Ed Scarpo's Blog, page 31

Feds Indict Alleged Colombo Acting Capo

Luca DiMatteo
A federal grand jury last week charged Luca DiMatteo, 70, of Merrick, with extortion, loan-sharking and racketeering conspiracy. The indictment accuses DiMatteo of serving as an acting captain in the Colombo crime family, one of New York’s five Mafia families, reports the Long Island Herald.

DiMatteo was charged alongside his nephew, Luca “Lukey” DiMatteo, 46, of Brooklyn, and another man, John Shields, also known as Scott Greco, 46, of Atlantic Beach.

The DiMatteos extorted a business owner for more than 10 years, squeezing him for $100 to $200 every other week until he closed the business in June, said Kelly Currie, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The indictment covers January 2009 to June 2015. Uncle and nephew also engaged in loan-sharking and racketeering conspiracy, Currie said.




Lukey and Shields were also charged with running an illegal gambling club in Brooklyn, Currie said.

Luca and Shields were arraigned on July 16 at a federal courthouse in Brooklyn, where Lukey was also scheduled to be arraigned on July 17.

A news release from Currie’s office described the elder DiMatteo as a long-time Colombo soldier who “for several years” has been acting captain of a crew of Colombo associates.

In a letter to the court, federal prosecutors said that a cooperating witness recorded 2011 conversations with Luca and Colombo members Joseph Carna and Vincent Manzo that indicate Luca’s status as an acting captain.

“We are committed to defeating organized crime,” Currie said in the release. “We will not tolerate the use of violence or threats of violence to extort local businesspeople, and we will shut down illegal gambling businesses in our neighborhoods.”

Diego Rodriguez, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York office, echoed Currie. “As alleged, Luca DiMatteo and Lukey DiMatteo picked up a check every couple of weeks from a local business for more than 10 years, but it wasn’t a paycheck — rather, they picked up a shakedown check,” Rodriguez said in the release.

Flora Edwards, Luca DiMatteo’s attorney, did not return a call for comment.

After 40 Years, Hoffa Disappearance Solved!

Dan E. Moldea, author of The Hoffa Wars and Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer, will be writing a piece for Jerry Capeci's GangLand News that will be published this coming Thursday.

Apparently, he'll tell us, once and for all, what the hell happened to James R. Hoffa.

From Gangland News:

Coming next week, a Gang Land special. On the 40th anniversary of one of the great Mafia mysteries — the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa — investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, the leading expert on Hoffa, will tell you, based on his 40 years of investigating the storied mob rubout, what happened, who did it, and where Hoffa ended up.

Moldea is an independent journalist, which says a lot today, when a handful of giant global entities own the majority of this nation's media. Truth is trumped by the bottom line and Homeland Security's needs, and angering other corporations that purchase ad space (or time) is out of the question. Nothing ever highlighted more for me how fabricated "the news" can be than an indy film I recently viewed on Netflix about Flight 800.

Moldea has been an independent journalist except for a stint he served for former patron Larry Flynt, the Hustler baron, who has repeatedly sought to expose the nation's biggest and most dangerous hypocrites: radical right-wingers. In 1998 Moldea served as Flynt's hired gun, investigating the investigators and their minions seeking to take over the government by impeaching President Clinton.

Moldea's work lead to the dramatic resignation of then-incoming House Speaker Bob Livingston.

,
We're not sure what Gangland News will publish this coming Thursday but we did find a blogger who previously pieced together -- primarily from Moldea's work -- what federal investigators believe is the closest we will ever get to the truth about Hoffa’s death. The blogger in question was primarily seeking to expose Richard Kuklinski, but we'll gloss over that to focus on Hoffa.

(As for Kuklinski, if you're interested, please check out: Last Word on Kuklinski)

Obviously this version of events is outdated as we're certain Moldea's upcoming story has got to have at least one or two stunning new revelations in it.

Take for instance this general given: Hoffa expected to meet with Anthony Giacalone of Detroit and Anthony Provenzano on the afternoon he vanished, according to several people, including Hoffa's wife. Supposedly, Provenzano wasn’t even in Detroit that day; he was in Union City.

However, The Gangster Report has noted recently:

Deceased New Jersey-based Mafioso and Genovese crime family captain Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano was in Detroit the night before labor leader and mob associate Jimmy Hoffa disappeared and was slain 40 years ago this month, according to an imprisoned FBI informant who came forward in the mid-2000s. The informant, former Teamster insider Don Wells, claims Provenzano dined at a favorite mafia haunt with Motor City underworld figures on July 29, 1975. Some experts further speculate Tony Pro could have also been in Michigan the next afternoon when Hoffa vanished from a suburban Detroit restaurant parking lot on July 30, 1975, not where his alibi placed him, at his New Jersey Teamsters union hall playing cards. Then-Jersey Teamsters boss Provenzano was feuding with Hoffa at the time he went missing. Hoffa was in the midst of trying to regain his post as Teamsters International President and Tony Pro, an ally-turned-enemy of his, is still considered one of the top suspects in the notorious kidnapping and murder which hasn’t been solved to this very day.

Also, in one of several recent breaking-news stories about Hoffa, TGR also says:

Ferocious and dangerously-stubborn Teamsters union chieftain Jimmy Hoffa was killed at deceased Detroit mafia soldier Carlo Licata’s house, not where famous mob turncoats Frank (the Irishman) Sheeran or Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli – both dead– assert the notorious gangland assassination went down 40 years ago this week in their respective confessions, according to exclusive Gangster Report sources. Licata’s house was at 680 W. Long Lake Road in Bloomfield Township, less than a five minute drive from where Hoffa disappeared from, as opposed to Sheeran’s and Zerilli’s claims that place his murder occurring at locations at least 20 minutes away. Licata, mob royalty in Detroit and California, died an untimely death at 680 W. Long Lake Road as well.

Whether the Moldea's upcoming story agrees with Scott Burnstein's reporting remains to be seen; we do know that Moldea is familiar with and endorses Burnstein's work based on a Facebook sharing of an announcement for the film Killing Jimmy Hoffa.

The basic theory is that Hoffa was known to have angered two powerful mobsters of his day: both Anthony Provenanzo, a Genovese capo who also served as vice president for Teamsters Local 560 in Union City, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania crime boss Russell Bufalino.

Hoffa and Provenzano had even exchanged a few punches while behind bars.

On the morning of July 30, a man Hoffa considered a son, Charles O’Brien, picked up three of Provenzano’s henchmen at a Detroit-area airport and drove them to a house where he was staying, not far from the Machus Red Fox restaurant.

Sal Briguglio, his brother Gabriel, and another New Jersey Teamster official named Thomas Andretta were their names. All were subsequently named as the suspected assassins by the federal grand jury.

(Moldea suspected that Frank Sheeran of Teamsters Local 326 in Wilmington, Delaware, was another conspirator/witness. In fact, Moldea accused Sheeran of belonging to the cabal before Sheeran later made his controversial "deathbed confession" about his role as the shooter in the Hoffa slay. Many informed readers of Cosa Nostra News have long made clear their belief that Sheeran lied.)

