Cosa Nostra News

By Nick Christophers We have all heard stories about Al Capone—maybe too many. I once was sent to investigate a home in Amityville, Long Island, where he supposedly briefly lived when they were loading booze from Canada, but didn't find any convincing evidence that the house, located in an area called “Rum Row," was his.   Did Capone run a floating speakeasy aboard the Keuka?  Recently, I came across an interesting find by underwater photographer and author Chris Roxburgh, who claims to have found the floating speakeasy Capone had in the late '20s. The wreck was the vessel the Keuka, which sank in 1932 in Traverse City, Michigan. That boat was built in 1889 and was christened the A. Stewart before the name was changed to the Keuka. The ship is 200 feet long and over two stories tall. In 1929 the boat had its grand opening as a "dance hall,” but it was really used to serve alcohol during Prohibition. Capone allegedly supplied the booze for the floating speakeasy. From ...

CAPONE, formerly FONZO, directed by Josh Trank, will be released via streaming services on May 12 ( see trailer below; it's there now ), centers on late-period Alphonse Capone, who's no longer the untouchable crime boss. In failing health, the former lord of the Chicago Outfit is haunted by the violence that made him public enemy number one. Tom Hardy plays titular character in Capone. Nick Christophers -- who has several books out, including Prison Rules with John Alite -- wrote the following, which stars Tom Hardy as the titular character. Ever since we saw him as Bob Saginowski in The Drop (2014), we knew Tom Hardy could play a realistic street guy. Now Hardy -- looking legitimately menacing -- is playing one of the wealthiest, most powerful mobsters of all time. Nick spoke with Kathrine Narducci (who plays sister Rosie Capone) and Al Sapienza (who plays Big Al's brother Ralphie Capone). Sapienza and Narducci are both veterans of The Sopranos ... Narducci, who ...

" Mexicans don’t flip. Part of the way the cartels retain control is through fear. Mexicans will cooperate to a certain level, but they won’t talk about Sinaloa. They know their family back home will be killed .” -- Undercover DEA agent... Olivia and Mia Flores (not their real names) wrote Cartel Wives , which tells the story of their lives as the wives of twin brothers who worked for Joaquín (El Chapo) Guzman, the former head of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. Olivia and Mia Flores...  After their husbands decided to cooperate with US law enforcement to help nail El Chapo and other high-ranking cartel figures in exchange for reduced sentences, they went to prison, where they’ve resided for the past 10 years in undisclosed locations. The women live under phony names in hotels with armed guards. The two women grew up in a Chicago suburb, the daughters of police officers. They are not in the witness protection program, however, because they “chose to not be in it,” as they expla...

Outfit boss Al Capone was among the first contingents of prisoners to enter Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary—essentially a 22-acre rock rising out of San Francisco Bay nearly 1.5 miles from shore—which opened for business on August 11, 1934. Al Capone's cell at Alcatraz. The Federal government acquired Alcatraz Island in 1849. It served as a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison, and then a Federal prison--until 1963. It's best known as a national recreation area, which it became in 1972. The Rock received landmark designation in both 1976 and 1986. Today, the island is a historic site operated by the National Park Service as part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is open to tours. Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was touted as the first high-security, escape-proof prison of the 20th century -- it was designed to be inhabited by prisoners deemed to be unusually violent, infamous, irredeemable, or who represented the greatest flight risks....

Odd-looking wax figures of Bugs Moran, Capone, Machine Gun McGurn (Potter’s Wax Museum) You can get more with a nice word and a gun than you can with a kind word.”  -- Al Capone Apocryphal quotes are a pet peeve of mine. (Another is high priced escorts who--but let’s not go into that, thank you very much.) Which reminds me of another quote, not apocryphal, by the great philosopher George Carlin: "I don't have pet peeves - I have major psychotic fcking hatreds.” I was pondering that quote historically attributed to Al Capone -- is a nice word also a kind one? -- when quite suddenly an unbiddened thought blossomed in my caffeinated brain: That's clever, witty stuff--but Al Capone never said it. I don't mean to imply he wasn't intelligent enough to think of it. In fact to rise to the top of such a ruthless entity as the Chicago Outfit, Capone had to possess an abundance of intelligence, among other traits.

Chicago during Prohibition was as lawless and violent as the Wild West. The underworld was fighting its own civil war between north and south. Only the North Siders were the Irish-Americans represented by Bugs Moran. Fighting them were the South Siders, the Italian syndicate led by Al Capone . So to speak. Johnny Torrio, the sly fox.... The war reached its climax on February 14, 1929, St. Valentine’s Day, when a devious trap was set for Moran.

