Cosa Nostra News

A federal appeals court dismissed a defamation lawsuit last Monday filed by a convicted murderer serving life in prison. The lawsuit, over the book  The Quiet Don , about the late Cosa Nostra boss Russell Bufalino , had caused the defendant depression, and supposedly made other inmates target him for violence. Coviello was arrested in 1978 for murder. In its order, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Louis Coviello, the convict who filed the lawsuit, had failed to pay the fee on time to have his case heard. Coviello was challenging a lower court ruling that had thrown out the $1 million defamation suit against the book's author and publishers: The Berkley Publishing Group and the Penguin Group.

A federal judge voiced his belief that the former FBI agent who was Greg Scarpa Senior's handler had indeed passed on intel that resulted in murders. Judge Korman Judge Edward Korman’s words were recently uncovered in a 2012 transcript of a court case related to Gregory Scarpa Jr. The judge was referring to murders that were part of the early 1990s Colombo crime family wa r. “It was my view and remains my view that Lin DeVecchio provided information to Scarpa that got people killed,” Korman said, according to the transcript.  “I found it pretty outrageous and the bottom line was, of course, nothing happened to Lin DeVecchio. He was permitted to retire and in his retirement was actually doing background checks for the (FBI),” the judge said. Scarpa Jr. was  seeking a reduction of his racketeering sentence  as a reward for helping the feds find explosives hidden in the home of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, as  noted back in August, whe...

Dan E. Moldea, author of The Hoffa Wars and Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer , has written a story that will be published Thursday on Jerry Capeci's GangLand News website. Apparently, he'll tell us, once and for all, what the hell happened to James R. Hoffa. From Gangland New s: Coming next week, a Gang Land special. On the 40th anniversary of one of the great Mafia mysteries — the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa — investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, the leading expert on Hoffa, will tell you, based on his 40 years of investigating the storied mob rubout, what happened, who did it, and where Hoffa ended up.

Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran Did Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran kill Hoffa? As one journalist noted: Sheeran's "deathbed confession" is still the most believable theory ever to come to light. “History Detectives Special Investigations,” “Who Killed Jimmy Hoffa?” -- which ran recently this week -- purported to take a fresh look at the slaying of Jimmy Hoffa, the former head of the Teamsters union who vanished from the face of the earth on July 30, 1975. It was the perfect mob hit and a high-profile public figure, too.