'Mob Wives' Karen Gravano Thinks She's a Superstar

By Ed Scarpo
Phoenix Arts - Jackalope Ranch:

Mob Daughter COVER.JPG
When mob heiress Karen Gravano was in her late teens, her father Salvatore "Sammy The Bull" Gravano, who was second in command in the Gambino crime family, became an FBI informant and fed juicy bits of mafia info to hungry agents that eventually took down boss John Gotti.

And apart from Gravano's own brushes with the law (including involvement in her dad's Arizona ecstasy ring, for which he's now serving time in Colorado and Karen was put on probation), that scandal is what has defined her. And much like her father gave up mob secrets, Gravano gives up her own in her new memoir Mob Daughter.

Not that Gravano is a stranger to putting the spotlight on her family and its history.

Quite the contrary: Gravano is currently starring in the second season of Vh1's Mob Wives, a "Family"-friendly reality program that seems destined for a third season. In the vein of other spousal shows like Bravo's Real Housewives franchise and Vh1's Arizona-based Baseball Wives, the show features women with varying ties to organized crime including Renee Graziano, whose father is consigliere for the Bonanno family, and spinoff-worthy Angela "Big Ang" Raiola, a Staten Island bar owner whose late uncle was a high-ranking member of the Genovese family...



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular This Week

Ex-Bonanno Boss Joe Massino Detailed His Role In Galante Hit (And It Wasn't What You Think)

By Ed Scarpo
Image
REVISED, EXPANDED Carmine Galante straightened out Joe Massino, Anthony Spero, Joe Chilli, and three others  on June 14, 1977, in a bar in Queens.  Massino testified that during the ceremony, Galante asked each of them who the boss of the Bonanno family was, and each replied, "you."  Massino, however, replied "Rastelli." Joe Massino came from a working-class Maspeth background, the second of three sons of a second-generation Italian-American couple. He survived and thrived in a longtime career in the American Mafia, rising to the epitome when he became boss of the Bonanno crime family. In the early 1990s, when most of the other New York bosses were incarcerated, Massino stood alone as the most powerful Mafioso on the street. Goombata: Gene Gotti, left, and Joe Massino walk-talk. Massino rose to the top on the backs of a multitude of dead men.  As protégé to Bonanno powerhouse Philip Rastelli, who spent most of his reign in prison, Massino first made his mark in hija
Read more

Prelude To The Galante Murders

By Ed Scarpo
Image
The following, which is admittedly sketchy in terms of detail (it is based on a quick encounter between wiseguys and goodguys in a parking lot at night), was cut from our series on Carmine Galante, which we're still finishing up. (After we publish the last remaining installment, we plan to republish the entire story as one single piece.) The Eternal Dance A t 9:30 in the evening of Tuesday, June 5, 1979, some five weeks before the murder of Carmine Galante, two undercover police officers in an unmarked Plymouth Valiant drove into the parking lot of the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream on Long Island. Green Acres Mall parking lot circa 1980 The purpose of the visit was to surveil one of Green Acres' restaurants, which was suspected of being a source of significant drug-dealing activity. The place also was known to belong to Bonanno wiseguy Gerlando (George from Canada) Sciascia, a made member of the Bonanno crime family and also a top member of the Sicilian faction. Sciascia, w
Read more

Hoodwinked: Restaurateur on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Was a Mobster

By Ed Scarpo
Image
Peter (Peter Pasta) Pellegrino, formerly of the Babylon, New York restaurant Peter’s Italian Restaurant, really is -- or was -- a gangster. Gordon gives a pep talk. Peter is ready for action..... The once-promising Bonanno crime family member who appeared in Kitchen Nightmares now calls himself a brokester . And the Bonanno crime family, with which he was once affiliated has disowned him. So has the rest of New York's Cosa Nostra, according to FBI documents and Peter Pasta himself. But before all that he appeared on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares in which he acted very much like the mobster he allegedly was trying to become around the time of filming. (See Peter's Italian Restaurant menu here .) Back then Peter Pasta was an up-and-coming Bonanno associate who "earned" $15 grand a week from bookmaking. At the time, he also owned two boats that he'd park in a pricey nearby Babylon harbor called Great South Bay. Gang Land News's Je
Read more

Bath Avenue Crew Rose High, Fell Hard

By Ed Scarpo
Image
This story from 2014 is one of the most popular on this site—and we didn't even know it until very recently (for reasons stemming from the fallibility of generalized analytics data.) Members of the Bath Avenue Crew were as young as 8 years old when they began to align themselves with the biggest, baddest gang in America: Cosa Nostra, specifically the Five Families. Bath Avenue Crew founding members. They saw the wiseguys on the street pulling up to the curbs in their big shiny Cadillacs, loafing around social clubs wearing pricey suits and sporting hundred-dollar haircuts and manicured fingernails. But the guys presented more than just a cold, distant image to watch; Mafia members interacted with the kids, joked around with them and showed them there were other ways to make it through life. The wiseguys doled out twenty-dollar bills like they were nothing. The wiseguys patted them on the back, told them they were "good kids," and maybe asked them to watch the cars
Read more

Many Ghosts Haunt Witness Protection Program

By Ed Scarpo
Image
PART TWO Pascal "Paddy" Calabrese robbed Buffalo's City Hall during daylight. While serving a five-year stretch for his daring but unsuccessful feat, he started nursing a deep hatred for his boss, Stefano Magaddino, who had cut him loose the moment he was cuffed by law enforcement. Magaddino had done the same to the drug-dealing Agueci brothers, forgetting about them as soon as they were arrested. Magaddino had been well aware of the brothers' narcotics business and was glad to pocket their generous tributes in return for police protection. But Magaddino couldn't have cared less when the cops busted the two. While out on bail, Albert Agueci threatened the 75-year-old Cosa Nostra boss, saying if Magaddino didn't use his connections to help him and his brother, he'd talk to the FBI about everything. Stefano Magaddino kept the Marshals busy. Albert was found dead a few days later, his body badly burned and missing 40 pounds of flesh, whi
Read more

Paulie Walnuts' Colombo Crime Family Ties

By Ed Scarpo
Image
Tony Sirico, who played Paulie "Walnuts" Gaultieri on HBO's The Sopranos , was dragged into the media spotlight, his mob past highlighted thanks to a crime docudrama that pops up every few months. His inclusion in the show centers on his involvement as a “witness” in the murder of a 1970s B-movie actress. (Not suspect . See the difference?) Who doesn't know about Sirico's mob-related past by now? Tony Sirico -- aka Paulie Walnuts.... Sirico was born Genaro Anthony Sirico Jr. in 1942 in Brooklyn, New York. He has played gangsters in numerous films, some poorly made, some pretty decent, including Fingers (probably his earliest mob film worth watching), Goodfellas , Innocent Blood , Bullets Over Broadway , Mighty Aphrodite, Gotti , Cop Land, and Mickey Blue Eyes . Before turning to acting, Sirico was reportedly an associate of the Colombo crime family serving under Carmine "Junior" Persico -- and was arrested an amazing 28 times, according
Read more