Ed Scarpo's Blog, page 27

Johnny Fratto Dies After Battling Lung Cancer

Johnny Fratto, RIP....

Johnny Fratto died following a bout with lung cancer.

Fratto passed away this morning peacefully with his family members by his side, including his wife, Ivanka. 
Fratto, 61, was the son of Outfit mobster Louis Fratto, who reportedly was active in Illinois and Iowa from the 1930s through the 1960s. 

Johnny Fratto made regular guest appearances on the Howard Stern Show and ran several businesses, including Beverly Hills Choppers. He wrote a book about the Mafia called Would You Read This Book If I Threatened to Kill You? It is unavailable, according to Amazon.com, however.
It's not known how long he'd been battling cancer.

Click here to purchase...

Fratto's brother Frank was killed along with boxer Rocky Marciano in a 1969 plane crash.
Asked about his alleged mob connections, Fratto once said:

It’s part of my heritage and part of my pedigree. It’s something that existed before I existed. I been around all of that and read about it before the time I was a little kid. I know guys that are “real guys”, I know guys that pretend to be real guys… it’s all the same: there’s good people and there’s bad people. I don’t believe it exists the way people believe it exists anymore. Maybe 25 years ago it was like that, but I think it’s still pretty much over… I am the Paris Hilton of the mafia, I haven’t done anything, yet somehow I seem to be the guy that’s always in the light.

We reported on Fratto when he was filmed accompanying Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino at LAX, where Merlino had just landed. Fratto said he was Joey's friend and driver.

If you are curious about the burpees comment:

Lufthansa Crew Darkened Dog Killer's Door

Peter "Bud" Zuccaro
Bud Zuccaro must've had a heart attack that day when he heard pounding on his front door and opened it up, only to see Jimmy the Gent standing there, along with Tommy Two-Guns and others.

They were fuming over something, but Bud probably had no idea over what or why. He was probably more concerned with impending death staring him in the eye.

James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke killed enough people to fill a cemetery under a boccie court (according to Henry Hill, who was probably exaggerating somewhat.). 
Tommy "Two-Guns" DeSimone was a certified maniac, who shot a kid to death for no good reason. Joe Pesci's version of Tommy was immortalized in Martince Scorcese's Goodfellas.
Vinny Asaro, a known made guy, also was there, with others. All were linked to the Lufthansa Heist at Kennedy Airport in Queens, New York.  Burke, DeSimone, Asaro and the others had shown up Peter Zuccaro’s home after Zuccaro shot a guard dog,  Zuccaro testified in court today at Vinny Asaro's trial in Brooklyn federal court.
Asaro is on trial for helping to plot the Lufthansa Heist at JFK airport, among other things, including murder-by-dog-leash. (Interesting irony here....)

“The dog zeroed in on me, jumped over the desk, I guess he didn’t recognize me, as started chewing on my arm,” the 60-year-old mob turncoat testified. 
“I shot him in the head. He mauled my arm. I had no choice.” 
Later, Zuccaro said Asaro showed up at his home with other members of the Lufthansa heist crew.
Frank Burke also was there, along with Parnell “Stacks” Edwards (Samuel L. Jackson played him in Goodfellas.)
The beef was later settled without anybody getting hurt by then-Bonanno capo Joseph Massino, who flipped in 2011 and is also testifying against Asaro.
“Joe, I’m your brother, who do you believe?” Asaro complained, according to Zuccaro. 
“I believe you but this kid (Zuccaro) is no liar,” Massino replied, Zuccaro said. 
Zuccaro testified there was not much honor among the Lufthansa thieves. 
Frank Burke blabbed about the robbery and had told Zucarro that Asaro and his cousin, Gaspare Valenti, were also involved. 
“He led me to believe he was set for life,” Zuccaro said of Frank Burke. 
“Frankie said Vinny kept Gaspare’s end (of the Lufthansa loot) and was trying to blame Jimmy Burke.” 
Valenti got his revenge for that by visiting the FBI in 2008 to make a deal. He agreed to wear a wire and became an informant. If Asaro had paid his cousin what was owed, it's unlikely that the 80-year-old Asaro would be on trial in the first place.
Zuccaro, an admitted murderer and pot-smoker who arrived in court from witness protection, also related the story of how he and others beat, then shot in the ass, Carmine Agnello, then-boyfriend of Victoria Gotti on John Gotti's orders. 
Agnello’s crime was beating up Victoria, according to published reports. 
Like Asaro, Zuccaro is from a section of East New York they all call “The Hole.” 
“It looked like a meteor hit something,” is how he described the area in  court. “It was a hole below sea level.” 

Heist's Brutal Reality for Lufthansa Staffers

Model of Lufthansa cargo terminal at JFK in 1978, exhibited in court. 
A former Lufthansa Airlines worker described what happened on that night in 1978, when masked gunmen infiltrated the Lufthansa cargo area at JFK, committing what was then called the largest robbery in American history. 
The witness took the stand today in Bonanno member Vincent Asaro's trial in Brooklyn Federal Court. The charges Asaro faces include co-masterminding the infamous $6 million Lufthansa heist with James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke. Asaro also is charged with the murder of Paul Katz, a suspected mob snitch strangled with a dog leash. 
Early in the a.m. in 1978, Rolf Rebmann was among the staffers grinding out the hours at the Kennedy Airport terminal targeted by mobsters using inside information, including blueprints.



Suddenly, “I heard a noise, someone hollering at the back. I went over to investigate. I opened the other door and there was a van parked there and a guy standing next to the van.” 
“I asked if I could help him. He said ‘No’ and stuck a gun in my face and told me to get into the van face-down.” 
Others were already inside the van, including Kerry Whalen, actually the first employee to meet the gun-wielding robbers Gaspare Valenti and Frank James Burke. 
The mobbed-up bandits had herded Rebmann along with other Lufthansa employees inside a cargo van, then issued a curt warning: Talk about this, you will die... 
Wallets and car keys were handed to the gangsters, who hefted large-sized weapons and wore masks. 
“We have your wallets. So we know where you live," said one of them, underlining the threat to murder anyone who dared talk to law enforcement. (An echo of the famous Goodfellas line: “You might know who we are, but we know who you are.”) 
In the commotion of the heist, the robbers couldn't account for Rolf, whose name was on the list of staffers' names. 
“We got everybody but we can’t find this guy Rolf!” one of the mobsters shouted. 

Cosa Nostra News commentator SP-IRISH shared this with us,
Henry Hill presumably at JFK....six months prior to his death. 