"Zu Cola" Gentile, left, with hand over face during a most ignoble moment in his bio, the 1937 drug arrest.   (Thanks to Christian Cipollini for picture.) AMENDED, EXPANDED If ever there were a Zelig in the American Mafia, his name was Nicola "Zu Cola" Gentile. Gentile is a significant source of information about the American Cosa Nostra's early years. The unique role he played expanded his knowledge. He was a sort of mobile troubleshooter who'd swoop in wherever and whenever needed. Mobsters all over the country frequently required his services. He published his memoirs, Vita di Capomafia , in Italy in 1963. That year, Joseph "Joe Cago" Valachi appeared before Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan's Permanent Subcommittee, aka the McClellan hearings . Many view the book as important as most other major sources of the Mafia's early years. It's up there with The Valachi Papers and Joseph Bonanno's Man of H...

FDR had to beat the mob at its own game to carry 1932. After a dramatic Republican National Convention in Cleveland which saw Donald Trump finally become the party’s official nominee, Hillary Clinton will this week accept the formal nomination of the Democratic Party. U.S. national conventions have always been big business opportunities. As one long-time ally of the Bush family reportedly said , “For people who operate in and around government, you can’t not be here.” Although some of the usual donors to the Republican National Convention, like Ford and UPS, stayed home this year , the host committee was able to raise nearly US$60 million from American businesses. Yet historically the “people who operate in and around government” are not only legitimate businesses but also, sometimes, less-than-legitimate ones. Take the 1932 Democratic National Convention. As I explain in my book about the hidden power of organized crime, from which this article is adapted, the nom...

Christopher Valente, standing on left, plays "The Waiter." With other members of The Making of the Mob: Chicago. The Making of the Mob: Chicago  premiered earlier this month on AMC and airs weekly on Monday evenings at 10/9 p.m. (EDT), including tonight. The show, which this year focuses on Chicago boss Al Capone , among other Outfit bosses and heavyweights , was produced by Stephen David Entertainment, which produced the first installment,  last year's The Making of the Mob: New York . Last year's Making of the Mob  was criticized for featuring actors who played mobsters -- instead of only emphasizing people with expert knowledge, such as former mobsters, authors, reporters and historians. Still, it received high ratings based on Neilson data.

Frankie Yale Yes, the John Gotti movie is the big news of the day , which is why I bring you the following.... (but seriously I hope to have some interesting news later today / tonight about the film. What I'd previously heard included some scenes will be shot in New York (Queens and Manhattan) and that the film is focused on Gotti Senior -- it's called The Life and Death of John Gotti, note. Some newspapers have incorrectly reported that filming has begun. It hasn't. While John Travolta and real-life wife Kelly Preston were slated to play Gotti Senior and his real-life wife, Victoria, there's no word regarding rest of cast.) The following arrives here courtesy of Tony Sokol, who wrote this story originally as part of a package of Boardwalk Empire-related stories for Den of Geek ... Tony also writes for The Chiseler , KpopStarz.com , and hypnocloud.com . His stories also can be seen on Altvariety, Coed.com , Daily Offbeat, Dark Media Press, Wicked Mystic and ...

Why did the Lanza family execute DeJohn? The American Mafia lost a few members in 1947, some well known, some not so well known. Among that year's deceased were Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, a New York-based labor racketeer who worked with Louis " Lepke " Buchalter (executed in 1944); Al Capone  and Benjamin " Bugsy " Siegel. (On the other side of the legal fence,  Fiorello La Guardia , the Mayor of New York who very publicly targeted New York's Mafia, died in 1947.) Nicholas DeJohn died that year. Ever hear of him? He was a mobster who came up in the Outfit then hauled ass for San Francisco , where he found a role in the local organized crime landscape. He died brutally in 1947; he was strangled to death, in fact. His body fermented in a trunk of a car for two days before it was discovered. The murder was never solved -- but a piece of evidence showed up in a certain pawn shop that puts an interesting twist on DeJohn's story....A hint -- G...

