Cosa Nostra News

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...

True-crime network Investigation Discovery (ID) has launched a new podcast called "Mafia Tapes," which focuses on the life and crimes of Murder Machine’s Dominick Montiglio, the former Gambino associate who joined Team America and who died on June 27, 2021. Dom Montiglio, left, who died last year, and Celia Aniskovich. (Source: Deadline ) The Mafia Tapes , produced for ID by Gigantic Pictures, features never-before-released recordings of Montiglio and highlights his personal struggles. (The "twist" ending is that Montiglio died during the making of the podcast, days after suffering a stroke, as per Deadline .) The series launched on January 17 with episodes released weekly. Montiglio's story was told, famously,  in the true-crime book Murder Machine by Gene Mustain and Jerry Capeci —though the book missed "a helluva lot," Dom once told us as part of a brief Q&A that was to prelude a larger story. (See story here .) Truthfully, we never took that li...

The murder rate in the U.S. has fallen dramatically in the past 25 years -- the FBI pegged the decline from 1993 to 2015 at 50% while the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported a 77% drop. Still, the glut of daily television fare seems to suggest that there's nothing like murder. Raymond Patriarca As a New York Times story recently noted of true-crime television: "it seems as if this genre has no saturation point." And the trend shows no signs of abating, considering the recent launch of  Beyond Reasonable Doubt  last Friday, which focused on the story of the Green River Killer, the most prolific serial killer in American history. Debuting this week are  Sin City Justice  and #Murder .

Jim Cooley (and BIG MF Matt Freeman) together host  The Last Round , a major sports podcast that features interviews with fighters, athletes, wrestlers and more. It garners nearly a half-million monthly listeners. Jim also is a former MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter. So Jim can kick serious ass, in other words. In fact , he kicks ass in this interview by being remarkably candid and honest.  He graciously and generously provided heartfelt answers to every question I asked. Thanks, man.... Jim Cooley hosts a sports podcast; he debuted another, called The Life, about the mob. Jim recently started another show, called The Life, about the Mafia. Up to 30,000 folks listen in on each episode. And he counts guys like Carmine Persico and Thomas (Tommy Karate) Pitera as his personal friends. (Jim hooked us up, too. Some may recall my shout out .) In fact, Pitera, as you'll read, told Jim: "I trust you with my life." And what's really interesting about The Li...