Soon enough, Rebmann was identified, hustled back out into the cold and ordered to open the bay doors to the cargo area's interior. 
“They were looking for the key to open the overhead (garage) door,” Rebmann told prosecutor Alicyn Cooley. “They asked for the keys and I gave them the keys.”
Then, after opening the door and backing the van into the warehouse, they marched the captives to the lunchroom.
“I saw three others, only from approximately the waist down, carrying guns,” Rebmann said. “The fellow was leading me around the warehouse with a gun in my back. They put me in the lunchroom and made me lay down on the floor. In the lunchroom all the guys that was working were tied up on the floor.”

While Tommy DeSimone and Valenti were staring at the cash-filled cardboard boxes, the guys with guns inside the lunchroom repeatedly reminded the employees to stay calm -- or else. 
“Do as you’re told,” Rebmann recalled hearing. “We don’t want to hurt anybody.” 
They may not have wanted to, but they did hurt somebody who didn't listen to them. 
At one point, Lufthansa employee Kerry Whalen tried to sound an alarm. 
“One of them stepped over me and hit Kerry," Rolf said in testimony at Asaro's trial.

Whalen, in a self-published book called “Inside the Lufthansa Heist:The FBI Lied,” described how he felt after Valenti pistol-whipped him.

The New York Daily News excerpted from the book how Whalen wet his pants:

“I couldn’t see with my left eye, but my right eye saw two bullets staring at me, the size of submarine torpedoes, in the chamber of a pistol,” he wrote. 

“I was so sure I would die that my body went completely limp causing me to urinate into my long johns.”

Valenti actually was the one who cracked Whalen's head with the butt of his gun. 
The heist team eventually created a human chain. They passed the haul -- every box of it, one after the other -- down and inside the van. 
Then the van sped off, hauling inside it the contents of what was then the largest robbery in American history. 
The Lufthansa staffers, frightened out of their wits, didn't dare to even stir until “somebody said there is nobody there,” Rebmann recalled. “And that’s when we all got up.” 
After Rebmann, a crew of former FBI agents took the stand to testify about various aspects of the the surveillance they slapped on Burke following the heist. 
They never slapped anything else onto Burke, heist-related, anyway. 
Jimmy the Gent was finally arrested on other charges, including murder, and died in prison in 1996. 
Rebmann took the stand after Valenti, who spent four days testifying about the heist and large volume of tape recordings he made via the wire he wore on his cousin, the 80-year-old frail-looking Vinny Asaro.
Valenti gave up Asaro because he of overwhelming financial issues primarily stemming from gambling. He also supposedly was tired of Cosa Nostra life. So in 2008, he visited the FBI, and was asked to wear a wire on Asaro.

On June 12, 2012, while Valenti was recording Asaro, Henry Hill, who flipped and told writer Nicholas Pileggi his story, died of natural causes.

That same month, Valenti brought Lufthansa up by asking Asaro if he planned on attending Hill's wake.
"No!"
"That’s one less left of Lufthansa,” Valenti said.
“Yeah,” Asaro responded. “Piece of shit.”
"He made a big thing like he was there with us," said Valenti.
“Fuck him,” Asaro told his wire-wearing turncoat cousin.
Hill was not on the actual job that night, but had played a role by introducing the robbers to bookie Marty Krugman, a Queens wig-store owner who tipped them off about the Lufthansa loot.
Why any mobster would attend Hill's wake is another question.

Anastasia Was Whacked on this Day in 1957

Anastasia, a violent mobster who died a violent death.
On this date in 1957, New York mob boss Albert Anastasia was shot to death in the Park Sheraton Hotel's barbershop.

Anastasia is believed to have been trying to nab a piece of the Cuban gambling action, and supposedly had met with Santos Trafficante in Manhattan to discuss this very topic before casually heading over for his regular shave and haircut.

Born in Tropea, Calabria, Italy, on Feb. 26, 1902, "Don Umberto" was murdered in New York City after spending more than seven years as boss of one of the Five Families.



In April 1951 Vincent Mangano, previous boss of the crime family, disappeared. Around the same time his brother Philip was found by a woman in a fishing boat. Shot twice in the face and once in the neck, Philip's body was sprawled in a marshy area of Jamaica Bay, in Brooklyn's Bergen Beach.

"AIDE OF JOE ADONIS IS FOUND SHOT DEAD," ran the New York Times headline reporting the murder. "Waterfront Racketeer 'Taken for a Ride, Then Dumped Out in a Brooklyn Marsh Glasses Spattered With Blood."

Vincent's body was never found. His underboss, Anastasia, who formerly ran the mob's prewar hit squad known as Murder Incorporated and had lived a notoriously violent life of crime in Brooklyn, took over the crime family.

A Calabrian in what was then primarily a Sicilian criminal organization, he named as his underboss Carlo Gambino, who lead the family's strong Palermo Sicily-oriented faction.

Anastasia earned mostly from lucrative waterfront labor racketeering, with brother "Tough Tony" running the docks for him, Anastasia lived in a luxurious mansion located in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He had a beautiful wife who'd borne him a son.

There's much speculation regarding the underworld alliance behind the hit.

Who the actual shooters were also has never been proven.

It's believed that the hit resulted from a two- or three-pronged alliance consisting mainly of Vito Genovese, who'd sent Frank Costello into retirement after creasing his skull with a bullet; Anastasia's ambitious underboss Gambino; and a faction of mobsters with strong gambling interests in Cuba, including Trafficante and Meyer Lansky.

Anastasia had been a strong ally of Costello's and supposedly was poised to ignite a mob war over the shooting ordered by Genovese. He reportedly made vague threats at a meeting with Genovese using language similar to what The Chin told John Gotti decades later following the Paul Castellano hit. So meone someday might have to answer for this...

Joseph Bonanno in his self-indulging memoir claimed he alone had kept the peace following Costello's shooting. He very well may have, as it would explain why Anastasia had otherwise inexplicably left himself so unguarded at a time when tempers of some very violent men, himself included, had previously been flaring. (Or Bonanno had gotten Anastasia to believe that after a.) joining the alliance or b.) choosing to take a backseat and let rival non-Sicilians (Genovese and Anastasia) kill each other.

Gaetano "Thomas" Lucchese was Anastasia's only ally at the time.

The actual hit likely resulted from Carlo Gambino's machinations involving Gambino-affiliated drug dealers from Manhattan's Lower East Side. Gangland News's Jerry Capeci reported this based on his sources.

I tend not to believe the Gallo brothers theory, although when Murder Inc was disbanded the outsourcing of Commission-sanctioned hits supposedly was given to Profaci's crime family.

Anastasia, in any event, gave his enemies lots of incriminating material to use against him. Aside from a button-selling scheme and the Arnold Schuster murder, The Mad Hatter supposedly had tried to get his piece of the Cuban gambling action, soon enough a moot point, though in 1957 the Mafia viewed the island nation off Florida's coast as shiny new frontier, a potential goldmine.

