Cosa Nostra News

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...

The following, which is admittedly sketchy in terms of detail (it is based on a quick encounter between wiseguys and goodguys in a parking lot at night), was cut from our series on Carmine Galante, which we're still finishing up. (After we publish the last remaining installment, we plan to republish the entire story as one single piece.) The Eternal Dance A t 9:30 in the evening of Tuesday, June 5, 1979, some five weeks before the murder of Carmine Galante, two undercover police officers in an unmarked Plymouth Valiant drove into the parking lot of the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream on Long Island. Green Acres Mall parking lot circa 1980 The purpose of the visit was to surveil the California Pizza at Green Acres, which was suspected of being a source of significant drug-dealing activity. The place also was known to belong to Bonanno wiseguy Gerlando (George from Canada) Sciascia, a made member of the Bonanno crime family and also a top member of the Sicilian faction. Scias...