Ed Scarpo's Blog, page 34

Recent Ruling Could Have Saved Paul Castellano

Where was this federal judge when the FBI installed a bug inside the home of Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano? The article doesn't even reference Castellano.

A federal judge issued a stern rebuke Friday to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's method for breaking up an illegal online betting ring. 
According to published reports a Las Vegas court frowned on the FBI's ruse of disconnecting Internet access to $25,000-per-night villas at Caesar's Palace Hotel and Casino.  FBI agents posed as the cable guy and secretly searched the premises.

The government claimed the search was legal because the suspects invited the agents into the room to fix the Internet. US District Judge Andrew P. Gordon wasn't buying it. He ruled that if the government could get away with such tactics like those they used to nab gambling kingpin Paul Phua and some of his associates, then the government would have carte blanche power to search just about any property.

"Permitting the government to create the need for the occupant to invite a third party into his or her home would effectively allow the government to conduct warrantless searches of the vast majority of residents and hotel rooms in America," Gordon wrote in throwing out evidence the agents collected. (To view PDF of the ruling, click here.)
"Authorities would need only to disrupt phone, Internet, cable, or other 'non-essential' service and then pose as technicians to gain warrantless entry to the vast majority of homes, hotel rooms, and similarly protected premises across America."

FBI cut Internet access, sent agents into hotel rooms to fix it without warrants.

The government had urged the court to uphold the search, arguing that it employs "ruses every day in its undercover operations." The government noted that US judges have previously upheld government ruses to gain access into dwellings.

In 1966, the Supreme Court authorized an agent to pose as a drug buyer to get consent to go inside a house. In 1980, an agent posing as a drug dealer's chauffeur was upheld. Seven years later, agents posed as real estate investors to access a bedroom and closet of a suspect. And in 1989, an agent posed as a UPS delivery man to get inside a drug house, the government argued.

But operatives posing as gas company or water district workers seeking permission to enter the premises to check for leaks were deemed illegal searches. That's because the occupants provided "involuntary" consent to enter because they were duped into believing a life-threatening emergency was afoot, Phua's defense pointed out.

In the Phua case, the FBI and a Nevada gaming official clandestinely filmed the rooms while building a case that ultimately accused Phua, his son, and others of running a World Cup soccer bookmaking ring where "hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal bets" were taking place. The investigation started last summer when Caesars Palace staff got suspicious that the men were ordering a substantial amount of electronic gear and Internet connections.
As for Castellano, in March 1983, the FBI obtained a warrant to install secret listening devices in Castellano's house on Todt Hill, the highest natural point in New York City's five boroughs and the highest elevation on the entire East Coast, from Florida to Cape Cod.
Waiting until Castellano flew south for a Florida vacation, agents drugged his watch dogs, disabled his security system, and planted devices in the dining and living rooms.

At least that's the version propagated in the book Boss of Bosses: The Fall of the Godfather- The FBI and Paul Castellano, which is a great read. (A book about Carlo Gambino, who appointed Castellano his successor, has practically the same title: Don Carlo,: Boss of Bosses, by Paul Meskil, 1973. We'd purchase it in a heartbeat, only it's priced from $75 to $150! Also, if you read the Castellano Boss of Bosses and find any interest in Tommy Agro, you should read Joe Dogs The Life & Crimes Of A Mobster, about Joseph "Joe Dogs" Iannuzzi.)
Tommy Agro was a gangster -- listen to the audio below and you will hear a gangster who has no clue he's being taped repeatedly threaten Joe Dogs' life. Agro's threats are not hollow. He had already tried to kill Joe Dogs. On January 19, 1981, Agro and two men found Ianuzzi at the Don Ritz Pizzeria on Singer Island, Florida and severely beat him with baseball bats, nearly to death.


Ignore the one minute of music -- this version is complete and unedited...


Giving it a close reading, we find it difficult to believe. No doubt the FBI wouldn't want it known how they installed "bugs" inside a private residence. The whole scenario -- drugging the dogs creates the risk of overdose, etc. -- seems improbable, down to the "tickle" of the magic marker as the covert-op-readied agent supposedly darkened an exposed ankle.
The official and more believable version is that they knocked out Castellano's cable television and an undercover agent slipped into the house dressed like a repairman who installed a listening device directly under the nose of Thomas "Tommy" Bilotti.

The bottom line is one way or the other they managed to obtain a wealth of incriminating information on Castellano.

With warm thanks to our Facebook friend who pointed this out to us.

Rare Photo of Dead Albert Anastasia

The well-known image.
We have seen quite a few images of dead gangsters in our day, as have many of you, we'd wager.

Initially, we included in our Cosa Nostra News logo the iconic 1979 photograph of Carmine Galante taken by the enterprising news photographer positioned atop a roof that overlooked the outside patio of Joe and Mary's Italian American Restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn. (The restaurant went out of business following the murder on a dreadfully hot New York summer day.)

But one image we happened across today gave us lengthy pause. We immediately knew we'd never seen the black-and-white photo before. Yet a familiarity was indeed there, likely due to the barber chair beside which the lifeless, blood-spattered gangster had collapsed after his infamous lunge at the mirror. A fatally shot mob boss, his dying brain's synapses misfiring, had mistakenly perceived his assassins to be standing in front of him. He'd been deceived by a reflection.





We knew we were looking at a photograph we'd never seen before of the feared, ruthless Five Family crime boss Albert Anastasia.

We have seen numerous photographs of Anastasia in death -- but always under a sheet. Even film footage captured the sheet-covered body carried on a stretcher toward an ambulance.

"The vivid image of a helpless victim swathed in white towels was stamped in the public memory," former New York Times reporter Selwyn Raab wrote in Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires, a book we continue to recommend highly.

In the stark image, a purloined memento from decades ago, the former "Lord High Executioner" of Murder Inc. who earlier in his crime career avoided the death penalty by killing every witness, has collapsed onto the barbershop's floor on his right side, his white dress shirt wrinkled, untucked, speckled and blotted with blood, shapeless trousers, tie spread across the body's side. His left arm is bent at the floor in an unnatural position, as if a dying Anastasia sought to make one final defiant gesture with his last breath. A similarly contorted limb wrings shrieks of pain from the living.

The photo doesn't reveal the shock, pain and horror as do photographs of, say, Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

Interestingly, what put us onto the picture was a Google alert somehow triggered by a March 9, 2011 Las Vegas Sun story concerning the Mob Museum's then-latest acquisition, the barber chair Anastasia resided in when he was murdered in 1957.

The chair in which Anastasia was groomed and, famously, clipped is the latest artifact added to The Mob Museum set to open in December in the old Federal Courthouse and Post Office at 300 Stewart Ave. in downtown Las Vegas.

The picture, see directly below, caught our attention more than the barber chair exhibit did.



The picture was included in the Sun story that reported the Mob Museum acquisition.

