Cosa Nostra News

In testimony at the 1992 trial, Salvatore (Sammy the Bull) Gravano details how he and John Gotti sat in a car and from a block away watched as Paul Castellano and Tommy Bilotti were shot to death in front of Sparks Steakhouse.  From left: Jackie D'Amico, Joe "The German" Watts, John Gotti, and Sammy the Bull. Gravano said that, on the evening of December 16, 1985, he and Gotti drove to East 46th Street and parked within sight of Spark's Steakhouse after deploying an eight-man hit team (four primary shooters and four backup shooters). Castellano and driver Thomas Bilotti actually pulled up next to Gotti's car at a light, but did not notice Gotti and Gravano. Bilotti then parked in front of the restaurant. And the gunmen ran over to the Lincoln. When it was done (at around 5:26 p.m.), the gunmen disappeared into the crowd, and Gotti and Gravano slowly drove past the scene. "I looked at Tommy on the floor," Gravano said. "I told Johnny they were gone....

Anthony Colombo died on January 6 in San Diego of complications from diabetes. Anthony was Joseph Colombo's son. Joseph Colombo, ready to take on all comers. Joseph Bonanno ordered his top gun, Joseph Colombo, to kill two bosses. Colombo, seemingly appalled at the move,  showed fealty to the two bosses, Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese. The Commission took care of Bonanno (though he certainly retaliated decades later, perhaps unintentionally) and as a reward for Colombo's loyalty, they named him, only 41 years old at the time, boss of one of New York's Five Families -- the Profaci family, which was re-christened t he Colombo crime family . It still carries his name to this day. Anthony Colombo recently took the time to answer some questions for the following Q&A. We connected via a mutual friend. Colombo: The Unsolved Murder  by Don Capria and Anthony Colombo is available now, priced at $4.99 for the Kindle version and $16.95 for the paperback. ...

Frank "Punchy" Illiano, above, a Brooklyn capo with the Genovese crime family, died Monday, January 6, at age 86 of natural causes in New York. Cosa Nostra News learned this directly from a personal friend of the elderly gangster, who noted that Punchy was "very well-respected." We have since learned that Illiano had been ill for the past two years of his life, and had been suffering nerve damage ever since he had been shot by a sniper in 1974 during the second of the two Gallo wars.

A recent San Gennaro Feast, which will be 87 years old next year. A fashionable group of newcomers wanted to have it reduced by 50 percent... Genovese capo Conrad Ianniello, 70, who five years ago was found to be extorting vendors at the San Gennaro Feast, plead guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges, federal prosecutors said. He admitted to disrupting a Long Island company's labor union's efforts. He conspired with other alleged street guys in 2008 to "pave the way for an alleged Genovese associate, who was an official at another union, to unionize the company instead, prosecutors charge," according to SILive.com . He was caught on wiretap on April 17, 2008, thanking co-defendant and Genovese associate Ryan Ellis for delivering a message to the union not to organize the Long Island company. "You got his (expletive) attention. He called me," court papers quoted him as saying. "He says they got nasty. ... I said, 'I got your (expletive...

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 ...