Around 10:20 on the morning of Oct. 25, 1957, Anastasia entered the Park Sheraton Hotel's barbershop (Arnold Rothstein had been slain there decades earlier) owned by Arthur Grasso.

That morning he sat back in the fourth chair of the shop's dozen. Joseph Bocchino administered to the crime boss, placing a hot cloth over Anastasia's face when two masked gunmen burst in and levelled handguns -- a .32 and a .38 caliber -- at the Don's covered supine shape. (See coroner's report, below).

They opened fire on Anastasia, bullets piercing his head, back, hip and hand.


The 55-year-old Anastasia lunged from his chair straight into the mirror, as if attacking his killers' reflection. He fell lifelessly to the floor amid a growing puddle of blood.
His widow returned to Canada. Comedian Buddy Hackett purchased Anastasia's former home on Bluff Road in the Palisade section of Fort Lee.

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What We Didn't Know About Lufthansa Heist

Vinny Asaro, last man standing, on trial risking a life sentence at 80.


TOTALLY REVISED, REFORMATTED:
Vincent Asaro sat in a car with James Burke, about a mile away from the Lufthansa cargo terminal on that December night in 1978, when eight mobbed-up gunmen were stealing a haul expected to be around $2 million, only discover it was three times that amount.

This story has been told before of course, initially in the iconic book Wiseguy, followed by an equally iconic cinematic adaptation, Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, not to mention the library of articles and additional books about the vaunted robbery. Once the largest heist in American history, it has been eclipsed. The 1990 Boston Museum robbery, valued at $300 million, currently is considered the largest.

Still, there remains information about the Lufthansa Heist that only now is being revealed. That is if you believe Gaspare Valenti who claims he flipped in 2008 because he was broke. Prosecutors say Valenti voluntarily came forward and agreed to testify against Asaro. Valenti, 68, first described how he started committing robberies, arson and other crimes for the 80-year-old defendant in the 1960s as a Bonanno family associate.


Valenti has never been publicly linked as a participant in the heist until this week's trial, when he said he was one of eight Mafia members and associates who, wearing black ski masks and gloves, drove up in a stolen van to the outside the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy International Airport on a December night in 1978.

Among some of the items he revealed about the Lufthansa Heist heretofore unknown to the public:

After forcing an employee to open a vault, Tommy DeSimone walked in first, followed by Valenti. DeSimone took a box down from a shelf, dropped it and stomped, revealing yellow plastic foam hiding two packets of money underneath that contained $125,000 in hundred-dollar bills. “This is it! This is it!” DeSimone told Valenti. “Take all these 50 boxes!” 

The crew of robbers formed a human chain to swiftly pass the cash-filled boxes out of the terminal and into the van. In addition, they nabbed “burlap sacks of gold chains, crates of watches, a big three-by-three metal box with little drawers on it and each drawer had diamonds in it and emeralds and all different stones,” Valenti said.

Valenti said he spent weeks using bleach-dipped cotton swabs to remove ink markings on the bills in order to make them untraceable. So much for the cash already being "totally, totally untraceable."

Asaro arranged for Valenti to sell Christmas trees from out of his house as a means to mask the odor of the burning cardboard boxes and wooden crates in which the valuables had been packaged.

Asaro and others began moving the money around to their friends, who were supposed to hold it for them, providing small payouts to Valenti and the rest of the crew. Many were later murdered, as depicted famously in Goodfellas.



When the heist van was found, law enforcement traced it to Stacks Edwards, a known affiliate of Burke's. Law enforcement had initially believed John Gotti was responsible.

The plan called for Valenti and another robber, Burke's son, to take a stolen black van to the airport terminal and use bolt cutters to break into a side entrance. Once inside the terminal, they teamed up with other armed and masked bandits who were holding several workers hostage in a lunch room, he said.


Valenti revealed despite the "sophisticated" planning that had gone into the heist, no escape plan had been included. "No. It's amazing — a robbery that big and nothing was discussed about where to go afterward. Vinny yelled out, ‘Bring it to my cousin’s house!’ And that’s where we went, to my house.”


Despite Burke's warning that accompanied the initial payouts -- Don't spend any of the money lavishly -- Asaro nevertheless used it to buy a second home, a boat and a Bill Blass designer edition of a Lincoln Continental. Asaro allegedly gambled most of of his $750,000 cut at the racetrack.

View the original Lufthansa indictment.



Supposedly that is Vinny Asaro shaking John Gotti's hand in an undated surveillance photo from the NY Times.


Heist History
James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke (July 5, 1931 – April 13, 1996), an Irish-American gangster with ties to the Luchese family through his association with Luchese capo Paul Vario, has historically been credited for masterminding the Lufthansa Heist caper.

The largest robbery in American history at the time, the crime stemmed from inside information from a Lufthansa cargo supervisor who owed a large gambling debt to Burke-controlled bookmaker Martin Krugman.

Burke allegedly planned and recruited a crew of criminal acquaintances that included DeSimone as well as a host of others, including a Gambino associate to oversee that family's interests..

JFK Airport was split between the Gambino and the Lucchese families, owing largely to an alliance set up between the men who the two families were named after – Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese – once Carlo’s son married Tommy’s daughter. Because of this, permission was sought from and granted by the Gambino capo who controlled the airport, which supposedly was John Gotti at the time. The Gambinos were expecting around $250,000 in proceeds from the "$2 million" crime. The Gambinos even worked it out so that Paolo LiCastri would be gunman in on the actual heist, to look after the crime family's interests. It would be his doom.

The book The Lufthansa Heist: Behind the Six-Million-Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the Word, notes that LiCastri was under Gotti, who'd been named capo in 1978, the year of the heist.

From the book Wiseguy, on which Goodfellas was based, Edward McDonald, who headed an organized crime taskforce for the Eastern District, offered some details about the murders, including LiCastri's fate:

MCDONALD: Henry Hill’s arrest was the first real break we’d had in the Lufthansa case in over a year. Ever since Lou Werner’s conviction the case had stagnated. Most of the witnesses and participants had either been murdered or disappeared. For instance, on the same night we convicted Lou Werner, Joe Manri and Frenchy McMahon were murdered. A month later Paolo LiCastri’s body turned up on top of a smoldering garbage heap in a lot off Flatlands Avenue, Brooklyn. Then Louis Cafora and his new wife, Joanna, disappeared. They were last seen happily driving away from some relative’s house in Queens in a new Cadillac Fat Louis had bought his bride. Henry was one of the crew’s only survivors, and he was finally caught in a position where he might be persuaded to talk. He was facing twenty-five years to life on the Nassau County narcotics conspiracy. His girlfriend and even his wife could also be tied into the drug conspiracy, and life could be made very unpleasant for them.

