Cosa Nostra News

The  Friends  of Ours blogger  is offering for  99 cents a Kindle ebook that is such a worthy addition  to your library of books about the Mafia, I feel dutified to promote it. ( Did I just invent a word? ) John Gotti, in a surveillance video. Source The author raises questions some mobsters most likely are uncomfortable discussing publicly. Which is putting it mildly. It should come as no surprise that mobsters were killed over mere allegations of homosexuality. According to what one Mafia capo said in testimony, the mob has a law that goes something like:  If you're found to be gay, you die. Interestingly, the capo said that during his induction ceremony, he'd been instructed about many rules, though that specific one was never mentioned.

Giovanni Riggi (February 1, 1925 – August 3, 2015), aka John the Eagle, died on Monday of natural causes. He was 90 and outlived what law enforcement officials no doubt considered a life sentence. A member of the New Jersey-based crime family since the 1940s (before it was given its historic name, the DeCavalcante crime family), Riggi served as the Elizabeth crew's captain and was named acting boss in the 1970s. John Riggi, at the height of power. Riggi's rise was slow and deliberate. Simone "Sam the Plumber" DeCavalcante  named Riggi as his successor in 1980. Riggi in fact held the official boss title up until his death a week ago.  He's been described as well-spoken, extremely polite and extremely ruthless. Toward the end of his life he'd been incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center (FMC) in Devens, Massachusetts. He was released on November 27, 2012. The funeral at the Corsentino Home for Funerals in Elizabeth, N.J., held on Friday, Aug. 7...

Riggi made Johnny Boy acting boss, then made him dead after D'Amato's mistress began discussing what happened in the bedroom. New Jersey mobster John "Johnny Boy" D'Amato was murdered in 1992 while holding the title of acting boss of the Decavalcantes, a position he supposedly won thanks to some secret maneuvering by Gambino boss John Gotti. D'Amato's gumare, or mistress, told the wrong people that Johnny Boy was a homosexual and they killed him in a hit that supposedly inspired Sopranos creator David Chase to create the Vito Spatafore story line realized towards the end of the series. Described as a member of the fictional DiMeo crime family -- the crime family Tony Soprano was boss of --  Spatafore (played by   Joseph R. Gannascoli) was married with two children and was a closeted homosexual close to the fiction New York mob boss, Phil Leotardo, played by Frank Vincent.