The article noted:

The story behind the chair was that on Oct. 25, 1957, Anastasia was murdered in the Grasso Barber Shop at the Park Sheraton Hotel in New York City, which today is the Park Central Hotel. The barbershop itself is now a Starbucks, so the spot where Anastasia was gunned down is still serving double shots (ba-da-bum).


The crime has never been solved, making it one of the great mysteries of mob lore. Anastasia, boss of the Gambino crime family, was the overlord of Murder Inc., which is reported to have enacted 400 to 700 murders. Anastasia’s was a rare “hit” in that it took place during the day, in a public forum and was the result of a leadership “dispute” between the Genovese and Gambino crime families.

According to "museum-maker" Kathy Barrie, it is a challenge to verify that such pieces of memorabilia are authentic. This chair was easy to track, given that the collector in St. Louis kept accurate records, and Youngman held the chair for decades. But museum officials have bemoaned such tantalizing artifacts as a cane purportedly used by Lucky Luciano that was manufactured more than 10 years after his death.

''These are odious criminals. But organized crime has earned almost a reverential standing with portions of the American public," Arthur Nash said.

“We really cannot say enough about the importance of having connoisseurs and experts connected with our museum,” Kathy Barrie said. “We can guarantee that the artifacts we have are authentic. Just as you might imagine, there are ersatz and not really up-to-snuff artifacts out on the market.”

The chair has been refurbished with new chrome and upholstery--Anastasia's blood is no longer there, in other words.

It is the real deal, passed along by a St. Louis collector to legendary comedian Henny Youngman (himself an active memorabilia collector) and finally sold to noted New York mob artifact collector Arthur Nash who out of the goodness of his heart gave it, free of charge, to the Mob Museum. Of course, we kid you here.

''These are odious criminals. But organized crime has earned almost a reverential standing with portions of the American public," Nash told the New York Times, which of course asked him to explain "the odd appeal" of collecting mob artifacts.

Arthur, you have an open invitation to chat with us if you ever have the time and inclination.

We have heard good things about him from our friend author/historian Christian Cipollini, who recently published his latest work, Murder Inc. (Gangland Mysteries).

Among other things, Nash operates the New York City Gangland website, which features some a 200 rarely viewed images. Many were provided to Nash by law enforcement sources, as well as private photo albums.
Yes, we are working on the many stories we've previously mentioned -- including Gambino's FBI files and Anastasia's last day, though we are focusing on more recently mentioned stories first. We'don't have the time we used to have to work on these stories.

Legendary Mafioso's Daughter Pens Memoir

Linda Scarpa

"Ready or not here i come... ready to share my secrets... my story..."
--Linda Scarpa

If you smoked pot with this 14-year-old girl back in 1983, you had a major screw loose.

That's because the girl in question is Linda Scarpa. Her dad, Gregory Scarpa, was also known as "The Grim Reaper." 
One of the most violent mobsters to strut through New York's boroughs, Scarpa was a chief assassin for imprisoned mob boss Carmine Persico during the 1990s Colombo war. Scarpa, who also served as a high-level FBI asset for years, hunted down the stoner and administered a beating probably recalled to this day in palpitating nightmares.



The boy's father, apparently not knowing anything about the man who beat his son to a pulp, drove to the Scarpa house to demand an apology.
Scarpa grabbed the kid by the arm and hustled him up a flight of stairs to Linda's room. 
He wanted her to see the kid's face, puffed eyes barely open, swollen lips.
"See, this is what happens when you give my daughter drugs," Scarpa told her. "Little Linda" never again smoked pot.

Psssssst: In an FBI agent's 1970s memoir, which included fake names to protect some identities, one of the mobsters was actually Greg Scarpa.... Do you know the name of the book and the character based on Greg Scarpa?

Available now for pre-order, The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter is 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.
We've written quite a few stories about Greg Scarpa and Linda too. Here's a selection of some of our "greatest hits" on the Scarpas:



Cosa Nostra News: Greg Scarpa: Mobster Played Key Role in ...Sep 10, 2012 ... Gregory Scarpa, Sr. (May 8, 1928 – June 4, 1994) was a fiercely loyal capo in the Colombo crime family with cojones the size of coconuts ...www.cosanostranews.com/.../greg-scarpa-mob-informer-who-played-key. html


Cosa Nostra News: Mafia Daughter Linda 'Scarpa' Schiro in NY PostMay 28, 2012 ... Linda Schiro, aka Scarpa, provides more anecdotes and details than have appeared in her previous interviews on "I Married a Mobster" and ...www.cosanostranews.com/.../mafia-d...-scarpa-schiro-in.htmlCosa Nostra News: The FBI's Deal with Greg Scarpa: Who Got the...Sep 15, 2013 ... Was the information the FBI got from Scarpa worth keeping him on the ... There's no doubt that Gregory Scarpa Sr., the killing machine, got the ...www.cosanostranews.com/.../the-fbi...-scarpa-who-got.html
Cosa Nostra News: Former Fed Confirms Scarpa's Role in '60s Civil ...May 22, 2011 ... DeVecchio confirmed the role Scarpa played in finding the three murdered ... The FBI brought Greg Scarpa to the [Klan member involved in the ...www.cosanostranews.com/.../former-...-scarpas-role-in-60s.html

Cosa Nostra News: Replay! GFELLA Offers Hip Hop Ode to Linda...Aug 24, 2013 ... Or a person, like Linda Scarpa, who to say has had a rough life would be ... Greg Scarpa: Mobster Played Key Role in Civil Rights movement.www.cosanostranews.com/.../g...






Cosa Nostra News: The Turncoat Who Helped Convict Half the MafiaSep 25, 2014 ... We don't need a writer imposing a thesis on the Scarpa story to see its larger- than-life framework. The guy singlehandedly helped facilitate the ...www.cosanostranews.com/.../the-tur...
Cosa Nostra News: Little Linda Scarpa Speaks on Blog Talk ShowApr 20, 2012 ... Linda Scarpa is the daughter of deceased Colombo crime family capo ... Ms. Scarpa is also currently working on a book -- her life story, the ...www.cosanostranews.com/.../hear-linda-scarpa-speak-on-blog-talks.html

Breakshot: Story of "Marbles" and Little Nicky

Interesting story about a little-known figure who was around Little Nicky Corozzo.

Kenji Gallo's latest Breakshot Blog column:
The Gambino Family is always a fun topic. This week is a story about Vincent “Marbles” Dragonetti, Little Nicky Corozzo’s son in law.





Vincent became known as Marbles when he was in his teens because of his bad skin. He had big pimples and boils so the name stuck. Marbles was not like most crime famimly guys, because he also had a regular job working in landscaping. He worked with his father and brother in the business until his father passed away. He then partnered up with his brother and they ran it together.