Burke was seeking to protect himself and Luchese capo Paul Vario (and probably other Mafia higher-ups) from prosecution and also enlarge their portion of the enormous treasure, which was never recovered. Burke's haul is believed to have ranged between $2 million and 4 million. One million to $2 million ended up in Vario’s pocket, while the rest was doled out to the robbers and others in supporting roles. The actual robbers themselves received the smallest share, anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000.

Partially as a result of the testimony of Hill, Burke was taken into custody on April 1, 1980, on suspicion of a number of crimes. In 1982, he was convicted of fixing Boston College basketball games as part of a point shaving gambling scam in 1978, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. While still in jail, he was convicted of the murder of drug dealer Richard Eaton, for which Burke was sentenced to a further 20 years.

Burke was suspected of several other killings in his lifetime, and gained a reputation for burying his victims in familiar locations, including Robert’s Lounge, the saloon he owned located near his Queens home.

Henry Hill described the saloon as Burke’s private cemetery.

“Jimmy buried over a dozen bodies… under the bocce courts,” Hill wrote in his memoir, A Goodfella’s Guide to New York.

Burke died of cancer in a Buffalo hospital in April 1996.

The Mafia's greatest heist took place at an airport that historically is believed to have been shared by the Luchese and Gambino families, which together "controlled" the airport due to the marriage between Carlo Gambino's son and Thomas Lucchese's daughter.

Yet Hill named both the Bonanno crime family and specifically identified Vincent Asaro as the capo who oversaw the family's interests at the airport:

“By early December everything was ready and we were just waiting for the word from Werner that the money had arrived. Jimmy told Paulie about what we had coming, and Paulie assigned his son Peter to pick up his end. Jimmy also had to give up a share to Vinnie Asaro, who was then the Bonanno family’s crew chief out at the airport. The Bonannos ran half the airport in those days, and Jimmy had to show respect to them to maintain the peace.

Hill doesn't directly implicate anyone in the book; he mentions a lot of names of people who could have been associated with the crime. He claims that because he was involved in his own business -- drug dealing and a college basketball-betting scheme involving Boston College -- he had "lost track" of the "guys in on the [Lufthansa] deal."

He notes:

"I heard for instance, that... LiCastri wasn't on the job. Frenchy McMahon, another stickup guy... was also hanging around all the time, but I wasn't sure where he was going to fit in. Frenchy was a good guy and he was very tight with Joe Buddha, so wherever you saw Joe Buddha you saw Frenchy. When you've got something like Lufthansa coming up, you don't ask questions and you don't talk about it. You don't want to know. Knowing what's not necessary is only trouble."

Asaro is named a few times in the book. He drove "Spider" to the neighborhood doctor after Tommy Two-Guns shot him in the foot for not dancing fast enough for him. (Next time he shot Spider in the chest, murdering him.)

Another glimpse of Asaro in Wiseguy is related to the killing of Krugman, the bookmaker.

“Right after New Year’s the Lufthansa heat got to be too much at Robert’s, so everyone moved to a new place Vinnie Asaro opened on Rockaway Boulevard. Vinnie was spending a fortune fixing up the place, which was right next door to his fence company.

I remember when I got back from Florida, Marty was all over me.

He was hanging around Vinnie’s new joint now, and he wanted to know about Tommy. He wanted to know about Stacks. What was going on? He knew Tommy had had trouble with the Gotti crew and that Stacks was probably hit over a business deal that went bad, but he was nervous. I think he sensed something was wrong. He used to hang around Vinnie’s bar waiting for war news. “And that’s where they whacked him out. At the bar. On January 6. Fran called at seven o’clock the next morning and said Marty hadn’t come home that night. I knew right away. I couldn’t get back to sleep. She called back at nine. I told her that I’d go out and look for him later that morning. “I drove over to Vinnie’s fence company, and I saw Jimmy’s car parked outside. I walked in and said that Fran had just called me.

Jimmy was sitting there. Vinnie was sitting next to him. Jimmy said, ‘He’s gone.’ 

Just like that. I looked at him. I shook my head. He said, ‘Go pick up your wife and go over there. Tell her that he’s probably with a girlfriend. Give her a story.’"

Burke's son, Frank James Burke, DeSimone, Hill and Angelo Sepe were the only participants to outlive the crime. Fate, however, did not let these men escape their destiny so easily. Sepe was murdered in the mid 1980s, shot in the head for having robbed a Mafia-connected drug dealer. Frank James Burke was found shot to death on a Brooklyn street in May of 1987, the spoiled fruit of a drug deal gone bad.

DeSimone, nicknamed "Two-Gun Tommy" because he carried a set of pearl-handled pistols, spent his short life looking to get inducted into the Luchese family. It has been claimed that the Vario faction of the family considered him "hopelessly stupid, demonstrating no ability to generate profit" though he was a fairly competent killer, probably killing a few people too many. In the film he is murdered primarily for killing a made guy (Hill mentions several times that Tommy was in trouble with the "Johnny Gotti crew," yet also wrote that the body would never be found, so Gotti would never know for sure what had happened to member Billy Batts).

Obvious questions arise. At time of the heist, the Bonanno family was running "half" the airport, according to Hill's account in Wiseguy. Idlewild Airport, renamed JFK International in 1963, was a huge moneymaker for the Gambino and Luchese families. It's difficult to understand how the Bonannos could've had such a large position.

That year the crime family was basically in receivership. The ever-imprisoned wife-killing Rusty Rastelli had been named boss in 1973. The next year would see the killing of Carmine Galante, followed later by the three-capo whackings.

Special agent Joe Pistone, aka Donnie Brasco, was in the process of infiltrating the Colombos, then transitioned over to the Bonanno family, which was more inviting to him.

It would seem Lufthansa may have been more of a local alliance among friendly capos who lived in Queens, in the airport's backyard. Jimmy Burke-Paul Vario (Luchese family), John Gotti (Gambino) and Vinny Asaro-Joe Massino versus, say, a deal worked out at the Commission level.

Massino in 1978 was years away from being boss and still had lots of killing to do to keep Rastelli in place. Massino's ticket may well have been punched in the following years, only he managed to come out ahead. Betting on him in 1978 to become boss was a longshot, yet according to Sal Vitale's testimony, he had received the bulk of the Bonanno family's payment.

Another issue worth pondering: if LiCastri was slain by Burke for his role in Lufthansa, it's difficult to believe that John Gotti wouldn't have sought retaliation. He certainly didn't hesitate to take out DeSimone, according to sources.

