Cosa Nostra News

An acting boss commands a crime family's captains, while a street boss generally is a capo in direct contact with the boss who passes on the boss's orders to the other captains, as our usually reliable sources tell us. What me worry? Ralph Francis DeLeo, former street boss. A boss would designate an acting or street boss when he is in prison or otherwise unable to command the family on the street. Why a boss would choose one man over another to be acting or street boss would depend on multiple considerations, including the political and the personal. One big consideration for the Colombo family circa 2008 was finding someone who wouldn't try to take over the entire organization, which is why they chose a Boston-based bank robber and convicted murderer. Alphonse (Little Allie Boy) Persico—the son of Carmine Persico, the onetime reputed head of the Colombo crime family who died in 2019 while serving a 100-plus-years prison sentence—was seeking to avoid his father's histo...

A Federal appeals court in Boston yesterday (Friday, September 24) upheld the life sentences of New England Cosa Nostra boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and mob associate Paul Weadick for the 1993 murder of Steven DiSarro, a Federal witness whose remains were found in an unmarked grave in Rhode Island in 2016. 1993 surveillance photo, from left: Salemme, Flemmi with back to camera, Frank Jr.  According to Federal prosecutors, Salemme, 88, held a secret interest in a South Boston nightclub  called The Channel, which DiSarro purchased. Salemme had DiSarro killed after he began to believe that the nightclub owner was talking to the FBI and was about to implicate him in criminal activity. The Fed's star witness at Salemme and Weadick's 2018 trial was Stephen (The Rifleman) Flemmi, the longtime partner of Winter Hill boss Whitey Bulger . Flemmi, 84, who is serving a life sentence for 10 murders, testified that he had walked in on the Salemmes, father and son, and Weadick...

A second suspect has emerged in the killing of James (Whitey) Bulger -- Paul J. DeCologero, a member of a violent Patriarca crime family crew in Boston that robbed and kidnapped rivals, and murdered and dismembered a teenage girl. Paul J. DeCologero. More details in the Whitey Bulger murder Tuesday morning at Hazelton federal penitentiary in West Virginia also have come to light -- and Fotios “Freddy” Geas confessed to committing the brutal murder by himself. Law enforcement sources say suspect Paul J. DeCologero also participated in the vicious murder of Whitey Bulger, according to the Boston Globe . DeCologero is serving a 25-year sentence for racketeering and conspiracy. (Some Boston officials believe prison guards allowed the inmates to attack Bulger.) Law enforcement officials “with knowledge of the matter” said that DeCologero and Geas attacked Bulger less than 12 hours after he arrived at the prison. The two men allegedly beat Bulger to dea...

UPDATED Flipping on the street is supposed to be the end of a gangster's story, but for Whitey Bulger, it was only the start.... Bulger denied who he was until the end He ratted out rivals -- he murdered, he extorted, and he double-crossed, time and again. He (and partner Stephen Flemmi) killed women -- at least two. When a tipoff told him it was time to face the music, he ran and hid and stole 16 more years, as a pretend human being. He'd certainly had lots of success pretending to be a gangster. And in the end, even after he was caught, Bulger strenuously denied ever being a federal informant. Those who followed his exploits back in South Boston were not surprised at how this story ended. “Anyone in criminal activity with him feels grossly betrayed that he was informing on them while he was supposedly their comrade and friend,” Michael Kendall, a former federal prosecutor from Boston who also once represented the family of one of Mr. Bulger’s murder vic...

UPDATE 2, Oct 31, 11:23 am Former Genovese Springfield crew associate Fotios “Freddy” Geas is currently in solitary with one other inmate after surveillance video caught the two, and probably others, killing James (Whitey Bulger), the South Boston mobster and FBI informer, hours after he was moved to US Penitentiary Hazelton in West Virginia. James (Whitey) Bulger Bulger, 89, was found unresponsive at 8:20 this morning, according to a BOP statement. Life-saving measures were initiated but he was pronounced dead. Bulger -- who was wheelchair bound -- was in general population Tuesday morning when he was approached by two or more inmates, one of them Geas, who wheeled him into a corner that could not be seen by surveillance cameras. The inmates beat Bulger -- one used a lock in a sock as a weapon -- until he was unconscious. He was beaten unrecognizable and it's unclear if there was an attempt to gouge his eyes out or if his eyes had popped out due to the v...

