Cosa Nostra News

Aging, physically ill, embittered, and alone, Ralph (Whitey) Tropiano finally reached the end of his rope at Leavenworth, then one of the toughest prisons in the country, and he played his final card: He sent a message to the FBI that he was, at long last, ready to talk... Not too many years earlier, in 1964, Whitey Tropiano had been at his pinnacle when he hit upon what he believed was the grand solution to all his pressing legal problems. He’d simply give the cops in New Haven, Connecticut, piles of cash and they'd leave him the hell alone. To protect his gambling operations in New Haven, Whitey offered to send payments of $150-$500 a week, in addition to a one-time upfront good faith payment of $2,000 each, to New Haven Detective Stephen Ahern and a West Hartford police official. Ahern and the West Hartford cop graciously accepted Whitey’s largess, thanked him profusely, and then went straight to their superiors to tell them all the details of what had transpired. In Feb...

The following is the first in a series about the mob in New Haven, Connecticut… It started off originally as a story about William Grasso — but while researching him, we found ourselves spending more time on Grasso's mentor, and decided an even more worthwhile series would detail his exploits first... Ralph “Whitey” Tropiano. Connecticut had a peculiar relationship with organized crime. Located at about the midpoint between New York and Boston, it never had its own formally designated crime family. However, due to its proximity to New York and Boston, it always attracted attention and several crime families had interests in the state over the decades. The notoriously bad-tempered, yet supremely disciplined  William (The Wild Man) Grasso, who rose to become underboss of the Patriarca crime family under Raymond Junior, once reminisced with an associate about old times and noted how he’d gotten his big break. It arrived in the form of a 10-year prison sentence. “Best t...