Tickle The Wire: Mob Expert Capeci Picks Top Mob Stories of 2011

The 'big bust' of January is still considered the largest mob story of 2011, even
though it was partly a dog-and-pony show put on by the Feds. But there was
some fire under the smoke.

The trial of Vinny 'Gorgeous'

was Joe Massino's first time

at bat as a witness, and was

also story number two of 2011.

The end of the year is always a time for pause and reflection, and top 10 lists are the order of the day... The top 10 news stories, business stories and obituaries; the top 10 celebrity scandals; the top 10 CDs, films and books (the latter few usually in terms of sales, not critical perception). And the lists go on...

We wonder: Who came up with the number 10 for the ... the top 10? I mean, why 10?

Anyway, we started to run our own list, or one we had found on another website -- titled The First of 2011's Top 10 Mafia Stories from Masslive.com -- but instead we decided to go to the expert, Jerry Capeci, who served up his own top stories list, but felt no obligation to fabricate 10 separate items. For that we salute him. And so we will go to him for this annual roundup, through the website Tickle The Wire:

"As New York mobster stories go, there seemed to be no shortage in 2011. Mob expert Jerry Capeci should know.

"Capeci, a former New York Daily News reporter, runs the website Gang Land News. On Thursday, he picked the top mob stories of 2011.

"Hands down, he writes, the top story was the Mafia Takedown arrests of 127 wiseguys and “various cohorts.”

"Runner up story, Capeci writes, was the appearance in April in fed court in Brooklyn of ex-Bonanno boss Joseph Massino on the witness stand at the capital murder trial of successor boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano. Massino made history, becoming the first mob boss from one of the 5 New York crime families to take the witness stand for the feds.

"Though Capeci picks the massive takedown in January as the top mob story of the year, he is not without some skepticism."

Read the rest of this article, Mob Expert Picks Top Mob Stories of 2011, which provides a summation, or you could go straight to the source, Capeci's site at ganglandnews.com; however, it is a pay-per-view site.