He was a regular guy in the crew who used to move cocaine with Mario, another crew member. Selling drugs is supposed to be forbidden, but this was before he was really close to Nicky. The Sicilians who now run the family come from a deep heroin selling background, but I guess that does not count either.

Gambino Capo Little Nicky Corozzo had a daughter. Little Nicky’s daughter Bernadette had been dating a man who was killed at Wheelers Bar in Sheepshead Bay. She met Marbles and they started to get serious so Nicky brought him closer to him. Nicky started grooming him. He still did a lot of credit card fraud and his first real pinch was credit card fraud on Long Island.

Nicky set him with a lot of landscaping accounts in Howard Beach, John Gotti’s old neighborhood. Then he helped Marbles open a nursery on Utica in Brooklyn. Marbles moved up the ranks pretty quick without getting his hands real dirty. Marbles used to sell slugs for parking meters and now he was taking care of a shylock customers of Little Nickys. One of the guys Little Nicky gave to him was a guy who had a 60k loan out.

Other guys in the crew started to stay away from Marbles because he would report everything about them to Little Nicky. Marbles had stopped being one of the guys and became the ears and eyes of the boss....


READ REST
ITEM:
We've got two exclusives up our sleeve. One interview, as mentioned, is a former Gambino capo, an old school wiseguy who tried to follow Cosa Nostra's codes. His forebears were among its founders here and in Sicily. He does fear mob retribution because he knows he is supposed to be killed for what he did. It's among the rules he signed onto on Christmas Eve 1988.
The other guy we spoke to is a former Colombo gangster with Luchese ties that extend to Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso. He's tied to five gangland hits and spent many years in prison for a crime everyone knew he didn't commit, though he did commit other crimes....

Are "Wannabe" Producers Aware of "Rob the Mob"?

The film “The Wannabe” is "centered around the 1992 John Gotti trial in New York City" but has more to do with the short-lived lukewarm HBO series Boardwalk Empire than any mob boss.

The producers don't seem to realize they are remaking a film released only last year called Rob the Mob. Or they found out too late so they added a "twist" to even further distance their cinematic effort from the true account of the married couple who robbed mob social clubs for a few months in the early 1990s. Ultimately the two were brutally murdered in broad daylight by Mafia shooters.

Watch the video for yourself and tell us why they all seem to be on Xanax. Or why they don't even acknowledge the previous film.
"The Wannabe" drew much of its talent from Boardwalk Empire. Martin Scorsese's name is attached but only as a producer, which doesn't necessarily mean anything more than he owed a favor.

In Gyp Rosetti Sharpens Boardwalk Empire's Edge we noted various lines of the fictional gangster's dialog: "I'll shit you out like yesterday's sausage, you bog-trotting prick." "Nobody here can take a joke." "What's that? A gun? I got a gun. He got a gun. He got a gun... Everybody got guns!" "Nothing's personal? What the fuck is life, if it's not personal?!"  "You smug kike midget, creeping around like a fucking dentist with the ether."
The big name stars in The Wannabe -- not to be confused with the trifling Wannabes film -- are
One of the best Sopranos' episodes, in our opinion, was Pine Barrens.

Also starring is Vincent Piazza, who played Charlie Lucky Luciano on Boardwalk Empire. 
We assume that when the producers realized the Uva story  had been told a year ago,  they added this kink:

The first thing Thomas does after meeting Rose is take her to the Gotti trial and convinces her that the jury can be rigged. After making a deal with the “brother” of a jurist in order to make sure that Gotti is released, he runs back to the mafia and tells him about this situation. He is later devastated when he finds out that the plug he thought he had, was just a fan watching the Gotti trial and tried to rob them all. He breaks down and for the first time, Rose sees him at his most vulnerable state. 

Both Rose and Thomas have their own dark secrets that are revealed throughout the movie and play a role in their relationship. These secrets surprisingly are what make their relationship so strong even when at times it seemed like everything went from bad to worse. Rose has always had a empty space in her heart because she never felt accepted  until she met Thomas, who changed her life and filled a void. The story follows the couple who falls into a downward spiral when they start robbing New York Mafia social clubs. The film, executive produced by Martin Scorsese, depicts a world when crime bosses were neighborhood kings and young men aspired to be a part of their world to gain the social status. 

Based on true events, The Wannabe tells the iconic mob story from a new perspective: an outsider’s point-of-view.

We stole that from The Source. The writing is horrid, too, but we're lazy today... Even this lackluster report tried to hide the film's major plot point.

The Uvas 2.0. That's Patricia Arquette....

Rob the Mob, directed by Oscar-nominee Raymond de Felitta starred Michael Pitt, Nina Arianda, Andy Garcia and Ray Romano.

Garcia, playing a mob boss that may have been inspired by Joe Massino (who really cares) unbelievably wore a full beard -- we couldn't help but think he did this to subliminally distance the film from the woebegone Godfather Part III, which of all things made a fictional ex-mob boss's crime family the protectors of Christendom, avenging the Pope's murder.

The ending was something out of Monty Python or Mel Brooks.....
 

What were you thinking FFC?

There were a few great scenes in the film, and we honestly thought it was a fine effort that failed, but the great director took a risk... credit him for that....

Rob the Mob was watchable but didn't strain itself too much to be true to what's known to have happened when Thomas and Rose Marie Uva, a married couple, made the foolhardy, fatal decision to rob Mafia social clubs in Little Italy, Queens and Brooklyn from the summer of 1992 to Christmas Eve 1992, when the two were killed.
In nearly every robbery, 21-year-old getaway driver Rose Marie waited in the car while Tommy, hefting an Uzi, simply walked into the clubs, the doors of which were open.
The wiseguys, despite what had happened to them, nevertheless voiced their admiration for Rose Marie's skills as a getaway driver.

When will they learn that in the mob, truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Method acting and star power won't save a film. A good script is needed first.

It's been too long since anyone's made a decent mob flick....
The Uvas robbed the mob...

Nicola Gentile Key Player in Building American Mafia

Nicola Gentile's memoir about the formation of the
American Mafia is unavailable in English....

This was my most popular newsletter -- meaning it generated the most opens, most clicks, etc. Probably, this was based on the title we used -- the most famous Mafioso you never heard of, or something like that....

Nicola "Nick" Gentile was a Sicilian Mafioso who traveled around the United States to witness many pivotal moments in the formation of the American Mafia. He knew firsthand many of men who established the foundation for Sicilian-based organized crime here.

He was a trusted confidant of New York Mafiosi from the early 1900s through the Castellammarese War, and was also called upon to mediate a dispute between the Morello-Lupo clan and boss of bosses Salvatore D'Aquila in the 1920s.

He mediated disputes in Chicago and Los Angeles, even in New York City, the Mafia's capitol.

