Cosa Nostra News

Excerpts from two handwritten letters, the first to the NYPD: I am not (a woman hater). I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam…I am on a different wavelength than everyone else—programmed to kill. To stop me you must kill me. Attention all police, Shoot me first—shoot to kill or else keep out of my way or you will die. I love to hunt. Prowling the street looking for fair game—tasty meat. The women of Queens are prettiest of all. It must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt—my life. Blood for Papa... Another, to newspaperman Jimmy Breslin: Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. Hello from the sewers of N.Y.C. which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of N.Y.C. and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead that has settled into the cracks. ... -- David Berkowitz, "Son of Sam" Some of the ...

Cosa Nostra News Exclusive EXPANDED Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso (or should we write, Mr. Mancuso, sir?) apparently has been commuting between the Bronx halfway house he was relocated to in August and the Pelham Bay neighborhood, Cosa Nostra News has learned. Mikey Nose is reminding people who's who. He's "all dressed up" and "playing the part," and "reminding people who is in charge," a source tells us. Mikey Nose also apparently has been telling people "he is all over the Internet and is actually mentioning your site!" So there you have it, folks, Michael Nose apparently has been reading all about himself here on  Cosa Nostra News . He's also become partners in a realty firm. "I'd love to see him hold open houses," the source added. Our source, who we hope keeps in touch , is knowledgeable about certain doings up in the Bronx and we're not going to name him, as per his request. ...

‟ Everybody thinks "Our family is different." And they are, in a lot of ways. Say I gotta do something and I take you with me. That's it. Nobody else knows. The only one that knows anything is the boss. ... We were taught, if it's done --- the old timers tell you, if someone's gotta go, they become a cockroach. What do you do with a cockroach? You kill the cockroach, you step on the cockroach, and you go about your business. You don't go calling people up and say  "Hey, I took on a cockroach last night... ” On Christmas Eve day 2004, while heading to a meeting with the acting boss of his family—the Genovese crime family—capo Angelo Prisco relaxed and spoke candidly to his driver/presumed protégé Jeff Santini. Genovese waterfront capo Angelo Prisco Prisco sounds good natured and easygoing, but the man you hear casually shooting the breeze was, at that very time, helming a violent home invasion crew that tied up its victims and beat them inside thei...

Before the bloody 1985 coup, John Gotti was capo at the Queens-based Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, where he'd run sitdowns. One sitdown was triggered when Bronx-based members of a crime family visited the wife of a wiseguy at home when the wiseguy was in prison for drug charges. Somehow it involved the Gambinos. “I wish it was me,” Gotti told them, apparently identifying with whoever was being detained. “You would never be safe if you stopped and spoke to my wife while I was locked up.” “You tell your skipper I said, ‘You ever go to a guy’s house while he is in jail, I’ll kill you.’" In the summer of 2009, Anthony Seccafico's wife had just given birth to twins. Seccafico, a construction worker and member of Local 79 of the Construction and General Building Laborers’ Union, commuted to Manhattan from his Staten Island home during the week. So as he did every week day, at around 4:30 a.m. on July 02, 2009, he stood at a deserted Staten Island bus stop ...

The net has widened in the murder probe of Luchese associate Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola, with Larry McShane of the New York Daily News reporting that three more co-conspirators were arrested toda y. Salvatore Zotolla's shooting this past summer was caught on videotape. The trio was nabbed for the murder of Sally Daz, 71, at a Bronx McDonald's drive-thru, as well as the summertime shooting of Sally Daz's son outside the family's home in the Bronx.  The attempted hit on the son, according to a cooperating witness, was an effort to lure the father into the shooter's cross-hairs, McShane reported. Identified in a superseding federal indictment, McShane reported, were Arthur (Scary) Codner, Himen (Ace) Ross, and Kalik McFarlane. “The defendants, together with others, with malice aforethought, did unlawfully kill Sylvester Zottola willfully, deliberately, maliciously and with premeditation,” the indictment read, according to McShane. Assistan...

Jailbird/alleged Bloods gang-banger Herman (Taliban) Blanco has been arrested for participating in last month's gangland shooting of Sylvester (Sally Daz) Zottola at a Bronx McDonald's drive-through, as well as the attempted murder three month's earlier of Sally Daz's son, Salvatore Zottola, Larry McShane of the Daily News reported  yesterday. October murder of Sally Daz Blanco, 33, of the Bronx, was arraigned Friday afternoon in Brooklyn Federal Court, McShane wrote. He's the second alleged member of the Bloods street gang to be arrested in the two Zottola shootings. Bushawn (Shelz) Shelton, 34, was arrested last month for his alleged role. FBI agent Michael Zoufal stated Blanco and Shelton offered to pay a cooperating witness to kill Sylvester Zottola and his son, Salvatore, though the failed attempt to kill Salvatore was "ordered in an effort to "lure out" the father, according to a federal criminal complaint. Sally D...

UPDATED WITH PHOTOS Reputed Bloods member Bushawn “Shelz” Shelton was indicted by a grand jury for murder for hire conspiracy and other charges in the October 4 murder of Bonanno crime family associate Sylvester Zottola, 71. Zottola was gunned down in his car, picture below, while waiting at a McDonald's drive through window in the Bronx. An unidentified cooperating witness testified that Shelton had paid him to kill Zottola and Zottola’s son, Salvatore Zottola, 41. The younger Zottola was shot outside his Locust Point home in July, but survived. Law enforcement sources have alleged that the hit was ordered by Albanian mobsters seeking to control Zottola's “Joker Poker” video game racket. One federal prosecutor estimated in court that the video game machines bring in as much as $7,000 a week.  Shelton, 34, a reputed high-ranking member of the Bloods allegedly paid another man to try to kill Sylvester and Salvatore Zottola. He also furnished the cont...

Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano won his freedom... from Colorado's Supermax prison, that is. He's not moving far. His new digs are located within a high-security facility on the same compound as the Administrative Maximum Security or ADX, according to an exclusive New York Post report. "Better than the hellhole Supermax prison in Colorado... where ex-Bonanno crime boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano had been rotting since 2011 after he was convicted of racketeering and murder. Basciano, 55, was recently sprung from the most infamous jail in the nation to a high-security facility located on the same 31-acre compound in Florence, Colo., the Daily News has learned. The exact date of the transfer is unclear," the Post noted.

Suspects were never in short supply regarding the Michael Meldish murder . The former Purple Gang boss was offed in November 2013 in what's described as a classic gangland hit tableau. Michael Meldish, former Purple Gang leader, may have died for pissing off a high-ranking Luchese Mafioso. His body, expensively attired, ensconced in a camel-colored leather jacket, was slumped over in the driver's seat, his head back, his mouth agape. “Michael was a stone-cold killer,” Joseph Coffey, former commanding officer of the NYPD’s organized crime homicide task force, told the New York Daily News.