Cosa Nostra News

A Federal appeals court in Boston yesterday (Friday, September 24) upheld the life sentences of New England Cosa Nostra boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and mob associate Paul Weadick for the 1993 murder of Steven DiSarro, a Federal witness whose remains were found in an unmarked grave in Rhode Island in 2016. 1993 surveillance photo, from left: Salemme, Flemmi with back to camera, Frank Jr.  According to Federal prosecutors, Salemme, 88, held a secret interest in a South Boston nightclub  called The Channel, which DiSarro purchased. Salemme had DiSarro killed after he began to believe that the nightclub owner was talking to the FBI and was about to implicate him in criminal activity. The Fed's star witness at Salemme and Weadick's 2018 trial was Stephen (The Rifleman) Flemmi, the longtime partner of Winter Hill boss Whitey Bulger . Flemmi, 84, who is serving a life sentence for 10 murders, testified that he had walked in on the Salemmes, father and son, and Weadick...

Final The Bonded Vault Company was a commercial safe-deposit business that occupied a vault inside Hudson Fur Storage in Providence, Rhode Island. It was an unofficial "bank" for members and associates of the Patriarca crime family. Located at 101 Cranston St., the bank consisted of 146 safe-deposit boxes (each of which was 2 feet high, 2 feet wide and 4 feet deep). Patriarca allowed his bookies, associates, and amici to store their valuables there. And they did, putting everything and anything -- cash, guns, gold bars, and jewelry -- in the Patriarca family's "bank." A film dramatizing the story of the infamous Bonded Vault robbery is hitting theaters next month. Partially filmed in Providence, Rhode Island, the film stars Theo Rossi (Marvel’s Luke Cage, Sons Of Anarchy), Clive Standen (Taken, Vikings, Everest), Emmy winner Samira Wiley (Handmaid’s Tale), Oscar nominee Chazz Palminteri as mob boss Raymond Patriarca, and Golden G...

A man gunned down Sunday morning in what Rhode Island law enforcement authorities say was a gangland hit was a known associate of former New England Mafia boss Luigi "Baby Shacks" Manocchio who had robbed an alleged associate of the Gambino crime family, as per a Target 12 report . Luigi "Baby Shacks" Manocchio. Napoloen Andrade, 37, of Central Falls,  was shot in the shadow of the Pawtucket halfway house  where he was sent prior to his release.  Andrade — who has a lengthy criminal record that includes violent crime and drug trafficking— was finishing a sentence for his role in a 2010 Connecticut home invasion of a Gambino crime family associate, 78. In 2014, Andrade was convicted for the robbery. "He has a lot of enemies," retired R.I. State Police Col. Steven O'Donnell, a veteran mob investigator, told Target 12. "There are a lot of people, based on things that have happened over his lifetime — it could push law enforcement in...

UPDATED New England Mafia capo Edward Lato, 71, was transferred Wednesday from Fort Dix federal prison in New Jersey to a halfway house. Eddie Lato According to the BOP inmate locator he's in a facility in Philadelphia. According to Target 12, which broke the story, Lato was sent to Pawtucket in Providence. Lato was eligible for release to home confinement or a halfway house on Jan. 25, according to the Target 12 story, which based that on information acquired from the Federal Bureau of Prisons via a Freedom of Information Act request. Lato's attorney, Mark Smith, remarked that he had "no knowledge" of Lato's situation. We've emailed Tim White, the reporter whose byline is on the Target 12 story, for clarification, and we'll update this story accordingly. Tim White replied: "Philadelphia is where the BOP's Residential Reentry Center is. As I reported in my story, he is at a halfway house in Pawtucket (halfway ho...

The most amazing thing about FBI Special Agent Michael R. McGowan (retired) is not that he is the first -- and so far only -- undercover FBI agent to infiltrate three crime families. Mike McGowan Nor that he has infiltrated Russian crime groups, Mexican drug cartels, and outlaw motorcycle clubs, nor gone undercover to nab criminals of a multitude of stripes, from contract murderers to corrupt politicians. It's not even that he won recognition from the highest levels of the FBI and the Department of Justice for completing some of the most daring and deadly assignments in recent memory. What bedazzles us most of all about  Mike McGowan is that he did all those things while sporting the same gigantic walrus mustache he sports even now (see it, up above?). "That was a little flipoff to the bad guys," he told us recently in a telephone interview. Both the mustache and its owner have been prominently mentioned in recordings of discussions among so...

Former New England mob boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, 85, has appealed his conviction and life sentence for the 1993 murder of Steven DiSarro, a South Boston nightclub owner. Salemme's attorney filed the appeal Wednesday He and co-defendant Paul Weadick, 63, were both convicted in Boston federal court in June. Weadick also is appealing. DiSarro, a 43-year-old father of five, was killed to prevent him from cooperating with federal authorities. His remains were unearthed behind a Providence mill building in 2016. The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston will hear the appeal. Salemme was in the Federal Witness Protection Program when DiSarro’s remains were discovered, leading to Salemme's arrest. At the sentencing hearing, DiSarro’s son, Michael, told Salemme about irony. “(Y)ou killed our father for thinking he was going to rat and become a snitch. When actually, Mr. Salemme, you ended up being the snitch... “You are a coward a...

UPDATED, REVISED Anthony L. DiNunzio, 58, of East Boston, Massachusetts, "the alleged leader of the New England organized crime family of La Cosa Nostra,"  was sentenced to six years in prison in 2012 on racketeering and extortion charges. Reputed acting boss Anthony DiNunzio, left, with Anthony Gambale in 2002. DiNunzio  was released a few weeks ago, on February 22, 2018, as pe r the BOP inmate locator website. In a colorful indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that DiNunzio had become the acting boss of New England’s Cosa Nostra crime family in late 2009 and oversaw the organization’s extortion of Rhode Island strip clubs and other such businesses, demanding payments of $2,000 to $6,000 per month. DiNunzio was arrested in 2012 at the Gemini Social Club in Boston's North End. He was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for racketeering. He's the brother of Carmen “The Big Cheese” DiNunzio, who served a state sentence for briber y and was r...

REVISED WITH NEW PHOTOS In May, the Sunday New York Times ran a special section profile about a largely unknown Boston gangster with ties to a legendary Cosa Nostra boss. For those of us interested in the mob, this is a good thing.... A young tough guy.... Reporter Dan Barry's lengthy piece detailed the story of Ralph DeMasi, an aging New England mobster who specialized in robbing armored trucks. DeMasi was known as a dedicated family man for whom crime was a 9-to-5 job, with the odd late night occasionally thrown in. Like Gambino capo Joe Piney Armone, in his later years... Both DeMasi and Armone reportedly  NEVER stepped out on their wives. ....  "The police routinely watched him drive off in the morning to lay the groundwork for a planned robbery, then return home in the evening, leaving the carousing to others." “That was not like the other wiseguys I knew,” a former Rhode Island law enforcement official told Barry. “Ralph was all about work....

The murder rate in the U.S. has fallen dramatically in the past 25 years -- the FBI pegged the decline from 1993 to 2015 at 50% while the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported a 77% drop. Still, the glut of daily television fare seems to suggest that there's nothing like murder. Raymond Patriarca As a New York Times story recently noted of true-crime television: "it seems as if this genre has no saturation point." And the trend shows no signs of abating, considering the recent launch of  Beyond Reasonable Doubt  last Friday, which focused on the story of the Green River Killer, the most prolific serial killer in American history. Debuting this week are  Sin City Justice  and #Murder .