Cosa Nostra News

What Happens When You Enter the Witness Protection Program? : Gerald Shur was struggling to convince his witness to testify. The year was 1961, and Shur, an attorney focused on organized crime at the Department of Justice, was talking to the owner of a New York trucking company who claimed that  Johnny “Sonny” Franzese  demanded half the profits of his business. Protected witness... Franzese’s men had vandalized his trucks and beaten him unconscious with baseball bats until he complied, and now the owner hoped that Shur could offer him a way out. But when Shur suggested testifying against Franzese, the witness responded, “Testify?” He had good reason to be incredulous. For Franzese, a member of one of the “ Five Families ” of the New York mafia, extorting a small business owner represented low-level crime. An associate wearing a wire would later record Franzese discussing the best way to commit murder: he would cover his fingertips with nail polish, wear a hairnet, and ...

Domenico Palazzotto on the right? It was bound to happen. Once upon a time, Sicilian mobsters were known as "zips" and were imported to America for very specific reasons. They were believed to be tougher than American Mafiosi; they had no police records here; they'd kill anyone -- including women and children; and for them, Omerta was not a word, it was a way of life.

Gang leader Ducarme Joseph was shot dead in St. Michel on Friday night. A former gang leader with ties to the Canadian Mafia, Joseph allegedly was involved in the 2009 shooting death of Nick Rizzuto Jr., son of the deceased Vito Rizzuto , formerly the powerful head of the Mafia in Montreal. Deceased Cosa Nostra boss Vito Rizzuto, middle, flanked by his father and son, both named Nick. Joseph, who'd gone into hiding, may have started raising his profile in the months following Vito's death. It was a fatal mistake.

From the Providence Journal : BOSTON MOB: The Rise and Fall of the New England Mob and Its Most Notorious Killer,” by Marc Songini. St. Martin’s Press. 369 pages. $27.99. This is a colorful, even gleeful, account of murder, mayhem and corruption during the heyday of the New England Mafia. As you can imagine, despite the title, a lot of it is about Rhode Island and Raymond L.S. Patriarca, who ran the “Office,” as it was called , from the Coin-O-Matic office on Atwells Avenue in Providence. Three strains run through the book by Boston-area journalist Marc Songini. The fast-reading narrative begins and ends with the turbulent history of Joseph Barboza, or Joseph Barboza Baron after he changed his name. Of Portuguese descent and from New Bedford, he worked with many of the other figures in the book.