"Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire" Available Now

Now available for purchase on Amazon Kindle! Cosa Nostra News: The Cicale Files, Volume 1: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire.

"As a capo in the Bonanno crime family, Dominick Cicale was privy to the inner workings of organized crime. Cicale was a rising star in the Bonanno family until Joseph Massino, the family's boss, was arrested on a murder rap and turned on his own people.

Massino's betrayal took down Cicale and his mentor Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, and many others. Faced with the disloyalty of Massino (the only Mafia Godfather to break the code of "omerta,") Cicale began cooperating with federal authorities. Here, Cicale not only reveals an insider’s view of the Mafia’s secret society, but provides readers with shocking details of the reign and fall of Joseph Massino."


As noted it is priced at $4.99 (it is not a full-length book, as it is around 20,000 words), and we packed it with as much value as possible. Researching extensively to set the background and context for Dominick's information, I tried to focus on little-known facts that were part of some of the major events described in the book.

For example, "Sonny Red" Indelicato was under investigation for the murder of Crazy Joe Gallo when he was killed, in addition, Indelicato, on the night of the three-capo meeting, scattered his crews throughout New York City in case the loyalist faction tried to take them all out in one strike? In addition, several Bonanno members supposedly stayed with Tommy “Karate” Pitera while the three capos were slaughtered.

As you'll read in our book, Dominick exonerates someone now sitting in prison for a crime they didn't commit. In addition, Massino failed two polygraph tests. As Newsday noted in the story Surprising testimony in Basciano case:

"Former crime boss Joseph Massino unexpectedly testified that he failed two FBI lie detector tests while trying to become a government witness -- an admission defense attorneys are likely to use to attack his credibility as they try to save crime captain Vincent Basciano from the death penalty.

"Massino described his test failings while Basciano's attorneys cross-examined him in a special proceeding, in which prosecutors are trying to convince a federal jury in Brooklyn that Basciano -- convicted this month of the murder of a mob associate -- deserves to die."

Anthony DeStefano mentions a murder plot Vinny "Gorgeous" Basciano tried to orchestrate from prison. The target was Michael "Mikey Nose" Mancuso. The plot didn't originate with Vinny, and DeStefano doesn't really know what set it in motion.

Tony Green

Now I realize some (or many) of you probably don't even know who some of these guys are. Sal Vitale, for example, was Massino's brother-in-law and underboss for a time. He fell out of favor and, following an indictment, he eventually flipped. This book was written for the beginner as well as the expert.

One main goal was to dole out juicy details that many of you likely will find intriguing. For example, consider the "Tony Green" excerpt. Anthony "Tony Green" Urso was a capo who briefly served as Joe Massino's acting boss. He advocated the killing of children of informants as punishment -- but also as a cautionary measure to stop others from flipping -- in an infamous comment made to "Big Lou" Tartaglione. (I'm pleased to announce that we have copies of those very tapes made by Big Lou! More on that to come in a future post...) Urso also dressed in skintight spandex and didn't always wear his toupee properly. He also could be talking about, say, a murder or a new family venture that could earn millions -- any topic at all was never large enough to interest Urso if a nice ass happened into his view. His entire focus would concentrate on a female's swaying buttocks.

From the excerpt:

...Urso commanded the Bonanno family and had major resources to back him up.

Urso was also interested in attractive young ladies—to a fault. On street corner meetings, he was known to suddenly lose interest in the topic of discussion whenever a fetching young woman happened into his field of vision. “Tony thought he was God's gift to every woman who passed him by,” Cicale said. “He’d make it so obvious too, looking a woman up and down.”

... Cicale recalled a time when he and Basciano were waiting for Urso to meet them. “Urso steps out of his tricked-out, pimped-out black Hummer H2 wearing bright, shiny, royal-blue skintight spandex. Urso actually looked as if he was about to get on stage at a male strip club.

“Vinny and I were standing in a supermarket parking lot waiting for Urso. We watched him park his car farther down the lot from us. When Urso got out of the Hummer in that outfit, Vinny starts whispering shit to me without moving his lips so Urso doesn’t notice. ‘Oh my fucking God,’ Basciano told me. ‘Is this man crazy or what? Dom, look at his sagging balls. They’re huge. This guy is fucking kidding, right?’”

 
Smiling at the recollection, Cicale said, “Tony was only several feet away and I’m trying to hold in a major burst of laughter. I’m trying to keep my lips together and stop myself from losing it. Then Vinny whispered again, like a ventriloquist: ‘Bo, shut the fuck up. You’re gonna make me bust out laughing right in this guy’s face. You’re gonna get us killed.’ I’m busting a gut inside, thinking if any of the other families see this guy, then we’re all gonna get killed, the whole fucking crime family.”...

Salvatore "The Iron Worker" Montagna also plays a role.Vito Rizzuto, who set loose a bloody vendetta against all traitors, especially those responsible for the murder of his father and son, is a major figure in the book. We posit that whatever else Vito was doing in Canada, he still reported to the Bonannos and paid annual tribute to the boss in New York. Cicale believes any "break" Vito made prior to his prison sentence for the three-capo slaying was directed personally at Massino and not the Bonanno family. In fact, Vito was very friendly with another figure in our book and was still paying tribute as late as the year 2004; he didn't stop paying in 1999, the year George From Canada was murdered, as has been widely reported.

Cosa Nostra News: The Cicale Files, Volume 1: Inside the Last Great Mafia Empire