Cosa Nostra News

Tough Guys Don't Dance, Norman Mailer's 1984 homage to the hard-boiled artwork of authors like Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane, gets its title from an anecdote about mob boss Frank Costello that someone once told the legendary American author. One of our favorites, the novel also is one of the more accessible works by Mailer, which doesn't necessarily mean it's easy reading. Tough Guys Don't Dance is a brilliant, stunning, hypnotic work that gets deeply inside your head. It grows even more astonishing when you learn how quickly Mailer banged the novel out, and for what reasons. Mailer, who died in 2007, supposedly wrote the book because "economic problems were pressing." He needed to either come up with a book for his publisher in sixty days, or he'd need to repay a huge amount of money that he didn't have. Set in Provincetown on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Tough Guys Don't Dance tells the story of Timothy Madden, a frustrated w...

On the evening of May 2, 1957, Frank Costello dined at Chandler’s Restaurant at 49 West 49th Street. In preparation for his role in The Godfather, Marlon Brando reportedly watched recordings of Costello speaking.  His companion may have been Philip Kennedy, a former semi-pro baseball player who was a sometime actor who managed a modeling agency. Costello likely enjoyed Kennedy’s company because Kennedy moved nimbly and freely among Manhattan’s wealthiest denizens. Costello, the insecure Don, was supposedly fixated on being accepted by those folks. The blue bloods made him self-conscious about his voice and his inability to lose the “deeze, doze, dem” East Harlem diction. (Bizarre stuff for the mob boss who filled Lucky Luciano’s shoes, but it is the insecurities that keep us interested in the guy, anyway.) Costello’s gravelly voice (which wasn’t as gravelly as you might think, as per the video below, which includes more of Frank talking than any other clip we’ve seen...

Gotti's Boys: The Mafia Crew That Killed for John Gotti is the latest from Anthony M. DeStefano. Gotti's Boys: The Mafia Crew That Killed for John Gotti  is the latest from Anthony M. DeStefano, the prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning journo. The book tells the story of John Gotti's inner circle: the men who helped the former Gambino boss rise to power. As per its Amazon pre-order page : "They called him “The Teflon Don.” But in his short reign as the head of the Gambino crime family, John Gotti wracked up a lifetime of charges from gambling, extortion, and tax evasion to racketeering, conspiracy, and five convictions of murder. He didn’t do it alone. Surrounding himself with a rogues gallery of contract killers, fixers, and enforcers, he built one of the richest, most powerful crime empires in modern history. Who were these men? Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony M. DeStefano takes you inside Gotti’s inner circle to reveal the dark hearts and violent dee...

 "Down here it’s called franchising. Where I come from, it’s called racketeering." -- Louis DiVita, author of A Wiser Guy It's a book that reads like a whos-who of the New York/New Jersey/Philadelphia crime families . Louis and his family crossed paths with a lot of figures you've read about, including Willie Moretti, Albert Anastasia, Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Vito Genovese. Benedetto Angelo, who was partnered with Joseph DiCarlo. 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 modern-day Mafia was created. Louis's grandfather, Paolo Palmeri, was a high-ranking mobster ...

REVISED, EXPANDED This year marks the 60th anniversary of Apalachin,  which has always been of great interest to me.. .. Police in pursuit in Apalachin on the day. .... Apalachin, NY, the infamous location of the November 14, 1957, Mafia Summit , changed everything by finally bringing the full resources of the FBI onto the nation's crime families . That ill-fated meeting in upstate New York left two legacies in place: The enormous free reign with which the wiseguys operated for so long was coming to a close as the FBI launched a full-court investigative press against the mob that wouldn't let up -- ever.....(Law enforcement's mob investigations may have periodically waned, but the efforts were forever renewed....) And, never again could J. Edgar Hoover deny Cosa Nostra's existence without looking like a fool.

FDR had to beat the mob at its own game to carry 1932. After a dramatic Republican National Convention in Cleveland which saw Donald Trump finally become the party’s official nominee, Hillary Clinton will this week accept the formal nomination of the Democratic Party. U.S. national conventions have always been big business opportunities. As one long-time ally of the Bush family reportedly said , “For people who operate in and around government, you can’t not be here.” Although some of the usual donors to the Republican National Convention, like Ford and UPS, stayed home this year , the host committee was able to raise nearly US$60 million from American businesses. Yet historically the “people who operate in and around government” are not only legitimate businesses but also, sometimes, less-than-legitimate ones. Take the 1932 Democratic National Convention. As I explain in my book about the hidden power of organized crime, from which this article is adapted, the nom...

"Nevada owes a debt of gratitude to Frank Schreck," a Las Vegas Sun editorial recently noted . Schreck was named this year's International Association of Gaming Advisors honoree and in recognition gave quite a speech. It included a head-turning revelation about a major Mafia figure notorious for his stint working in the  Stardust hotel and casino  (among other places), which once occupied a prime slot on the fabled Las Vegas strip. Geri, on Lefty's left, looks like Sharon Stone.   Schreck, considered a premier gaming attorney in Nevada and elsewhere, recounted his personal take on Las Vegas history, including the enduring legacy of oddball billionaire Howard Hughes . Schreck's rise commenced in 1971 when then-governor Mike O’Callaghan’s appointed the then-27-year-old lawyer to the Nevada Gaming Commission, setting a record. Schreck remains the youngest commissioner ever appointed to that regulatory body, which was charged with policing whether someone could...

