Cosa Nostra News

In 2015, one of the best documentaries about the American Mafia in years ran on television. It aired in the U.K. and was never seen on television in this country, though it's available online. (It is truly baffling that the best modern American Mafia documentaries are no longer being made in America.) ToniMarie Ricci, formerly married to Mikie Scars, descends from mob royalty. Now the same group out of Britain is airing a follow-up to the 2015 show. The new program, two hourlong episodes, is called Mafia Women with Trevor McDonald, which is slated to debut on February 16 of this year. This time, Trevor McDonald interviews the wives, girlfriends, sisters and daughters of members of the Mafia. Among the women appearing on the show are ToniMarie Ricci , ex-wife of Michael DiLeonardo, aka Mikie Scars, former Gambino capo , and Linda Scarpa, Gregory Scarpa Senior's daughter .

Earlier this year, Linda Scarpa, daughter of Colombo mobster Greg Scarpa, appeared on Crime Watch Daily , a true-crime show about which we have written in the past , partly to promote her recent memoir. Cosa Nostra News contributor Nick Christophers described Linda Scarpa's book, The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter , as one of the "few books (that) have truly captured mob life" accurately. (See the story here .) Gregory Scarpa, known as "The Grim Reaper," was one of the most violent mobsters ever to strut through New York City's boroughs -- and the fact that he was a longtime high-echelon FBI informant only made him more dangerous. As noted in January of this year , a federal judge years ago had voiced his belief that Scarpa's former FBI agent handler Lindley DeVecchio was indeed guilty of passing on key intelligence to Scarpa, who then put it to use to murder mob rivals.

A mob turncoat who flipped on a multitude of Colombo gangsters, including Thomas "Tommy Shots" Gioeli, and whose cooperation was described as "historic" was sentenced last Friday to no jail time. Thomas McLaughlin, the turncoat, was himself involved in three gangland hits, two of which were tied to the 1990s Colombo civil war. He also was a member of the Bay Parkway Boys, a farm team for the mob. In McLaughlin's case, it gave him entry into the Colombo crime family, one of the youngest and most violent of New York's Five Families. Tommy McLaughlin has a secret "I just want to apologize for my past and look forward to the future," McLaughlin, 46, told Judge Brian Cogan last week in Brooklyn Federal Court. One year after he'd finished serving a long prison term for a drug conviction, McLaughlin voluntarily began informing in 2009, and secretly recorded thousands of hours of conversations with mobsters.

Linda Scarpa's memoir about life with the mob hitter known as the Grim Reaper aka Greg Scarpa. Click on the cover to purchase.... By Nick Christophers, guest contributor, editor of Mob Candy (see his website ): We have been inundated with books, films and TV shows on the subject of the Mafia over the years. Wives, girlfriends and daughters have taken to the pen to expose their experiences. Yet many of them have either “sugar-coated” their stories or they really had no knowledge of “the life.” One of the earliest books that delved deep into the life was “ Mafia Marriage ” by Rosalie Bonanno, who was married to Salvatore Vincent “ Bill” Bonanno , the son of Cosa Nostra boss Joseph Bonanno . Since then there have been many attempts to expose the true meaning of living in that world, e.g., “ This Family of Mine ” by Victoria Gotti, daughter of John Gotti, former boss of the Gambino crime family; “ The Godfather’s Daughter ” by Rita Gigante, daughter of Vincent Louis G...

Mikie Scars memoir is a book that needs to be written. In the olden days, when mob guys referred to a contract, you could bet your bottom dollar on what the topic of discussion was. These days, however, such a conversation more than likely means the topic is a book or movie deal... Two major mob-related book deals have been announced so far this year. As noted earlier this month, former Philadelphia mob boss Ralph Natale has inked a deal to write his memoir. So far titled Lost Lives and Forgotten Vows, Thomas Dunne Books is slated to publish the book, which is slated to hit bookstores in the fall of 2016. Natale is writing the book with two others, Dan Pearson (of "I Married a Mobster") and New York Daily News reporter Larry McShane.

Angela Clemente was nearly beaten to  death  and  is in  dire  need of a liver transplant. Angela Clemente, who is both an inspiration and a friend, very much deserves this New York Times profile; she has done tons of work and has accomplished much with little recognition or compensation. As the New York Times writes below, "for nearly 15 years, [Angela] Clemente, 48 and a self-professed 'forensic analyst,' has waged an independent and improbable campaign to prove that the government turned a blind eye to as many as 39 murders committed in New York by turncoat gangsters it paid to work as informants." It was Angela who sued the Feds and used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain "more than 1,000 pages of previously classified material concerning Mr. Scarpa." (The same material was used by Peter Lance, the author of the true-crime book, Deal with the Devil , who also wrote the forward to John "Junior" Gotti's ebook .)

The Grim Reaper is back in the headlines, courtesy of Larry Mazza, who claims he had an affair with Scarpa's second wife, Linda Schiro, who inadvertently saved former FBI agent Lin DeVecchio when he was on trial. Greg Scarpa, feared Colombo enforcer , apparently had some pretty amazing secrets . Schiro was proven as unreliable on the witness stand by a team of reporters, Tom Robbins and Jerry Capeci. The two had been working on a book with Schiro earlier and had in their possession tape recordings of Schiro contradicting when she'd previously said about DeVecchio.