Cosa Nostra News

" Found religion? Maybe. But it doesn't erase the past, if he did. " --Canadian Mafia expert James Dubro on Pat Musitano's alleged religious transformation The boss of a Calabrian crime family in Hamilton, a Canadian port city about 41 miles west of Niagara Falls, was shot multiple times on Thursday morning and remains in critical condition. Peel Regional police on Thursday investigate the Musitano shooting. Pasquale (Pat) Musitano is still clinging to life at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto where he was brought Thursday morning. He was reportedly shot at least four times, including once in the head, at around 7 a.m. Thursday. A witness described the shooting as "very unsettling and terrifying. And quite brazen in broad daylight." The Hamilton Spectator broke the identity of the victim; law enforcement remains tight-lipped about the incident, neither naming or confirming the name of the victim Mafia vi olence in Hamilton and su...

This was supposed to be a straightforward story about Jake Russo, but of course I can never not plunge headfirst down whatever rabbit hole catches my eye.... Can't ignore what intrigues me.... Rochester acting boss Jake Russo disappeared in September 1964, and nearly 55 years later, his body has never been found. Jake Russo may have disappeared because of Stefano Magaddino's greed. Recently surfaced videotaped interviews with a former Russo cohort may finally reveal what really happened all those years ago. In interviews conducted and videotaped several years prior to his 2014 death, Rene Piccarreto Sr., the former consigliere of the Rochester crime family, said that Russo was strangled in the basement of a downtown Rochester restaurant that later became a popular area pizzeria called the Pizza Stop. But back in 1964, the restaurant was owned by Frank Valenti, the man who succeeded Russo atop the Mafia family there. Actually, Russo had only been put in charge w...

How do you get inherent lawbreakers to follow laws.... John Gotti and Joe Butch outside the Ravenite social club . (Source NYPost) That was the question that  confronted Charles (Lucky) Luciano and others at the dawn of the American Mafia, the 1931 reorganization of organized crime, when the men running America's Mafia decided to once and for all optimize their "thing" for efficient plunder. Each member of the "board of directors" had one vote, and the majority determined the decrees that were issued forth. By putting in place such a construct, Luciano effectively did away with the entity that previously served as the mob's top governing body. The  capo di tutti i capi  or  capo dei capi,  the "boss of all bosses" or "boss of [the] bosses," was no longer, though if Luciano had wanted to hold that position, he likely would've met with little dissent. ( One almost can't help recalling a sliver of basic Am...

A  Wiser Guy , by Louis DiVita, is the work of a man with a fascinating background. His grandfather was a high-ranking mobster who was associated with Stefano Magaddino, the Mafia overlord of Buffalo, New York, whose dominion extended into Canada. Be a Goodfella and click image. Thanks! His brother, Benedetto Angelo, stayed in Niagara Falls,where he was partnered with Joseph DiCarlo. Paolo "Paul" Palmeri moved to New Jersey and started enterprising with Willie Moretti, who is perhaps best known today for what he didn't do -- namely, he was not around to hunt down Vito Genovese after he sent a young shooter to kill Frank Costello. However, the boss of what became the Genovese crime family survived. Smart enough to retire, he lived out his life puttering around in his garden. Or did he? According to Louis DiVita it was none other than the Prime Minister himself who showed up at his grandmother's doorstep one day with an envelope. Invited inside, they...

Today marks the Kindle debut of Louis P. DiVita's A Wiser Guy -- so readers can purchase it in whatever format they prefer: ebook , hardcover or paperback . (Be sure to check out Louis's website , where the above trailer is posted, along with additional information.) In A Wiser Guy , DiVita -- whose grandfather was Paul Palmeri and great uncle Benedetto Angelo, aka "Buffalo Bill," Joseph DiCarlo 's partner -- shares personal and colorful anecdotes about life among high-profile members of the American Mafia from around the 1920s to the present. DiVita's forebears, originally from Sicily's Castellammare Del Golfo , first played a decades-long role in upstate New York where they were closely allied with mob bosses Stefano Magaddino and Joseph DiCarlo. The Palmeri brothers initially planted their flags in Buffalo and Niagara Falls; they had associations with major Canadian mobsters of the day, such as Rocco Perri. These relationships had ramificatio...

A Wiser Guy , by Louis DiVita, includes mention of a nearly unbelievably wide array of wiseguys, including Willie Moretti, Albert Anastasia, Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Vito Genovese. Some are not as well known. His forebears wound up in New Jersey's Mafia landscape but first played a decades-long role in upstate New York where they were closely allied with mobsters such as Stefano Magaddino and Joseph DiCarlo. The Palmeri brothers both backed their countryman Salvatore Maranzano when the New York Mafia split into factions and used murder to finally end an ongoing feud as to who was going to be who. Afterward, the Mafia as we know it today was created.

Frank Papalia—brother of violent former mob boss John "Johnny Pops" Papalia, aka The Enforcer—died on April 15 at age 83. Known for being among the last remaining figures of an infamous one-time Mafia dynasty based in Ontario, Canada, Frank Papalia suffered from Alzheimer’s disease in a Hamilton-based nursing home when he died. [There were four Papalia brothers, the other two were Rocco and Dominic.] John "Johnny Pops" Papalia Fate was less kind to brother Johnny, who'd been a well-known bootlegger and later, as a drug trafficker with links to both the French and Pizza Connections (which, actually, were the same operation, a longtime, ongoing one that involved the Sicilian Cosa Nostra as well as Corsican crime families .) Johnny may have also been suffering from the onset of Alzheimer’s disease when in May of 1997 he was shot in the back of his head in the downtown Hamilton parking lot of a vending machine company he then owned.