Where did the Manzo family get their money?

During the first of a two-part Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion special, it was revealed in a conversation, about whether the rumors that the Manzos have mob connections are true, that Caroline Manzo’s father-in-law, Albert “Tiny” Manzo, was murdered in 1983.  What happened, and why would it be brought up in that context?

News reports of the era clearly suggest that Albert “Tiny” Manzo was killed in a mob hit, and it definitely sounds like one.

Police who discovered Manzo’s naked, 350-pound body stuffed inside the trunk of his Lincoln Continental in Hillside immediately noticed two things out of the ordinary: Manzo’s massive arms and legs had been wrapped in plastic, and his chest was ripped open with a quartet of gunshot wounds.

Manzo disappeared in mid-August of that year while traveling from one of his two Paterson restaurants to a meeting in Wayne. Police found his body Aug. 22 inside the trunk of his car, which was parked at a Hillside supermarket.

The murder was never solved. The Union County prosecutor and police investigators speculated that Manzo was killed as a result of involvement with organized crime figures. One theory is that he angered local mob figures by attempting to open an illegal gambling club in Paterson without their permission.

Ironically, the friendly and gregarious Manzo had based his mayoral campaign on a law-and-order platform, promising to hold public hangings in the yard of the Passaic County Jail.

That is truly a tragedy and a shock to the family, and I can completely understand why Caroline Manzo is still quite emotional about it to this day, since this gentleman was her father-in-law.  If the police theory is right, I have to respect Mr. Manzo for having the guts to stand up to organized crime.  I can also understand why Caroline Manzo finds the internet rumors of a Mafia connection to be hurtful.

At the same time, if indeed this gentleman ran afoul of the Mafia because he was opening an illegal gambling parlor without their permission, he clearly wasn’t quite as law-and-order as others might believe.

Does that mean the Manzos have mob connections of any type today?  Not necessarily, so I think it is unfair to make that assumption. At the same time, in all honesty, I still did wonder where some of the housewives’ husbands got that much money.

The Manzos seem to have received $500,000 from Albert Sr.’s life insurance policy in 1989, six years after his death.  The holdup was because the insurance company, Massachusetts Mutual, refused the claim because he didn’t disclose he had diabetes, so there are court records on that dispute.  The policy was initially applied for in June, and the initial payment was made less than a month before his murder, so I’d bet the company suspected he knew he had pissed off the wrong people when he purchased the policy, but they just couldn’t prove it.

Note to self:  Never buy a life insurance policy from MassMutual, because their excuse to get out of paying the policy proceeds is ridiculous.  Who cares if the man had diabetes, when he underwent a required physical prior to policy issuance (so their own doctor should have tested for that, especially given his massive size), when he obviously died not of diabetes, but from four gunshot wounds to the chest?  It wasn’t a suicide, after all, and I’m sure if the man had a choice, he’d be alive to this day.  Furthermore, if the insurance company could prove he knew he was about to die, they’d have brought that as an argument against payout instead.  So they needed to just pay the proceeds, since they accepted the risk, and not give the grieving family of a murder victim such a hard time.  This is in fact a good example of why I hate insurance companies.  But, I digress.

It appears that Albert Sr. started The Brownstone as well as another restaurant many years ago, so that alone was a successful preexisting asset which could easily support the Manzo family, but probably not at that level of wealth.  However, if properly invested over the years – especially if used to invest in other profitable businesses as I would assume the Manzos have done, since they seem to be hardworking and have very good business sense – they could all indeed live very well even today from the proceeds of that insurance policy.  When the policy proceeds were combined with The Brownstone asset as well as the second restaurant (and there may have been other significant business assets as well), the family was surely worth well over $1 million even then.  In 1989, that was a LOT of money.

Teresa Giudice’s husband, however, strikes me as nothing but a common thug.  I also find it very hard to believe he makes that much money in the construction business, especially after the scene at his office, which suggests his company’s office is smaller and less well-equipped than the home office from which I am typing this.  Of course, their McMansion could be built far less expensively by a contractor than by anyone else, but that still doesn’t explain Teresa spending over $100,000 on furniture – in cash, no less – to furnish a single room of that home.  Even if her husband inherited money like the Manzos, she spends it like she has a money tree in the back yard, so it wouldn’t last for any sustained period of time even if wisely invested, since very successful investments must be nurtured, and since the current economy appears to have had no negative effect on their lifestyle at all.  Quite the contrary, because Teresa said on the show that she pays cash even for shockingly expensive purchases because she “heard” the economy has taken a downturn.  I therefore think it is normal for others to have at least some suspicions about the source of their income given all that combined with his persona, his wife’s violent public behavior (not to mention his laughing reaction to it), and the amount of organized crime in New Jersey.

I understand that the “housewives” think that kind of suspicion is unfair.  However, surely they realized how others would view the situation, before they decided to star on a popular reality show and spend money like it’s water.  This is even more so given some of their clearly threatening behavior on that show, which in Teresa’s case became physical.  Besides, people are always going to question where the “housewives” got their money, because those very same questions have arisen with every version of the Housewives franchise.  For those reasons, they should have seen the suspicions coming from a mile away.

However, after reading up on the murder of Albert Sr and the insurance dispute which followed, I am going to assume the Manzos got their money through hard work and the inheritance of a long-established successful business, combined with the well-invested proceeds of a long-ago life insurance policy.  Perhaps something will come to my attention which may explain how the Guidices can afford their lifestyle as well.  Until then, however, I’m certainly not ready to assume they have any current connections to organized crime, unless I see something which clearly points in that direction.