Cosa Nostra News

Rudolph Giuliani, when he was US Attorney for the Southern District of New York*, personally devised the strategy behind the Commission Case, the first effort by law enforcement to attack the Mafia by way of its ''board of directors.” Or, as put forth in the 22-count indictment, the defendants were charged with conducting the affairs of ''the commission of La Cosa Nostra'' in a racketeering pattern that included murders, loan-sharking, labor payoffs, and extortion of the concrete industry in New York City. Mathew Mari's VIEW FROM MULBERRY STREET podcast is a labor of love. Giuliani said his vision began taking shape (yes, to simplify we’ll take Rudy at his word for now) after he read Joseph Bonanno Sr.'s 1983 autobiography, A Man of Honor, which, he said, described the inner workings of the Commission from an earlier historical era. The other vital component of his vision arrived via an August 1983 meeting between Rudy and Ronald Goldstock, head of the N...

"(Carmine) Galenti (sic) believes in rapid extermination of opposition and any who endanger his position of power. His associates fear him for his bad temper." -- FBI files .... Carmine Galante in 1947, when he was around 37 years old. You would have thought you were looking at just another innocuous, bespectacled, grandfatherly type if you had seen the 5-foot 5-inch tall, 60-something-year-old Carmine (Lilo) Galante examining the artichokes and tomatoes at Balducci’s in Greenwich Village or enjoying espresso and cannoli at De Robertis Pasticceria on the Lower East Side or dining at the Tre Amici Ristorante at 1294 Third Avenue. He reportedly also jogged along the East River path near the United Nations building and played handball at the YMCA (despite walking with a stoop). His daily routine also included being driven by a chauffeur each morning to L&T Cleaners at 245 Elizabeth Street, reportedly his base of operations. You would never think he was a man who could be in...

Intense media speculation followed Carmine Galante as he walked out of prison in 1974 and stayed on him for the five years he had left on this earth. He was targeted by television cameras as well as newspapers and magazines (stories were even written about all the stories that had been written about him). He also had to deal with law enforcement seeking to violate him and send him back to prison, which happened more than once after his 1974 release, including months before he was brutally gunned down with two other men on the back patio of a Bushwick, Brooklyn restaurant  on Knickerbocker Avenue. Suspected of more than 80 homicides, Galante, pictured above, was a lifelong mobster who became a key power in the Bonanno crime family. A confident of boss Joe Bonanno himself, Galante was involved in every racket and enterprise imaginable, including international heroin trafficking. Galante was a shark who made a massive mark on the underworld, and not only in New York and the United St...

UPDATED Joseph Bonanno, a founding father of the modern American Mafia, would spend months living in almost complete seclusion in Tucson, telling those close to him that he wanted no contact with anyone. Joseph Bonanno, his son Bill, and Gaspar DiGregorio. By August 1964, Bonanno had been ousted for "overreaching" with his plotting to kill Carlo Gambino and Tommy Luchese, the two bosses who, in alliance with Buffalo boss Stefano Magaddino, dominated the Commission after Joseph Profaci died. Other sitting Commission bosses were New Jersey-based Gerardo Catena (sitting in for Vito Genovese, who was in prison), Angelo Bruno from Philadelphia, Sam Giancana from Chicago, and Detroit boss Joseph Zerilli. Former Profaci capo Joe Colombo was given a seat on the Commission when Gambino elevated him to boss of the Profaci family (which became the Colombo family.) Simone (Sam The Plumber) DeCavalcante wasn’t on the Commission but served a key mediatory role for the Commission...

Joseph Bonanno was expelled from the Mafia in the 1960s: He became an "unmade" man, losing his button, his boss position, and his seat on the Commission. Joe Bonanno. Read about the shootout on Troutman Street at Gangsters Inc . But hope springs eternal, and sly Don Peppino made ongoing efforts to rehabilitate himself for a return to Cosa Nostra well into the late 1970s. Either to start a new crime family in Arizona or to take control of the existing one in Los Angeles, Bonanno, from his retirement perch in Tucson, apparently kept hope alive that one day he'd stage a triumphant Mafia comeback. (He never succeeded; we're not changing our tune: Bonanno never got anywhere with these efforts. But if any man ever c ould have done it, Joe Bonanno was him). And in the process, some FBI agents believed he orchestrated or helped plot at least one hit, of a Los Angeles capo who reportedly had been attempting to stage a coup and create a new West Coast family. Bonanno a...

In September 1964, illegal bugs planted in the meeting places of high-level Mafiosi across the nation by covert teams of FBI agents started to pick up bits of related news regarding the fate of a sitting member of the Mafia Commission. Bonanno consented to an interview with 60 Minutes. It was a mistake. The FBI black bag operation commenced as part of J. Edgar Hoover's post-Apalachin strategic intelligence gathering efforts, and in September 1964, it captured in real-time word of a Commission ruling as it hurtled like a brushfire from New York City to the nation's 24 crime families. Frank DeSimone, the Los Angeles Cosa Nostra boss, was heard in San Francisco telling a boss there that Joseph Bonanno was out. Thomas (Tommy Ryan) Eboli, acting boss of the Genovese Family, and underboss Gerry Catena together had traveled to the Providence, Rhode Island, headquarters of Raymond Patriarca, boss of the New England Family, to explain that Bonanno was out. Catena also was he...