Inside Gaetano's: The mob stories, basement legends and ghost lore behind a Denver icon
From the outside, Gaetano's looks like your classic Italian neighborhood spot. But step inside, and you're stepping into one of Denver's most infamous stories, where good food met mob ties.
This dining room once doubled as a meeting place for one of the city's most powerful crime families.
Gaetano's has called North Denver's Tejon Street home since 1947. Owned by Clyde and "Checkers" Smaldone, the family called it simply "The Place."
"They would bring a lot to the neighborhood, you know," Owner Ron Robinson shared. "But they would also kill people, too."
Few people know those stories better than owner Ron Robinson, who has spent years studying the Smaldones and the legacy they left behind inside these walls.
"Back in the day, a lot of people were not allowed to come in here because they heard there was some weird stuff going on in here," Robinson said.
As the story goes, by the 1950s and '60s, Gaetano's had become the Smaldone family's headquarters, a place where some of the most notable names in organized crime were said to pass through.
One of the most famous stories centers around bootlegging.
"They used to buy whiskey in Canada for $66 a case, but found this guy in Chicago that was selling it for $33 a case, and that was Capone," Robinson said. "Capone has evidently been in this building a few times."
Other stories say Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. once played cards in the basement. A basement that's now used to prep meatballs and lasagna. But according to the stories still told inside Gaetano's, it was once home to cruel and unusual punishment.
"Several people had gotten executed in this boiler room," Robinson said.
By the 1980s, the mob had slowed, but some say the spirit of the mafia never left Gaetano's basement.
Robinson says a couple of mediums once came in and claimed there was "an old angry woman" in the liquor room after hearing a few bottles drop.
Mafia stories or phantom gangsters, one thing's clear: Gaetano's is a Denver Italian institution.
"I mean, it's an icon."
