Cosa Nostra News

“Nobody is gonna go against them. They’d go head to head with anybody.” Source on Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso and his Administration in the Bonanno crime family. Bonanno mobster Peter (Peter Pasta) Pellegrino, a name you are familiar with if you have been watching Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and reading Cosa Nostra News , is back in business—the gambling and shylocking business, though, not the restaurant business. Peter Pasta Pellegrino. (From Facebook.) In fact, Peter Pasta was among the Bonannos who benefitted from Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso 's reorganization of the crime family last Christmas, we've learned. Pellegrino was bumped from acting capo to official capo. He’s now overseeing a Bonanno crew in Florida and one allied with Albanians in Ridgewood, Queens. Also part of the Nose's Christmastime shakeup, Anthony (Bruno) Indelicato , the longtime Bonanno wiseguy who was a direct participant—he was one of the shooters—in the 1979 Carmine Galante murders, w...

One night in early May 1981, FBI agents were watching the Middle Village, Queens, home of Bonanno soldier Santo Giordano, a skilled mechanic who operated a gas station and was a licensed pilot. Santo Giordano, aka Tony. Giordano belonged to the Bonanno family’s Zip faction, which at the time had been aggressively focusing on the sale of heroin. The Zip faction also included Gerlando (George from Canada) Sciascia, Sal Catalano, Cesare Bonventre, Baldo Amato, and Giovanni Ligammari (who would all variously feature in the Pizza Connection Case). Also fully with the Zips was the “Sixth Family,” members of the Bonanno-linked outpost that Carmine Galante had established in Montreal decades prior . When Galante was slain by members of his own crime family in 1979, Giordano was among the Bonannos stationed outside the restaurant. The wheelman, he stood guard by the car used to ferry the shooters to and from the scene. Giordano’s fingerprint was later discovered on a door handle, though even...

Vincent (Kojak) Giattino, 69, one of the few members of Bonanno soldier Thomas (Tommy Karate) Pitera 's crew who didn't flip after arrest over 30 years ago, is once again seeking compassionate release.    Giattino was on America's Most Wanted prior to his 1991 arrest in Florida. Two previous compassionate release efforts were nixed, including one this past July that Judge Margo K. Brodie shot down, noting, Giattino “committed two heinous murders using guns equipped with silencers and trafficked narcotics as a devout member of BCF (Bonanno Crime Family).” With this latest effort, attorney Anthony Cecutti is hoping he can win release for Giattino by highlighting two recent decisions to release two other convicted murderers who were serving life sentences. Those decisions involved Colombo capo Anthony Russo, who ordered murders during the Colombo war, and Paul Moore, a drug trafficker who fatally shot a rival. Both were given reduced sentences on the same day last month by Jud...

" He no like drugs. He say: no, no no [to heroin] on Knickerbocker Avenue. They say, ‘Okay.’ Then they kill him .” —Luigi Ronsisvalle on Pietro Licata, longtime Bonanno power in Brooklyn. Got it in 1976. (Licata, that is.) Just in time to add to your Christmas shopping list : Former Brooklyn prosecutor Michael F. Vecchione’s third true crime book tells the story of Luigi Ronsisvalle, the “diabolically funny” mob hit man who arrived in New York from Sicily in 1966 to make his mark in the American underworld. He eventually landed in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn on Knickerbocker Avenue as it was evolving into ground zero for the Bonanno's international heroin trafficking business. Ronsisvalle, left, and Ivan Fisher, Sal Catalano's Pizza Connection attorney, when Luigi was recanting. Or attempting to. Homicide Is My Business: Luigi the Zip―A Hitman’s Quest for Honor  is available now. Jerry Schmetterer is co-writer. Ronsisvalle achieved limited success in gangland (none ac...

