Cosa Nostra News

Is the structure of the New York Mafia somehow based on the Roman legions? (We recently received an email posing that question.) It all started about 100 years ago with a Sicilian mobster named Salvatore Maranzano, who was the capo of all the clans in Sicily’s Castellammare del Golfo region, the birthplace of many powerful Sicilian American gangsters. Salvatore Maranzano on September 10, 1931. The Fascist government of Benito Mussolini kicked Maranzano out of Italy in the 1920s. He came to America, settling in Brooklyn. Maranzano built a legitimate real estate brokerage business, which he used as cover for his criminal operations, which included a growing bootlegging business. Eventually, Maranzano was atop an immense criminal organization sprawled across the Northeast United States. He took to mentoring a young man named Joseph Bonanno. Maranzano enjoyed talking about himself and was known to spend an inordinate amount of time telling everyone around him that he had studied for the pr...

“Carl wants to swallow up everybody." -- Unnamed Mafia boss via surveillance recording At the end of 1972, Carlo Gambino, boss of the Gambino crime family, was working on a "dramatic reorganization" of New York's Five Families, the likes of which had not been seen since 1931. As radical as this sounds, it is not unbelievable considering some events leading up to it. Gambino Gambino wanted to rid New York of hundreds of Mafia members, then rebuild by inducting only select men who'd proved their loyalty. (He was preparing to open the books in 1973.) Gambino, 70 at the time, believed the "Mafia must retreat to the past in order to survive," law enforcement officials said. The first two crime families on the block were to be the Luchese and Colombo crime families. Then the Bonanno crime family. "Twenty percent of known Mafia members in New York are currently under indictment in cases developed by the Federal Bureau of In...

REVISED, EXPANDED This year marks the 60th anniversary of Apalachin,  which has always been of great interest to me.. .. Police in pursuit in Apalachin on the day. .... Apalachin, NY, the infamous location of the November 14, 1957, Mafia Summit , changed everything by finally bringing the full resources of the FBI onto the nation's crime families . That ill-fated meeting in upstate New York left two legacies in place: The enormous free reign with which the wiseguys operated for so long was coming to a close as the FBI launched a full-court investigative press against the mob that wouldn't let up -- ever.....(Law enforcement's mob investigations may have periodically waned, but the efforts were forever renewed....) And, never again could J. Edgar Hoover deny Cosa Nostra's existence without looking like a fool.

UPDATED "Do you see the devil in the tree picking his nails with his mouth trying to figure out which one he wants a rape?" This painting once graced the home of Vito Genovese. Since last night we've heard from additional folks about Trama's Trattoria, the New Jersey restaurant where the painting once owned by Vito Genovese hangs. Not all knew about the painting, but they certainly remember the food.  " The Garganelli pasta is out of this world. Don Vito would certainly have approved," said one. (They prefer I identify them as "friends." You can figure out the rest. The fact is, they are friends.)  The painting, of a group of fair maidens being spied on by a demon or something, once apparently hung in Genovese's mansion in the Atlantic Highlands. And I'm hoping someone reading this can shed more light on that painting.

"Nick the Blade" had "absolutely no redeeming qualities" one FBI agent said of him. A Pittsburgh mobster who wasn't even two years out of prison, where he'd served a near-three-decade stretch, dropped dead of a heart attack while enjoying his usual glass of Pinot Grigio. Eugene "Nick the Blade" Gesuale, 73, was at Past Times Restaurant and Bar, "when he suddenly fell over" this past Thursday night, bar manager David Ruiz told The Daytona Beach Journal Online . Ruiz was quoted saying yesterday afternoon: "He was on his cellphone and it looked as if he was having a seizure. I called 9-1-1." ( Hear the 9-1-1 call , which runs five minutes.)

Vito Genovese may have single-handedly done more damage to the Mafia than any other mobster. Taking a cue from my good friend over at Friends of Ours , who did this on the appropriate date, I am posting, for posterity's sake, the New York Daily News's original 1957 article on Appalachin.  The Friends of Ours blogger , Philip Crawford Jr., has an excellent book available now: The Mafia and the Gays . It is an historical analysis of the Mafia's control of gay bars in major U.S. cities, including New York and Chicago. The unjust illegality of such establishments essentially green-lighted the Mafia to come in and cater to that demand.

This first ran in late December of 2015... In North Jersey's Fort Lee sits a mansion for sale that was once owned by one of the most powerful and feared Cosa Nostra bosses in the American Mafia's history:  Albert Anastasia . Anastasia's home in Fort Lee includes a "strange tiled room." Described as a sprawling Mission-style estate, it's located at 75 Bluff Road and, according to a recent published report, it hasn't changed much since Anastasia had it built in 1947. The house was bigger than others in the area back then. In fact, the 25-room luxurious spread ruined the scenic view of Manhattan for at least one family, though they aren't known to have complained.

EXCLUSIVE INFORMATION: On this date in 1957, New York mob boss Albert Anastasia was shot to death in the Park Sheraton Hotel's barbershop. Born in Tropea, Calabria, Italy, on Feb. 26, 1902, "Don Umberto" was murdered in New York City after spending more than seven years as boss of one of the Five Families. And it wasn't the Gallo brothers or a crew affiliated with Raymond Patriarca or anyone else who killed one of the Mafia's most ruthless members, as has been speculated. According to Michael "Mikie Scars" DiLeonardo, Jerry Capeci was partially correct when he identified the shooters years ago in an exclusive story.

