Cosa Nostra News

UPDATED Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso should've been made years earlier than he was. It was a prison sentence for murder that delayed his induction into the Bonanno crime family. Vinny Gorgeous tells Anthony Donato what's what as Dom Cicale seems to spot surveillance activity. In 1984, Mikey Nose left his mortally wounded wife Evelina on a bench outside Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx. (Early reports noted that there had been two bullets in her head.) Mancuso had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 10 years in state prison. His induction into the Mafia was delayed because he had to serve that sentence, informants told the FBI. Mancuso was named acting boss in November 2004, making him the third acting Bonanno boss since Joseph Massino was arrested in 2002. Mancuso was also the fifth consecutive boss or acting boss of the Bonanno crime family to be convicted of a violent crime (the previous four were Anthony Spero, Massino, Anthony Urso, and Vincent Basciano). ...

De Niro as Burke, left, Ray Liotta as Henry Hill. No Vinny Asaro character was in Goodfellas, though he certainly was mentioned in the book. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.... Prosecutors blasted reputed Bonanno capo Vincent Asaro , 79, with new charges based on a superseding indictment, as reported last week . The charges have not been revealed yet because evidence recorded on tape needs to be digitized, prosecutors said. Described as looking gaunt, Asaro seemed to be suffering from involuntary shivering at the proceeding last week in which his lawyer attempted to push back the date of Asaro's racketeering trial slated for July in Brooklyn Federal Court..

Anthony Spero , former consiglieri/acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, died nearly six years ago. The once-supremely powerful "Old Man" of the American Mafia was 79 when he passed, a guest of the Federal Medical Center of the Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina. Spero died in prison in 2008. Spero lived it, walked it, talked it, breathed it. The only thing that may have captivated him as much as "the life" were his pigeons. That and frying chicken cutlets in the back of his club on Bath Avenue in Bath Beach, Brooklyn. He also ran the Big Apple Car, a limo service. He spent near-uninterrupted decades on the street before finally going away for life in 2002 on racketeering and murder charges in a case considered surprisingly circumstantial in that no direct testimony against him was ever offered. According to the book "Mob Boss," about Al D'Arco's life in the Luchese family, it was noted that  while servi...

Bud Zuccaro The fourth witness apparently is Peter "Bud" Zuccaro, who testified against Charles Carneglia (who had been Zuccaro's best man) and John Gotti Jr in Manhattan. The three other cooperating witnesses are Joe Massino, Salvatore Vitale, and a relative of the Asaros whom I refer to as The Mook, (a foolish, insignificant and contemptible person) Gaspare (Gary) Valenti. According to court papers CW-4 was an associate of the Gambino family, who pled guilty pursuant to a cooperation agreement in the Eastern District of New York to two counts of murder in-aid-of racketeering, narcotics distribution conspiracy and money laundering conspiracy. CW-4’s information has been corroborated by, among other things, physical surveillances, consensual recordings and the testimony of other witnesses. CW-4 cooperated in the hopes of obtaining leniency in sentencing and protection in the Witness Security program. At sentencing, the government moved, pursuant to U.S.S.G. § 5K1.1 ...

Vito Rizzuto was buried in a coffin made of gold. Canadian Mafia drug kingpin Vito Rizzuto , 67, died in a very unnatural way for someone in his line of work: of natural causes, on Dec. 23. His funeral mass this past Monday was held at Notre-Dame-de-la-Défense, a Catholic Church in Montreal's Little Italy. It is the same church where masses were held for Vito's father and one son, both named Nicolo, though the son preferred Nick. (Vito's other son, Leonardo, reportedly practices law). (The church has a certain notoriety of its own regarding its sizable cupola, brick facade and frescoes -- specifically one fresco painted prior to World War II that depicts Benito Mussolini signing the Lateran Accords in 1929, which recognized The State of the Vatican City, ensuring its "absolute and visible independence" and "to guarantee to it an indisputable sovereignty in international affairs." The treaty's principles are upheld today. Built by Italian ...

Vito Rizzuto in his prime. If Mafia history were taught in school, the date May 5, 1981, would be wrought with significance. That was the day of the infamous three-capo take-down in Brooklyn, when Bonanno family loyalists took on three bosses who were forming a rival faction to take control of the family. The loyalists won--and the family would continue to be run by its nominal boss, Philip Rusty Rastelli, a mostly impotent figure who held the top spot much longer than he would've liked in order to provide the true boss, Joe Massino, with cover.

Peter (Peter Pasta) Pellegrino, formerly of the Babylon, New York restaurant Peter’s Italian Restaurant, really is -- or was -- a gangster. Gordon gives a pep talk. Peter is ready for action..... The once-promising Bonanno crime family member who appeared in Kitchen Nightmares now calls himself a brokester . And the Bonanno crime family, with which he was once affiliated has disowned him. So has the rest of New York's Cosa Nostra, according to FBI documents and Peter Pasta himself. But before all that he appeared on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares in which he acted very much like the mobster he allegedly was trying to become around the time of filming. (See Peter's Italian Restaurant menu here .) Back then Peter Pasta was an up-and-coming Bonanno associate who "earned" $15 grand a week from bookmaking. At the time, he also owned two boats that he'd park in a pricey nearby Babylon harbor called Great South Bay. Gang Land News's Jerry  Capec...

I answered the phone this morning to:  "You didn't fucking tell me you were gonna write about Bobby!" No clue what he was talking about. "Bobby at the Post never lived in Knickerbocker Village. Sally killed him because he found out he was a cop." Ahhh.... okay, I knew.... I said, "I heard Vitale was a cop too." Sal Vitale ordered Perrino's murder. The skeletal remains weren't found until Vitale himself flipped. "Exactly. One cop killed the other. In the Mob. Take that shit down. I'm gonna tell you what really happened because you obviously don't know what the fuck happened." He started with:  "Baldo was scared shitless that night. You know how fucking hard it is to dig a hole in February?" Read this while you can. (This was solidly sourced, too, five years ago .... but I wouldn't have it any other way. And remember the truth is always stranger....) A Mafia associate/New York Post sup...