Cosa Nostra News

Vincent (Kojak) Giattino, 69, one of the few members of Bonanno soldier Thomas (Tommy Karate) Pitera 's crew who didn't flip after arrest over 30 years ago, is once again seeking compassionate release.    Giattino was on America's Most Wanted prior to his 1991 arrest in Florida. Two previous compassionate release efforts were nixed, including one this past July that Judge Margo K. Brodie shot down, noting, Giattino “committed two heinous murders using guns equipped with silencers and trafficked narcotics as a devout member of BCF (Bonanno Crime Family).” With this latest effort, attorney Anthony Cecutti is hoping he can win release for Giattino by highlighting two recent decisions to release two other convicted murderers who were serving life sentences. Those decisions involved Colombo capo Anthony Russo, who ordered murders during the Colombo war, and Paul Moore, a drug trafficker who fatally shot a rival. Both were given reduced sentences on the same day last month by Jud...

Rudolph Giuliani, when he was US Attorney for the Southern District of New York*, personally devised the strategy behind the Commission Case, the first effort by law enforcement to attack the Mafia by way of its ''board of directors.” Or, as put forth in the 22-count indictment, the defendants were charged with conducting the affairs of ''the commission of La Cosa Nostra'' in a racketeering pattern that included murders, loan-sharking, labor payoffs, and extortion of the concrete industry in New York City. Mathew Mari's VIEW FROM MULBERRY STREET podcast is a labor of love. Giuliani said his vision began taking shape (yes, to simplify we’ll take Rudy at his word for now) after he read Joseph Bonanno Sr.'s 1983 autobiography, A Man of Honor, which, he said, described the inner workings of the Commission from an earlier historical era. The other vital component of his vision arrived via an August 1983 meeting between Rudy and Ronald Goldstock, head of the N...