Cosa Nostra News

EXPANDED Frank "Punchy" Illiano added Larry Gallo and Albert "Kid Blast" Gallo outside Brooklyn Supreme Court, October 25, 1965. The mistaken identity slayings left two dead.  And The Godfather was playing in New York theaters at the time.  This past week marked The Godfather's 45th anniversary as an Academy Award triumph, cementing its status as one of the greatest films ever made. Released in 1972, it received 11 nominations and emerged with three Oscars. The Godfather II, released in 1974, also got 11 nominations, and won six Oscars. (We won't mention Godfather Part III.) Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola expressed regrets about making both sequels, including The Godfather Part II. In 2011, Coppola, when asked if he'd ever consider returning to the story, said: 'There should have only been one." In August 1972 four innocent businessmen were blasted at the Neapolitan Noodle restaurant at 320 Eas...

A 47-year-old man was caught with a gun at his Staten Island Kemball Avenue home and arrested last Saturday at 8:13 p.m. Colombo guys went at a newspaper union to help an underboss's son. Police arrived at the location, having been summoned by a 911 call about a violent domestic dispute, an NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information source told a reporter. Rocco Miraglia Junior's verbal dispute with his 49-year-old wife had escalated into a physical confrontation during which he allegedly punched her. Then, in a preemptive move, he broke a landline telephone to prevent her from calling the police. It didn't work. Enter the cops, who put the cuffs on Miraglia and brought him in, where he was charged with felony criminal possession of a weapon and various misdemeanors, including assault, criminal mischief, criminal possession of a controlled substance, and acting in a manner injurious to a child. The NYPD touted the incident on social media as a "great...

This article was first published in the Den of Geek NYCC Special Edition Magazine; you can find the online version here .  It's written by Tony Sokol, the admitted "Gangster Geek" at Den of Geek, for which he writes. Tony is a quite talented writer, in fact (in addition to being a  playwright and musician). Aside from writing for Den of Geek, he also writes for The Chiseler , KpopStarz.com , and  hypnocloud.com . Previously, he wrote for Altvariety, Coed.com , Daily Offbeat, Dark Media Press, Wicked Mystic and other magazines.  He has had over 20 plays produced in NYC, including Vampyr Theatre and the rock opera “AssassiNation: We Killed JFK.” He appeared on the Joan Rivers (TV) Show, Strange Universe and Britain’s “The Girlie Show.” Goodfellas is a classic movie in the gangster genre. It tells the story of a crew of working criminals from the working class section of East New York, Brooklyn. These wise guys pulled off the biggest haul of the Twentieth Cent...

Life in the Gallo crew Mob Candy publisher Frank DiMatteo has written a memoir -- now available -- about his life in the crew of Joseph "Crazy Joey" Gallo. Introduction: "I guess you can say each person has a choice of which road to follow in life, sometimes you don't have the power to make that choice. In my case, life came at me so fast that I never had the opportunity to hit the brakes. I grew up around my father's world, a world that few have ever learned to understand or justify. That world has been termed "The Underworld". You might say, I was bred into the Mafia. It was always around me and I was always around it. I knew the ways of the street as well as I knew my ABC's, in fact, I knew the streets better. I knew all these men and they all knew me, most of them watched me grow from a baby to the full grown man I am today, Frank DiMatteo. This was the world I grew up in and to me, it was as normal as family life on televisi...

  Albert Gallo under arrest. "Yeah, I left it noisy. That way it scares any pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders away." In August 1972 the mob committed one of its worst blunders ever when innocent businessmen were fired on in cold blood at the Neapolitan Noodle restaurant at 320 East 79th Street in Manhattan. " The Godfather " was still playing in New York theaters five months after its release. On Friday, Aug. 11, 1972, a hit man from Las Vegas walked into the Noodle during the dinner hour rush. Mistaking four businessmen at the crowded bar for Colombo family acting boss "Little Allie" Persico and three Colombo wiseguys, the shooter opened fire with two long-barreled pistols, killing two of the businessmen — kosher beef wholesalers from Westchester County and Long Island — and wounding their companions. The men were old friends celebrating a daughter's wedding engagement. They arrived at the Noodle at the exact wrong time, as the P...

It is well known that Greg Scarpa Senior had been a turncoat since 1960 and that he provided law enforcement with all the dope he could muster on his enemies, rivals and even friends -- basically anyone but himself. Greg Scarpa did deep and lasting damage to most of the Five Families, as well as other crime families. We've written here, more than once, about his missions for the FBI, one of which involved him sallying south to help extinguish the Mississippi Burning problem . He went on other missions, too. Such complex duplicity requires a sharp mind and probably an intelligence level well above average.

Tommy Pitera, decades in prison. Tommy "Karate" Pitera was unique in the annals of the American Mafia, or Cosa Nostra. He is suspected by law enforcement of committing as many as 60 murders. His nickname is derived from his love of martial arts, including karate. He also had more in common with a serial killer than a mobster in terms of how he killed and dismembered his victims, and kept "trophies." In one case, supposedly he kept the ears of one victim. When threatening someone for whatever reason, Pitera would supposedly throw the ears down on the table and tell his trembling target to: "Talk to him." But in one of those bizarre quirks of fate, Tommy was not blessed with a deep masculine voice. He didn't sound like the big, bad killer he was. Rather, he sounded more like Mickey Mouse .

Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran Did Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran kill Hoffa? As one journalist noted: Sheeran's "deathbed confession" is still the most believable theory ever to come to light. “History Detectives Special Investigations,” “Who Killed Jimmy Hoffa?” -- which ran recently this week -- purported to take a fresh look at the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa, the former head of the Teamsters union who vanished from the face of the earth on July 30, 1975. It was the perfect mob hit and a high-profile public figure, too.

With the Mafia Maps app, you can visit many of the mob's most famous haunts in New York City. For .99 cents, it's a hell of a deal... You can find the exact place this wiseguy got the hard goodbye. Among the sites Mafia Maps will help you find: the place where Don Umberto (Albert Anastasia) was brutally slain -- the hit forever linked the Mafia and barbershops, as well as the steakhouse in front of which Gambino boss "Big Paul" Castellano was gunned down, along with his driver and underboss, Tommy Bilotti. They were killed in front of Sparks and died in the street, Big Paul splayed out on the sidewalk, eyes wide open in death. Bilotti was supine, in the street on top of a huge puddle of his own blood.

Arthur Nash posted the image below on his Facebook page:  New York City Gangland - Rare Photo Book . He is the author of  New York City Gangland , a compilation of some 200 rare photos of mobsters obtained primarily from private collections and law enforcement sources. Mob figures included go all the way back to Prohibition Days, but the book also includes contemporary gangsters, such as John Gotti. This images features items found in Joe Gallo's wallet after he was shot to death in Little Italy. Crazy Joe Gallo died on the night of his 43rd birthday, on April 7, 1972. Gallo had spent the evening celebrating at the Copacabana nightclub, then he and a few others stopped at Umberto’s Clam House on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. It was around 5 a.m. A short while later, shooters materialized at the restaurant and fired a volley of shots; Gallo staggered out of the eatery and fell dead in the street. Apparently Gallo thought he was safe because there suppos...