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Showing posts with the label Phil (Rusty) Rastelli

Ex-Bonanno Boss Joe Massino Detailed His Role In Galante Hit (And It Wasn't What You Think)

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REVISED, EXPANDED Carmine Galante straightened out Joe Massino, Anthony Spero, Joe Chilli, and three others  on June 14, 1977, in a bar in Queens.  Massino testified that during the ceremony, Galante asked each of them who the boss of the Bonanno family was, and each replied, "you."  Massino, however, replied "Rastelli." Joe Massino came from a working-class Maspeth background, the second of three sons of a second-generation Italian-American couple. He survived and thrived in a longtime career in the American Mafia, rising to the epitome when he became boss of the Bonanno crime family. In the early 1990s, when most of the other New York bosses were incarcerated, Massino stood alone as the most powerful Mafioso on the street. Goombata: Gene Gotti, left, and Joe Massino walk-talk. Massino rose to the top on the backs of a multitude of dead men.  As protégé to Bonanno powerhouse Philip Rastelli, who spent most of his reign in prison, Massino first made his mark in ...

Fear City: Netflix Doc Highlights When Mafia Commission Ran New York

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Unless you've been lost on a deserted island the past week, you probably know that Netflix dropped a trailer for Fear City , the streaming platform's three-part docu-series on the New York Mafia that will premiere in a couple of days on July 22 ( SEE TRAILER BELOW ). Paul Castellano, Carmine (Junior) Persico, Phil (Rusty) Rastelli, Anthony (Tony Ducks) Corallo, Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno. Fear City (a riff on New York's "Fun City" nickname—though Fun City itself was meant to be sarcastic ) focuses on the Mafia Commission Case (aka, United States v. Anthony Salerno, et al, a 22-count Manhattan-based indictment that was handed down in February 1985), which was the Feds attempt to destroy the New York Mafia by taking out its "brain trust," in one fell swoop. (They were successful to an extent.)  Fear City is produced by RAW, the company behind Don’t F**K With Cats (an excellent documentary on Netlix right now: watch it immediately),  and Brillste...