Nicola "Nick" Gentile  was a Sicilian Mafioso who traveled around the United States to witness many pivotal moments in the formation of the American Mafia. He knew firsthand many of men who established the foundation for Sicilian-based organized crime here. Nicola Gentile's memoir about the formation of the American Mafia is unavailable in English.... Born in the southern Sicilian community of Siculiana in 1884, he arrived in the U.S. at age 19. Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri were his chief American home bases. He was a trusted confidant of New York Mafiosi from the early 1900s through the Castellammarese War, and was also called upon to mediate a dispute between the Morello-Lupo clan and boss of bosses Salvatore D'Aquila in the 1920s. He mediated disputes in Chicago and Los Angeles, even in New York City, the Mafia's capitol. Gentile briefly served in leadership roles for the Kansas City, Cleveland and Pittsburgh Mafia families. Pitts...

  "Caponigro and his brother-in-law Alfred Salerno were... tortured before being killed. Salerno had been shot three times behind the right ear and once behind the left ear. The autopsy showed that a rope had been tied around his neck, wrists, and ankles, and most of his neck and face bones shattered." Ghost of Al Capone in the country? : "THE way Mafia style killings are going on in Bangladesh for the control of illegal businesses, it may not sound too incredulous to say that soon things are bound to go out of control of the administration, like it did for the governments in many countries of the world. USA, Mexico, Italy, Brazil, Russia, had bad experience with such criminal gangs, and at one point law enforcers had to go all-out to crush them. Everywhere a strong nexus of corrupt police officials, administration bigwigs and politicians made it possible for various gangs to operate right before the eye of the law.

Cool, cool website; thanks to my friend for calling this out: Infamous New York | A Gangland Tour of New York City's Most Infamous Crime Scenes : "Before the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and Prohibition put him on the map, Al Capone received his bachelor’s degree in gangsternomics courtesy of Johnny “The Fox” Torrio, a future mafia chieftan who got his start as the leader of the James Street Gang. A dormouse of a man with button eyes and a nose like a thimble, Torrio could only be described as one of the finest criminal mastermind’s of the 20th century, and it all started on James Street, a tiny sliver of a street that is one of the last remaining vestiges of the old Corlear’s Hook neighborhood. Life in crime came early for Torrio. As a boy he worked in his stepfather’s illegal moonshine den at 86 James Street. In 1904, the urchin started promoting boxing matches, where he met the bantamweight fighter and gangland kingpin, Paul Kelly. Kelly, a suave racketeer whose r...

Arthur Nash posted the image below on his Facebook page:  New York City Gangland - Rare Photo Book . He is the author of  New York City Gangland , a compilation of some 200 rare photos of mobsters obtained primarily from private collections and law enforcement sources. Mob figures included go all the way back to Prohibition Days, but the book also includes contemporary gangsters, such as John Gotti. This images features items found in Joe Gallo's wallet after he was shot to death in Little Italy. Crazy Joe Gallo died on the night of his 43rd birthday, on April 7, 1972. Gallo had spent the evening celebrating at the Copacabana nightclub, then he and a few others stopped at Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. It was around 5 a.m. A short while later, shooters materialized at the restaurant and fired a volley of shots; Gallo staggered out of the eatery and fell dead in the street. Apparently Gallo thought he was safe because there suppos...

Al "Scarface" Capone was the most un-Mafia-like boss in the  Mafia.  Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (Jan. 17, 1899 – Jan. 25, 1947) is still the most popular of the American Gangsters , according to David Brooks, the proprietor of American Gangsters , a website that sells fans a range of products featuring images of famous mobsters in American history. This is based on an analysis of what Brooks sells through his website. And the general public is still primarily interested in Capone , the most popular mobster in America, and probably has been since the Roaring Twenties, as Brooks told us in a recent interview . True aficionados of the Mafia, however, are more interested in Lucky Luciano , Brooks noted.

As a society most people are fascinated by living a different lifestyle than they live. Whether it's a famous ballplayer, an actor or even a musician -- we all sometimes muse about living the life of another. Many of us also fantasize about being infamous mobsters--thugs, hit men and even godfathers. Whatever their station within the mob, these are men who chose this lifestyle -- and they are known as American Gangsters and they left their mark on history. Capone, Siegel, Luciano, Gotti and others lived by their own rules. Whether you’re a fan or a critic we can’t deny that their legacies have enchanted millions of us. And, they have served as examples later followed by legitimate business: The booze-running days of Prohibition brought us NASCAR as we know it today, and from the illegal gambling halls came the bright lights and casinos that today glow along the Las Vegas strip. Even the numbers rackets served as a forerunner, to today's state lotteries and scratch-of...