Gentile briefly served in leadership roles for the Kansas City, Cleveland and Pittsburgh Mafia families. Pittsburgh bosses Gregorio Conti and John Bazzano, and Cleveland bosses Joe Lonardo and Frank "Ciccio" Milano were trusted associates.

More than once, mob assassins stalked him. The most dramatic confrontation occured when Gentile was called to  Salvatore Maranzano's Chicago underworld coronation at the conclusion of the Castellammarese War.
Pittsburgh boss Giuseppe Siragusa made secret accusations against Gentile, and Gentile was summoned for a sort of trial that could have ended with his execution. In a separate meeting with host Al Capone, Gentile denied the charges and threatened to behead any person who said otherwise. 
Capone, impressed by Gentile's balls, made the ruling in favor -- and Nicola carried the day.

In 1937, he fled to Sicily in the face of a narcotics-related indictment.
After World War II, when Luciano was deported to Italy, the U.S. narcotics enforcement agents believed Gentile joined him to arrange a drug smuggling operation that extended from Sicily to the U.S. The FBI reported that Carlo Gambino was another participant in a drug smuggling ring with Luciano.
According to the FBI files:

"During the spring of 1948, reliable information obtained from a Bureau of Narcotics source indicated that CARLO GAMBINO travelled clandestinely to Palermo, Sicily, where he joined his brother, PAUL GAMBINO, who had fled to Italy to avoid prosecution in a Federal alcohol tax case. The GAMBINOS were reported to exercise control over the narcotic smuggling activities between the Mafia element in Palermo and the United States on behalf of SALVATORE LUCANIA and during 1948, both GAMBINO brothers met with LUCANIA at the home of their relatives in Palermo, Sicily. ...

"Investigation further developed the information that among those interested in the smuggling of these aliens was a representative of the Santo - Serge Trading Company, 196 First Avenue, New York city. This company is operated by SANTO SORGE, an intimate associate of SALVATORE LUCANIA, and it will be recalled that immediately prior to his apprehension at the Apalachin meeting JOSEPH BONANNO was observed at Palermo Sicily, in the company of SANTO SORGE."

It could be theorized that Gambino, Bonanno, Luciano and possibly other bosses were involved in one major smuggling ring, Santo Sorge being a common denominator. Whatever the case, Gambino was considered a top narcotics dealer and had overseen a drug ring that stretched from Palermo, Sicily, to America, The Federal Bureau of Narcotics' Harry J. Anslinger tended to over-hype Luciano's influence, however.

Gentile eventually decided to write about his Mafia experiences. In 1963 Vita di Capomafia hit bookstores' shelves in Italy (the same year Joe Valachi appeared before the American public to expose America's Cosa Nostra after Vito Genovese deemed him a rat and ordered his murder.)

The published version, co-written with a journalist, included and expanded upon material from an earlier manuscript that America's intelligence community got hold of and translated into English.

The book was a hot item for Italy's media as it prompted widespread newspaper coverage at the time.
Gentile's early manuscript, the published book and articles were used by U.S. law enforcement officials as corroboration for Valachi's testimony, some allege. Most likely, bits of Gentile's work were provided to Valachi to fill gaps in his knowledge of the Mafia or to help jog his memory, some theorize.
Also Greg Scarpa was providing the FBI with information; it's been alleged he too was tapped to supplement Valachi's knowledge. Those "family trees" hanging on the walls were rather extensive for one man's memory.

The Mafia condemned Gentile for writing the book. His death was ordered for violating Omerta. 
The hitters, oddly, chose not to shoot the man, however. It's weird but true that Gentile was allowed to die of old age. Now this scenario is ludicrous. Shooters were routinely killed for disobeying orders -- so they must have carried out a true order....
The death went unnoticed by the American press but Gentile lives on as a reference for such mob scholars as John Dickie and Alex Hortis.

If anyone could provide me with an English-language version of the book, please contact me. I am dying to read this thing!

Also what do you think about Gentile's death? If he was ordered to be murdered -- what happened? Do you buy that the shooters decided not to kill him?

Sicilian Cosa Nostra Rebrands Itself, Dickie Says

Gaetano Riina, brother of Salvatore 'Toto' Riina, after he was arrested in Mazara del Vallo Photo: AP
"The Mafia is oppression, arrogance, greed, self-enrichment, power and hegemony above and against all others. It is not an abstract concept, or a state of mind, or a literary term... It is a criminal organization regulated by unwritten but iron and inexorable rules... The myth of a courageous and generous 'man of honor' must be destroyed, because a mafioso is just the opposite."
-- Cesare Terranova, Italian Magistrate murdered in 1979

An interview with Professor John Dickie

Cosa Nostra - rebranding the Mafia: The mafia, in the strict sense of Cosa Nostra, the hierarchical criminal organization based in Sicily, does not ‘run Italy’ as you sometimes hear people rather glibly say,” explains John Dickie, senior lecturer in Italian at the University of London, and author of Cosa Nostra – a history of the Sicilian Mafia. It’s in response to the question, to what extent is an understanding of the Mafia crucial to an understanding of the history of modern Italy? 
“It is no coincidence – though, he continues – that the mafia was born at the same time as the modern Italian State, in the middle of the nineteenth century. Since then, the Italian state has co-habited with illegal forms of power based on an ability to use violence (that is, with the mafia in a looser meaning). Still today, some areas of southern Italy are not under the full control of the legal government, in the sense that criminal associations create their own ‘legality’, their own shadow state. Understanding how that situation has evolved tells us a great deal about Italy, and about the State’s difficulties in establishing its right to rule.”

Dickie’s work, which is amongst the first serious academic studies on Cosa Nostra published in English, dismisses many of the accepted myths about the organisation, propagated by its own members, as well as through art, literature and film over the last century.
Let’s talk about the name. Do we know what the origins of the name are? When it first came into use? Do ‘mafiosi‘ actually use the term referring to themselves?

Men of honour, as initiated members of Cosa Nostra are called, do not use the word mafia about themselves. That fact alone is enough to tell us that all the etymological speculation that has gone on around the origins of the word is missing the point. That said, the best guess we have is that the word existed in Palermo dialect in the middle of the nineteenth century: it meant a kind of self-confidence and beauty–’cool’ is an approximate English equivalent. The story of how it then came to have criminal connotations, and came to be a powerful political weapon at the same time, is told in an early chapter of my book.


Cosa Nostra exists to protect the credibility of its brand. In other words, to make sure that the threats its members issue are never made in vain. A bit like the Volkswagen brand and its reputation for reliability. Only in the case of Cosa Nostra, protecting your brand identity means being able to kill people and get away with it, rather than just being able to start your car on a damp morning.


Many books on the mafia have been written by journalists and commentators, but relatively few by historians (certainly in English). What are the challenges facing the historian approaching a topic like the mafia?