In the afternoon, O’Brien picked Hoffa up at the restaurant and drove him to the house, where the three men were waiting for him.

Picardo alleged that Hoffa’s killers stuffed him into a 55-gallon drum, loaded him onto a truck in Detroit, and shipped him to an unknown destination. His remains were later squashed in a car-compacting machine. This was brought before a grand jury.

It seems while we may soon learn a few colorful and intriguing new details, the feds already have a basic grasp of who was involved in the Hoffa hit. Have known.....so how much of the Hoffa mystery is still a mystery?


Further reading:
Chapter One of Moldea's The Hoffa Wars
Playboy magazine excerpt of The Hoffa Wars
"My afternoon with Jimmy Hoffa's alleged killer"
Rise & fall of Jimmy Hoffa (1978): Part One and Part Two
1979 letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books about Hoffa and the JFK murder
The JFK Murder and Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante: Crediting The Hoffa Wars for saying it first
The Washington Post about the movie, Hoffa: "Tales of Hoffa: Why Does Hollywood Make Thugs Into Heroes"
On Rolland McMaster and Frank Sheeran
Andy Petepiece's review of I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt
Anthony Zerilli and the 2013 search for Hoffa's body (CNN)
The FBI on Jimmy Hoffa

Moldea at The Mob Museum to speak on a symposium about Jimmy Hoffa
             on Killing Jimmy Hoffa, a documentary by Al Profit and Scott Bernstein
             on The Hoffa Wars as a 2015 updated eBook, published by Open Road Media

             on the 50th anniversary of the Warren Report
             on Frank Sheeran
             on Death of Jack Tocco, the former boss of the Detroit Mafia
             on Death of Phillip "Brother" Moscato
             on the 50th anniversary of the JFK murder
             on the 38th anniversary of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance


"After I alleged that Frank Sheeran was involved in the murder conspiracy against Jimmy Hoffa in my 1978 book about Hoffa, I received this letter from Sheeran's attorney, threatening me with litigation. . . . From 2001 to 2003, Sheeran made a series of confessions--although there was a problem distinguishing the truth from his conflicting versions of events."


20 places Jimmy Hoffa could be buried
9 Places Jimmy Hoffa (Probably) Isn’t Buried

Death of Former Gambino Underboss Reported

Anthony “The Genius” Megale, who rose to be the underboss of the Gambino crime family, died at Stamford Hospital Tuesday night.

Megale was dubbed “The Genius” on a federal wiretap by an upset and angry John Gotti, who apparently thought Megale was anything but a genius.

Cause of death was not known as of yesterday, said an employee at the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Farmington. However, it was confirmed by two sources that Megale died of a heart attack at 9:30 p.m. on his 62nd birthday. He had only been released from a Pennsylvania federal prison in December having been indicted on 38 extortion charges in 2004.

Megale’s Stamford attorney, Stephan Seeger, and a law enforcement source confirmed the cause of death was an apparent heart attack.

Megale was sentenced to more than 11 years in federal prison in September 2006 for his part in a tri-state racketeering enterprise centered in New York state.

Seeger said that in the 15 years he had known and represented Megale, he was always a gentleman.

“This whole mafia folklore is what the public wants to believe, but it detracts from some of his more noteworthy qualities,” Seeger said. “He was a kind man who took care of his wife and kids and he contributed greatly to Stamford and surrounding area communities.”

Seeger said he had spoken to Megale’s family and they they were taking the news hard. He requested privacy to allow them to grieve.

“There has always been a lot more to Tony than any alleged mafia folklore,” he insisted.

Although Megale denied membership in the Gambinos, he was accused by federal prosecutors and police of becoming the second-in-command of the crime family in the early 2000s. The Gambinos have traditionally focused on Fairfield County, especially Bridgeport, as its Connecticut turf.

In 1989, Megale admitted to being Gotti’s top man in Connecticut, a confession Seeger said he never meant to make.

Megale was handed a 135-month sentence for extorting thousands of dollars from the owner of a Greenwich restaurant named Valbella, a New Jersey trucking company and a Westchester County, N.Y.-based construction company.

He was among 32 members and associates of the Gambino crime family who were arrested by the FBI in 2005 during a New York crime sweep that involved a decade-long racketeering scheme of violent assault, extortion, loansharking, union embezzlement, illegal gambling, trafficking in stolen property and mail fraud.

Authorities said the crimes were exposed during a three-year investigation by undercover FBI agent Joaquin Garcia (aka Jack Falcone), who infiltrated the Gambinos and made hundreds of secret tape recordings of high-ranking members at sites throughout the Bronx, N.Y., and Westchester County, including the United Hebrew Geriatrics Home in New Rochelle, N.Y.

Former Connecticut Post and Stamford Advocate reporter Frank Fedeli, who wrote dozens of articles about Megale while covering the organized crime beat, said Megale was given his mob moniker in a back-handed way.

Fedeli said Megale was dubbed “The Genius” on a federal wiretap by an upset and angry Gotti, who apparently thought Megale was anything but a genius.

Fedeli, now Stamford’s customer service supervisor, said in the late 70s and early 80s Megale ran Tony’s Italian Restaurant on the corner of State and Atlantic streets. While it wasn’t known for its ambiance, the place had a well-respected fra diavolo sauce and was a favorite place for the Gambinos to catch up with their New York brothers. Federal officials and Stamford police knew about the arrangement and kept close tabs on the eatery.

Fedeli said Megale had great help rising through the mafia’s ranks through his uncle, Cosmos Sandalo, who was a very well-liked and low-profile gentleman mobster. Megale, who was a street soldier and known to be a good mob earner, was also helped by a pitched mob war from 1978 to 1981 that rubbed out many of the older established mafia bosses.

“The vacuum was created and he walked into it,” Fedeli said.

Megale’s health declined in the months surrounding his sentencing on federal charges in Connecticut in early 2006. He suffered two heart attacks and underwent two heart surgeries in the spring of that year.

Mob Books We'd Like to Read...

Mikie Scars memoir is a book that needs to be written.In the olden days, when mob guys referred to a contract, you could bet your bottom dollar on what the topic of discussion was.

These days, however, such a conversation more than likely means the topic is a book or movie deal...

Two major mob-related book deals have been announced so far this year.

As noted earlier this month, former Philadelphia mob boss Ralph Natale has inked a deal to write his memoir. So far titled Lost Lives and Forgotten Vows, Thomas Dunne Books is slated to publish the book, which is slated to hit bookstores in the fall of 2016. Natale is writing the book with two others, Dan Pearson (of "I Married a Mobster") and New York Daily News reporter Larry McShane. Back in late April, we reported that Linda Scarpa had inked a deal with Pinnacle to write a memoir in which her infamous father, Gregory Scarpa, aka "The Grim Reaper," will be a major focal point. Scarpa was a chief assassin for imprisoned mob boss Carmine Persico during the 1990s Colombo war, though there's some interesting details we recently read about on Kenji Gallo's excellent Breakshot Blog.
Referring to the Colombo war (the third one, in the early 1990s), Kenji writes:

The main thing about the whole event that people do not understand is that Scarpa was on the outs with the Persicos [as the crime family war broke out]. He was already very sick with AIDS that he had contracted from a blood transfusion. The dementia was setting in at the time. 

