Cosa Nostra News

Excerpts from two handwritten letters, the first to the NYPD: I am not (a woman hater). I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam…I am on a different wavelength than everyone else—programmed to kill. To stop me you must kill me. Attention all police, Shoot me first—shoot to kill or else keep out of my way or you will die. I love to hunt. Prowling the street looking for fair game—tasty meat. The women of Queens are prettiest of all. It must be the water they drink. I live for the hunt—my life. Blood for Papa... Another, to newspaperman Jimmy Breslin: Hello from the gutters of N.Y.C. which are filled with dog manure, vomit, stale wine, urine and blood. Hello from the sewers of N.Y.C. which swallow up these delicacies when they are washed away by the sweeper trucks. Hello from the cracks in the sidewalks of N.Y.C. and from the ants that dwell in these cracks and feed in the dried blood of the dead that has settled into the cracks. ... -- David Berkowitz, "Son of Sam" Some of the ...

Mob associate Michael (Cookie) Durso flipped against the Genovese crime family and wore a wire hidden within a $3,000 Rolex wristwatch for three years -- all the while recording thousands of hours of "privileged" conversations among high-ranking members of the Genovese crime family. Farby Serpico, former Genovese  acting boss In the end he rode off into the sunset of the Witness Protection Program with wife Vanessa. Financially, the couple was not hurting, either; they were able to bring millions of dollars with them, as  Gangland News  reported  on February 21, 2002. Durso had been meeting with prosecutors to discuss flipping -- due to his longstanding beef over the murder of his cousin, a Genovese crime family loanshark. Durso was to meet with Mark Feldman, the head of the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney's Organized Crime unit, and Paul Weinstein, a chief prosecutor, for a third time on June 17, 1998. He couldn't make that meeting, though, as he was ar...