Was Mobster Slain for Finding God?

I answered the phone this morning to: "You didn't fucking tell me you were gonna write about Bobby!"

No clue what he was talking about.

"Bobby at the Post never lived in Knickerbocker Village. Sally killed him because he found out he was a cop."

Ahhh.... okay, I knew.... I said, "I heard Vitale was a cop too."


Sal Vitale approved the Robert Perrino hit, supposedly because the family feared he might give them up in a New York Post probe.
Sal Vitale ordered Perrino's murder. The skeletal remains weren't found
until Vitale himself flipped.


"Exactly. One cop killed the other. In the Mob. Take that shit down. I'm gonna tell you what really happened because you obviously don't know what the fuck happened."

He started with: 

"Baldo was scared shitless that night. You know how fucking hard it is to dig a hole in February?"

Read this while you can. (This was solidly sourced, too, five years ago .... but I wouldn't have it any other way. And remember the truth is always stranger....)


A Mafia associate/New York Post supervisor was murdered by the mob for being too religious, said a Bonanno turncoat at the trial of Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano..

Robert Perrino was shot in the head and stabbed in the ear with an ice pick by Bonanno mobsters after they allegedly learned that he'd been attending mass on a daily basis and was even telling his cohorts in crime about the growing role Catholicism was playing in his life.

At Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano's trial, James Tartaglione, known as "Big Louie," for the first time gave an alternative reason for Perrino's horrific murder. Historically, it was believed Perrino was slain because the Bonanno bosses thought he would expose their infiltration of the The New York Post's delivery operations.

Robert Franklin Perrino, aka Bobby Perrino, was born February 9, 1938 to first-generation immigrants from Brindisi, Italy. Following a full career in the NYPD, he was named the Superintendent of Deliveries at the New York Post from the 1970s up until 1992, when he was murdered and his body disappeared.

Perrino was the son-in-law of Bonanno crime family underboss and former consigliere Nicholas "Nicky Glasses" Marangello, who survived the Sonny Red triple killings. Nicky Glasses was demoted rather than killed.(Marangello died December 30, 1999).

Nicky Glasses with a young Joe Massino?


Perrino spent a 20-year career in the NYPD as a police officer posted in Manhattan's Little Italy. His years  on the force were described as "unremarkable."

He retired from the NYPD in the 1960s and found a subsequent, much more lucrative career in organized crime as the Superintendent of Deliveries for the New York Post. In actuality, he was put in that slot to replace Bonanno mobster Anthony Michele who was promoted to Director of Circulation.

Perrino led a sort of double life. On the one hand, he was a powerful and influential Bonanno associate for around 20 years -- but during all that time, his fellow Post employees (excepting, of course, the 51-plus mobsters Perrino got jobs at the newspaper) as well as his blood relatives had no idea he was anything else but an employee of the Post.

The New York Post labor force became infested with Bonanno mobsters. The Post Circulation Crew alone included three made men who, along with others Perrino got in, received wages, some of which amounted to $50,000 a year. About 51 crime family members had no-show jobs; others were partially or wholly present at the newspaper distribution plant.

For years, while leading the The Post Circulation Crew -- and fully backed by Massino and Salvatore Vitale, Perrino organized the theft of thousands of newspapers every day and sold them to non-connected independent street vendors and stores in Manhattan and Staten Island at a rate of twenty to thirty cents each; the standard newspaper price at the time was fifty cents.

Baldo Amato, who shot Perrino, is serving life
The Bonanno crime family virtually was entrenched at the newspaper – lending money to employees, as well as selling them firearms, ammunition and drugs. Perrino collected the debts supposedly by using nun-chucks to threaten those behind on payments. 

When the New York State Marshals began probing Cosa Nostra infiltration of the The New York Post in the 1990s, Perrino was the main target, as well as the focal point of a labor racketeering probe launched by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. U.S. Marshals planted a transmitter in Perrino's office at the distribution plant.

Perrino lived in Knickerbocker Village, where his mobster father-in-law and other members of the Bonanno crime family resided (including Benjamin "Lefty Two-Guns" Ruggiero and Anthony "Tony" Mirra, who Lefty claimed he threatened to shoot in the face during a sitdown supposedly over who had rights to a hood named Donnie Brasco. Brasco actually went on record with Mirra first, but Mirra went off to prison and was forgotten about. Meanwhile, the undercover FBI agent slyly worked his way into Lefty's crew, run by Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano. When Mirra suddenly returned to the street he turned to Mafia protocol to try to win Donnie back.)

As a sign of his post-NYPD success, Perrino eventually moved out of Knickerbocker Village to a waterfront mansion located in Long Island's tony Huntington Bay section in Huntington, New York. At the time he moved with his wife and children -- at least one daughter.

After his disappearance police discovered an arsenal of firearms, including weapons with the serial numbers gone (probably burnt off with acid, a common practice) as well as $105,000 in cash.

He was declared legally dead in 1997.


Big Louie's Testimony at Vinny Basciano trial
Tartaglione said Perrino went to church every day. "He was praying every day. They thought he may flip -- that he found religion. Then-underboss Salvatore Vitale ordered his murder.

"Sal had him whacked," Tartaglione told the court.

Richard "Shellack Head" Cantarella told Perrino he needed to attend a meeting at a Brooklyn social club.

Perrino went to the meeting accompanied by Michael "Mickey Bats" Cardella. The social club was in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and was owned by Bonanno mob associate Anthony Basile.

As Perrino entered the club, the chosen shooter, Baldassare "Baldo" Amato, swiftly fired several shots into the back of his head. He then departed the club, hoping into Cardella's car and driving off.

Frank Lino sent over a cleanup crew to destroy evidence and dispose of the body. Entering the club were Lino's cousin, Robert Lino, as well as Frank Ambrosiano and Anthony Basile.

The trio was startled to discover that Perrino was on the floor but very much alive -- he had survived the shooting. One of the three grabbed an ice-pack and summarily finished the job.

Frank Lino was angered at the botched execution and later told Bonanno boss Sal Vitale: "Tell the guy that did the shooting to make sure that next time that the victim was dead," as noted in Simon Crittle's The Last Godfather: The Rise and Fall of Joey Massino.

Click on image to purchase.


According to The Last Godfather, Perrino was then wrapped in a carpet and driven away to a construction company, Commercial Brick, located at 98 Jewett Avenue in Port Richmond, Staten Island owned by Anthony Basile, where he was buried underneath the cement floor of the store.

Several weeks later, one of his limbs was said to have risen up from the floor making the mobsters dig a deeper grave.

Years later, Anthony Basile was indicted on drug trafficking charges; Salvatore Vitale and Joseph Massino feared Anthony would become an informant and reveal Perrino's gravesite. His remains were removed from the cement floor and buried again.

Perrino’s body was not found until Vitale himself began cooperating with police.

At Basciano's trial prosecutors played recordings of a meeting between Basciano and Tartaglione at the Seacrest Diner on Long Island, apparently in reference to Perrino.

Tartaglione was wearing a wire.

Basciano can be heard predicting his demise during the conversation.

"The end of the day, we're all gonna be in jail. 'That's going to fucking happen."





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