Available now for pre-order, Linda's book, The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter, will be published by Pinnacle and was co-written with Boston Globe reporter Linda Rosencrance. The 320-page print edition is $7.99 -- the Kindle ebook $7.95. The book includes 16 pages of photos.
Now we'd like to discuss a new book-related topic: 
Mob Books We'd Like to Read (If Publishers Only Would Publish Them).

We think, for example, Joseph "Big Joey" Massino should write his memoirs. Massino was such a high-profile figure in the Mafia for decades, wielding as much power as any mob boss, such a book would be filled with intriguing revelations. Massino would have insight into the slaying of Carmine Galante, as well as the "Sonny Red Trifecta"--the storied slaying of three captains in one fell swoop.
Massino has already said we don't know as much as we think we do about basic mob history. In addition to claiming former Gambino boss John Gotti wanted to kill him, he's also alleged that both Anthony Mirra and Sonny Black Napolitano were not killed because of former FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone'a infiltration of the crime family.
It is absolutely insane to us that the publishing world is not knocking down Michael "Mikie Scars" DiLeonardo's front door. (Though for all we know, they might be.... former wiseguys can be pretty cagey guys when they want to be!)
He was inducted into the crime family with Junior Gotti, and had a front-row seat to the New York Mafia's doings for decades. He also is highly educated about the Mafia, in possession of certain exclusive knowledge about the mob's formation in the United States. 
Mikie Scars would keep the historians busy, that's for sure.
We also think a book about the Scores racket, which we believe was run primarily by one man for years, a low-level Gambino confederate named Steve Sergio.

In fact, the Scores story should be told on film -- we think it would work better that way because Scores was, of course, a strip club.....


One book we plan to finish up soon -- which you will be able to read soon enough -- is our book about Frank Gangi and Thomas "Tommy Karate" Pitera....

Who Killed Abe "Kid Twist" Reles?

Abe "Kid Twist" Reles
Abe "Kid Twist" Reles is doubtlessly remembered best for being the proverbial canary who couldn't fly (but did indeed sing).

In November 1941 the mob may have gotten to Kid Twist while he was under police protection at a hotel in Coney Island, New York. We say "may" because no one knows for certain who orchestrated what may have been the hit. We repeat "may" because there's also the chance that Reles did indeed fall to his doom (the more or less "official" opinion on the matter) while attempting to climb down a twisted roll of bed sheets to get out of the hotel, either to escape or play a practical joke of some sort on his alleged protectors.

The list of potential assassins is long. But for a whole host of reasons, the Reles "killing," exhaustively investigated in later years, will never be solved.


So many mysteries linger. To wit, Reles swallowed a shot of whiskey moments prior to death. The source of the booze was never found. So many unanswered questions abound.

Last week's episode of AMC's Making of the Mob blindly confirmed not only that the mob killed Kid Twist, but that Frank Costello was the mastermind behind Reles's execution. It certainly could be the case but we'd love to know AMC's confirmed source.

A knowledgeable gangland source told us he believed it likely was the West Side behind the Reles killing. He also said he'd heard specific mention of Joe Adonis as being involved, though he admitted he was offering speculation as opposed to factual information.
The West Side is a common nickname for the Genovese crime family, which Costello was boss of at the time of the Reles death. Charlie "Lucky" Luciano then was sitting in a prison cell near the Canadian border, while Vito Genovese, Luciano's first acting boss, had fled to Italy in 1937 fearing a murder prosecution. He didn't return until 1944.
It is certainly possible that Costello was behind the killing. He had politicians, judges, cops -- probably Sunday school teachers -- in his pocket "like so many nickels and dimes."

But other mobsters also could have been responsible. In fact, Albert Anastasia had the most compelling motive of all to see Kid Twist splatter.

Then of course there may have been no higher authority responsible than Reles's own cohabitants, which included an assortment of police and law enforcement officials and even a number of fellow Murder Inc. squealers. (Reles was not the only guy who flipped at the time -- however, he has the distrinction of being quite hated by everyone -- cops and fellow stoolies alike -- for his vile, sadistic, despicable character traits.)
The sad fact is that we will never know with certainty exactly what happened to Reles -- who shoved or threw him out the window. Assuming he really wasn't trying to lower himself downward to play a joke or whatever, then falling to his death.
Sure, another letter or memo may one day be found, but enough time has passed to turn such efforts to investigate into yet another episodic folly.
Reles met his end the evening before he was to testify against Anastasia.

Kid Twist likely would've sent Don Umberto to the electric chair, as was the case with several other guys who put the Murder in Murder Inc., perhaps most famously Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. Anastasia made some serious errors in the commission of a certain murder in which he personally participated. (Reles had not taken part in this hit, but had highly incriminating knowledge regarding it, as did other witnesses (all of whom would die before they could ever testify).

Reles and company were sequestered at Coney Island's Half Moon Hotel, a 14-story building that first opened its doors in 1927, and that was located on the Riegelmann Boardwalk (or simply the Coney Island Boardwalk -- speaking of which, any of you familiar with The Warriors?). 
The hotel was built on the boardwalk, which runs along Coney Island's southern shore adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, and was meant to help Coney Island steal some thunder from New Jersey's bustling beach resort town Atlantic City. 
The Half Moon, named for explorer Henry Hudson's ship (he'd once anchored it off Gravesend Bay, where Coney Island was later founded, while he sought a shortcut to Asia) would become more closely linked to Kid Twist's infamous demise before the hotel met its own end, in 1995, after eventually becoming a naval convalescent hospital during World War 2, then a maternity hospital (the Harbor Hospital), and finally a geriatric hospital.

Reles was used to test Newton's law of gravity:: When his body hovered outside a window of a sixth floor hotel room, gravity pulled him downward with enough velocity to end his life (perhaps not immediately).

But before he flipped, he was once an up-and-comer who fought for dominion over all criminal activity in Brooklyn's Brownsville section. Closely allied with Albert Anastasia, who viewed from the sidelines the burly, tough Jewish gangster fight a bloody street war (Don Umberto believed in survival of the fittest; he didn't provide Reles with the assistance he'd initially sought to take out the previous management team in Brownsville.)

Reles and his crew eventually evolved into part of Murder Inc., the Mafia's death squad, whose members under the auspices of Anastasia (whom the press dubbed "Lord High Executioner," among other names,  members tasked with troving round the country in search of targets who the Commission decided for whatever reason to have murdered.

