Cosa Nostra News

The following, which is admittedly sketchy in terms of detail (it is based on a quick encounter between wiseguys and goodguys in a parking lot at night), was cut from our series on Carmine Galante, which we're still finishing up. (After we publish the last remaining installment, we plan to republish the entire story as one single piece.) The Eternal Dance A t 9:30 in the evening of Tuesday, June 5, 1979, some five weeks before the murder of Carmine Galante, two undercover police officers in an unmarked Plymouth Valiant drove into the parking lot of the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream on Long Island. Green Acres Mall parking lot circa 1980 The purpose of the visit was to surveil the California Pizza at Green Acres, which was suspected of being a source of significant drug-dealing activity. The place also was known to belong to Bonanno wiseguy Gerlando (George from Canada) Sciascia, a made member of the Bonanno crime family and also a top member of the Sicilian faction. Scias...

As noted, Paul Ragusa, 48, an associate of the Bonanno and Gambino families, was recently sentenced to six years--because in 2017, he met with a CW whom he knew through their prior affiliation with the Giannini Crew, which this story profiles at length.... Gambina, left, Senator D'Amato, Sciulla, right, who was found in a trunk. Sicilian-born Bonanno capo Baldassare (Baldo) Amato reminds us of the Mafia version of the cat with nine lives, if such a thing could be contemplated. And while he didn't have anywhere near nine resurrections, we presume over the years he’s extricated himself from some very tricky situations. While it's never been empirically ascertained, to our knowledge, we're betting that Mafia politics of the 1970s-1980s, particularly when involving the Bonanno family, had a much higher than average mortality rate. A seemingly Zelig-type figure, Amato either possessed the luck or guile (or both) to survive and thrive when others couldn't (...

Joseph Galante was a member of the notorious Giannini Crew, a group of dozens of young wannabes based in a café in Queens, when he helped get rid of the corpse of Thomas Sanjane, whose throat was slashed in 1991 as part of a cocaine rip-off scheme. Galante would later flip, hoping that his efforts to help the Feds would help mitigate his prison time. But then he resumed committing crimes -- and prosecutors discarded their cooperation agreement with him. Then at his 2016 trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Shreve Ariail told Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis: "The defendant committed one of the most heinous crimes you can conceive of committing." Galante, faced 30 years to life, and got away with a 10-year sentence. Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis was well aware of "the extraordinary length of time he served as an informant and making secret recordings of mobsters from the Bonanno, Colombo and Gambino crime families." The crew showed up on the Fed...

The short, stocky, balding man stepped out of the air-conditioned chill of the brown Lincoln limousine and into the scorching July afternoon in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Wearing a white short-sleeved knit shirt open at the neck and blue slacks (in which $860 in cash and Medicare and social security cards had been shoved), the man waved goodbye to the driver, who was his nephew. Then, sucking on his customary large Churchill cigar, the man strolled toward the nondescript eatery set between a law office and a pizza parlor on Knickerbocker Avenue. Dingy yellow curtains hung over the long front windows. A simple rectangular sign on top declared the place an Italian-American Restaurant and touted its takeout fare. Joe and Mary’s Italian-American Restaurant reportedly offered good food and was family-run, both of which appealed to the man, who was related to the owner. Bushwick, once a prosperous enclave, was a fading Bonanno stronghold at the time. The neighborhood, nestled bet...

Joseph Galante, 49, a member of the Queens-based Giannini Crew, who assisted in the 1993 disposal of a murder victim, but then cooperated and wore a wire, was sentenced to 10 years in prison earlier this month for this "gruesome" crime. Galante caught some major luck as he had appartently decided flipping wasn't for him. He "resumed committing crimes and prosecutors tore up his cooperation agreement," the Daily News  reported . Galante, who faced 30 to life, got away with 10 years. Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis was well aware of "the extraordinary length of time he served as an informant and making secret recordings of mobsters from the Bonanno, Colombo and Genovese crime families."

I don't like to write stories this way, but sometimes, when someone threatens your credibility because they believe Cosa Nostra is some sort of supernatural entity composed of "Men of Honour" that is far superior to  other "Men of Honour" from Italy's mainland, and they simply refuse to accept what one of the most accomplished scholars on the Mafia has written regarding this, I am reduced to scanning a book page. John Dickie wrote the above, which is the bottom portion of page 157 of his book Mafia Republic . He sprinkles the names of examples throughout the book and I am not going through it page by page to find a list of names. As for the American Cosa Nostra, we have the example of Carmine Galante making Sicilian members of the Mafia into the Bonanno borgata. We have the testimony of Frank Coppa, a close friend of Joseph Massino and Frank Lino who was known for his pump-and-dump stock schemes.

The photo of a dead Carmine Galante, who sought to take control of the Bonanno family after emerging from prison in the 1970s, is so iconic for me, I'd never think of even using another picture in this blog's logo.... Lilo wasn't around for coffee... FBI agent Joe Pistone, posing as Donny Brasco, was just infiltrating the family as a street-level soldier under Sonny "Black" Napolitano. He thought he had the players identified -- but his intel, as time proved, was not precisely on the money. Joseph Wendling, 65, now a private investigator, was a detective in an elite unit of the New York City Police Department focused on the five Mafia families that ruled the city’s underworld, called The Pizza Squad.

I answered the phone this morning to:  "You didn't fucking tell me you were gonna write about Bobby!" No clue what he was talking about. "Bobby at the Post never lived in Knickerbocker Village. Sally killed him because he found out he was a cop." Ahhh.... okay, I knew.... I said, "I heard Vitale was a cop too." Sal Vitale ordered Perrino's murder. The skeletal remains weren't found until Vitale himself flipped. "Exactly. One cop killed the other. In the Mob. Take that shit down. I'm gonna tell you what really happened because you obviously don't know what the fuck happened." He started with:  "Baldo was scared shitless that night. You know how fucking hard it is to dig a hole in February?" Read this while you can. (This was solidly sourced, too, five years ago .... but I wouldn't have it any other way. And remember the truth is always stranger....) A Mafia associate/New York Post sup...