But DeSimone was killed officially, in a sanctioned hit.

LiCastri's murder, along the others, were not sanctioned. In other words, from the purist's point of view, those killed in the Lufthansa fallout were not killed due to "Mafia business."

Lufthansa was not purely a mob heist. It was one put together primarily by a powerful associate and capos from three crime families, all of whom lived in Queens, New York.

Vinny Asaro, Lufthansa Heist's Last Loose End

Vincent Asaro at Brooklyn Federal Court in 1966.

Expanded slightly: In a Brooklyn courtroom this week commenced the trial of an 80-year-old Bonanno family gangster, Vincent Asaro, who allegedly was involved in the notorious 1978 Lufthansa Heist. Not only was he supposedly the Bonanno family's overseer at JFK airport, the prosecution charged, noting that Asaro himself played a direct role in the heist.

Ex-underboss Salvatore Vitale testified yesterday, providing a window into events surrounding the notorious robbery at JFK airport. Asaro supposedly was heard muttering "motherfucker" constantly under his breath during testimony, trying all the while to stare Vitale in the eye.

Asaro personally handed off a case stuffed with jewelry from the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist to future Bonanno boss Joseph Massino, Vitale said Monday at the first ever mob-related trial over the historic "unsolved" crime. Massino himself also is slated to testify, among others.


“When Joe got in the car he had the case that Vinny gave him,” Vitale testified. “He had it in his lap…He opened up the case and he showed me all kinds of chains and he said ‘this is from the Lufthansa score.’”

Later that day, Vitale went to Massino’s Queens house and was shown a portion of the breathtaking haul.

“All of the jewelry was laid out on the dining room table,” Vitale said, adding his measly piece of the fortune was only one measly necklace.

“A couple of days later I drove Joey to the diamond district on Canal Street and after I parked we entered into a jewelry store,” Vitale said. “There was a guy there — him and Joe went in the back with the case and I never saw the case again.”

On cross examination, Asaro’s attorney, Elizabeth Macedonio, sought to bash Vitale’s testimony as unreliable.


Opening Statements
“The defendant is a gangster through and through — he lived and breathed the Mafia,” prosecutor Lindsay Gerdes said in her opening statement as Asaro, 80, looked on wearing a gray sweater.

“On the night of the heist itself, the robbery team brought all the tools they would need — guns, masks, gloves,” she said.

“The defendant and Jimmy Burke waited nearby in a car, ready to act as a crash car if the police happened to stumble upon the crew,” she said. Apparently Asaro was a direct participant in the crime.

“Jimmy Burke and Vincent Asaro were true partners in crime,” Gerdes said. “Hijacking, robbing, murder.”

She later referred to the Lufthansa job as “truly the score of all scores. Boxes and boxes of money and jewelry. More money than anyone could have dreamed.”

Gaspare Valenti, a cousin of Asaro's and also a Bonanno associate, is expected to tell jurors today that Asaro had talked about his involvement in the heist -- emphasizing in his colorful language that he'd failed to receive his fair share.

“We never got our right money, what we were supposed to get, we got fucked all around. Got fucked around. That ­fucking Jimmy [Burke] kept everything,” Asaro complained on tape, according to prosecutors. (He constantly bitched about how cheap everyone around him was, yet his own supposed greed may be a key reason his cousin flipped on him.)

In addition to the robbery, loansharking, gambling and assault raps, Asaro is charged with killing a suspected FBI cooperator with a dog chain in 1969.

During its opening statement Monday, the defense stressed the burden of proof is on the government. It said prosecutors are relying on "incentived" criminals for a lot of their argument.

Of Asaro's alleged involvement in the fabled heist, McMahon has said: "Innocence. Pure, actual innocence. He didn't do it, had nothing to do with it. Pretty much all the people that did it got murdered ... So, the fact that my client didn't get murdered would suggest that he didn't have anything to do with it, so I'll start right there."

Prosecutors haven't revealed why their key witnesses turned on Asaro, though it's believed he may have held a grudge after being cheated out of a cut of Asaro's $750,000 take from the heist.

The $6 million in 2015 dollars would be worth $21.9 million, with each share worth $2.7 million, according to information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The crew behind the scheme, including mastermind Jimmy Burke, had believed the haul would've been much less. It had actually been pegged at $2 million. Part of the reason so many were killed is that the haul was so much larger than Burke had believed.

It brought down so much heat on all the families, Burke began systematically killing all the actual participants in the crime, mostly lowly hired guns destined to receive the smallest shares from the loot.

Louis Werner, an airport cargo worker, is the only one to ever be convicted for the crime.

Valenti, a Bonanno associate who has pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, is expected to take the witness stand to testify about Asaro's alleged role in the Lufthansa heist and a gruesome murder of a suspected mob turncoat.

Other witnesses will include former Bonanno boss Joseph Massino, the first New York Mafia boss to turn informant after being found guilty following a major racketeering case.

Asaro was a Bonanno soldier, with the Mafia slogan 'death before dishonor' tattooed on his forearm in late 1978 when the Lufthansa cargo terminal was robbed.

The men stole about $5 million in untraceable US currency that was being returned to the United States from Germany, along with about $1 million in jewelry.

Valenti, wore a wire on Asaro and is expected to hang murders on the elderly Mafioso, whom the Sicilian faction of the Bonanno family was touting to take over a few years prior to Asaro's arrest early last year.

Here's the New York Daily News's first story on the Lufhansa Heist: Five gunmen steal an estimated $5 million from Lufthansa cargo hangar at Kennedy Airport in 1978, originally published on Dec. 12, 1978. 

The story was written by William Federici and Owen Moritz.

Five gunmen steal an estimated $5 million from Lufthansa cargo hangar at Kennedy Airport in 1978, originally published on Dec. 12, 1978.

In what may be the nation's biggest cash heist ever, five masked gunmen slipped through a supposedly impenetrable security net around a Lufthansa cargo hangar at Kennedy Airport early yesterday and rode off with an estimated $5 million in easily spendable American and foreign money.
And just for good luck, the bandits, also carried off another $300,000 to $500,000 in gold, pearls and jewelry to complete a heist that makes the legendary Brink's job, of which $1.2 million was cash, look like a theft from another century, before inflation.
The gunmen hit the two-block-long hangar of the Red Baron's airline at 3:15 a.m. when its "high value" room was bursting with money. A Lufthansa jet had landed with $2 million to $3 million in currency being shipped to the Chase Manhattan and Federal Reserve banks here. Another $2 million or so was on hand.

Port Authority police said two gunmen circled around to a back entrance of the huge cargo area — the place is girded by cyclone fences — clipped a lock without touching off an alarm, then seized at gunpoint a guard making his rounds.