Abe "Kid Twist" Reles Abe "Kid Twist" Reles is doubtlessly remembered best for being the proverbial canary who couldn't fly (but did indeed sing). In November 1941 the mob may have gotten to Kid Twist while he was under police protection at a hotel in Coney Island, New York. We say "may have gotten" because no one knows for certain who orchestrated what may have been a hit. We repeat "may have been a hit" because there's also the chance that Reles did indeed fall to his doom (the more or less "official" opinion on the matter) while attempting to climb down a twisted roll of bed sheets to get out of the hotel, either to escape or play a practical joke of some sort on his alleged protectors.

From its inception, the American Mafia included among its plethora of rackets the slot-machine. So popular during the twentieth century's first few decades were these little games of chance, it's difficult today to truly comprehend it. NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was hands-on. Perhaps the most suitable image to remind us is the photograph above of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia sledgehammering a machine (the scene also was captured on film footage). All the historical Mafia bosses, especially the men who served as heads of New York's Five Families—Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, Vito Genovese and, most famously of all, Frank Costello, for example—reaped fortunes from slot machine profits.

What Happens When You Enter the Witness Protection Program? : Gerald Shur was struggling to convince his witness to testify. The year was 1961, and Shur, an attorney focused on organized crime at the Department of Justice, was talking to the owner of a New York trucking company who claimed that  Johnny “Sonny” Franzese  demanded half the profits of his business. Protected witness... Franzese’s men had vandalized his trucks and beaten him unconscious with baseball bats until he complied, and now the owner hoped that Shur could offer him a way out. But when Shur suggested testifying against Franzese, the witness responded, “Testify?” He had good reason to be incredulous. For Franzese, a member of one of the “ Five Families ” of the New York mafia, extorting a small business owner represented low-level crime. An associate wearing a wire would later record Franzese discussing the best way to commit murder: he would cover his fingertips with nail polish, wear a hairnet, and ...

About three weeks ago, we passed the 56th anniversary of the infamous meeting at Apalachin, when cops raided Joe Barbara's House. They didn't have the slightest inkling of what they were getting into -- and I refer here to the Mafia.... J. Edgar Hoover could no longer deny the existence of a national crime ring working in the U.S. He preferred chasing Communists and destroying people he didn't like. On Nov. 14, 1957, New York state police official Edgar D. Croswell noticed a suspicious number of expensive cars with out-of-state license plates converging in his small town of Apalachin.* He and his troopers began jotting down license plates. Croswell, owing to his knowledge of the mob (specifically, Carmine Galante who was in town that November day; Crosswell had arrested him previously and was well aware of who he was) knew something was up. (Croswell also had no illusions about Joseph (Joe the Barber) Barbara (a more appropriate nickname would've been J...

Anastasia whacked by Gambino drug dealers--not Persico/Gallo faction. Albert Anastasia (Umberto Anastasio, Sept. 26, 1902 – Oct. 25, 1957) was one of the most ruthless and feared Cosa Nostra mobsters in U.S. history, bar none. A co-founder of LCN, Anastasia during the pre-war years ran Murder Inc., a group of primarily Jewish hit men always on call. He was boss of what became the Gambino crime family in 1957, having killed his boss, Vincent Mangano. Anastasia's own execution in a midtown barbershop is one of the most spectacular mob hits ever. It was the most high-profile "hit" since the big mob war of the 1930s. And Carmine "the Snake" Persico and the Gallo brothers had nothing to do with it. One source told Cosa Nostra News : "Joey Gallo went around after the Anastasia hit telling people to call he and his pals the 'Barbershop Quartet.' That means nothing. I have had guys intimate to me that they clipped a certain guy, when I knew for ...

Al and Nucky stroll; they are the ones with hats. From  PressofAtlanticCity.com: As a historian, Marc Mappen doesn't like people who deal more in myths than facts when writing about the same subjects he does. In Mappen's new book, "Prohibition Gangsters: The Rise and Fall of a Bad Generation," he raises serious doubts about a legend about Atlantic City that has survived for more than 80 years - the 1929 gangster conference that supposedly involved mobsters from multiple cities, including Al Capone from Chicago and Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello from New York. Mappen, a Highland Park resident, believes only Capone and other Chicago underworld criminals were at the conference at that time in Atlantic City.

Charlie Lucky was the inspiration for The Godfather? Small World News Service is running a review of a book about Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, "Lucky Luciano: Mafia Murderer and Secret Agent," by Tim Newark (though the title seems to have been changed to "Lucky Luciano: The Real and the Fake Gangster," which at least sounds less silly than the first title, though it is still pretty damn silly nevertheless). The book describes him as being "heralded ... as the model for legendary mafia boss Don Vito Corleone," from The Godfather, novel by Mario Puzo , and the film, directed by Francis Ford Coppola , screenplay by both men [as well as the screenplays for the two sequels]. "He was widely credited for running New York’s notorious underworld, and linked to multimillion dollar extortion rackets, revenge beatings and gangland murders," the review adds, quoting the book or a release about the book.