We'll be following up on this with some of the more provocative facts as well as who could likely have played a role and who didn't.

First Mob Boss Since Bonanno to Write Memoir

Former Philly boss who flipped inked deal to write book.
Former Philadelphia mob boss Ralph Natale is writing his memoir, the Hollywood Reporter revealed.

Lost Lives and Forgotten Vows, which Thomas Dunne Books is slated to publish, is due to hit bookstores in the fall of 2016. Natale will work on his tome with producer Dan Pearson (of "I Married a Mobster") and New York Daily News reporter Larry McShane,

Natale "becomes only the second Mafia Godfather to tell his own life story, following New York’s Joe Bonanno," THR reported.





The book claims it will offer “a behind-the-scenes master’s class on organized crime.”

We may argue with the use of the term "master's."

The Natale story is not, after all, one about the mob's golden age.

Natale was an arsonist and drug dealer who told a federal informant everything -- literally every thing.

He was said to be Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino's puppet -- the guy put on the street for the Feds and cops to focus on while Merlino and his tight-knit crew worked behind his back.

Natale attained power when he emerged from prison in 1994. He sought to run the notoriously disorganized Philly Mafia with the discipline of a Prussian general administering to his soldiers. (Prussia is the proverbial “army in search of a nation," while the Philly mob more closely resembled the Keystone Cops than, say, the Genovese family.)

Natale's army was brimming with mooks, killers, traitors, braggarts and bumbling fools -- an underworld turned upside down following decades of unrelenting bloodshed following the "illegal" 1980 shotgun murder of respected Mafia Don Angelo Bruno, a Sicilian-American mobster who had close ties to Carlo Gambino and who ran the Philadelphia crime family, peacefully and prosperously, for two decades.

Joseph "Uncle Joe" Ligambi is widely credited for being such a shrewd Mafia boss precisely because he was able to successfully clean up what in part can be termed Natale's mess.

Nicodemo "Little Nicky" Scarfo, who pulled a "John Gotti" years before even John Gotti, seemed more interested in murder than money.

Murder or money? Who really cares....
Natale's reign lasted until a 1998 indictment was poised to send the then-69-year-old away to prison forever (for wisely dealing junk).

Natale "got religion" and struck a deal with federal agents, earning himself the title of "the first American Mafia boss to turn on his own family."

A U.S. attorney general said Natale's cooperation against Skinny Joey (then touted in the press as reminiscent of the Sammy the Bull and John Gotti case)  "represent[ed] the complete collapse" of the Philadelphia mob.

Yeah, right.

From THR: “Ralph Natale, has out killed, out smarted and outlived his adversaries. Now he gets to tell history in his own words not just mafia history but American history,” said Pearson in a statement announcing the deal. “Lost Lives and Forgotten Vows will take the reader on a trip into the epicenter of Americana in the mid-to-late 20th Century where pop culture and politics frequently intersected with the underworld, and where Ralph Natale was the man charged with greasing the wheels so the multiple relationships between those entities could run at full speed.”

Cosa Nostra Has Decorated War Vets Too

Sherman tanks refueling at Normandy, 1944.

With July 4 approaching, we're feeling patriotic, so we present here a reworking of one of our first stories for this blog (there's a four-year-old comment below; didn't know we've been working on this thing for four years....)

Yes, mobsters are criminals, but some of them are heroes, too, or at least damn good Americans.

Before you shake your head in befuddlement, understand we refer here to gangsters who fought in American wars and were decorated for their valiant efforts.

John "Johnny Green" Faraci, a Bonanno crime family member, was described as "a large-scale loanshark with numerous loanshark victims," who, by one law enforcement estimate, had half a million dollars in loans out on the street. He died in January 2011 at age 88.
Ten years before his death, the aging Bonanno soldier and three underlings faced federal loansharking charges after a would-be victim went to the FBI and agreed to wear a wire. "I got a nice baseball bat in my trunk; bust your legs up," one of Faraci's crew members said to the cooperator, according to the arrest complaint. In another taped conversation, the same guy bragged about his abilities: "Yesterday I got a hold of a young guy in my neighborhood. I gave him such a f-----g beating. . . . I've been doing this all my life."

The same Faraci landed at Normandy in 1944 and earned himself a Bronze Star for having fought Hitler's Wehrmacht across Europe.

George Barone, identified as one of the Mafia’s most feared hit men, also died in January 2011, at age 86.

Barone is suspected of personally murdering more than 20 people back in the days when the mob truly ran New York's waterfront.

He eventually flipped, supposedly when his own crime family put a price on his head. Barone then put numerous criminal cohorts behind bars.
Mobsters in the Genovese family rarely flip -- one report called Barone only the third member of the family to break the mob’s code of silence.
According to Gangland News (which seems to have gotten the year of Barone's death as well as his age incorrect -- errors by Jerry Capeci are as rare as Genovese soldiers flipping) Barone had volunteered at 18 to serve in the Navy. 
Barone fought in battles on Guam, Saipan, Leyte, Luzon, and Iwo Jima. A radio man, his daily job was to guide landing crafts onto the beach. One of Barone’s many lifelong ailments from WWII was a respiratory illness. It started, he told friends, after he'd buried his face into Iwo Jima beach's black sand in an effort to evade the deadly ongoing Japanese shelling. "I breathed in so much of that damn sand, I’m still spitting it out,"' he'd tell friends.
He participated in the five "bloodiest invasions in the Pacific theater," Capeci wrote.
Barone returned home to become a founder of a street gang, the Jets -- yes, they were later immortalized in the musical West Side Story. Still, Barone was more about killing than choreography....

Going farther back to The Great War -- that's World War I -- we have the case of Edward “Monk” Eastman. A Brooklyn native who once was a pet store owner, he ran "one of the fiercest and most powerful gangs in New York City. According to legend, he would carve a notch in his beloved club each time he bashed in the head of a rival thug."

But by 1917 Eastman was addicted to opium and nearing a dead end. So at age 43, he sought a new start, and enlisted to serve in World War I after serving several jail sentences.

"When the examining physicians noticed the famously tough-looking Eastman’s poorly healed bullet wounds, scarred knuckles and marks from knife and razor cuts, he asked which battles the new volunteer had seen. “Oh, a lot of little wars around New York,” Eastman replied gruffly. He went on to serve honorably in France, returning home a hero—and resuming his life of crime shortly thereafter."
"Matty the Horse" was a decorated vet.
Some call this a paradoxAnother noted war vet/gangster was Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello, a Genovese capo who also served in the South Pacific, where he got a Bronze Star for making a deliberate offensive charge directly into a Japanese machine gun nest. His New York Times obit (he died at 93 on August 15, 2012) barely mentions this. (Interestingly, In the 1970s, Ianniello disobeyed strict Mafia protocol when he assisted the authorities in the search for 6-year-old Etan Patz who disappeared on a Manhattan street. Ianniello was described by the Washington Post as: "a businessman in a world where brutality often spoke loudest, operating like a CEO rather than a street thug.")