Making Toto Catalano say the rosary probably wasn't a good idea... On May 21, 1999, a young woman made a frantic call to a police dispatcher saying that her father, Giovanni Ligammari, 60, and brother, Pietro, 37, had hanged themselves and were dead. Ligammari, second from right, leaves Capri Motel with Joseph (Big Joey) Massino, far right; Vito Rizzuto, second from left; and Sicilian Bonanno capo Gerlando (George from Canada) Sciascia. The father and son were found hanging face to face via separate nooses (made from nylon packing cord) from the basement rafters of the older man's two-family home in an affluent Bergen County suburb. Giovanni Ligammari, a New Jersey contractor as well as a Sicilian member of the Bonanno family (his son also became a Bonanno soldier), was captured on May 6,1981, the day after the murders of three Bonanno capos, in photographs by the FBI, which had set up surveillance on the Capri Motel at 555 Hutchinson River Parkway in the Bronx.  The FBI had sn...

Well, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, and Guatemala—to name three places that Dominick Cicale, former Bonanno crime family capo, has visited on business during post-Cosa Nostra life over the past nine years. Dom Cicale at St. Joseph School for Girls. "The country's first lady asked for the water machine to be placed in that school because she went there as a young girl," Dom said. (Yes, this is kind of an unusual story for this blog to publish, we admit....) After being released from prison, Dominick met with a rabbi "who works to better humanity," he said. A source told us that Dom "offered to work to help society at large, and he has made great strides working with Yehuda Kaploun. Currently president of RussKap Water, Dominick has worked in various global locations to provide healthy water around the globe." Kaploun told us that Dominick has been "a model of redemption since his release." Diamond mine in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone that Do...

Defense lawyers using the "musical consiglieris" defense in the courtroom apparently wasn't the only reason why Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso, boss of the Bonanno family, took the drastic step of expelling (aka shelving) his own acting boss and three others from the crime family back in 2019. Mikey Nose Mancuso.  Credit:  Noah Goldberg/Daily News . It also had something to do with betrayal: ex-acting boss Joseph (Joe C) Cammarano tried to take control of the crime family while Mikey Nose was still in prison, according to today's Gang Land News , which reports that details of Joe C's maneuvering against Mancuso came to light via testimony at the Bonanno racketeering trial .  Gang Land also reported today that tensions between Mikey Nose and Joe C. ramped up significantly last week, to the extent that there was a big brawl at a Long Island funeral parlor during a wake for Cammarano's father-in-law, Vito Grimaldi.  "Mikey Nose is a torpedo—a killer." I...

With thanks to our pal "Vincent" for pointing out the denial of the appeal... EXPANDED Salvatore Delligatti, an associate with the powerful Genovese crime family who was sentenced to 25 years in prison, will remain behind bars until February 7, 2037, after a federal appeals court rejected his appeal last month. Salvatore Delligatti, alleged Genovese associate, is slated for release in 2037.  Delligatti , who was convicted in 2018 following a three-week trial in Manhattan federal court for committing a range of alleged crimes, including for being the "main organizer and leader" of a failed plot to whack a rival gangster, raised various challenges, including that the evidence was not sufficient to sustain his conviction and that his 25-year prison sentence was "substantively unreasonable." The United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, in an opinion published June 8, concluded that his  arguments "lacked merit" and affirmed the sentence. Dell...

The Philadelphia crime family formally earned a slot on the humiliating list of Cosa Nostra borgatas to have one of their "secret" initiation ceremonies electronically recorded by law enforcement. Anthony Persiano recorded his 2015 initiation. (Photo s ource : The Gangster Report) Law enforcement has recorded four "secret" Cosa Nostra initiation ceremonies over the decades, to our knowledge. The Feds recorded a Patriarca crime family ceremony in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1989. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police recorded a ceremony involving the Bonanno crime family, which has long-standing historical ties to Italian organized crime in Canada. The ceremony occurred in 2015. The Philly crime family has had induction ceremonies recorded twice. Most recently, Northeast knockaround guy Anthony Persiano became a Federal informant and recorded his October 2015 ceremony. ( Persiano is the CI we wondered about in 2018, when news broke about the FBI bust involving members an...