The first and most serious problem was only overcome remarkably recently. Until 1992 we didn’t know for certain what the Sicilian mafia was! It was in that year that the existence of Cosa Nostra was finally confirmed by the Italian courts. Before then, historians couldn’t be confident that they knew what they were looking for when they went back through the records to research the mafia. That is why the first genuine history of the Sicilian mafia ever written in Italian only came out in 1993–a brilliant work of scholarship and analysis by the Catania historian Salvatore Lupo. It’s a great shame that his book has never been translated into English.


The other, obvious, problem is documentation. The Sicilian mafia is, and has always been, a secret association of murderers and criminals. By its very nature, it does not leave written records. However, because it has always lived in close contact with political power, it has left a great deal of secondary evidence about itself.


What sets Cosa Nostra apart from organisations like the ‘Ndrangheta of Calabria, or the Sacra Corona Unita of Puglia? How is it that the mafia has come to be seen as the template for organised criminal activity worldwide?


Cosa Nostra is quite simply far more organized than the other southern Italian criminal associations. None of the others has anything like the provincial Commissions that act as parliaments and courts for the mafia in western Sicily. None of the others has a boss of all bosses as Cosa Nostra does. The close links with the United States, where the Sicilian model came to dominate over the other criminal associations exported from Italy, has also helped Cosa Nostra become prominent.


One review of your book described it as a “precise and necessary work of rebranding”. Would you agree? What drew you to the subject?

The reference to branding is interesting. It derives from a fascinating sociological analysis of the Sicilian mafia by Diego Gambetta–another one of the breakthrough studies on the subject that came out in the early 1990s. He pioneered the idea that ‘mafia’ could be thought of as a brand–either of trust, or of intimidation, depending on how you view the extortion rackets that are at the basis of Cosa Nostra‘s power.

Cosa Nostra exists to protect the credibility of its brand. In other words, to make sure that the threats its members issue are never made in vain. A bit like the Volkswagen brand and its reputation for reliability. Only in the case of Cosa Nostra, protecting your brand identity means being able to kill people and get away with it, rather than just being able to start your car on a damp morning.

What do you think about representations of the mafia in popular culture – films and literature? Are the portrayals wide off the mark? Also, to what extent do you think that the mafia as an organisation is aware or influenced by these representations? To put it another way, does today’s mafia vainly try to live up to the stereotypes portrayed in films like The Godfather?
I think what the reviewer who referred to ‘rebranding’ had in mind is my attempt to take the mafia seriously. And that is what drew me to the subject in the first place. What most people know about the mafia comes from the US entertainment industry. The whole American mob genre–all the books and films that have sprung from the loins of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather – isn’t really about the mafia at all. Hollywood has used the mafia to talk about what it means to be a man, about the pressures of juggling the responsibilities of family and work, about the dark side of the American dream, or even just to peddle cool images of laconic blokes in sharp suits. And in all that, the fascinating, tragic, scandalous story of what organized crime has done in Sicily has been lost from view. It’s difficult to imagine Al Pacino playing the part of Giovanni Brusca, who dissolved a 12-year-old boy in acid because his father had betrayed Cosa Nostra.
The mafia in Sicily has always been aware of how it is represented, and mafiosi are directly responsible for some of the mystifications that have been spread–like the nonsense about the mafia having Arab origins, for example. Yet the media has also had an influence on the mafia’s own view of itself. It is often said, even during mafia initiation rituals, that the mafia originated as a medieval sect called the Beati Paoli who defended the weak against the powerful and unscrupulous. That idea probably started with a swashbuckling novel about the Beati Paoli published in Palermo early in the twentieth century. In other words, some early mafiosi liked the story, and borrowed it for their own purposes; later gangsters simply began to believe in what had first been spread as the association’s own propaganda.
You take an interesting argument from Franchetti’s Political and Administrative Conditions in Sicily [A study published in 1877], that the Mafia are in essence an entrepreneurial association specialising in the sale of violence. Moreover, it was the absence of a State monopoly on violence that empowered it. In the transition from feudalism to capitalism, what was it about Sicily in particular that created the conditions for the Mafia?
Apart from capitalism and a weak State, there are two other key ingredients that went to form the mafia. The first is a strong tradition of political conspiracy. Rather like some members of Republican and Loyalist terrorist groups in Northern Ireland who are also gangsters, many of the very earliest mafiosi were both criminals and patriotic conspirators, or at least moved in that milieu. The second ingredient is lemons, as I explain in my book. In other words, a very valuable and very vulnerable cash crop that tied western Sicily into the world economy.
For many, in the media certainly, the moment when Tommaso Buscetta turned supergrass represented the first breakthrough in the struggle against the mafia [Buscetta, an important figure in Cosa Nostra, gave testimony to Falcone that played a fundamental part in the maxi-trials held in Sicily in the 1980s] . In reality, your book documents the numerous occasions where similar attempts were made, legally and politically, to combat the mafia. What was different about Buscetta’s testimony? Was it as unique as we’re led to believe?
In my book I tell the story of Francesco Siino, the ‘regional or supreme capo‘ of the Palermo area in the 1890s, who turned to the police when he was defeated in a mafia war. (Significantly, it seems to have been his wife who convinced him to talk.) But in court, when it became clear that the case based partly on his confessions was falling apart, Siino retracted. Mafiosi, usually defeated ones, have been talking to the police since the outset. What is distinctive about Buscetta is simply that he was the first mafia supergrass to be believed. He was believed because there was a magistrate, Giovanni Falcone, with the courage, empathy and intelligence to take his testimony seriously. And because of Falcone, Buscetta went into far more detail about Cosa Nostra, and about what it means to be a man of honour, than anyone had done before.
Buscetta’s testimony was history-making in a quite literal sense. It was his insider’s picture of the Sicilian mafia that led Italian historians to look again at the evidence and re-write the story of the mafia completely. It’s the work of those historians that I have brought together in my book.
Unfairly asking you to gaze into the future rather than the past, in a hundred years from now how likely is it that Falcone, Buscetta and the maxi trials will be another footnote in mafia history?
I sincerely hope not. One of the lessons of the history of the mafia is that it has come very close to defeat on a number of occasions. There is nothing inevitable about the existence of Cosa Nostra. If the political will can be found–and that’s a huge ‘if’ in Italy–then the mafia can be defeated.

The mafia is often portrayed as a State within a State. With its involvement in arms and drugs trafficking, how has the post 9/11 war on terrorism affected the organisation? Aside from possible connections through drug trafficking and money laundering to radical Islamic groups, the mafia has proven itself in the past to be a terrorist organisation (if we define that as the targetting of civilians for political purposes). How does it fit in the post 9/11 world?

