Cosa Nostra News

Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger’s attorney, Hank Brennan, told the WSJ that he intends to sue the government for wrongful death and negligence. The lawsuit is part of his effort to uncover why the authorities sent the notorious gangster to the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia and placed him in with the general population. Brennan will file the lawsuit on behalf of Bulger’s estate. “It’s important for the family and the public to know why the prisons decided to wheel an 89-year-old man with a history of heart attacks into one of the most dangerous prisons in the country,” Brennan told the WSJ. Brennan has represented Bulger since 2011, when he was captured after 16 years on the lam. He defended the longtime FBI informant at the 2013 trial that found the Irish mob boss guilty of committing a range of crimes, including multiple murders, extortion, money-laundering and drug-dealing from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. A BOP spokesperson said that Bul...

Francis Salemme, the former New England Mafia boss accused of killing nightclub owner Steven DiSarro in 1993, was found guilty of the murder by a federal jury at the Moakley Courthouse in South Boston. 1993 surveillance photo: Salemme, left, Flemmi, back to camera, Salemme Jr. right at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. On June 22, the jury reached its verdict after four days of deliberations. Salemme, 84, was charged in the killing of DiSarro, who owned the Channel and was a federal witness. DiSarro's body was found in 2016. Salamme associate Paul Weadick, 63, also was found guilty of the murder. Sentencing is set for September 13. Murdering a federal witness carries a life sentence. Salemme had been arrested in Connecticut in 2016, after living in Atlanta as "Richard Parker" in the federal witness protection program before fleeing. "Today, one of the last New England mafia bosses, Frank 'Cadillac' Salemme along with an accomplice, Paul Wea...

Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme’s murder trial starts this month. Cadillac Frank: What a long, strange trip..... Salemme, 84, was arrested in 2016 while in the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program. He and Paul Weadick, 62, of Burlington go on trial April 24 in U.S. District Court. The centerpiece of the case is the May 10, 1993, hit on Steven DiSarro, 43, who then owned the popular waterfront rock club The Channel. "Extremely distraught” and dubious about a sit-down he’d been summoned to with the then-boss of the New England Mafia, DiSarro left a note at his Westwood home for one of his sons. In the note, he wrote that his sons wouldn't see him again anytime soon. DiSarro then stepped into a car waiting for him and disappeared, prosecutors will allege during Salemme’s murder trial. Stephen (The Rifleman) Flemmi and Robert P. DeLuca, are slated to testify, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak Jr. Prosecutors will paint a chilling, det...

Hierarchy of Philadelphia Cosa Nostra identified in complaint See below Following a two-year probe, the FBI last week arrested a soldier and two associates of the Philadelphia mob in South Jersey on drug-related charges. Garden State Parkway was drug pipeline. The FBI describes the  case as a dismantling of a drug pipeline running nearly the length of the Garden State Parkway. The men, all of whom have drug convictions, were indicted and arrested on March 14 for selling drugs across the state. The case also involved confidential sources-- one, CS-1 in the indictment, is "a made member of the Philadelphia LCN" who's been giving the FBI information since 2015; he's also "personally familiar with numerous associates and members " of the Philadelphia mob -- and undercover agents. Joseph Servidio, 58, of Upper Township, New Jersey, was identified as a soldier in the Philadelphia Cosa Nostra by FBI Special Agent Mark R. Hindle. Also arrested ...

UPDATED, REVISED Anthony L. DiNunzio, 58, of East Boston, Massachusetts, "the alleged leader of the New England organized crime family of La Cosa Nostra,"  was sentenced to six years in prison in 2012 on racketeering and extortion charges. Reputed acting boss Anthony DiNunzio, left, with Anthony Gambale in 2002. DiNunzio  was released a few weeks ago, on February 22, 2018, as pe r the BOP inmate locator website. In a colorful indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that DiNunzio had become the acting boss of New England’s Cosa Nostra crime family in late 2009 and oversaw the organization’s extortion of Rhode Island strip clubs and other such businesses, demanding payments of $2,000 to $6,000 per month. DiNunzio was arrested in 2012 at the Gemini Social Club in Boston's North End. He was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for racketeering. He's the brother of Carmen “The Big Cheese” DiNunzio, who served a state sentence for briber y and was r...

By Cosa Nostra News contributor Nick Christophers The Last Longshoreman:   A Chilling Tale of Crime and Corruption on the Boston Waterfront , Marc Zappulla's new fictional book, catapults us back to a lifestyle that few today are capable of understanding. Technically his fourth book -- he served as a ghostwriter on the first three -- it also is his debut solo effort, a mob-related fictional book. With The Last Longshoreman, Marc sought to re-create a lost world, one in which most longshoremen had to deal with organized crime on some level. Not since Marlon Brando’s unflinching performance in On The Waterfront  has this shadowy world been spotlighted in such detail, Marc believes.

Five of the six Angiulo brothers in 1961. From left, Antonio, Michele, Nocolo, Gennaro, and Donato. Do the right thing -- free Sal DiMasi , proclaimed the Lowell Sun's  editorial , which was published online yesterday. The editorial weighs Salvatore F. "Sal" DiMasi's crimes against those of legendary former Patriarca crime family underboss Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo, who operated with his brothers a highly profitable gambling and loansharking operation. The vast revenue-spawning operation formed part of the bedrock foundation of the New England mob's empire. Based in Boston's North End on the aptly named Prince Street, the Angiulo brothers ran their empire enjoying insulation from the probing eyes of law enforcement for decades. ( How? By bribing cops and elected officials .)

October 15, 2021 : This story was NOT a gag, as it said at the end for the past five years. There really was a guy I called Charley P, or C.P., from here, New York City. He got cold feet about two seconds after I published and freaked out on me--begged me to take it down. I told him: how about I put a little note at the end saying it was all a joke? He was so relieved I could see the anguish visibly depart his face. I also inserted some fictional material about the “murder” on Gun Hill Road, and some of the other biographical Bronx details were “masked” in an attempt to make the story seem like it truly was a joke. It took years before Charley was comfortable enough to communicate with me and tell me anything meaningful. Over time he learned he could trust me (after testing me in multiple ways). When I said I would never betray him, say by naming him and writing about him, etc., I meant it. The piece overall was an attempt to re-create Charley's personality and record some of his o...