The gunmen forced the guard to deactivate a silent alarm and open the front entrance to admit a black van that contained three more gunmen, police said. With the guard in handcuffs, the five swept into the hangar on the northern flank of the airport, rounded up nine workers on their lunch break and locked them in a second-floor cafeteria. They forced a guard to reveal the combination to a safe. And then, for more than an hour, they looted a 14-by-14-foot cinder-block vault of 30 bags of cash and jewels.

The five loaded the van and fled.

"They were prepared," said an airport spokesman. "They had enough handcuffs for all 10 employees."

"We've got every reason to believe this is an inside job because of the way they went through a sophisticated alarm system," he said.

The currency haul, largely in dollars but including some Swiss francs and West German marks, was estimated at $5 million at day's end. But authorities were still trying to reckon to precise amount.

If confirmed, the cash heist would set a new entry in American record books, exceeding the $4.3 million cash haul from the Chicago warehouse of Purolator Security Inc. four years ago and the $1.2 million in the fabled Brink's hijacking.

An employee shows the FBI where he and others were tied up during the Lufthansa robbery.

Banking sources said the cash was "used" money, meaning it was unmarked. Most of the money was from tourism and dollar exchanges, and some of it was considered "old" money — money due to be turned over to the Federal Reserve Bank in exchange for new dollars.

"We do this sort of thing only occasionally," a Chase official said, explaining why currency had been shipped from Frankfurt. Usually, money is transferred by wire in what amounts to a paper transaction.

In addition to the Lufthansa shipment, which arrived at 12:55 a.m., the vault contained cash and jewels that had been in storage since Friday after a usual 3:15 p.m. Friday pickup.

A Brink's Inc. truck had arrived Friday at the prescribed time to pick up the money, according to one account, but the airline foreman was on the field directing the unloading of another delivery. Told to wait, the Brink's guards said they had to leave because of a tight schedule.

Brink's officials declined comment.

According to Port Authority detectives, the five bandits wore stocking masks, and three carried .38-caliber handguns. The other two carried a shotgun and a .45.

One part-time worker, Kerry Whelan, a college student, was pistol-whipped when he attempted to escape while the gunmen were handcuffing the cargo handlers and agents. His wounds required five stitches.

Those familiar with the huge Lufthansa complex said the gunman had to know their way around in order to pull off the heist with such precision. The bandits knew which of several cinderblock rooms was the "high value" room.

The gunmen also knew the grounds well, entering from a back entrance which faces the Belt Parkway. The escape via the front entrance which leads to a service lead of the Van Wyck Expressway, authorities said.

Gorilla Convict: Lufthansa Heist Story Twist

In case you missed it, the following is excerpted from the top of a Q&A on Seth Ferranti's blog, Gorilla Convict. He interviews Daniel Simone, author of The Lufthansa Heist: Behind the Six-Million-Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World.

The interview is quite comprehensive and intriguing. Ferranti himself is a quite intriguing subject too.

"He earned a master’s degree, got married, launched a writing career and founded a publishing house," all from behind bars.


As noted on the website Ozy:
"In 1993, Ferranti, a 22-year-old high school dropout, was sentenced to 304 months in prison. The self-proclaimed “rebel without a cause” was a first-time, nonviolent offender whom prosecutors had deemed a drug kingpin. In late July, after serving the required 85 percent of his federal time and getting 10 months chopped off his sentence for completing drug rehab, Ferranti walked out of the Federal Correctional Complex."

"It feels like forever. I spent 21 years in prison, and that whole time in prison is like a distant memory."
- Seth Ferranti

The drug that landed him that sentence (where he accomplished more than I have) was LSD, one of the least addictive drugs available. People don't overdose on LSD. We've never been inundated with accounts of  LSD dealers murdering each other over turf. And the once-common urban massacre known as "the drive-by" (as in "drive-by shooting") never occurred owing to LSD, to my knowledge. 
Not to diminish the dangers posed by the drug (actual name: lysergic acid diethylamide).

It is one of the most potent mind-altering substances available. Yet it's probably the only drug with an origin story that could serve as the setup for a Seth Rogen comedy:  It was created by accident in 1938 when one of two Swiss chemists inadvertently ingested it and experienced the drug's hallucinogenic properties.

Onward with the Q&A regarding one of the latest in a flood of books detailing varying aspects of the Lufthansa heist, considered one of the largest heist in American history, though it has since been surpassed.
Simone's book stands out for the distinction of listing as coauthor former Luchese associate-turned informant Henry Hill himself. (Rob Sberna and Dominick Cicale, friends of mine, wrote The Mystery of the Lufthansa Airlines Heist:: A Wiseguy Reveals the Untold Story, which includes excerpts of a Hill interview. I have promoted that book -- and will continue doing so; due to the conflict-of-interest perception, I decided to link to Seth's Q&A to cover the topic).

As for Simone, his next slated nonfiction book -- about the infamous Charles Manson -- sounds even more intriguing. 
The New York Post's Page Six wrote of it: 

Charles Manson — the charismatic cult leader convicted in the deaths of actress Sharon Tate and eight other victims — might not be guilty, according to Long Island journalist Daniel Simone. 

Simone and co-author Heidi Ley are putting the finishing touches on a book that will lay out all the evidence that Manson, 80, was the victim of a ruthlessly ambitious prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, who died in June. 

“The reader will walk away with doubts,” Simone told me. “Of Manson’s 37 prior arrests, none involved violence. And [almost] every single witness who testified against him was a convicted felon or facing trial.” 

Manson wasn’t even at the scenes of the Tate-LaBianca murders but was convicted because he told his co-conspirators to do it. 

Manson, who gave the authors 12 hours of prison interviews, has authorized the tome. “He not only signed off on it, he placed his thumbprints beneath his signature in case someone questions its authenticity,” Simone said. “He’s quite clever.”

From Gorilla Convict: Goodfellas, John Gotti and The Lufthansa Heist

Twenty five years ago, the Martin Scorcese film Goodfellas, was released to rave reviews and furious fanfare. With the wisecracking Joe Pesci as Tommy, the brilliant Robert De Nero as Jimmy the Gent Burke and Ray Liotta as the central character, Henry Hill, the movie chronicles a murderous tale of greed. The story, told from Henry Hill’s point of view after he turned federal informant, left out a few important details. It only hyper glosses over the actual Lufthansa Heist, and left out John Gotti’s role in the affair entirely.

But a new book that Henry Hill worked on shortly before his death in 2012, with author Daniel Simone, has been released to fill in all the missing details. Coinciding with the 25th Anniversary of Goodfellas, The Lufthansa Heist: Behind the Six-Million Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World is available now and the book describes how a young John Gotti whacked the real life Joe Pesci character Tommy DeSimone.