I’m not sure we can really regard 9/11 as a watershed in the history of the mafia in the way that your question implies. I don’t think the rise of Islamist terrorism means very much to Cosa Nostra, except in the sense that it has probably diverted some police manpower in the US and Italy away from organized crime. The biggest turning points in the recent history of the Sicilian mafia were the verdict of the Court of Cassation in 1992 that finally proved the existence of Cosa Nostra, and the murders of judges Falcone and Borsellino a few months afterwards. Another turning point was the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the old political system in Italy: the mafia could no longer dress itself up as a bulwark against Communism. (Which was the justification for some acts of mafia terrorism in the past.)
One group who are absent from your history, for the most part, are women. Do women play any role in the organisation, other than passive?



There are women in my book: in the chapters on the Sangiorgi Report, for example, or on Peppino Impastato. But to answer your question, yes they certainly do. Women are not allowed to be initiated into Cosa Nostra, but their cooperation is fundamental to the organization’s survival. That’s why Cosa Nostra has so many rules about women’s behaviour, and about men’s behaviour towards women. Almost inevitably, women learn some of the secrets of their criminal menfolk: a mafia wife is the one who has to wash the blood and excrement off her husband’s clothes when he’s been strangling a victim. So Cosa Nostracannot afford to alienate its women in case they betray those secrets. Women bring their children up to admire and emulate mafia fathers who spend a great deal of time away–in jail for example. They lend their names to mafia front businesses. In countless ways they oil the machinery of mafia power.

Occasionally mafia women have also come to exercise power themselves. We cannot be sure whether this is an entirely new historical phenomenon. But any woman who does take an active part in criminal policy-making always does so on borrowed authority–she rules on behalf of an imprisoned husband, for example. A very recent case is that of Giusy Vitale, the sister of the boss of Partinico; she was acting boss of a Family until she turned state’s evidence. But even today, these cases are quite rare–and rarer in Sicily than in the other criminal associations in Italy. Every boss of Cosa Nostra has, or should have, a (male) deputy ready to step into his shoes if he gets killed or imprisoned. Cosa Nostraexists as an organization precisely in order to guarantee continuity in leadership.



The mafia continues to exist partly due to complicity on the part of various important social partners. What role has the Church had in the struggle against the mafia? Would it be fair to say that, at an institutional level rather than on the part of individual priests, the Church has been far from strident in its criticisms of the mafia?
That’s a pretty good summary–although rather generous to the Church! The fact that it took until 1993 for the Pope to come out and declare the mafia an evil speaks for itself. During the Cold War, the Vatican was far more concerned about Communism in Sicily than it was about the mafia. At the local level, there has been a great deal of complicity between individual churchmen and the mafia–as well as some extraordinary instances of heroic resistance.

Many mafiosi also profess a version of the Catholic faith. It helps them live with themselves. As one mafia defector has recently said:

We mafiosi are believers because […] we are made of flesh and blood like everyone else. Of course, the first few times it is bad to see those people dying while we…, well…, we act as executioners. But afterwards it becomes normal.

Religion – or what passes for it – is also the cultural glue that keeps Cosa Nostra compact. It is not just that the dynastic politics of Cosa Nostra‘s leading kinship networks are played out at religious rites of passage like Christenings, weddings and funerals. Becoming a mafioso means taking on a new identity, and a strange form of religious morality is often integral to that identity. ‘I kill you before God’, as one man of honour announced to a petty crook he executed in public a few years ago.

There is a political stereotype of the mafia, particularly after episodes like the Portella della Ginestra massacre [1947 massacre of eleven people at a mayday gathering, by Salvatore Giuliano, reputedly a mafioso], that it has been aligned with the centre-right (most obviously with the DC). To what extent have the Italian left managed to avoid political contact with the mafia?
The best way of avoiding political contact with the mafia is by staying out of power–which is where the Left has been in Sicily for most of its history. The mafia also has a legacy of suspicion towards the Right, which originates in Fascism’s war on the mafia in the late 1920s. Cosa Nostra is very political, but it is not ideological. Its natural political home is the amorphous, amoral centre ground of Italian public life. That’s where politicians are most likely to stay in power, and where the mafia can best strike the exchange deals it relies on to get access to public works contracts and the like.

READ John Dickie’s Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia

Kindle Best-Seller "Mystery of Lufthansa" Excerpt

Edited The short-format e-book The Mystery of the Lufthansa Airlines Heist:: A Wiseguy Reveals the Untold Story, available now for $3.99, reached number 2 on an Amazon Kindle paid bestseller list. It's still at number two as I write this... and 3 and 4 on other paid lists.
That's a damn fine showing -- and it beats our own Cosa Nostra News: The Cicale Files, Volume 1: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire.

We asked Rob Sberna for his take: "I’m pleased but not surprised that the book is a hit. The Lufthansa robbery grabbed the public’s attention, for both its size and also its boldness. And because the crime—and the whereabouts of the missing loot—have remained unsolved for nearly four decades, it has become even more infamous.








"And now, for the first time, a mob insider has revealed the mystery of the missing money. We're seeing that fans of mob stories and true crime mysteries are interested in Dominick Cicale's account."

Rob Sberna, author
We offer here an exclusive excerpt heretofore only available via our newsletter.

In the book, Dominick Cicale, a former high-ranking member of the Bonanno crime family, discloses never-before-told details about the Lufthansa robbery, immortalized in"Goodfellas."

"In Rao’s Restaurant, 23 years after the Lufthansa Airlines robbery, Vinny Basciano and Bruno Indelicato trickled out details of the Lufthansa robbery and the whereabouts of the loot.

The two caporegimes seemed undecided whether they wanted to brag about their inside knowledge to Dominick or protect their secrets.

Dominick could only wait patiently as the story teased out. His thoughts drifted back to a night two years earlier, in the same restaurant, when he had first met Vinny. He was introduced by Bruno, his former prison buddy. During his stretch in federal lockup, Dominick had come to admire the loyalty, brotherhood and respect shared by the mob guys. When a made guy arrived in prison, they were taken care of by their associates on the outside. Not only were they sent money and clothing, but their wives were provided with financial assistance. That familial bond appealed to Dominick, who was raised by a free-spirited mother and had little contact with his father.

When Dominick left prison in 1999, he arranged for Bruno to set up a meeting with Vinny. The sit-down was approved and Dominick arrived with his godfather Peter Cicale, a Lucchese mob associate who had played a character named “Pete the Killer” in “Goodfellas.”

During their initial conversation, Vinny had peppered Dominick with questions, evaluating his ambition and character and getting a sense for his loyalty and discretion. Vinny was impressed by Dominick’s poise, his rugged physique, and his machismo. He quickly gained Vinny’s trust and approval. Over the past two years, Dominick had proven himself a good earner who could also be counted on to use muscle when necessary. Now, Vinny and Bruno were bringing Dominick into their confidence, a clear signal the men were grooming him for a greater role in family business.

