Staten Island Godmother Meets Marilyn Monroe

From Next Magazine, with our apologies:

... The more you learn about [Big Ang] Raiola, the more apparent it seems that she was born to become a local folk hero. After all, this is the mob we are talking about, perhaps America’s most beloved subject of film and television.



 But with The Godfather and The Sopranos in the past and Scorsese bent on family fare, it has fallen on Mob Wives to pick up where our obsession left off. At 52, Raiola has all the credentials needed to fill our lust for powerful, family-oriented seekers of the Italian-America dream. Her uncle Salvatore “Sally Dogs” Lombardi was a leader of the Genovese family, one of the “five families” that has controlled organized crime in New York, and Raiola has spent her whole life chasing after wiseguys.


The Smoking Gun recently dug up 2001 reports that she was involved in a mob-tied drug ring and escaped jail time on a $100,000 bond. She claims to have waited on John Gotti at an undercover Mafia bar. Raiola even has a fitting mob name: Big Ang.