Benny Eggs also heroically fought for his country.Venero Frank "Benny Eggs" Mangano, also of the Genovese crime family, served as a bomber tail gunner with the United States Army Air Corps in Europe and was decorated with a Distinguished Flying Cross (for "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight") and an Air Medal with four Oak Leaf Clusters and three Battle Stars.

Steve “The Rifleman” Flemmi, a Whitey Bulger associate and quite lethal mob killer, actually got his nickname not from his work on the street but rather in reference to his stint as a sharpshooter in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He enlisted at age 17 and served two tours of duty with the 187th Infantry Regiment and won both the Silver and Bronze Stars.

Carlo Mastrototaro died in 2009 at age 89, his obit noted, adding that he'd been frequently identified as both a "kingpin of organized crime in the Worcester area for much of the latter half of the past century and a highly decorated World War II combat veteran." A Genovese capo and a lieutenant of powerful New England mob boss Raymond L.S. Patriarcha, his actions won him the Silver Star and a Purple Heart for being wounded during the Battle of Saipan He was mustered out of the Marines in 1944. His unit was virtually annihilated at the Battle of Iwo Jima.

We thought we'd give a couple of honorable mentions here.

Meyer Lansky was reputed to have disrupted rallies by Nazi sympathizers in New York City (and later shipped arms to pro-Zionists fighting for an Israeli state, the creation of which was prompted by the Nazis' genocidal efforts). Lansky also supposedly helped the CIA-precursor known as the Office of Naval Intelligence‘s Operation Underworld to recruit criminals to watch for German infiltrators and submarine-borne saboteurs.

Lucky Luciano also allegedly helped the U.S. military in the invasion of Italy, as did the Sicilian Mafia, which reportedly patrolled the island's roads for snipers, provided guides over mountainous terrain and arranged safe passage for advancing troops (courtesy of Luciano).

(In return the U.S. army inadvertently helped revitalize the Sicilian Cosa Nostra by putting its erstwhile allies in political power positions all over Sicily.)

As for Operation Underworld, it involved the cooperation of organized crime figures who, from 1942 to 1945, served to counter Nazi spies and saboteurs mainly by protecting the U.S.'s northeastern ports, as well as by helping avoid wartime labor union strikes and limit theft by black-marketeers of vital war supplies and equipment.

However, after the war, Axis records showed no sabotage operations had existed. As well no evidence has ever been produced to indicate there had ever been underworld sabotage. The Normandie sinking was almost certainly an accident. (Albert Anastasia boasted that the mob had sank the ship and had been exploiting U.S. fears of Nazi sabotage to get Luciano out of prison. He was lying).

Fears about possible sabotage or disruption of the waterfront were indeed running high though. Commander Charles R. Haffenden of the ONI in New York set up a special security unit. He sought mobster Joseph Lanza, who ran the Fulton Fish Market, for help.

"Socks" Lanza suggested he approach Charles Luciano who was in Dannemora prison (since renamed Clinton, it is the prison from which the two inmates escaped earlier this month, on June 6, 2015) at the time serving a 30- to 50-year sentence for running a prostitution ring. (Many believe Luciano, though a murderous racketeer, was nonetheless railroaded by Thomas Dewey in this case. Salvatore Lucania was never the overlord of New York's whore houses but apparently lots of the city's hoodlums found it easier to use Luciano's name when they were collecting their money from the prostitutes.)
For his cooperation Luciano was moved to a more convenient and comfortable prison in May 1942.

Luciano’s influence in stopping sabotage remains unclear, but authorities have noted that waterfront strikes stopped after Luciano’s attorney, Moses Polakoff, contacted underworld figures who held influence over the longshoremen unions.

In 1946 Luciano's sentence was commuted. After serving 9½ years, he was deported to his native Italy.

If you're interested in this topic, two books we suggest you read are Rodney Campbell's 1977 The Luciano Project: The Secret Wartime Collaboration of the Mafia and the U.S. Navy and Tim Newark's more recent, 2007, Mafia Allies. The True Story of America’s Secret Alliance with the Mob in World War II.

We wanted to offer in closing what one early commenter to this story wrote, some four years ago. We don't necessarily agree--do you?

"Mobsters are only upward mobile Americans who took the route available. 

"The establishment, the Yale educated upper crust members of the intelligence community guard the portals of power jealously. If not invited in, or worse excluded by birth, religion or ethnicity, then one must force his way in. Exactly what members of the Judaeo-Italian underworld did. 

"Largely by providing malum prohibitum [a Latin phrase used in law to refer to conduct that constitutes an unlawful act only by virtue of statute as opposed to conduct evil in and of itself] services denied the populace by the upper crust, but desired by them none the less. 

"On balance is America a better place for the availability of the services provided by the rackets, which are to a large measure victimless crimes? Acts by people claiming the right to do what they want with their time, money and bodies."

Philly Mafia Prince Sought Bulger's Demise

Phil Leonetti
Phil Loenetti is one of our favorite former gangsters. 

His inherent talent for being unintentionally hilarious we deem as legendary. And despite all the years he's spent out of his former life, he still doesn't seem to appreciate the magnitude of some crimes. Like murder.

Did you see the interview where the newscaster asked him if he, Phil, thought it odd that he had married the widow of a man he himself had murdered.

Crazy Phil smiled, clearly befuddled, and after a few beats responded with: "Why? ... You mean because I was the guy who killed the husband?"

No, in Phil's brain it wasn't the least bit odd, actually....



And we have to find the video of him relating the anecdote about how he and another Philly mob guy visited a jewelry store and inadvertently scared the jeweler working inside.

The jeweler wouldn't unlock the door and, well, he was really really scared of Crazy Phil and his pal.... so he actually... he, um, well the jeweler suicided himself. Rather than unlock the door and let Phil in.....(you gotta hear Phil tell the story)....

Anyway in this story Crazy Phil claims he divined that Whitey Bulger should've been killed--when apparent pea brains Ray Patriarca and Vincenzo The Chin Gigante were too dumb to see it.

Only it seems Crazy Phil didn't know it was Whitey Bulger in the first place!!!

We know, we know.... You gotta hear Crazy Phil explain it:

(Originally from the HuffingtonPost): When my uncle Nicodemo Scarfo was in La Tuna federal prison in 1983, he placed me in charge of running the day-to-day operations of our crime family in New Jersey from our headquarters just two and a half blocks from the Boardwalk in Atlantic City.

Two other men from our family, Salvatore "Chuckie" Merlino and Salvie Testa, were running our street operation in South Philadelphia and even though we were in the throws of a bloody mob war with a 4'10 old-school gangster known as "The Hunchback," things were going pretty good for us, especially in Atlantic City. On most days I would meet with gangsters from North Jersey and New York, many of whom came to Atlantic City with an envelope that usually contained several thousand dollars in cash as a tribute payment to my uncle and our family resulting from business they were involved in either Atlantic City or Philadelphia.

