Cosa Nostra News

John (Sonny) Franzese, longtime Colombo underboss, died Sunday after a brief illness at the age of 103, Newsday reports. Franzese, of Roslyn, reigned over the mob family’s rackets on Long Island in the 1960s and had interests in restaurants, several topless clubs, independent record labels and even the porn classic, “Deep Throat.” He was considered a rising star in the Mafia hierarchy until he was convicted of masterminding a series of bank robberies across the country in 1967..... One of our last stories about him addressed the question of why Sonny Franzese would give a high profile interview to Newsday, Long Island’s hometown newspaper....we posited a very specific covert reason .... John Sonny Franzese was the ultimate stand-up wiseguy. He was the embodiment of omerta, a man inherently incapable of breaking the Mafia's codes. He spent decades in prison because he refused to name names. Even at the advanced age of 90, he served the sentence handed down rather t

UPDATED Frank (Frankie Loc ) Locascio, the former Gambino consigliere serving life following a 1992 murder racketeering conviction, won a small victory last week when a federal appeals court in Manhattan ordered that a signed declaration from Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano be admitted as new evidence.  Frank Loc and John Gotti definitely pre-December 1990. Locascio included the declaration in a filing in Brooklyn federal court that is part of his ongoing effort to overturn his conviction for the 1990 slaying of Gambino wiseguy Louis DiBono ,  a successful contractor who failed to show up when summoned. For his infraction, DiBono was shot to death in a World Trade Center parking garage in October of 1990. Gravano’s signed statement bolsters one of Locascio’s key ongoing claims: for years, Locascio has argued that he tried to talk John Gotti out of killing DiBono and had attempted to broker a peace deal by which DiBono would pay Gotti $50,000 for his absenteeism. Gra

“ We got nothing but troubles… You know what I want you to do, Frank? We gotta both buy chemotherapy with the money I got .” The secret meeting place above the Ravenite. We’re approaching the highly incriminating stuff... John Gotti digs graves for himself, Frank Locascio, and for whatever was left of Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano's career in the underworld--the underboss would escape the indictment by flipping. Are wiseguys who would fault Gotti for these legal tribulations on the money? An argument could be made that a mitigating biological factor exists. As we continue to stretch the boundaries of science -- we further enrich our understanding of humanity's intrinsic need for stories. For those interested in this: Stories “are our earliest sciences, a kind of people-physics . Their logic is how we naturally think. They configure our biology, and how we feel, in ways long essential for our survival. Like our language instinct, a story drive—an inborn hunger for

The FBI surreptitiously recorded about 600 hours of discussions in the apartment above the Ravenite social club, six hours of which were entered into evidence during the 1992 murder and racketeering trial of John Gotti and his consiglieri Frank Locascio. And in this installment of our ongoing series , we present the rest of the discussion from November 30, 1989. The transcript indicates there was a pause where we left off previously . We pick up from there. (These take an extraordinary amount of time to put together!) FILE NUMBER: 183A-3507  PLACE: Apartment above the Ravenite Social Club, located at 247 Mulberry Street in Little Italy, Manhattan  TIME: 8:15 P.M.  PARTICIPANTS: JOHN GOTTI, SALVATORE GRAVANO, FRANK LOCASCIO [. . . .] GRAVANO: Know what I mean? GOTTI: Yeah. But, no, I’m saying. Well, whoever done it, I don’t know who done it. And I know youse two— GRAVANO: Well, I knew he didn’t have no balls! GOTTI: That’s right. GRAVANO: I knew he didn’t have

“Now Neil was a man’s man. He wouldn’t betray nothin’.”  -- John Gotti on the Ravenite transcripts  The FBI surreptitiously recorded about 600 hours of discussions in the apartment above the Ravenite social club, six hours of which were entered into evidence during the 1992 murder and racketeering trial of John Gotti and his consiglieri Frank Locascio. And in an ongoing series we'll present as much of them as we can... The FBI agents were acting under a federal statute that permits government agents to break and enter into homes and businesses or other locations where there is probable cause to believe that criminal activity will occur. By 1987, the FBI had “limited success” with electronic surveillance and began to look for locations to plant bugs to spy on Gotti. Bruce Mouw, the leader of the Gambino squad, chose the Ravenite Social Club at 247 Mulberry Street in Little Italy as the best place to attempt a surveillance effort. But the acoustics of the club were