Cosa Nostra News

Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano, the underboss who helped John Gotti run the Gambino family, before he helped the FBI take it apart, was sitting in a brown leather chair in his dimly lit social club-type podcast studio preparing to launch into his latest—only this podcast, something very different was about to come out of his mouth. Worked up (about something): Michael Franzese, Patrick Bet-David,  Sammy Gravano. Instead of another riff about this or that gangland hit, Sammy the Bull was pitching a mental-health services platform that connects people with psychotherapists. "Is there something bothering you and giving you anxiety, preventing you from achieving your goal?" the Bull intones in unhurried gruff Brooklynese. (The same voice Gravano used to describe how, one night at Sparks, “shots rang out in the night air" with "people running, screaming, falling, scrambling all over to get away.") "When I got out of prison," the Bull's pitch contin...

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."

In the late 1980s/early 1990s, mobsters and associates were routinely murdered in all of New York's boroughs. George Conte, middle. In places like Bath Avenue, the remains of violent gangland hits were found in car trunks or slumped over steering wheels; they ripened in the backs of trucks and vans. Some were buried, many never to be found. The victims were shot late at night or in the early morning when no witnesses were around. But bullets also flew in broad daylight, sometimes just across the street from a police station. Often, law enforcement--NYPD, DA's detectives, the Feds--knew who the killer was, but knowing and having the evidence to prove it in court are two different things and can be worlds apart. George Conte back then was a capo in the Luchese family. Called "Georgie Goggles," he and Luchese capo George "Georgie Neck" Zappola were later charged for the slaying of painters union official and potential government witness Jame...

Joey Calco Publishers Marketplace  reports: "The Joey Calco Story (former Bonanno hitman) by Richard Cagan (out May 2014)." Cagan is a published author of several books, including one mob book, Mafia Cop: The Two Families of Michael Palermo; Saints Only Live in Heaven . I've never read it or him. Looks like former Bath Avenue Crew member Joey Calco wants to tell his story. It was supposed to have been released already -- only, where is it? As many of you -- especially former and current residents of  Bath Beach -- no doubt recall, Calco — a turncoat with two murder convictions under his belt — had reinvented himself in the witness protection program as Joseph Milano, the owner of Goomba’s Pizza in Florida . But that version of life imploded on him back in 2009, when he made that infamous videotaped leap over the counter seen 'round the world after two customers had the balls to complain and then demand their money back because Joey screwed u...

This story from 2014 is one of the most popular on this site—and we didn't even know it until very recently (for reasons stemming from the fallibility of generalized analytics data.) Members of the Bath Avenue Crew were as young as 8 years old when they began to align themselves with the biggest, baddest gang in America: Cosa Nostra, specifically the Five Families. Bath Avenue Crew founding members. They saw the wiseguys on the street pulling up to the curbs in their big shiny Cadillacs, loafing around social clubs wearing pricey suits and sporting hundred-dollar haircuts and manicured fingernails. But the guys presented more than just a cold, distant image to watch; Mafia members interacted with the kids, joked around with them and showed them there were other ways to make it through life. The wiseguys doled out twenty-dollar bills like they were nothing. The wiseguys patted them on the back, told them they were "good kids," and maybe asked them to watch the cars...