Leaning closer to hear the two capos’ voices amidst the chatter of conversation and the jukebox in Rao’s, Dominick listened as Vinny explained that Jimmy Burke had asked a friend to rent a safety deposit box at a bank in Queens. Burke then placed between $2 million and $4 million in the box. He gave the keys to the box to his two daughters. Burke was known to have a close relationship with his girls, particularly Cathy.

Vinny told Dominick that the Burke sisters were aware that the safety deposit box contained a large amount of cash, but it’s not certain how much of the money they may have spent. Like their father, both women lived modestly and were hard workers. Robin drove a school bus in Queens and Cathy owned a Manhattan jewelry store, so perhaps the women were saving the money as a rainy day fund or a retirement nest egg.

Their brother, Jessie James Burke, had been educated in private schools and was an attorney on Long Island, specializing in real estate law. Their other brother, Frank, had been shot to death in Brooklyn in 1987 after an altercation in a bar.

If, in fact, Cathy and Robin were counting on their father’s stash to fund their retirement, they were facing a major disappointment. By 2001, the box had been emptied.

Dominick listened, with equal parts amusement and surprise, as Vinny explained that he and Bruno had convinced Robin Burke to turn over her key to the box.

“Bruno knew about the money through Cathy, his wife,” said Dominick, recounting Vinny’s story. “In those days, Cathy was basically in control of everything—the safety deposit box, her mother Mickey, and the rest of the family’s affairs. She would have never given Vinny and Bruno access to the box. Even though she was married to Bruno, she had an independent streak. She had her jewelry business, she traveled to Paris several times a year, and she even owned rental property that Bruno didn’t know about. Cathy was a smart girl. She acted tough, but she was very nice. I got to know her well through Bruno. She came to my daughter’s christening and I went to her daughter’s birthday parties.”

Cathy, perhaps more than her other siblings, was endowed with her father’s forceful personality.Henry Hill recalled a family trip that he, Jimmy Burke, and their daughters had once taken. They had stopped at a restaurant and Hill and Burke argued over the check, with each insisting on paying.

Cathy, at age 9 or so, pulled the check from her father’s hand and said, “Dad, let Henry pay the check. It will make him feel like a big man.”

Along with inheriting her father’s strong will, Cathy also was the heir to his real estate. She took possession of a house in Queens that came with a gruesome secret. In June 2013, the FBI, acting on a tip, dug around and in the home as they searched for traces of Paul Katz, an associate of Jimmy Burke’s who disappeared in 1969. Investigators discovered bones buried in the ground that were determined to be human.

DNA tests confirmed they were indeed a match for Katz, who once owned a warehouse that was used by mob figures to store stolen goods. When the warehouse was raided, Burke and Vincent Asaro suspected that Katz was an informant.

On the night of his death, Dec. 6, 1969, Katz left home after receiving a phone call. He told his wife that he was going to “meet the guys at the candy store.”

Katz’s wife, perhaps sensing danger, begged him not to leave. Katz assured her that he would be back soon. He walked out of the house, saying goodbye to his five children, who were watching television in the living room.

Authorities say that Burke beat and strangled Katz with a dog chain. He then buried Katz’s body under the basement floor of the Queens house that eventually became the property of Cathy Burke.

In late 1998, when Bruno first told Vinny about the safety deposit box containing the Lufthansa cash, Vinny came up with the idea to approach Robin with a scheme, while keeping it a secret from Cathy.

“Robin was not a dummy,” said Dominick. “But she was more trusting of Vinny and Bruno, who was her brother-in-law. So they told Robin that they needed to borrow money for a business deal they were arranging. They asked her to not tell Cathy about the loan, and they promised to return the money quickly with interest. They basically charmed Robin into giving
them the money.”

From 1999 to 2000, Vinny and Bruno made several trips to the safety deposit box, taking out $200,000 to $500,000 at a time.

A portion of the money did go towards a business deal, of sorts. Vinnie was eager to invest in an animated movie about ferrets, tentatively called “Ferretina.” The project was brought to Vinny’s attention by Frank Avianca, a producer of horror movies and the occasional porn flick.

Before entering the movie business, Avianca had a singing career under the name Frankie Sardo. In February 1959, he was part of the Winter Dance Party tour with Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. On February 2, after a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, Sardo traveled to the next venue by bus with Waylon Jennings and Dion and the Belmonts, while the headliners took a plane. In a tragedy dubbed “The Day the Music Died,” the plane crashed in a cornfield, killing Holly, Valens and Richardson.

In preparation for producing “Ferretina,” Frank Avianca thoroughly researched ferrets, said Dominick. “He found out that ferrets were the second-most popular domesticated animal in the U.S. His statistics showed that nearly 20 million people owned ferrets, so the demographics were good. The movie was going to be a love story about ferrets that came from Europe to America. The ferrets get separated, go through some struggles, and then find each other again.”

Vinny gave Avianca upwards of $250,000 for the film project. Although legendary actress Chita Rivera reportedly agreed to star in the movie and Sony Pictures had committed $20 million towards marketing, “Ferretina” never went into production. (“It’s too bad it wasn’t made,” said Dominick. “I was promised a 10 percent cut from Vinny’s end.”)

And what happened to the rest of the Lufthansa money? Dominick was stunned to hear that Vinny had blown it all at casinos."


Purchase The Mystery of the Lufthansa Airlines Heist: A Wiseguy Reveals the Untold Story to learn the full story.....

"The Worst-Kept Secret" in the Mafia....

Gerard “Gerry” Chilli

Updated 
A longtime source told us he found himself recalling a list of suspicious things about the guy we refer to as "the mole" after he read the story.

He called it "the worst-kept secret" in the New York Mafia.

In particular, he recalled a Bonanno Christmas party at Long Island's Harbor Club in the early 1990s. (It was once owned by "Junior" Gotti but the Bonanno family had taken over, according to the source). The crime family treated the holiday affair with the secrecy of an induction ceremony.
That means it was top secret. Guys didn't know the party's location. They were told to show up at various diners and other nondescript places -- where they were picked up and driven to the location, which no one knew about beforehand except for a handful of the crime family's top guys.

Our source can't recall the exact year but said it took place before Massino's release or while he was on parole. To his knowledge it has never been written about. We did some research and found quite a few reports regarding Bonanno Christmas parties, but nothing about this one.

"I know people don't believe anything unless it's written about in all the books," our source said. "Believe me, there is lots of things not written about in the books."

One report did catch our eye. Agents from three federal agencies conducted the raid.

The 2011 party was held in Brooklyn, as Jerry Capeci reported in a story called DEA Grinches Spoil Bonanno Family Christmas Party:

"Just as the crowd - it included three Bonanno wiseguys - began to unwind, a gaggle of shotgun-toting party poopers armed also with search warrants arrived at the Bensonhurst storefront. The Grinches didn't even bother to wear red for the occasion; They had on dark blue jackets with big white letters "DEA" across their backs."

