Cosa Nostra News

UPDATED : The Interboro Parkway opened in June 1935 -- and was renamed the Jackie Robinson Expressway in 1997. Junk(yard) boss: Luchese capo Paul Vario. It cut through cemeteries and residential real estate, requiring the relocation of burial sites and the razing of homes. The parkway's tricky route is why it reportedly took much longer to build than other New York City parkways. It also has many curves -- because the planners and builders had sought to minimize the number of burial plots that had to be relocated. Like many places in New York, that parkway has secrets.... The Interboro was the favorite parkway of savvier New Yorkers who, once upon a time, knew it was the city's least-trafficked major artery, and that even at rush hour, traffic rarely clogged it. (Cab drivers generally didn't know it existed.) The parkway runs through Brooklyn and one of the entrances is near Fulton Street (the Fulton Street in Brooklyn, of course, not the one in Manhattan), w...

Detective LeVien was part of a 1972 sting centered on a junkyard in Canarsie, Brooklyn.  New York’s five families would meet here. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times New York Detective Who Infiltrated the Mafia, Dies at 68 - The New York Times : Douglas A. LeVien Jr., a former undercover police detective who in 1972 infiltrated the meeting ground used by New York’s five Mafia families, a landmark operation that produced scores of convictions, died on July 30 while vacationing in Saratoga, N.Y. He was 68. The cause was a heart attack, his son Vincent Douglas LeVien said. Except for several months in the late 1970s when, under apparent threat of death from a high-ranking mobster, he was placed in the federal witness protection program, Detective LeVien lived in Brooklyn all his life.

Meyer Lansky spent the final years of his life in sun-baked Miami Beach, Florida, which was not his first choice. Lansky was a legitimately tough bastard, as one Miami cop learned. He had fought like hell to stay in Israel, believing it to be the one place where he could live out the rest of his life and die in peace. But following two years of legal battles, he was tossed out. How sincere was Lansky about wanting to live in Israel? Probably very sincere. After all, Lansky himself had played something of a role in Israel's very founding. He had smuggled arms (rifles, specifically) there in 1948 to assist Menachem Begin and his guerrillas as they helped to violently forge the Jewish state's foundation. In fact, years after he was kicked out, Lansky tried to return. When Begin and his hard-line Likud party rose to power in May of 1977, ending the 30-year-reign of the Israeli Labor party, to which David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir had belonged, Lansky called a key co...

Suspects were never in short supply regarding the Michael Meldish murder . The former Purple Gang boss was offed in November 2013 in what's described as a classic gangland hit tableau. Michael Meldish, former Purple Gang leader, may have died for pissing off a high-ranking Luchese Mafioso. His body, expensively attired, ensconced in a camel-colored leather jacket, was slumped over in the driver's seat, his head back, his mouth agape. “Michael was a stone-cold killer,” Joseph Coffey, former commanding officer of the NYPD’s organized crime homicide task force, told the New York Daily News.

See part one of this story, Path to WITSEC Built on Omerta's Dead, here . In December 1964, Pascal "Paddy" Calabrese robbed Buffalo's City Hall during daylight. While serving a five-year stretch for his daring but unsuccessful feat, he started nursing a deep hatred for his boss, Stefano Magaddino, who had cut him loose the moment he was cuffed by law enforcement. Buffalo wiseguy Paddy Calabrese helped create the Witness Protection Program. Magaddino had done the same to the drug-dealing Agueci brothers, forgetting about them as soon as they were arrested. Magaddino had been well aware of the brothers' narcotics business and was glad to pocket their generous tributes in return for extending them police protection.  But Magaddino couldn't have cared less when the cops busted the two. While out on bail,  Albert Agueci  threatened the 75-year-old Cosa Nostra boss, saying if Magaddino didn't use his connections to help him and his brother, he'd talk to the ...

Jerry Capeci's GanglandNews  today reports that "25 inmates — including five mobsters and two Albanian hoods whose names Gang Land has obtained," engaged in a "bloody jailhouse brawl"during leisure time in the rec room of the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, on Saturday, March 14. Danbury, the article noted, is a low-security facility that houses 750 sentenced inmates. Alex Rudaj,of Albanian Mafia. Following the violent confrontation, everyone involved was "thrown into "the hole" after receiving stitches or treated for cuts, bloody noses and other non-life-threatening injuries." Prison officials and the FBI are investigating but declined to confirm or deny the fight, the website reported. Sources say the suspected mob pugilists included Colombo soldier Vito Guzzo, 50, Gambino mobsters Michael (Mikey Y) Yannotti, 51, Michael Roccaforte, 38, and Neil Lombardo, 59, and Bonanno wiseguy Robert Lino, 48. Their primary vict...

"In this life, there’s a lotta hypocrisy that you just learn to live with—like there’s a rule against dealing drugs, and Gene Gotti [another Gotti brother], is doin’ a long bit for that; you’re not supposed to go with other goodfellas’ wives—happens all the time; you’re not allowed to kill a big boss without the other families’ permission—John Gotti and Sammy whacked Nasabeak [Beak-nose Paul Castellano] and almost started a war."  --Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo "Ah, Christ on the fucking cross. Right now I'd give my fucking life just to have fucking Buffalo win one."--John Gotti courtesy of Wikimedia Commons  A Brooklyn-based Bonanno crime family associate who served time with Gene Gotti took issue with the headline to this story today and contacted us accordingly. He strongly disagrees with our use of the word "Gentleman." "You're losing your touch. Don't get it twisted: I would never bow down to Gene Gott...

TheCrimeBeat.com : On Dec. 11, 1978, a crew led by mob associate Jimmy Burke pulled off a daring stunning heist at JFK Airport that netted $5 million in cash and $1 million in precious stones. The case, which was immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s movie “Goodfellas,” has puzzled authorities for 36 years. Only one robber was ever convicted for the crime and the whereabouts of the loot has remained a secret…until now.

Alleged Gambino associate Scott Fappiano. Todt Hill mobster  Scott Fappiano, 53, who spent 21 years behind bars until DNA evidence cleared him, lost his "malicious prosecution" case this past week. On Wednesday, Jan. 7, a Brooklyn judge issued a summary ruling against him. See Scott Fappiano decision --  click here for PDF .

Incredibly absorbing documentary about the mob's decades-long control of prizefighting. Most notable - the film uses modern technology to highlight the so-called " phantom punch " that sent Sonny Liston to the mat. This knockdown -- further screwed up by the referee, a former boxer himself -- marked the beginning of the end of both Liston's boxing career and the mob's influence over the sport. (Some even believe the mob murdered Liston.) The two fights between Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston for the World Heavyweight Championship were among the most watched and controversial fights in the sport's history. The phantom punch ended the second fight between Muhammad Ali (then still known as Cassius Clay) and Sonny Liston.

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...