Cosa Nostra News

Two Garden State mobsters, including the former head of the Genovese crime family's New Jersey contingent, are seeking to get out of prison on arguments that their decades-old convictions—for ordering a hit on a businessman in an Upper East Side Italian restaurant as well as for plotting to murder top members of the Gambino family—should be overturned owing to prosecutorial misconduct. Bobby Manna, center, and crew were nabbed in 1988. Former Genovese consiglieri Louis (Bobby) Manna, who served in the regime of Vincent (Chin) Gigante, and co-defendant Richard (Bocci) DeSciscio, an alleged associate whom Manna entrusted with carrying out murders, posed their arguments (via their attorneys) in motions recently filed in Federal court. Manna, 91, and DeSciscio and co-defendants Martin (Motts) Casella, who owned Casella's Restaurant, a Genovese hangout, and  Frank (Dipsy) Daniello, a retired Hoboken police lieutenant, were charged for involvement in  plotting to murder John Gotti...

COSA NOSTRA NEWS   EXCLUSIVE  The Genovese family has tapped a longtime, largely unknown veteran to "service" (or assist in various capacities) the official boss of the organization, which has been described as the most powerful Mafia family in the United States. Chin Gigante died in December 2005. Michael (Mickey) Ragusa, 54--a longtime confidant of boss Liborio (Barney) Bellomo , who has built an extremely low profile over the years (we found no photos of him)  -- is the Genovese family's new street boss, Cosa Nostra News has learned. Genovese street bosses have been known to relay the boss's orders to family capos and soldiers, as well as personally divert away from the boss any incoming fire (figuratively and literally) from the likes of law enforcement, potential enemies, and the unforgiving, relentless New York City media. Hailing from Pleasantville, Ragusa was promoted recently (though the formal appointment may have been largely ceremonia...

Vincent D’Onofrio plays onetime Genovese boss  Vincent (The Chin) Gigante in the Epix cable series Godfather of Harlem , which debuts this month and has been billed as a prequel to Ridley Scott's 2007 film American Gangster, which highlighted the story of 1970s Harlem drug dealer Frank Lucas. Godfather of Harlem, which takes major liberties with Mafia history, premieres on September 29 and tells the "true" story of drug lord Bumpy Johnson (played by Forest Whitaker), who in the early 1960s returned from prison to find his old neighborhood fiefdom under the thumb of the Italian Mafia, specifically, the Genovese family, whom Bumpy takes on to regain control. He allies with radical preacher Malcolm X, “catching his political rise in the cross-hairs of social upheaval and a mob war that threatens to tear the city apart.” The show's larger theme is the juxtaposition of the underworld against the civil rights movement during one of the most tumultuous times...

On the evening of May 2, 1957, Frank Costello dined at Chandler’s Restaurant at 49 West 49th Street. In preparation for his role in The Godfather, Marlon Brando reportedly watched recordings of Costello speaking.  His companion may have been Philip Kennedy, a former semi-pro baseball player who was a sometime actor who managed a modeling agency. Costello likely enjoyed Kennedy’s company because Kennedy moved nimbly and freely among Manhattan’s wealthiest denizens. Costello, the insecure Don, was supposedly fixated on being accepted by those folks. The blue bloods made him self-conscious about his voice and his inability to lose the “deeze, doze, dem” East Harlem diction. (Bizarre stuff for the mob boss who filled Lucky Luciano’s shoes, but it is the insecurities that keep us interested in the guy, anyway.) Costello’s gravelly voice (which wasn’t as gravelly as you might think, as per the video below, which includes more of Frank talking than any other clip we’ve seen...

The son of late Genovese boss Vincent (Chin) Gigante was sentenced to two years in prison yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.  Chin's son was arrested in January 2018. He was living in Chin's $12 million Upper East Side townhouse. Vincent Esposito copped to one count of racketeering  on April 10 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn for conspiring to commit racketeering offenses with members and associates of the Genovese family. The agreed-upon sentencing range was 24 to 30 months in prison. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero handed down the 24-month sentence yesterday (Friday, July 19) at 9 a.m., imposing a term from the lower end of the range. Cosa Nostra News has learned that the Fed's handed the judge a letter that highlighted what the FBI seized from the Esposito townhouse when Esposito was nabbed in January 2018: they found brass knuckles, a gun, a knife, and lotsa cash. (More on those "weapons,...

Even though Joseph (Joe Cago) Valachi was made during the 1930-31 fighting of the Castellammarese War, his initiation ceremony seemingly was a warm and fuzzy affair that commenced only after the men in attendance had chowed down on home-cooked macaroni and drank red wine. Anthony (Bingy) Arillotta Valachi chronicled getting his button--in what is generally considered a “classic” initiation ritual--among a great many other  things in his bloated  autobiography The Real Deal , which can be viewed on Thomas Hunt's American Mafia website . Genovese turncoats and the Mafia's most solemn ceremony, the induction of new members, is the focus. As noted in a previous story on Anthony (Bingy) Arillotta, former boss of the Genovese crime family's Springfield crew, this month's GQ in the U.K. includes a cover story on the American Mafia in which Arillotta details his induction ceremony, during which he'd been asked to strip naked. Anthony Arillotta was the fourth ...