Sandra Lansky Talks About Memoir in Florida

By Ed Scarpo
Sandra Lansky March 30, 2014 from YouTube:

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Q&A with Sandra Lansky at Jewish Museum of South Florida.

Read our story: Daughter's Memoir Offers New Portrait of Enigmatic Lansky

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

By Ed Scarpo
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Peter "Peter Pasta" Pellegrino, formerly of the Babylon, New York restaurant Peter’s Italian Restaurant, really is -- or was -- a gangster.

The once-promising Bonanno member who appeared after the Kitchen Nightmares episode aired, 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 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 Jerry Capeci broke the news, reporting:

Today, like the battered and bruised…
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Junior Gotti Cleans Family Business's Slate

By Ed Scarpo
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Cosa Nostra News blogger Nick Christophers wrote his take on the two-part A&E program on John Gotti Senior and Junior. I am still working on my version, which includes input from important figures in the actual Gotti-Gambino crime family saga, most prominently former Gambino capo Michael (Mikie Scars) DiLeonardo. ....

Like many of you, I was curious to view the sanitized version of Junior’s life.

Now understand, I have always respected John Sr., especially following the two times I met him. He  was a gentleman whose very presence emanated power. Yet as we all know he let the spotlight blind his logic. I only met Junior once, at the old Island Park club Channel 80 when he docked his boat there. I’m 53; he and I are not far apart in age. 
The documentary was well done but full of bullet holes. A lot of mis-information and half-truths. His father did not kill Jimmy McBratney it was Ralph Galione who was later ordered killed by Gotti Sr. My information comes from legit sources and I’…
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Twisting Ndrangheta's Historical Misogyny Against It

By Ed Scarpo
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All of Italy's Mafias (several primary ones, plus at least two minor offshoots, including a Sicilian-based Mafia that rivals Cosa Nostra) are brutal secret criminal societies, but none surpasses the Ndrangheta for wanton acts of barbarity.


And it's the Calabrian Mafia's violence and historical culture of misogyny that seem to be its Achilles heel.


About five years ago, 22-year-old Francesco Barone, a member of an ‘Ndrangheta family in Rosarno, Calabria, was arrested. His charge? Murdering his own mother.

As reported, Barone caught his mother, Francesca Bellocco, “in flagrante” in the family summer home in Calabria with Domenico Cacciola, member of a rival ‘Ndrangheta crime family. Barone’s father, Salvatore, was serving time in prison near Brescia, northern Italy.


Investigators claim that Barone junior decided to defend the family honour by killing his mother because of her adulterous relationship. He immediately summoned two other clan members who arrived at the summer h…
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Does It Take Talent to Make an Inherently Dramatic Mobster Boring?

By Ed Scarpo
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"John (Travolta) was great, but it wasn’t perfect because nobody could have gotten it perfect. John did a better job than Armand Assante [in the 1996 film “Gotti”], and Armand did a good job."


---John Junior Gotti, who is not one to mince words...nor hedge bets...



"I’d rather wake up next to a severed horse head than ever watch “Gotti” again," began a recent memorable New York Post review of the long-gestating gangster revisionist biopic, Gotti.

The reviewer added: "The finished product belongs in a cement bucket at the bottom of the river."

And he called it the "worst movie of the year so far."

In the years -- eight, in total -- it took to make this film, four directors passed on the project, which had a grand total of 44 producers. Kevin Connolly, the fifth and final, helmed the film, which premiered Friday night. So we can blame him. Connolly was on Entourage! we heard so many times, once he signed the contract. Well, he can star in any frig…
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Gotti Confidant John Carneglia Officially a Free Man Tomorrow

By Ed Scarpo
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John Carneglia, who on December 16, 1985, allegedly fired the fatal shots that ended Paul Castellano's reign and paved the way for John Gotti's rise to the top of the Gambino crime family, will be released from a Residential Reentry management Field Office at 100 20th Street tomorrow.

That's according to the BOP locator site. He'd served 28 years in federal prison for heroin trafficking.

And despite his role in the 1986 hit in front of Sparks Steakhouse, Carneglia was never charged in the midtown Manhattan assassination, despite the fact that Gambino turncoat (and former underboss) Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano fingered Carnigs in 1991 for shooting Big Paul. Sammy also fingered Gotti's brother, Gene, who also is due to depart prison, on September 5 of this year.



Carneglia and Gene Gotti were been found guilty of drug dealing in 1989. Prosecutors opted not to indict either of them for Castellano's murder, after both were convicted and sent away for 50 years api…
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Ready? Longtime Gotti Confidant John Carneglia Back in Brooklyn

By Ed Scarpo
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REVISED, EXPANDED WITH INFORMATION FROM MIKIE SCARS

Longtime Gambino mobster/Gotti confidant John Carneglia, 73, gets out of prison next year, specifically on June 11.

He already has one foot out the door, though, having been moved to a halfway house in Brooklyn, a source told Cosa Nostra News. The BOP inmate locator site confirms this.

His partner in crime, Gene Gotti, 70 (brother of the one and only) is slated for release, on September 15, but hasn't been moved yet from Pollock FCI.
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The Happiest Father’s Day to All

By Ed Scarpo
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To the good guys and bad guys...

From me to all my readers...With great thanks to a friend who sent me this tonight... 




To our Fathers, Grandfathers, and Great Grandfathers.
May we remember all their unselfish sacrifices, acts of unconditional love and all the quiet prayers they sent to heaven beseeching our holiness, happiness, health and success.

May we remember them in the glory of heaven and be half the graceful people they were.

Happy Father’s’ Day to all my readers.....
And many, many, many more!!!!




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