Cosa Nostra News

Aniello "Neil" Dellacroce was born on March 15, 1914, in New York City and died on Dec. 2, 1985, in New York City. He took to "the life" with vigor. First arrested at 16, Dellacroce swiftly went about establishing a solid criminal portfolio for himself, making it as diverse as he could. He was charged with a range of crimes and was in and out of prison most of his life. He'd served one-two year bids for assault, armed robbery, drug dealing. But Dellacroce, a work in progress, eventually specialized in murder. And for that, the Feds never really touched the longtime Gambino crime family underboss. Neil Dellacroce Serving as Carlo Gambino's underboss, then Paul Castellano's, Dellacroce lived a life of what can only be chronicled as unimaginable violence. As protégé to the " Lord High Executioner" himself, Albert Anastasia, Dellacroce was a Murder Inc. button man. He learned how to administer death by some of the best practitione...

75 years ago today Abe Reles went out the window... The Writers of Wrong is the name of a blog I discovered today; I knew it was a more-than-credible source once I saw the names attached to it... Christian Cipollini. .. Thomas Hunt ... and Patrick Downey (who authored a book on Legs Diamond I am currently enjoying immensely. And speaking of books, Cip and Downey both contributed to a fictional short story compendium , Cocktail Noir: From Gangsters and Gin Joints to Gumshoes and Gimlets .) Mob historians are invited to contribute, as the blog notes : " Writers of crime history are encouraged to submit news releases; short book excerpts; event announcements; links to videos, images, websites, etc., for publication in this blog using the 'Contact Us' form at the bottom of the page ." On this date in 1941, informant Abe "Kid Twist" Reles fell to his death at the Half Moon Hotel, Coney Island. The thirty-five-year-old Reles, who had been coop...

Christian Cipollini, the award-winning author of three true-crime books, has broken new ground with his latest effort, which revisits a somewhat familiar topic: Salvatore Lucania -- that's Charlie "Lucky" Luciano to you. Cipollini is a standout in the Mafia-based true-crime genre. In addition to authoring three books --  Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend ,  Murder Inc.  and  Diary of a Motor City Hit Man  -- he's appeared on several high-profile television shows, including the Biography Channel's  Gangsters: America's Most Evil  and the History Channel's  United Stuff of America  (in addition to also serving as a consultant/producer for National Geographic's critically acclaimed series,  DRUGS, INC. ) The "lab," where Christian writes, muses, maybe smokes a cigar.... Most recently, he appeared at the Las Vegas Mob Museum to discuss the Mafia's pre-WWII hit squad known as Murder Incorporated (the topic of...

Click on image to see on Amazon Yes, Montagna part two and a lot of other things in the works -- just saw this, thought it might interest some of you. Good historical Mafia fiction is hard to find.... "War makes patriots of us all — even Mafia capos. Albert Anastasia, a big deal in Murder Inc., enlisted in the Army. Joseph (Socks) Lanza, who controlled the rackets at the Fulton Fish Market, let naval officers work undercover on his fleet. And Long Island mobsters were said to have helped capture saboteurs who came ashore from a German submarine. These and other real-life gangsters appear in THE LETTER WRITER (Knopf, $26.95), Dan Fesperman’s dynamic novel set in New York during World War II." The New York Times today includes a story about this fictional book that takes place during WW2 and includes real Mafia figures among its characters. Among them is Meyer Lansky, "who arranged for Mafia dons to coordinate their war efforts with Frank Hogan, the New York...

Abe "Kid Twist" Reles Abe "Kid Twist" Reles is doubtlessly remembered best for being the proverbial canary who couldn't fly (but did indeed sing). In November 1941 the mob may have gotten to Kid Twist while he was under police protection at a hotel in Coney Island, New York. We say "may have gotten" because no one knows for certain who orchestrated what may have been a hit. We repeat "may have been a hit" because there's also the chance that Reles did indeed fall to his doom (the more or less "official" opinion on the matter) while attempting to climb down a twisted roll of bed sheets to get out of the hotel, either to escape or play a practical joke of some sort on his alleged protectors.

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.

The swath of marshland beside the Belt Parkway along Jamaica Bay's northern edge is a wasteland, a place I have driven through my whole life. I remember staring at those drab-colored reeds as a child, sitting in the backseat on the way to or from my grandparents' house for Sunday dinner. I refer here to the moldering woods stretching for miles along Jamaica Bay’s northern edges, near where Brooklyn dissolves into Queens. It is a place well out of sight for most New Yorkers, and therefore out of mind. A law enforcement officer walks throug h  an old mob dumping ground. Having the imagination that I have, that desolate expanse sparked all kinds of dark fantasies in my brain, most of which centered on monsters rising up out of the tall reeds while dead bodies decomposed beneath them. I was right about the bodies being there (not to mention a mere letter "b" away from actually hitting the nail on the head). Mobsters, for decades, left the victims of count...