On more than one occassion I met with gangsters from the Patriarca crime family, an organization based primarily out of the Boston area, but with a heavy presence in and around Providence, Rhode Island.

During one of these meetings, a guy I knew as a mob associate who was affiliated with the Genovese crime family in New York introduced me to another mob associate from Providence. The two of them wanted to buy an old hotel in Atlantic City and re-develop it into a caberet style nightclub and restaurant and wanted the blessing of our family. After several meetings and after getting the green light to proceed from my uncle who was in jail, I arranged to meet with caporegimes from both the Genovese and Patriarca crime families to ensure that everything was done in accordance with the rules of La Cosa Nostra, i.e., that everyone knew where the money was to be sent.

In this case, monthly envelopes would be sent to Vincent "Chin" Gigante, boss of the Genovese, through his underboss Venero "Benny Eggs" Mangano, Raymond Patriarca, boss of the Patriarca's, through his underboss Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo, and my uncle, Nicky Scarfo, boss of the Philadelphia/Atlantic City mob, through me.

As things progressed with our proposed joint venture, I first heard the name "Jimmy Bulger" from one of the Boston guys during a dinner meeting. Bulger I would learn, was an Irish drug-dealer and low-life punk from South Boston who was paying the Patriarca's tribute money to stay in business. The problem with Bulger was that he wasn't paying enough and was balking at efforts to pay more.

What's worse I would learn, was that Bulger had reportedly murdered a woman, had once been charged with rape, and may have worked as a male prostitute when he was younger.

The kicker was, he was also suspected of being an informant.

"You gotta kill em," I told the Boston guy, "Immediately. You can't do business with someone like him. I'm disgusted just hearing you talk about him."

A few weeks later I sent word to New York that my uncle and our family wanted nothing to do with the proposed venture and that the Patriarca's were forbidden from conducting any business in Atlantic City.

"They are not our kind of people," I told the Genovese guys from New York and that was the end of it.

Fast forward 30 years to 2013 and I am back in New York promoting my book, Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family & The Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra, and I overhear a conversation between my co-author Christopher Graziano and another gentlemen we were dining with near our hotel in downtown Brooklyn and I hear Chris say, "I can't believe Johnny Depp's gonna play Whitey Bulger, I thought it was going to be Mark Wahlberg."

I entered the conversation late and when I was asked by one of the reporters that we were eating with if I ever came across Whitey Bulger when I was in the mob, I said, "I never met him and never heard of him until a couple years ago when I saw he had gotten arrested. But there was another Bulger from Boston I had heard about, a guy named Jimmy Bulger. He was a low-life Irish drug dealer I had heard about from one of the mob guys in Boston."

I then went on to tell the story repeated above and ended it with, "I can't believe they kept this guy around. I told them they should kill him immediately. Maybe he was a cousin of Whitey's, who knows."

Everyone at the table looked at me in stunned silence and Chris said, "Philip, Whitey Bulger and Jimmy Bulger are the same guy. The guy you just described is Whitey Bulger. Whitey's real name is James Bulger."

I told them, "No way. The guy I'm talking about, Jimmy Bulger, he wasn't a gangster, he was a drug-dealer paying tribute to the Italian's in Boston's North End. It's definitely not the same guy."

After arguing my point for most of the evening, I went back to the hotel and did some research and realized that Chris was right.

The low-life Irish drug dealer that I said should be killed in 1983 was in fact the infamous Whitey Bulger.

Thirty years later I stand by that.

Bulger should have been killed by the Patriarca's, plain and simple.

How they could do business with someone like him is unfathomable. To call him a gangster is a joke.

He was a psychopathic, drug-dealing serial killer, not a gangster.

I'm glad its Johnny Depp playing Bulger in the movie about his life and not Mark Wahlberg. No disrespect to Johnny Depp, but I like Wahlberg and how he carries himself. Seeing him portray a lowlife like Bulger would have been disappointing.

Philip Leonetti is the former underboss of the Philadelphia/Atlantic City mob and the nephew of imprisoned mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky Scarfo. He was the youngest underboss in the history of the modern day La Cosa Nostra and in 1989 was the highest ranking mafioso to break omerta and cooperate with the federal government.

In 2012 he wrote the book Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and The Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra. He lives in seclusion under an assumed name with a $500,000.00 bounty placed on his head from his jailed uncle Nicky Scarfo.

West Side Held "Deadly" Interest in Joe Massino

"The Chin" takes a stroll with a companion...

Crime families opportunistically form and break alliances.

Shortly before the third shooting war began, Colombo leaders including Carmine Sessa met at the Persico family estate in Saugerties, New York, to plot the murder of Vittorio "Little Vic" Orena.

When the other crime families learned of the pending war, leaders of the Luchese, Genovese and Gambino families tried to resolve the problem before the shooting began by meeting with Colombo leaders. (Notice one family is missing?)

Alfonso "Little Al" D'Arco, former acting boss of the Luchese family, discussed this series of meetings meant to stop the third Colombo war at Orena's trial. The talks only postponed the shooting, which formally broke out in late 1991.

D'Arco said the four-family meetings had been held in apartments and hotel rooms around New York City.
The Bonanno family was excluded because "the Genovese family was deadly against them."
We became aware of the tension between the Genovese and Bonanno family while working on a story. So our surprise was not as great as it likely would have been when a source recently told us something that we'd never heard or read anywhere before.
Vincent "The Chin" Gigante wanted Joe Massino whacked and asked Paul Castellano, then Gambino boss, if Roy DeMeo could carry it out, meaning Gigante most likely wanted Massino to disappear without a trace like the Murder Machine's countless other victims.
Castellano turned Gigante down, for reasons unknown.
Dominick Montiglio, former Gambino crime family associate and nephew of Anthony "Nino" Gaggi, a onetime powerful and respected captain in the Gambino family, recently told us this while we were preparing a followup to a previous story, 
Dominick, while working for his uncle, came into regular contact with deadly Gaggi subordinate DeMeo and his Murder Machine crew for years.
Based on the chronology of events, it would seem that this would have meant that Gigante wanted Massino out of the way so the "Sonny Red" faction of the Bonannos could've held sway rather than being slaughtered in the basement of a Gambino-run nightclub in the early 1980s, a few years after the Commission-sanctioned (or was it?) slaying of Carmine "Lilo" Galante.

As for the Three Captain Slaying, a Bonanno source gave us interesting insight.

When Massino went to the Commission to complain about the Sonny Red faction, he'd initially not been given the permission he'd wanted to consolidate power under boss Rusty Rastelli.

He was later told he and his men could take up arms but only after Massino had information that Sonny Red was arming himself.

A Bonanno associate had inadvertently seen Sonny Red out in public and noticed he'd had a gun stuffed inside his infamous red leather boot, according to our source. It was this sighting of the gun in the boot that allowed the Massino/Rastelli faction to win the day.

