Vinny DeQuattro of Cranston held the heads of some of the most ruthless Rhode Island criminals in his hands – as he lopped “a little off the top” at his Federal Hill barber shop.
Nicknamed “Vinny D”, DeQuattro spent more than half a century styling the hair of members of the mob.
“A lot of people call them mafia, but for me, it’s regular people. I respect them. I never call them mafioso, I treat them like a regular person,” he said.
One of the “regulars” at Vinny D’s barber shop was the late, notorious New England crime lord, Raymond L.S. Patriarca.
What kind of cut did the Patriarca prefer? “He didn’t have much hair, so not much you can do,” DeQuattro said laughingly.
Despite Patriarca’s fierce reputation, DeQuattro described him as nice.
And he says they didn’t talk much while he was in the barber’s chair. According to DeQuattro, anything that was spoken between them was confidential, their own code of silence.
DeQuattro came to Rhode Island as an immigrant from Italy in his early twenties to work as a barber in downtown Providence. Later, he would open his own shop in the Federal Hill neighborhood.
Another of his longtime customers was Gerry Tillinghast, a dapper enforcer for the Patriarca crime family. They met in the late 1960s and Tillinghast began bringing some of his friends to DeQuattro for haircuts. One was George Basmajian, a loan shark for the New England mob.
DeQuattro remembers Tillinghast asking him to stay late one night so he and Basmajian could get haircuts. The next morning on his drive into work, DeQuattro heard Tillinghast and his brother had killed Basmajian. The Tillinghasts went to prison.
“I thought, ‘jeeze, I lost two customers,’” said DeQuattro.
DeQuattro says not all of his patrons were “wise guys,” many were the good guys, such as local doctors, lawyers and police. Even the late beloved traffic judge Frank Caprio was a client.
It was Caprio who dubbed DeQuattro “The Singing Barber” because DeQuattro would often serenade his customers with songs in his native Italian.
But for now, the octogenarian does most of his singing at his Cranston home. “In the shower, I’m the best! My neighbor across the street says, ‘Who’s this guy?’” said a smiling DeQuattro.