The book also sheds light on a headline ripped straight out of todays news. Aging Mafioso Capo Vincent Asaro is about to go to trial for charges in connection with the Lufthansa Heist. He is actually the first person ever charged with the heist and the judge has ruled that no references can be made to the movie Goodfellas in the case. The book actually casts doubts on federal prosecutors case against Asaro. The US Attorney’s office seems hell bent on convicting the Bonanno gangster and making him take the fall for the quarter century old crime, but Simone raises serious questions on whether he played a part in the robbery at all. And in classic Henry Hill form the book implicates everyone who was involved in the heist, detailing the part Mafia legend John Gotti played. Maybe Asaro should try to get the book entered into evidence. We sat down with Daniel Simone for a brief history lesson.....

How did you meet Henry Hill?

I met him by sheer coincidence at a fund raiser.

What interested you in writing the Lufthansa Heist?

When the robbery took place in 1978, I lived in the vicinities of Kennedy Airport.  This brazen felony made blazoning headlines, and it entranced the public. Initially, Lufthansa disclosed that the amount of the theft was $2,000,000, then $3,000,000, and every week the total rose and rose. It was fascinating because the NYPD and the Port Authority suspected with reasonable certainty who had done it, but couldn’t muster sufficient evidence for a probable cause to arrest anyone. I also had another motivation inspiring me to write about this ballsy affront on Lufthansa, a remarkable coincidence. At that time, I was into a relationship with a young lady who was a Lufthansa stewardess, and for that reason I felt an intangible attachment to the event. And the media sensationalized it as if it were scripted in Hollywood, which glamorized what would have been just another burglary.

What was it like working on the book with Henry Hill?

It was tough. Henry often strayed from the subject, and wandered from one irrelevant topic to another. He seemed to find more pleasure in sharing his cooking recipes with me. (I, too, try my hand at cooking). Then on many days, Henry’s memory was hazy, and quite frequently he simply didn’t feel like discussing Lufthansa. He’d be anxious to move on with the morning and dive into unrelated activities, painting, signing promotional merchandise–and drinking.

Talk about the upcoming case and what it means?

I’m assuming you’re referring to the Vincent Asaro case. I spent almost two years interviewing Henry–and some of those sessions were videotaped. I had the collaboration of the two FBI agents who spearheaded the investigation (they wrote the forward and the afterward in my book). I also had the invaluable cooperation of Ed McDonald, the former US Attorney who was in charge of the case. (Incidentally, he played himself in Goodfellas). In my Notes and Sources page of the book, I name numerous individuals who were peripherally involved in the robbery; some on the sides of the authorities, and several down in the bowels of the underworld. Additionally, I managed to review a series of FBI inter-office memorandums circulated by those agents who were assisting the lead investigators identifying prospective suspects.  And in the end of this exhausting mission, Vincent Asaro’s name never came up...



READ THE ENTIRE Q&A...
Related articles [image error] 'Goodfellas': 25 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Scorsese's Masterpiece [image error] Page To Screen: Goodfellas turned Wiseguy's simple prose into cinematic gold [image error] Was Goodfellas the Last Truly Great Mobster Film? [image error] 'Goodfellas' 25th Anniversary: Where Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and the Other Stars Are Now

Lefty Rosenthal's Hidden Las Vegas Agenda?

Geri, on Lefty's left, looks a lot like Sharon Stone, who played a character
based on her in the film Casino.

"Nevada owes a debt of gratitude to Frank Schreck," a Las Vegas Sun editorial recently noted.

Schreck was named this year's International Association of Gaming Advisors honoree and in recognition gave quite a speech. It included a head-turning revelation about a major Mafia figure notorious for his stint working in the Stardust hotel and casino (among other places), which once occupied a prime slot on the fabled Las Vegas strip.

Schreck, considered a premier gaming attorney in Nevada and elsewhere, recounted his personal take on Las Vegas history, including the enduring legacy of oddball billionaire
Schreck's rise commenced in 1971 when then-governor Mike O’Callaghan’s appointed the then-27-year-old lawyer to the Nevada Gaming Commission, setting a record. Schreck remains the youngest commissioner ever appointed to that regulatory body, which was charged with policing whether someone could purchase a gaming license and join Nevada’s bedrock industry.

The operative word is "someone." Schreck was there when Hughes came into town and bought most of it via his corporations, a no-no at the time. The town, however, eyeing Hugh's billions when the word "billionaire" was not commonly part of the lexicon, sought to make some serious changes to permit the aviator, filmmaker, engineer, loner, etc., to sink fortunes into the strip.

The Sun article described Schreck as instrumental in terms of his "leadership in writing the rules and regulations that allowed public companies, banks and Wall Street investment firms to become owners of Nevada’s regulated casinos."

"Before Hughes moved to Las Vegas, each gaming hotel and casino was licensed to individuals only. Corporations were not allowed and, of course, in those days Wall Street and the insurance companies wanted no part of “gambling." 

"All this was happening toward the end of the 1960s, when Las Vegas was in a slump and its potentially rosy and exciting future was, well, questionable. That is when Hughes, a recent Nevada transplant, decided he wanted in the gambling business and swept up six casino-hotels in practically the blink of an eye. 

"That brought two challenges to the fore: how to license Hughes, who refused to go out in public, and how to license corporations (which Hughes used to hold his assets), which violated the Nevada mindset of holding individuals accountable and not the legal fiction of a corporation for their conduct in the industry. 

"That’s about when Frank was appointed to the commission and handed the job of writing the rules that govern — to this day — the entrance of public companies, Wall Street and every other form of financial involvement into Nevada’s primary industry. It is those rules that have proved invaluable in the growth of gaming in Nevada over the past 40 years. ..." 

"Hughes made it safe for the big boys to look at and consider investing in Las Vegas. If Las Vegas was good enough for the richest man in the country, they figured it was good enough for them. It was as simple as that!"

Then, according to the editorial, Schreck in last week's speech swerved into another topic of historical interest, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal who died on Oct. 13, 2008.

As noted: "The Chicago Outfit put Rosenthal in. They used the nickname "Crazy" when they spoke of him," noted Jane Ann Morrison in the Las Vegas Review Journal in 2008. Interestingly, while she knew both Rosenthal and Spilotro, she actually found "the fastidious" Rosenthal scarier than Tony "The Ant":

The few times Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal and I spoke, he looked at me as if I were a worm he'd like to step on, except the ensuing goo would dirty the sole of his shoe. Actually, I found the fastidious Rosenthal scarier than mobster Anthony Spilotro, and no one accused Rosenthal of killing dozens of people. 