Sonny Red Indelicato, Phil Lucky Giaccone, and Big Trin Trinchera only agreed to meet with Massino after they were convinced they were going to a full Commission meeting, we also were told.

That's why they went unarmed (along with Frank Lino, who inadvertently put himself in harm's way by taking Bruno Indelicato's place), even leaving their cars parked at a diner to be driven to the meeting's undisclosed location by Gambino family members as part of the ruse that it was a Commission meeting.

"They never would've gone like that unless they were positively convinced it was a Commission meeting," our source said. "You did what the Commission said, or else."
(Interesting note, sports fans: there is a particular way to pronounce "Lilo," we've learned from a former Bonanno family member (inducted in the 1970s) who was well acquainted with the fierce Galante. One way we can tell if a source is "for real," for example, is listening to how they pronounce the man's nickname.... if they don't say it the right way, we know what we're dealing with.)

It's no secret that there were problems between the Genovese family (working with the Luchese family) and the Gambino family when John Gotti seized control following the December 1985 assassination of Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

Genovese chief Gigante worked with Luchese leader Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso to kill John Gotti, accidentally slaying Gotti underboss Frank DeCicco in a spectacular midday car bomb detonation on April 13, 1986, in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn.

We'd always believed that Gigante was in on several additional hits ordered by Gaspipe against the Gambino family, though after researching this story, it seems more likely that Gigante and Casso together carried out only the DeCicco plot, then worked separately after that, with the Lucheses focusing on the Gambino family and the Genovese family (less successfully) concentrating on John and Gene Gotti.

As for Gotti, he suspected both families had been working against him -- and had taken action.

It's strange though -- two high-profile Gambinos slain after DeCicco both were believed to be involved in the Castellano hit (which had gone off without commission approval, supposedly the reason why "The Chin" was so angry). But both men also were considered to be involved in an attempt on Gaspipe's life.

There are reasons to believe the Luchese and Genovese families continued working together -- but the details of each hit seem to suggest it was mostly the Lucheses out in front doing the plotting and killing.

Casso certainly had strong motives of his own for killing Gambino family members.

Five months after the DeCicco bombing, on September 14, 1986, a carload of associates and/or members of the Gambino family attempted to assassinate Gaspipe as he ate an ice cream cone while sitting his his front seat. Although wounded, Casso survived. 

Once Gaspipe recovered, he did what any Mafia boss in his position would likely do: he sought revenge. Using his mob cops he got hold of the only man he could identify from the shooting, James Hydell, who Gaspipe then tortured before killing.

Some five years after the DeCicco hit, in November, 1990. Edward Lino, a Gambino family captain, was murdered by the so-called Mafia cops, Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, on Gaspipe's orders. Lino, described as "a dapper and respected legend in the mob" as well as "a tough Gambino family soldier who had played a role in the killing of Paul Castellano, the family's don, in 1985," was also known to be a shooter. This is not a guy you'd want to fuck with -- which may be why Casso chose to use his "mob cops" to take out the proven Mafia shooter.

Lino could've been killed as revenge for the Castellano hit like DeCicco was -- however, Casso suspected that Lino also was somehow involved in the attempt on Gaspipe's life. (Perhaps Casso had squeezed this out of Hydell?)

Several months later, on April 13, 1991, Gambino soldier Bartholomew "Bobby" Boriello was shot dead outside his Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, home on Bay 29th Street. A trusted Gotti aide, Boriello had once chauffeured the Dapper Godfather around New York City (Boriello also drove Gotti’s son, Junior).
Casso gave the order. Information on Boriello furnished by Eppolito and  Caracappa was provided to the shooter, Luchese captain Frank "Big Frank" Lastorino, who shot Boriello twice in the head and five times in the torso. Boriello died in the street beside his 1991 Lincoln Towncar while his wife, Susan, and their two young children were inside the house.
Boriello had been under investigation by multiple federal agencies at the time and was believed to have been running a cocaine trafficking ring. Borriello also was named as a proficient shooter who may have been involved in the Castellano hit as well, based on the testimony of Gambino informant Dominick LoFaro, who flipped after his 1984 arrest in upstate New York on heroin charges, which could have sent him to prison for 20 years, Time reported.
When Gotti heard about Boriello's murder, he was furious -- and had suspected the Genovese family of taking out his former driver.
Sammy the Bull Gravano, based on depositions he gave the government when he became a co-operating witness, detailed how Gambino family bosses had a sit-down with the Genovese family, demanding the murder of West Side associate Preston Geritano. The Gambinos thought, mistakenly, that he'd been behind Boriello’s murder. 
Then in 2004, Geritano was slain -- however by then it had nothing to do with Gotti or the Gambinos. His murderer was his own brother-in-law, Andrew Gargiulo, a successful bookmaker who was identified by several law enforcement officials as a soldier in the Genovese crime family. Gargiulo had used a hunting knife to stab Geritano, 57, after the two started arguing around 2 p.m. inside Brooklyn's Amici restaurant on Fort Hamilton Parkway. The disagreement spilled outside and turned into a brawl during which Gargiulo stabbed his brother-in-law twice in the torso. 
Geritano, described as an associate in the Genovese crime family, was once a longshoreman. He also had been arrested on cargo theft charges and was also involved in gambling and loansharking. He was pronounced dead at 2:45 p.m. at Lutheran Medical Center.
A New York Times article described Geritano as a former "mob star" who in 1991 came under scrutiny in the slaying of Borriello. Police investigators eventually concluded he had no role in the killing.
Now we turn to the tape recordings of the Genovese family's New Jersey boss, Louis "Bobby" Manna.

Manna’s headquarters was based in an office in Casella’s Restaurant in Hoboken. From there, he managed gambling, loansharking, labor racketeering, corruption and pier thefts in the region. Based on investigative findings, Manna controlled portions of Hudson County.

Manna was jailed for three years in the 1970s for refusing to answer questions about organized crime, but his goose was cooked in June, 1989, when he was convicted of ordering the murder of New York businessman Irwin Schiff and of plotting the murder of then-Gambino boss John Gotti, as well as Gotti’s brother, Gene. Manna had been indicted along with Martin Casella and Richard "Bocci" DeSciscio. 
Authorities said the plot to kill the Gottis surfaced in 1987 during a joint FBI-New Jersey State Police investigation into Manna's Mafia activities. Dozens of secretly recorded conversations were obtained after the FBI placed a listening device in Casella's Restaurant. The taped conversations occurred between August 1987 and January 1988.
The plot against John Gotti arose in a Sept. 21 in a conversation among Manna, Casella and another man. The plan was to attack Gotti near a club he frequented in Ozone Park, Queens. ''Wear a disguise,'' Manna said. ''It's an open place.''

The FBI subsequently notified Gotti of the plot. According to an Oct. 9 transcript, the Genovese mobsters learned of the warning -- but wanted the two Gottis dead so badly, they continued plotting.

"Hey, John Gotti knows,'' Casella said on Oct. 9.

