Breakshot: Story of "Marbles" and Little Nicky
Interesting story about a little-known figure who was around Little Nicky Corozzo.
Kenji Gallo's latest Breakshot Blog column:
The Gambino Family is always a fun topic. This week is a story about Vincent “Marbles” Dragonetti, Little Nicky Corozzo’s son in law.
Vincent became known as Marbles when he was in his teens because of his bad skin. He had big pimples and boils so the name stuck. Marbles was not like most crime famimly guys, because he also had a regular job working in landscaping. He worked with his father and brother in the business until his father passed away. He then partnered up with his brother and they ran it together.
He was a regular guy in the crew who used to move cocaine with Mario, another crew member. Selling drugs is supposed to be forbidden, but this was before he was really close to Nicky. The Sicilians who now run the family come from a deep heroin selling background, but I guess that does not count either.
Gambino Capo Little Nicky Corozzo had a daughter. Little Nicky’s daughter Bernadette had been dating a man who was killed at Wheelers Bar in Sheepshead Bay. She met Marbles and they started to get serious so Nicky brought him closer to him. Nicky started grooming him. He still did a lot of credit card fraud and his first real pinch was credit card fraud on Long Island.
Nicky set him with a lot of landscaping accounts in Howard Beach, John Gotti’s old neighborhood. Then he helped Marbles open a nursery on Utica in Brooklyn. Marbles moved up the ranks pretty quick without getting his hands real dirty. Marbles used to sell slugs for parking meters and now he was taking care of a shylock customers of Little Nickys. One of the guys Little Nicky gave to him was a guy who had a 60k loan out.
Other guys in the crew started to stay away from Marbles because he would report everything about them to Little Nicky. Marbles had stopped being one of the guys and became the ears and eyes of the boss....
ITEM:
We've got two exclusives up our sleeve. One interview, as mentioned, is a former Gambino capo, an old school wiseguy who tried to follow Cosa Nostra's codes. His forebears were among its founders here and in Sicily. He does fear mob retribution because he knows he is supposed to be killed for what he did. It's among the rules he signed onto on Christmas Eve 1988.
The other guy we spoke to is a former Colombo gangster with Luchese ties that extend to Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso. He's tied to five gangland hits and spent many years in prison for a crime everyone knew he didn't commit, though he did commit other crimes....