Cosa Nostra News

We're reposting this centaur of a story, which we originally posted in 2016, as an in memoriam to "Charlie P" or "CP," who died of COVID-19 last year, as we recently learned. His death prompted us to revisit and edit the original . Then, following more recent communications (this past weekend), we decided to go one step further and repost the entire thing. In keeping with our agreement, we will never identify or write about Charlie P further. (Charlie or Charley, etc., makes no difference because it wasn’t his real name.) John Gotti, right, Gambino capo Thomas Gambino, son of founder. This story is based on notes I took during informal discussions with an old timer I will call "Charley P." I call him Charley Partanna, just to call him something. I'm hoping this can be an occasional column but Charley didn't want to commit to anything without remuneration involved. ------------------------ In 2003, Winter Hill turncoat Steve Flemmi told federal ...

A body is found floating in a body bag on the Hackensack river, five bullets in the cabeza. It’s Luchese acting capo Phil Coffee Cups from Bayside Queens. From the probe that follows, the FBI believes the hit was orchestrated by someone in another family in north Jersey. Gang Land News gets the scoop and writes up an exclusive, and the FBI view slips into the newspapers, some of which highlight it in stories. But two years later, a detective with the NYPD says the hit came from within the same family because the boss had a grudge over something (the detective knows not what the grudge was over). Around the same time, an ex-acting capo in California publishes a memoir that says it was the Gambino family, based on what he heard when, while still an active wiseguy, he visited New York City around the time of the hit. For the next five years, the different theories have been floating around in the press. Some reports focus on the FBI theory, some on the NYPD theory, some on what the guy in...

INCLUDES UPDATE For years we belonged to the "never explain" school of blogging. Show them, don't tell them, we thought. Only recently did we realize the shortcomings of that philosophy. Nature abhors a vacuum. Sometimes unanswered questions can create an air of mystery where it doesn't necessarily exist. Something we have always wondered about: What is he thinking. We also can't forget the other side of the coin: explaining yourself has the potential of making you look like a moron lacking in self awareness who insults the intelligence of his readers and that is the last thing we want to do. We walk a very fine line with this story. We published the Ravenite transcripts and then Sammy the Bull Gravano's court testimony transcripts years after we initially received the printouts from a source. We published the Ravenite transcripts first, then the testimony. Why have we been focusing on transcripts so much lately? The answer is, because we heard that Gravano wa...

Mismanagement, dingbat recruits, and poorly conceived succession plans are among the challenges facing the American mob in late 2021. Reputed Colombo boss Andrew (Mush) Russo.   That's according to a recent WSJ report  (the site requires a subscription, however, which is why we give a shoutout [and owe a beer to] this guy ).  The following is our take on the gist of that story.... The report uses last month’s widely reported Colombo busts to offer a largely superficial glimpse into the New York mob. Informing the article is input from sources including former FBI agents, an anonymous former Colombo wiseguy, former government researchers (lots of formers, which is part of the problem with this story) as well as—this being the WSJ—a crisis management consultant (who also was a former FBI agent) and a professor emeritus. The WSJ references the (supremely disappointing) Many Saints of Newark, though the connection to the Sopranos prequal was enough of a stretch that we comfor...

I wrote this to provide unsolicited, anonymous advice to a single solitary individual, and I believe it worked exactly as intended. ( Of course this is certainly not the most effective way to communicate with one person, but it does wonders for a blogger seeking writerly inspiration.) This is another story maybe I'll expound on when I write my memoirs in 30 years. Do something long enough, you would have to be moronic to not learn a few things from your experience.  The more immediate prompt for writing this: we watched certain YouTubers last night that got us thinking about all sorts of things late into the night. (The " My Blue Heaven" backlash that certain people have steadily [and apparently unknowingly] been begging for arrived a few months back.)   The following is a list of guidelines and beliefs that we've accumulated from everything we experienced blogging. It is geared to what we're trying to do here. Also, like most posts we publish here, this is mainl...

Frank (Frankie Loc ) Locascio, the former Gambino consigliere serving life in prison for a 1992 murder racketeering conviction, died on October 1, 2021, at age 89, as per the BOP inmate locator website. Frank (Frankie Loc ) Locascio, left, and John Gotti.   Locascio, for more than three decades, had been serving a life sentence following his 1992 conviction for the slaying of Gambino wiseguy Louis DiBono, who was shot three times in the head in October 1990 in an underground parking garage at the World Trade Center.  DiBono earned Gotti’s wrath by ignoring his orders to come in. Some wiseguys were appalled that Gotti put a hit on DiBono for missing meetings, saying that the former guy, Paul Castellano, never would've whacked someone for simply missed some meetings. The DiBono murder was one of five pinned on the Dapper Don by the jury. Locascio, who was on trial alongside Gotti, was found guilty of the DiBono murder and conspiracy to murder Gaetano Vastola, a DeCavalcante...

We're breaking one of our Cardinal Rules by posting this installment without an introduction (we might add one retroactively). We've been focusing exclusively on finishing our profile of onetime Bonanno family powerhouse Carmine (Lilo) Galante ... Jimmy Brown despised the media, especially photographers. See previous installment:  Hitting Jelly Belly, aka Louie DiBono: Testimony Of Underboss Salvatore (Sammy The Bull) Gravano, Part 13 Murdering Louie DiBono: Part 12 As noted when we kicked off this series , the following is a continuation of the direct examination of Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano by John Gleeson, then then-Assistant US Attorney, during the 1992 racketeering and murder trial of Gambino boss John Gotti and reputed acting consiglieri Frank (Frankie Loc) Locascio.... GLEESON: You mentioned a number of times Jimmy Brown (James "Jimmy Brown" Failla)? GRAVANO: Yes. GLEESON: What was his responsibility? GRAVANO: Controlled the garbage industry for us. GL...