The most amazing thing about FBI Special Agent Michael R. McGowan (retired) is not that he is the first -- and so far only -- undercover FBI agent to infiltrate three crime families. Mike McGowan Nor that he has infiltrated Russian crime groups, Mexican drug cartels, and outlaw motorcycle clubs, nor gone undercover to nab criminals of a multitude of stripes, from contract murderers to corrupt politicians. It's not even that he won recognition from the highest levels of the FBI and the Department of Justice for completing some of the most daring and deadly assignments in recent memory. What bedazzles us most of all about  Mike McGowan is that he did all those things while sporting the same gigantic walrus mustache he sports even now (see it, up above?). "That was a little flipoff to the bad guys," he told us recently in a telephone interview. Both the mustache and its owner have been prominently mentioned in recordings of discussions among so...

UPDATED NOTE, VIDEO ADDED Yesterday, Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme, one-time boss of the New England Mafia, was formally indicted for the 1993 murder of a Boston nightclub owner whose body was found this past March in Providence, Rhode Island by law enforcement authorities acting on a tip. Salemme, Paul Weadick, who also is named in the indictment, and Salemme's son, who died in 1995, have long been suspected of involvement in the notorious disappearance of the nightclub owner, Steven A. DiSarro. The indictment, unsealed Friday, charges Salemme and Weadick with the murder of DiSarro, a federal witness. 

"Cadillac Frank" during 1995 arrest. UPDATED Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, a former top-level member of the New England Mafia  who flipped to testify against notorious Irish mob boss James "Whitey" Bulger , was yanked out of Witness Protection and arrested today, having been charged with murdering a witness. Salemme is to appear today at 3 p.m. before a Boston-based U.S. District Court, U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz’s office said. Salemme is charged with the May 10, 1993 murder of South Boston nightclub manager Steven A. DiSarro. Salemme and his son, who has since died, were long suspected of being behind the murder .

Enrico Ponzo was quite jovial in an interview, though he's been a difficult prisoner, committing various violent acts. A longtime Boston Mafia associate who was a fugitive from Massachusetts justice for 16 years was sentenced to 46 months on multiple charges in Boise recently, news reports revealed . That's in addition to the 28-year-sentence the mobster has already received. Enrico Ponzo , 47, after participating in a failed hit that was part of a New England Mafia war , fled Massachusetts in 1994, with law enforcement in hot pursuit. Following years on the run, Ponzo settled in a small Idaho town -- and for the next 10 years, the Boston wiseguy successfully posed as a rancher named Jay Shaw.

An ignoble man caught in a most ignoble way.... Because he didn't extinguish a simple light, the former Irishman who ran South Boston's Winter Hill Gang while serving double-duty as a high-echelon snitch, 85-year-old James "Whitey" Bulge r was caught literally with his pants down. According to court documents unearthed by the Boston Globe, a correction's officer spied Bulger masturbating in his cell at 3 a.m. last June at the US Penitentiary Coleman II in Florida Since Federal inmates are prohibited from all sexual activity, Bulger was punished for the wee infraction, Boston.com reported. He was placed in solitary confinement for 30 days; his commissary and email privileges were stopped for 120 days.

Boston mobster Enrico Ponzo , 47, after participating in a failed hit that was part of the New England Mafia war, fled Massachusetts in 1994, with law enforcement in hot pursuit. Following years on the run, Ponzo finally settled in a small Idaho town under an alias. And for the next 10 years, the Boston wiseguy successfully played the part of a rancher named Jay Shaw. A mobster named Jay Shaw? Or a rancher named Enrico Ponzo? In 2011, he was recaptured -- and two years later, following a trial in which he faced attempted murder and other alleged charges, Ponzo was convicted and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Nevertheless, next month, on Feb. 2, he'll return to his former adopted home state of Idaho to a courtroom to face 16 felonious counts involving unlawful possession of a firearm, aggravated identity theft, and possession of documents for intended fraudulent use.