Now I've been on the receiving end of plenty of cold stares, but Rosenthal really gave it his all and his cold stare did a number on me when I was a federal court reporter between 1978 and 1984. Our first face-to-face encounter was during that period when he was unofficially running the Stardust... 

He had various titles, from food and beverage director to entertainment director, but it was no secret he was concerned with more than how many blueberries were in a blueberry muffin and how tall the show girls were."

A court reporter said she actually found Lefty scarier than Tony "The Ant" Spilotro,
Rosenthal's muscle whose Hole in the Wall crew caused big trouble for the
diminutive, ultra-violent Outfit shooter.
As Lefty's website notes (conveniently overlooking that he was put in Nevada on behalf of the Outfit, which had assumed control of the gambling mecca after the New York Mafia fumbled it... Remember that list found in Frank Costello's pocket after he was shot in the head?)...

Anyway the official Lefty website says:

For much of his professional life, the Chicago-born and casino-bred, Rosenthal has been the country's top handicapper. He was one of a handful of men who literally set the line for thousands of bookmakers from coast to coast. 

During the 1970's, and early eighties, Rosenthal ran four Las Vegas casinos simultaneously, including the world famous Stardust Hotel and Casino.Rosenthal is also credited with creatingthe first Race & Sportsbook (Parlor) in Las Vegas. Despite resistance from the traditional casino bosses, who believed exclusively in terms of table games and slots, Rosenthal had spent decades in and around the sports world to know that it could be the motherlode of casino betting.He created a space-age theater-like Race and Sportsbook at the Stardust Hotel & Casino that was copied by every casino on the strip.

Now back to Shreck's speech, in which he provided the answer to an apparently longtime question that had risen to something akin to folklore status.

Specifically, why did Las Vegas gaming authorities wait so long to call Rosenthal "forward for licensing when everyone knew he was running the Stardust Hotel for his Chicago-based owners (I think you get the picture). If not, try to remember the 1995 film “Casino” with Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone. De Niro played the Lefty character."

Schreck, it seems, finally solved this puzzle:

"... It was common for the gaming authorities not to call some casino people forward, but we all knew why. Their pasts couldn’t stand up to modern-day scrutiny, but their present-day activities were exemplary. Hence, they got passes. 

"But Lefty? No one could understand why gaming authorities refused to act. Neither could Frank, who tried to bring Rosenthal forward but found only deaf ears attached to responsible and honest men. 

"Finally, according to Schreck, as he was leaving the commission to enter private practice, he got his wish. The commission would call Lefty Rosenthal forward for suitability — the drama that was played out near the end of “Casino.”

Then, shortly thereafter, as noted in his speech, Schreck learned what the hold up had been.  "It was an answer some of us believed was the case but couldn’t prove," the editorial writer added.

Lefty Rosenthal was a government informant, Schreck reveled, "confirming" what industry insiders long believed.

Mob Flick Death Collector Was Pesci's Debut

Frank Vincent sports a '70s 'fro in Family Enforcer, Wanna watch Family Enforcer, the film that launched Joe Pesci's career? Robert De Niro allegedly viewed the B-flick and recommended that
Family Enforcer was originally named The Death Collector, and versions of the 1976 film can be found under either title. Amazon offers it as part of a double- and even triple-feature DVD for as little as $5 (with free two- day delivery for Amazon Prime members).

Grindhouse Releasing, which focuses on acquiring and distributing "classic" films (ie, shock horror (Cannibal Holocaust) and exploitation films) is preparing a new version of Family Enforcer for release as well.

Or you could watch Family Enforcer for free....



Cosa Nostra News presents Family Enforcer, directed by onetime filmmaker Ralph De Vito....
The film is public domain and there's a couple of things to keep in mind.

First off, Pesci isn't the star; he supposedly has third billing (I didn't watch the film yet myself). And I'm not sure if Frank Vincent's role is larger or smaller. Also the film comes highly recommended. A former Mafia captain recommended it to me, among other people.
According to one of Amazon's most-helpful reviews:

... Aside from Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent, most of the actors are pretty much unknown. The plot of the story is solid and believable... the soundtrack and the time-to-time nudity makes it seem like a cheesy porno flick. Joe Pesci's character, Joey, is similar to the psycho character he portrayed in "Goodfellas". Another unique aspect is that the main hitman is African-American (Keith Davis), pretty rare for a Mafia movie. Based in New Jersey it's pretty much a 90 minute episode of "The Sopranos" before the series was even thought of! This would make a great remake....

There's quite a lot "unnecessary nudity" (???) by an actress who was also given good reviews (for her acting ability). However, she, like the writer/director, apparently dropped out of the film world as well.

Family Enforcer's taglines

If You Liked "The Godfather" & "Dog Day Afternoon," Then This Is Your Kind of Motion Picture. JERRY BOLANTE isn't afraid of anyone or anything. He's young, street-smart, tough, with a fierce raw sexual energy ... He's MAFIA! He always collects...or you pay with your life! The Mean Streets Just Got Meaner.

If you've already viewed, leave your thoughts below. If you view it on this blog or purchase the DVD version, also leave a comment below.

From Wikipedia, part of the film's plot:

"Jerry Bolanti (Joe Cortese), a mafia-connected hoodlum, is released from jail and needs a job. During this very uncertain and stressful transitional period he plays the field to help stay relaxed. He discovers almost by accident that he has a talent for debt collecting and intimidation. He then decides to pay a visit to a mid-level wiseguy acquaintance (Lou Criscuola) and offer up his services.


His first gig is to collect from a certain Bernie Feldshuh (Frank Vincent). Before he can deliver the swag to his capo, however, he is intercepted by Bernie's henchmen who take back the money and leave him for dead. Jerry returns to Bernie's home while still healing from his gunshot wounds and extracts a moderate amount of retribution. Bernie's response is to hire a top-notch assassin named Marley (Keith Davis) to take down Jerry as well as the lawyer named Herb Greene (Jack Ramage) who commissioned him to collect on the debt in the first place. An unfortunate secretary becomes collateral damage. Jerry's boss Anthony learns of the deed and sends a man of his own to even the score. An unfortunate bodyguard becomes collateral damage. But Jerry never does recover the $28,000.


His next assignment is to team up with enforcers Joe (Joe Pesci) and Serge (Bobby Alto) to conduct a raid on a shop manager for $40,000 that he may or may not have "owed" to somebody. But Bernie's newly hired hitman Marley is watching and waiting for an opportunity to take Jerry down. This proves disastrous for the entire operation. After the heist the trio of gangsters heads over to a hotel room to count out the profits and celebrate a little......."