Cosa Nostra News

In the late 1980s/early 1990s, mobsters and associates were routinely murdered in all of New York's boroughs. George Conte, middle. In places like Bath Avenue, the remains of violent gangland hits were found in car trunks or slumped over steering wheels; they ripened in the backs of trucks and vans. Some were buried, many never to be found. The victims were shot late at night or in the early morning when no witnesses were around. But bullets also flew in broad daylight, sometimes just across the street from a police station. Often, law enforcement--NYPD, DA's detectives, the Feds--knew who the killer was, but knowing and having the evidence to prove it in court are two different things and can be worlds apart. George Conte back then was a capo in the Luchese family. Called "Georgie Goggles," he and Luchese capo George "Georgie Neck" Zappola were later charged for the slaying of painters union official and potential government witness Jame...

Anthony Spero , former consiglieri/acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, died nearly six years ago. The once-supremely powerful "Old Man" of the American Mafia was 79 when he passed, a guest of the Federal Medical Center of the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina. Spero died in prison in 2008. Spero lived it, walked it, talked it, breathed it. The only thing that may have captivated him as much as "the life" were his pigeons. That and frying chicken cutlets in the back of his club on Bath Avenue in Bath Beach, Brooklyn. He also ran the Big Apple Car, a limo service. He spent near-uninterrupted decades on the street before finally going away for life in 2002 on racketeering and murder charges in a case considered surprisingly circumstantial in that no direct testimony against him was ever offered. According to the book "Mob Boss," about Al D'Arco's life in the Luchese family, it was noted that  while servi...