"Did you hear how the FBI got Joe?" How a New York crime boss was taken down in Tucson

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — This is the story of a retired New York crime boss living in a quiet Tucson neighborhood during the 1970s and 80s.

But it's also the story of federal agents here in Tucson taking down that reputed mafia leader and finally putting him behind bars for the first time.

Here's the "Absolutely Arizona" story of Joe Bonanno's arrest in Tucson. The arrest would end his underworld career, which spanned his rise as an Al Capone bootlegger and gunrunner to head of the New York Mafia.

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So how did Bonanno, a retired businessman living in the Catalina Vista neighborhood near the Arizona Inn, finally end up in prison?

"Did you hear how the FBI got Joe? He was putting his notes in his trash can."

I sat down with Bill Roemer, the son of FBI agent William F. Roemer, who helped take down Bonanno by sifting through his trash.

Yes, his trash.

"He told me what they were doing with checking the garbage cans for ripped-up papers,"
said Roemer.

For two-and-a-half years during the late 1970s, the task force would drive up in an unmarked van and grab the Bonannos' trash from the curb, then sort out the small scraps of paper from the rest of the trash.

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Gene Ehmann was on the task force with William Roemer. He described the process of piecing back together the notes in a 1981 KGUN 9 documentary called "Joe Bonanno's Notes."

"We'd match up the writing just like a large jigsaw puzzle, match up the writing and the ink, and put it into its original form and scotch tape it," said Ehmann in the documentary.

WATCH THE ORIGINAL 1981 KGUN 9 DOCUMENTARY:

Strike Force Agent Ehmann explained, "He would discuss things that appeared to be on those notes and then he would take out his pen and cross them off as he got through with them."

But Bonanno wouldn't make those calls from his home, knowing the FBI might be listening in.

"He was using seven different public phones around Tucson," Bill Roemer recalled of his father's work.

Bill Roemer says he even ran into Bonanno using the payphone outside the old Bookmans.

"I came around the corner and closer than I am to you, I almost ran into him. I recognized him. I kind of had to sidestep. I immediately called my dad at his home and I said, 'you know who I just almost literally ran into?' Dad cut me off and said Joe Bonanno. I said, yeah. He said, 'that's one of his favorite places to call'."

Using the notes found in the trash, the Tucson FBI agents knew which payphone Bonanno would be using. They got permission to wiretap the payphones and built a strong case against him.

On March 17, 1979 the FBI used a search warrant to find more incriminating documents inside the Bonanno home.

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On the next trash day, they discovered that Bonanno had thrown away even more documents—documents that led to Joe Bonanno's arrest.

William Roemer was one of two FBI agents who took him into custody.

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"They had enough evidence from the wiretaps and from the notes in his garbage can, things like that, that he was still operating the organized crime, the Bonanno organized crime family," Bill Roemer said.

Bonanno was sentenced to five years in prison—later reduced to a year—and fined $10,000.

But at age 75, Bonanno was actually behind bars for less than eight months.

"It was a big feather in the cap of the Tucson FBI office that they were the ones that finally got him," Roemer tells me.

"He had never been arrested in New York City but they finally got him, in all places, Tucson, Arizona."

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William Roemer retired shortly after the Bonanno arrest, following a 30-year career taking down members of organized crime.

It's a story that makes the arrest of reputed mafia boss Joe Bonanno Absolutely Arizona.