Cosa Nostra News

Gambino wiseguy Robert (DiB) DiBernardo—the Gambino family's czar of pornography, including, disturbingly, child pornography, who was made to disappear on Gambino boss John Gotti’s orders—played a role in the 1984 presidential election. Robert DiBernardo, known as DiB, disappeared in 1986. As per an intelligence report by the New York State Organized Crime Task Force, in 1985 John A. Zaccaro—the husband of Geraldine A. Ferraro, who served in the House of Representatives from 1979 to 1985, and was the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee in 1984—was observed chatting with DiBernardo. At the time, DiBernardo was running Star Distributing Company, which law enforcement officials identified as one of the largest pornography operations in the US. DiB ran the porn business out of a building co-owned by Zaccaro and managed by his real estate brokerage, P. Zaccaro Inc., in lower Manhattan. (Ferraro, herself an officer in the real-estate business, said she and her husband were u...

" We whacked Tommy Ocera. We gave him a luparo bianco ." Colombo acting boss Vic Orena in discussion with Luchese acting boss Al D'Arco at a December 1989 dinner meeting of Colombo and Luchese family leaders, as per D'Arco testimony. Greg Scarpa surveillance image. Attorneys for Victor (Little Vic) Orena say they have uncovered never-before-revealed evidence that will blow the lid off the case -- or rather, the door off Orena's prison cell at FMC Devens. As we recently noted , they claim they can't reveal details of this evidence because it could lead to people getting killed. How else are we to interpret the words of Orena attorney David  Schoen about the evidence being  “unbelievably shocking” and possibly dangerous if revealed publicly ? Once again and possibly for the final time, Vic Orena, 86–the former Colombo acting boss who had visions of cementing his position permanently atop the crime family and is today wheelchair-bound and suffering from dementia...

Ailing former Colombo acting boss Victor (Little Vic) Orena, 86, who currently resides at FMC Devens, the Federal prison in Massachusetts, may be in for a taste of freedom before shuffling off this mortal coil. William (Wild Bill) Cutolo, Vic Orena, Benny Aloi, Bobby Ross. . Because a firearms charge in his 1992 case has been tossed, Orena, who is wheelchair-bound and suffering from dementia, will have to be completely resentenced--and his lawyers are hoping to use this opportunity to successfully press for his release, according to a Daily News report by Noah Goldberg . When Orena is resentenced, his lawyers will argue that he has been rehabilitated. They also say that they will present newly discovered evidence that points toward Orena's innocence. “An overriding factor here is Mr. Orena’s age and medical conditions,” said David Schoen, Orena’s lawyer, at a Monday hearing in front of Eastern District Judge Eric Komitee. Schoen told the Daily News that new evidence includes previ...

" B efore there was John Gotti, there was Sonny Franzese," someone once said, and we concur. Former Colombo capo Michael Franzese said he was made on Oct. 31, 1975. On Long Island—especially the Long Island of the 1960s, decades before Amy Fisher shot Mary Joe at Joe Buttofuoco's Massapequa home, making all us Long Island natives (aka Long Islanders) look like jerks—and especially after  Ernest (Ernie the Hawk) Rupolo's stabbed and bullet-riddled body was recovered  from the beach at Jamaica Bay, Queens in August 1964 (his feet had been weighted down with cement blocks, the proverbial concrete shoes), most Long Islanders generally believed that  John Sonny Franzese was the major Mafia power  in the Northeast United States.  Never mind that Sonny most likely had nothing whatsoever to do with Rupolo and wasn't found guilty for it at the conclusion of the 1967 trial. Nevertheless, Rupolo's murder prefaced an unprecedented legal onslaught against Franzese, wi...