Cosa Nostra News

Reputed Colombo boss Andrew (Mush) Russo, who was among the indicted in the recent case related to the longtime pilfering of a labor union, was to be released from jail last week on $10 million bond, while Vic Orena, the Colombo acting boss who opposed Russo and other Persico loyalists in the bloody 1991-92 Colombo war—and who is so deranged these days, he believes he is the president of the United States (that derangement seems to be getting around)—will remain locked up at Federal Medical Center Devers in Massachusetts. Colombo acting boss Vic Orena in his heyday. Russo's release and the denial of Orena's compassionate release were set forth in separate Brooklyn Federal Court rulings, both of which were highlighted in a Daily News report last week by Noah Goldberg and Larry McShane . Helping spring Russo, 87, from the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center was about $7 million in property that was put up as collateral. He was allowed to bond out after Chief Magistrate Judge C...

We're reposting this centaur of a story, which we originally posted in 2016, as an in memoriam to "Charlie P" or "CP," who died of COVID-19 last year, as we recently learned. His death prompted us to revisit and edit the original . Then, following more recent communications (this past weekend), we decided to go one step further and repost the entire thing. In keeping with our agreement, we will never identify or write about Charlie P further. (Charlie or Charley, etc., makes no difference because it wasn’t his real name.) John Gotti, right, Gambino capo Thomas Gambino, son of founder. This story is based on notes I took during informal discussions with an old timer I will call "Charley P." I call him Charley Partanna, just to call him something. I'm hoping this can be an occasional column but Charley didn't want to commit to anything without remuneration involved. ------------------------ In 2003, Winter Hill turncoat Steve Flemmi told federal ...

A body is found floating in a body bag on the Hackensack river, five bullets in the cabeza. It’s Luchese acting capo Phil Coffee Cups from Bayside Queens. From the probe that follows, the FBI believes the hit was orchestrated by someone in another family in north Jersey. Gang Land News gets the scoop and writes up an exclusive, and the FBI view slips into the newspapers, some of which highlight it in stories. But two years later, a detective with the NYPD says the hit came from within the same family because the boss had a grudge over something (the detective knows not what the grudge was over). Around the same time, an ex-acting capo in California publishes a memoir that says it was the Gambino family, based on what he heard when, while still an active wiseguy, he visited New York City around the time of the hit. For the next five years, the different theories have been floating around in the press. Some reports focus on the FBI theory, some on the NYPD theory, some on what the guy in...

INCLUDES UPDATE For years we belonged to the "never explain" school of blogging. Show them, don't tell them, we thought. Only recently did we realize the shortcomings of that philosophy. Nature abhors a vacuum. Sometimes unanswered questions can create an air of mystery where it doesn't necessarily exist. Something we have always wondered about: What is he thinking. We also can't forget the other side of the coin: explaining yourself has the potential of making you look like a moron lacking in self awareness who insults the intelligence of his readers and that is the last thing we want to do. We walk a very fine line with this story. We published the Ravenite transcripts and then Sammy the Bull Gravano's court testimony transcripts years after we initially received the printouts from a source. We published the Ravenite transcripts first, then the testimony. Why have we been focusing on transcripts so much lately? The answer is, because we heard that Gravano wa...