From its inception, the American Mafia included among its plethora of rackets the slot-machine. So popular during the twentieth century's first few decades were these little games of chance, it's difficult today to truly comprehend it. NYC Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was hands-on. Perhaps the most suitable image to remind us is the photograph above of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia sledgehammering a machine (the scene also was captured on film footage). All the historical Mafia bosses, especially the men who served as heads of New York's Five Families—Charlie "Lucky" Luciano, Vito Genovese and, most famously of all, Frank Costello, for example—reaped fortunes from slot machine profits.

"Kayo was an animal on a leash for [Bonanno capo Joe]  Zicarelli and others.  All they had to do was unsnap the leash and he'd kill for the fun of it."  -- Federal agent "Kayo" Konigsberg struggles with detectives. An 89-year-old mob hitman  who was probably responsible for the murder of Anthony "Tony Bender" Strollo, a high ranking Genovese crime family capo, died in late November, about two years after finishing a 50-year prison sentence. Harold "Kayo" Konigsberg died five days after his 89th birthday and was buried in Florida, where he'd been living in a nursing home and terrorizing his fellow residents.

Tired of being a mob associate and kicking up most of your earnings? Tired of constantly lying to your superiors about how much you earn so you don't have to kick up as much? Face it -- you wanna be a made guy... Well, friends, now that dream can be yours! You can become a full member of the Philadelphia mob for only a one-time payment of $10,000! (Cash, of course.) Chances are, you won't read an ad like that in 5,000 years. But buying your way into the Mafia was a sellable concept that certain mobsters such as Joseph Skinny Joey Merlino sought to benefit, according to two government witnesses. "No, I said $100,000...." Joseph Merlino, right. Someone could join the Philly mob by making a cash payment to George Borgesi , who belonged to the administration of the family his uncle lorded over and brought back from extinction for Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino , who also was selling mob memberships. (Merlino, however, was getting $100,000 per button ...

Vito Genovese in the mid 1940s. The Mafia has always recruited from the streets. Both Vito Genovese and Carlo Gambino in the 1950s enlisted soldiers in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn from a Brooklyn street gang called the Jackson Gents. Interestingly these street gangs are still around today, while groups like the Purple Gang and the Bath Avenue Crew, Italian mob-affiliated gangs that more closely resemble the Mafia and were considered farm teams, seem to have died out. Overall, however, the street gangs today are working as partners with the Mafia, which is more strict about recruitment, having the mindset that blood trumps everything else. The Colombo family, in particular, was ahead of the curve in that they have long relied on blood-family relations for members more than anything else. But it wasn't always that way. Used to be the Mafia recruited from street gangs -- teenagers running around in leather jackets, their hair greased back into a duck's a...

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the infamous trial resulting from the disastrous 1957 meeting in Apalachin, New York (humorously depicted at the start of Analyze This ). The resulting conspiracy trial,  United States v. Bufalino ultimately led to acquittals. Roadblocks stop mobsters fleeing from 1957's hastily called Apalachin summit. Prosecutors actually had won a jury's "guilty" verdict, but  an appellate court overturned it on an appeal .

About three weeks ago, we passed the 56th anniversary of the infamous meeting at Apalachin, when cops raided Joe Barbara's House. They didn't have the slightest inkling of what they were getting into -- and I refer here to the Mafia.... J. Edgar Hoover could no longer deny the existence of a national crime ring working in the U.S. He preferred chasing Communists and destroying people he didn't like. On Nov. 14, 1957, New York state police official Edgar D. Croswell noticed a suspicious number of expensive cars with out-of-state license plates converging in his small town of Apalachin.* He and his troopers began jotting down license plates. Croswell, owing to his knowledge of the mob (specifically, Carmine Galante who was in town that November day; Crosswell had arrested him previously and was well aware of who he was) knew something was up. (Croswell also had no illusions about Joseph (Joe the Barber) Barbara (a more appropriate nickname would've been J...

We noticed the New York Daily News is offering for sale crime pics of organized crime figures, among other criminals, as well as murder scenes, etc. Those interested: Daily News Pix Crime : Murder Inc., the Five Families, John Gotti, 'Lucky' Lucchiano, Son of Sam... the Daily News has all the unforgettable crime photos you are looking for. Order yours today. Here's a couple we thought were interesting... Army gives up Vito Genovese in Italy to Brooklyn District Attorney's office to face murder indictment. Genovese is shown in patrol wagon on way to felony court in Brooklyn Carmine Galante shooting scene on Knickerbocker Ave. in Brooklyn, NY. Restraurant can be seen on left side of street.

Charlie Lucky was the inspiration for The Godfather? Small World News Service is running a review of a book about Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, "Lucky Luciano: Mafia Murderer and Secret Agent," by Tim Newark (though the title seems to have been changed to "Lucky Luciano: The Real and the Fake Gangster," which at least sounds less silly than the first title, though it is still pretty damn silly nevertheless). The book describes him as being "heralded ... as the model for legendary mafia boss Don Vito Corleone," from The Godfather, novel by Mario Puzo , and the film, directed by Francis Ford Coppola , screenplay by both men [as well as the screenplays for the two sequels]. "He was widely credited for running New York’s notorious underworld, and linked to multimillion dollar extortion rackets, revenge beatings and gangland murders," the review adds, quoting the book or a release about the book.