An unidentified man responded, ''John Gotti knows we. . . .''

''That we ordered it?'' another man said.

The plotting continued. On Jan. 10, Manna referenced ''a big hit, John Gotti,'' and then apparently discussed the selection of gunman.

Two days later, in a conversation between Manna and James Napoli, Manna said: ''Gene Gotti's dead.''

''When are you gonna hit him?'' Napoli asked.

''Gene Gotti's dead,'' Manna repeated.

''We're gonna be paying for this, you know, for the rest of our lives,'' Napoli said.
John Gotti was doing some plotting of his own. His plan was to murder the Chin and put Genovese capo and longtime friend Alfonso "Allie Shades" Malangone in the big seat. This is based on an FBI summary of tape recorded remarks made by Genovese capo Alan "Baldie" Lonqo during a three-year investigation of the Genovese family.

"John Gotti was taking over. (Be)cause our friend (Malangone) grew up with him, we could make a deal. He (Chin) was dead," Longo said, adding that the scheme collapsed when Gaspipe declined to take part. Why would he have done anything to strengthen his arch enemy's position?

"If Gaspipe could have been talked into killing our friend, you know who would have been our boss, Alley Shades … He was always up John's ass," said Longo, who was Malangone's bodyguard and chauffeur in 1988, when the plotting and counter-plotting was in full swing.
Considering all the plotting and murdering going on back in the Gotti years, we wonder if it's even really news that "The Chin" wanted Massino dead....

Judge Throws Book at Gangster Who "Chose Omerta"

Joseph Mignacca fired a Glock at a man with an AK47 in an attempt to
murder Raynald Desjardins, now in prison awaiting trial.
The man who saved the life of Vito Rizzuto's mortal enemy was sentenced to seven years in prison for exchanging gunfire with at least one man firing an AK47 (presumably a Mafia shooter sent to kill Raynald Desjardins, then a major figure in the Montreal underworld).

Quebec Court Judge Gilles Garneau added two years to the prosecution's recommended sentence.

Jonathan Mignacca, 30, a St-Léonard resident, was found guilty in January for discharging a firearm while with Desjardins, who reportedly split with the Rizzuto organization after serving a lengthy prison sentence. Allegedly Desjardins (whose nicknames include "Old" and "China," both rather baffling) buffered Rizzuto from becoming ensnared in the drug trafficking case.


Mignacca was convicted on several charges: intent to injure others; possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose; unauthorized possession of a firearm; careless use of a firearm; and possession of a prohibited or restricted and loaded firearm.

Garneau imposed the harsh sentence for many reasons, chiefly because the lives of many innocent bystanders were jeopardized. The gunfight took place on Sept 16, 2011, in broad daylight in Laval, Quebec.

Off Lévesque Blvd E. and near a bridge linking Montreal and Quebec., Mignacca and Desjardins were parked in separate vehicles so they could speak from their driver's seats when a man emerged from a location nearby and opened fire with an AK47.

Mignacca used a Glock semi-automatic pistol to return fire. Apparently he let loose enough of a barrage to send the gunman fleeing. Mignacca later tossed the pistol into a nearby river and tried to flee through nearby woods.

Police arrested him when he later emerged, not far from the scene of the shooting.

The other gunman who first opened fire has never been arrested. He escaped across the Rivière des Prairies apparently on a "Sea Doo" -- a kind of speedboat (this must be the first time in Mafia history that a Mafia assassin escaped on a vehicle with that name). The mystery shooter set the watercraft afire before abandoning it on the Montreal side.

Desjardins was stopped for questioning when police observed him driving along Lévesque Blvd. E. He sat in the backseat of a police cruiser and was remarkably composed for a man who had just been fired upon with an AK47.

Garneau noted that Mignacca “chose Omerta” when the police questioned him about the shooting.

The case against Mignacca involved circumstantial evidence. Despite the presence of many bystanders, no one who testified could say they actually saw Mignacca fire his Glock. Judge Garneau noted in his decision that everything transpired so quickly -- in seconds -- that this was not surprising.

Ballistics analysis matched six spent shell casings found inside Mignacca’s Dodge Journey to the Glock that a passerby discovered the following spring on the shore of Rivière des Prairies when the river’s water levels were unusually low. The gun was found not far from where the gunman and Mignacca exchanged gunfire.

Mignacca also inadvertently placed himself at the crime scene of the crime--twice. When he was first detained he told an officer: “That’s my vehicle over there,” meaning his bullet-riddled Journey. 
He also had a minor wound to his chest that an expert on firearms testified was similar to injuries suffered by people holding the same type of Glock too close to their body when firing it. Spent shell casings eject from the rear of the pistol.

“Did he behave like a victim? Absolutely not,” Garneau said while delivering his decision. “Who takes part in this kind of thing? A simple citizen? No.”

The gun that wasn't supposed to ever be found.

Also fueling the decision was the fact that Mignacca refused to help prepare a pre-sentencing report about his life. He instead submitted a written statement summarizing his life "in six long paragraphs," one report said.

Mignacca wrote that he'd grown up in St-Léonard and that his parents separated when he was 12. A “very rebellious” teenager, he noted that he'd been placed in a group home at age 16.

Police who investigated the shooting testified that it seemed Mignacca was acting as Desjardins’ bodyguard. Aside from Mignacca defending himself and Desjardins, he was often seen in the company of the man once described as "one of the most powerful crime figures in Quebec."
A witness spent a night in jail for initially refusing to testify when the defense attorney called him.
Desjardins, 61, is charged with the first-degree murder of Salvatore Montagna, the former Bonanno boss who joined the the breakaway faction but then broke away and reportedly was trying to take control.

Some suggest Montagna was working in cahoots with a group of Bonannos in New York who may have viewed Rizzuto's absence as an opportunity to gain control of Montreal, a vital entry point for drug trafficking into the United States.

We do know that when Montagna first arrived in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and nearby Hamilton, it was with Ndrangheta members that he met, not Sicilian Cosa Nostra mobsters. Montagna was himself Sicilian, so this struck many as odd. At the time, 2009, there were 15 organized crime families operating in the region, nine of which were Calabrian Ndrines. It's believed Giacomo Luppino's arrival in Hamilton led to the dominance of the Calabrian Mafia in the region.

One theory suggests that Montagna's true plan was to help the Ndrangheta take control of the Port of Montreal, considered America's "front door" for drug smugglers. The Ndrangheta, allied with the Mexican cartels, was trafficking drugs into the U.S. via the "back door" -- Juarez, Mexico.

Ciudad Juarez was the murder capital of the world, with 8.5 murders a day recorded back in 2010, during the height of cartel violence.

(This reportedly has changed. Five years later, local officials say the city is much safer, and foreign tourists and investors are now being targeted as part of a tourism campaign launched by Juarez. "Juarez is Waiting for You" is the campaign's slogan.)

Desjardins is awaiting trial for the Nov. 24, 2011, murder of Montagna.