Cosa Nostra News

In a New York Times editorial, the stepson of Chuckie O'Brien — the foster son of Jimmy Hoffa — calls The Irishman "by far the greatest depiction of the false charge against my stepfather." ... "My 86-year-old stepfather ... for more than half his life, 44 years ... has watched himself portrayed in news articles, books and motion pictures — most recently, in Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” — as someone he is not. The effect on his life has been devastating." If you haven't watched The Irishman , watch it... What’s that? Did Frank Sheeran really kill Jimmy Hoffa (and Joe Gallo, etc.)? How about we put that aside for a sec -- this interest in solving murders. Let's take our Sherlock Holmes hats-- the deerstalkers -- off. If you want to learn about the Hoffa murder, we'll send you a list of books. Here's a secret: Martin Scorsese doesn't give a rat's ass who killed James Riddle Hoffa. And Crazy Joey Gallo (and JFK, m...

Almost 45 years later, and the tips apparently still keep a-coming. Hoffa with his chief lieutenant Frank Sheeran. Michigan law enforcement yesterday morning used cadaver dogs to search for the remains of James Riddle Hoffa , the (very) appropriately named one-time Teamsters boss who abruptly disappeared off the face of the earth in 1975. Detectives with the Michigan State Police, forensic anthropologists, and a K-9 handler with dogs trained in alerting to the presence of cadavers searched a parcel of land in Hillsdale Township. They didn't find him. The source of the tip was an unidentified woman who inherited the land when her father passed away. She claims to have family ties to the American Mafia. Hoffa, who had been president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, disappeared from a Bloomfield Township restaurant on July 30, 1975. He was declared legally dead in 1982. The case went cold, with sporadic tips sending investigators on multiple...

EXPANDED By now, we thought we would've watched (and rewatched) Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman , the gangster flick we've been hearing, reading, and writing about since 2011, when Robert De Niro accepted the role . Triumvirate: De Niro, Scorsese, Pesci Netflix nabbed the rights to the long-gestating epic in 2017. The film, the acclaimed director's ninth outing with DeNiro, also stars Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, and Bobby Cannavale (who gave a stellar turn as Boardwalk Empire's villainous Gyp Rosetti .) Based on I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, the film tells the story of union strong-arm/Jimmy Hoffa confidant Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran. The film will debut this fall. (Sebastian Maniscalco reportedly confirmed this on the Joe Rogan podcast , saying it'll be out this October.) The Irishman was expected to be a smash at this year's Cannes film festival, but then Scorsese decided to use the same laborious VFX technology used in Th...

A great nephew of a former legendary power in the Genovese crime family was arrested Tuesday morning for allegedly assaulting a lady friend in a Midtown Manhattan apartment last November. Tony Pro will be a major character in The Irishman. He was known to make enemies vanish forever. Danny Provenzano, 55, an actor/indie film director, was in custody awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court after surrendering to authorities. Danny is a great-nephew of the late Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, a reputed capo for Vito Genovese. Danny was arrested over allegations that he got into a dispute with Pamela O’Neil, 51, over money he owed her. On November 26, she alleged that he shoved her to the floor inside a W. 31st St. apartment, according to the NYPD. He also slammed her arm in a doorway, causing bruising and back pain, cops said. O’Neil, who is disabled, had won a disability settlement that she also alleges Provenzano stole from her. She also alleges that he has been...

Gregory Scarpa Senior, the longtime Colombo capo/FBI informant who stopped counting his murders at 50 (think about that), was done in not by a bullet, but by a little white pill. Larry Mazza He took too many aspirins.*  That caused stomach problems, which resulted in surgeries, then the blood transfusion from which he contracted the AIDS virus that wore him down to nothing and ended his life. So think about this: If Greg Scarpa had only taken Tylenol, then lots more people probably would've been robbed and murdered in New York City. "He was vicious and he corrupted people," Larry Mazza , Scarpa's protege, recently recalled. "He was cunning and wily -- he had all the street smarts." For Larry, life is less deadly today and much  better. He's written a memoir of mob life in New York,  The Life,  and was in the two-part A&E John Gotti documentary,  Godfather and Son . He scored a high-profile role in what will be the hottest Mafia m...

Felix (Skinny Razor) DiTullio  played a crucial role in the lives of many young Philadelphia wiseguys. Friendly Lounge was Skinny Razor's joint... DiTullio 's lounge was a veritable mob college, the place where Wiseguy 101 was taught by the consummate professional. (An awful lot of gangland hits allegedly occurred there, too.) The Friendly Lounge's most famous graduate likely was mob boss Nicodemo (Little Nicky) Scarfo, who surprisingly wasn't portrayed in The Irishman, and the second, mob boss Ralph Natale. Skinny Razor also is considered one of the Mafia's foremost assassins. And now, the new Martin Scorsese film The Irishman, which debuted on Netflix nationwide last week, has given Skinny Razor a much higher profile than he ever had (or would've wanted). The film is based on the book  I Heard You Paint Houses , which purports to tell the story of Philadelphia union heavy Frank Sheeran, who claimed to have killed both James R. Hoff...

Netflix has expanded beyond its original business model as a rental service of prerecorded entertainment. In addition to offering DVDs and streaming services for rent, it also has crossed over to the production side of the entertainment industry, producing and distributing its own television shows, documentaries and feature films, in addition to acquiring such programs from production companies. The Irishman: director, left, and  some of the best actors working in films today. Late last month, IndieWire broke the news that Netflix had nabbed the rights to Martin Scorsese ’s long-gestating gangster epic, The Irishman , the acclaimed director's ninth outing with Robert DeNiro. Also starring: Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, and Bobby Cannavale (who turned out a stellar performance as Boardwalk Empire's desperately needed villian, Gyp Rosetti .)