Ruggiero would never rise above a wealthy street-level mobster.

I went in my room, I closed the door and I cried ..." The bugs also overheard Angelo saying how difficult it was accepting his brother's death because the body was in "fuckin pieces."

[3] When Ruggiero, also under indictment, had his bail revoked for his abrasive behavior in preliminary hearings, a frustrated Gotti instead promoted Armone to underboss.

[citation needed] After turning state's evidence to avoid prosecution, former underboss Gravano reported that during the last months of Ruggiero's life both he and Gene Gotti urged John to visit his near-death childhood friend.