Cosa Nostra News

On Tuesday Federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss a perjury case against a Rhode Island mob associate/bookie. Gaythorne (Poochie) Angell Jr., 84, was indicted in 2016 for lying to a grand jury about shakedown money paid to the mob by the Foxy Lady strip club. He is the Angell family’s patriarch — whose friends range from Smith Hill politicians to Federal Hill wiseguys. Poochie has long denied he was anything but a consultant. But a 2009 court document signed by a Foxy Lady lawyer showed that Angell had a previously undisclosed financial interest in the club, raising questions about the city’s oversight of its liquor-licensing laws. He since successfully completed a pretrial diversion program, as prosecutors noted in a filing in U.S. District Court, Providence. If a judge agrees to the dismissal, Angell, of East Greenwich, will not face the perjury charge in federal court. Jim Martin, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said that prosecutors and Angell agreed...

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...

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 .

Reputed New England boss "Spucky" Spagnolo is 72. Two New England Mafiosi in their 70s, including the alleged acting Patriarca crime family boss, are going to prison after copping to a years-long extortion scheme in federal court.  On December 16, Antonio “Spucky” Spagnolo, 73, and Pryce “Stretch” Quintina, 75, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to affect commerce by extortion. Prosecutors alleged that Spagnolo, of Revere is the acting boss of the New England Mafia. Co-defendant, Quintina, also of Revere, reported to Spagnolo, prosecutors said. Both men pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Boston to charges of conspiracy to affect commerce by extortion for threatening the owner of the Revere Moose Lodge and another businessman, the Boston Globe  reported , If Judge Patti B. Saris approves a plea agreement between prosecutors and the two mobsters, Spagnolo will be sentenced to two years in prison and Quintana to 18 months. A senten...

John Alite recently took to the podium at Las Vegas's Mob Museum , the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement. He offered an Author Talk spotlighted on his collaboration with acclaimed Philadelphia-based journalist George Anastasia , who wrote  Gotti’s Rules: The Story of John Alite, Junior Gotti and the Demise of the American Mafia . In an even, somber tone, he voiced his experiences and perceptions as an associate of the Gambino crime family during John Gotti's reign. John Alite speaks at the Las Vegas Mob Museum. Alite's presentation was provided free of charge with museum admission (and for museum members). A video of the presentation can be viewed on this story's jump page.

Phil Leonetti is one of our favorite former gangsters.  His inherent talent for being unintentionally hilarious we deem as legendary. And despite all the years he's spent out of his former life, he still doesn't seem to appreciate the magnitude of some crimes. Like murder. Phil Leonetti Did you see the interview where the newscaster asked him if he, Phil, thought it odd that he had married the widow of a man he himself had murdered?

See part one of this story, Path to WITSEC Built on Omerta's Dead, here . In December 1964, Pascal "Paddy" Calabrese robbed Buffalo's City Hall during daylight. While serving a five-year stretch for his daring but unsuccessful feat, he started nursing a deep hatred for his boss, Stefano Magaddino, who had cut him loose the moment he was cuffed by law enforcement. Buffalo wiseguy Paddy Calabrese helped create the Witness Protection Program. Magaddino had done the same to the drug-dealing Agueci brothers, forgetting about them as soon as they were arrested. Magaddino had been well aware of the brothers' narcotics business and was glad to pocket their generous tributes in return for extending them police protection.  But Magaddino couldn't have cared less when the cops busted the two. While out on bail,  Albert Agueci  threatened the 75-year-old Cosa Nostra boss, saying if Magaddino didn't use his connections to help him and his brother, he'd talk to the ...

By now, most have probably read about the FBI releasing a recording of a Mafia induction ceremony from 25 years ago in Medford. The Boston Globe , specifically, has been getting plenty of mileage out of this story for many of those years. The story includes a huge error that's been repeated in many of last week's rewrites. On Oct. 29, 1989, New England Mafia boss Raymond “Junior” Patriarca anointed four new soldiers into his crime family. A full-blown ceremony with a total of 21 wiseguys in attendance, it occurred following a civil war.

Boston mobster/friend to Darin Bufalino Charles Lightbody spoke freely on a prison telephone call. POSTSCRIPT ADDED: Three men were indicted on state and federal charges earlier this month for deceiving Wynn Resorts Ltd. and state gaming regulators by hiding the fact that a man with alleged ties to the New England Cosa Nostra held a financial interest in a parcel of land purchased by the gaming company. According to U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz and Attorney General Martha Coakley’s Office , the trio all held a financial interest in FBT Everett Realty LLC, the entity that owned the title to the land on which Wynn Resorts had proposed to construct a destination resort casino. Charles Lightbody, 54, of Revere, Dustin DeNunzio, 37, of Cambridge, and Anthony Gattineri, 56, of Winchester were indicted on Oct. 2 by a federal grand jury for their role in concealing from Wynn Resorts and Massachusetts gaming regulators the financial interests of Lightbody, a convicted felon and known ...

Early mugshot of young Raymond Patriarca . Was Federal Hill really safer back when Ray Patriarca ran all of New England from the Coin-o-Matic on Atwells Avenue ? I raise this question following a recent report that ran the following quote: "There is a perception that things were less violent on Federal Hill during the Raymond Patriarca era but I disagree since it is only the nature of the violence that has changed,” explained Former Rhode Island Attorney General Arlene Violet, who oversaw a major crackdown on mob activity during her tenure as Rhode Island Attorney General from 1984-1986.