Cosa Nostra News

Pagan testified at a murder trial in  which he was the actual murderer. Recently the  WSJ.com ran a story about a "rare and risky legal strategy" used by prosecutors. Turns out they even have a name for it: Testifying down. Guess who they were referring to! (Well, at least he's still in the clink, as we learn..) In two recent cases in Brooklyn, one of which was the  James Donovan  murder trial, in which Pagan testified,  "... [t]he government used cooperating witnesses—"big fish"—who admitted to more serious crimes than the charges faced by the people they were testifying against. "This is, generally speaking, the opposite of how cooperating witnesses work. Usually, legal experts said, the goal is to get those witnesses to admit to wrongdoing, cooperate with the government and to walk the investigation up the ladder, obtaining evidence against leaders or those potentially engaged in more serious crimes. In exchange, on the recommendatio...

Daniel Fama Reputed Gambino crime-family associate Daniel Fama no longer faces charges for allegedly being the getaway driver for the 1990 gangland hit of Edward "Eddie the Chink" Garofalo ordered by then Gambino boss John Gotti . But for about one year, he's been psychologically dealing with the pressure of a possible mandatory life sentence. On top of that, he lost eight months of his life in jail -- and all probably because he wouldn't roll for the Feds. According to papers announcing the  indictment , filed in New York's Southern District, Fama had been charged with the crime of killing a person who was believed to be a government informant, a federal charge. The case was filed against Fama in the first place due to testimony, ironically enough, from another member of the Garofalo hit team--  Joseph “Little Joey” D’Angelo , who was one of the two men who actually fired the fatal shots into Garofalo outside his home in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Th...