"Announcing a raid, the federal drug agents announced a raid, and herded the partygoers out into the cold night for two hours. The suspects - for the most part, elderly men with no prior arrests - were lined up and searched. Their cell phones were taken and later returned. No drugs were seized. ...

"The circumstances surrounding the 7:30 p.m., December 15 raid at the three-room club are shrouded in mystery and intrigue..."

The party we refer to was busted as well. But first there was drinking and merriment -- and strippers.

The mobster we still won't name was at the party -- one of the guys driven there. He had his eye on a stripper and wanted to get to know her more "intimately." His natural charm didn't do the trick, however, so he sought Jerry Asaro -- Vincent's son -- to talk to the woman. Asaro wouldn't do his cohort that favor.

"We don't act like pimps," the source told us. "He asked Jerry Asaro to hook him up and she wasn't interested. He made an issue out of it."

The guy then disappeared for about an hour.

"He said he needed to go outside for something," our source said. "I was standing right next to him. I remember it. He went outside to make a phone call or something."

Next thing the guys knew, not long after he returned, the Feds were outside taking pictures. And then they busted the party. "A couple of guys got violated.

"Now, how did the Feds find out about that meeting?"

The "mole" is a "notorious brokester who doesn't pay anybody." He also said the guy had once gone out West to start up a business, only it failed and he returned.

The "mole" and Nicky "Mouth" Santora both "beat a [Colombo gangster] out of $100,000."

They met "Big Lou" for dinner the night he died. Our source isn't claiming the two mobsters had anything to do with the death; he's saying they took advantage of the situation.

Now we are not saying anything about Nicky Mouth, who has been held without bail for trial. It's just that both the "mole" and Nicky Mouth at some point in time partnered up on some level, according to our source. The Colombo gangster died on the night he happened to have dinner with Santora and friend.

Santora and the other guy then unveiled the story that they'd paid "Big Lou" the $100,000 that they owed him. They couldn't prove it, of course. But then they didn't have to. Nobody could disprove it, either.

Joe Massino didn't care for either of them, the source said. "He called them both broken down valises."

But of the two, Massino preferred to deal with the other guy -- meaning not Nicky Mouth.

"Joe disliked Nicky and [the mole]. But [the mole] was the smarter of the two."

This guy has a history of meeting Bonanno members who get violated. He was there when NYPD detectives observed that suspicious meeting with John Palazzolo in the parking lot of a Queens diner.

He was there when Gerard “Gerry” Chilli was violated. According to our source, he picked Chili up at the airport in December 2013 when the capo arrived in New York from Florida. Chilli was busted as was another made member of the family: Peter Lovaglio.

"He's bobbing and weaving through everything," our source said of the guy. "Nothing touches him."

"He lives off a bullshit reputation. He pretends to be a tough guy, but he never did a fucking thing."

"Not doing a fucking thing" has only one meaning in gangland.

"He was a backup guy one or two times, supposedly."

Our source also mentioned the murder of Russell Mauro. He was robbed and killed -- but there was another factor, too.

"They were afraid of Russell. He was a dangerous guy."

Mauro is not well-known today but was a major junk dealer and a known Mafia shooter.

Mauro personally shot and killed Carmine Galante. He was the one who shot Lilo's eye out.

PS: Gerry Chilli never trusted the guy who drove him from the airport after his bust.

"How Stupid Can They Be?" Mole in Bonannos' Midst

Bobby Lino, left, Russell Mauro, on right.

Our source was inducted into Cosa Nostra's Bonanno Family in 1975, when the books were opened for the first time in a long time. He started out under Nicholas Marangello, aka "Little Nicky Glasses," underboss at the time, and became acting capo for Mickey Zaffarano.

"In that regime was all the guys that no one wanted," he said. "Anthony Bruno Indelicato, Anthony Rabito, Tony Mirra, Sonny Black Napolitano, James Episcopia, Louis "Louie HaHa" Attanasio and Vinny Asaro.

"That crew broke up when Lilo got hit. They took down all Lilo's guys."

Our source, a pretty sharp character in our view, made it through the ranks earning a lot of money in construction and selling heroin. Lets call him "Blue Eyes."

In the late 1990s, he went to jail, did his time and now resides in what he calls the " the warm state."

When he read our admittedly lame John Palazzolo story, he called us.

Of Russell Mauro, he said, "They robbed him and killed him and we couldn't attend the wake."

Whenever guys were ordered not to attend a funeral, when guys were shelved -- all such actions were said to be "forte familia," meaning for the strength of the family, our source told us.

"It was done for the family -- forte familia."

"Now he is a top-ranking member of the Bonanno family. How in the world did anyone put him in a position to open his big mouth to the wrong ears about everything, politics in the family, meeting with guys that are on parole, knowing who is who?"

But as for the main story, "How stupid can these new guys be!" He may have left the streets some time ago, but he certainly sounds like a guy from New York.

"There's a mole deep in this in the family for years. I can't believe that every time there's a meeting or a walk-and-talk, the FBI is always there. And listens."

The guy he thinks is a mole has been feeding the FBI agents information for years, he said.

After the "Sonny Red trifecta," his name for the storied three-capo whacking of Sonny Red, Phil Lucky and Big Trin in the basement of a Gambino-owned club, the "mole" -- who was part of the conspiracy, our guy said -- was put in position to gather lots of information.

"He was never charged" for the three capo murders, our source said of him. Also "he had something to do with the disappearance of the son-in-law of Paul Castellano."

"Now let's talk about the Donnie Brasco case. He was in the middle of that also, circa 1981. He was caught on a federal wiretap talking about Joe Massino being his captain, and loaning money and never received a subpoena."

Russell Mauro. A lot of guys didn't think he had
to go when he did. 
"He always borrowed money from members and never paid anyone in the family back but Joe Massino.and Big Louie. He was and is a broken down suitcase. He talked about everyone in the family. Dial any seven numbers and he would pick up the phone."

"He started a lot of trouble with in the family. He told the boss, Joe Massino, lies about everyone he didn't like and owed money to in the family."

Then he was under a captain close to Joe Massino, Johnny Palazzolo, and was in a backup position when Russell Mauro got killed. Still nothing happened to him.

"Now he is a top-ranking member of the Bonanno family. How in the world did anyone put him in a position to open his big mouth to the wrong ears about everything, politics in the family, meeting with guys that are on parole, knowing who is who?"

"If he was a fish he'd be on a wall because his mouth is always open and talking shit about everyone, even his good friends."

He added: "It's odd that every time someone meets him they get violated and or pinched.

"He's happy he's out and alive. But them young Long Island kids in gangland are right -- they don't need this thing resurfacing and the whole world knowing their business...."

The mobster-mole is a "total fraud and yellow dog. There is more nerve in a veal cutlet and his manhood is questionable. We'll get to that later ..."



Comments would be welcomed.....