Cosa Nostra News

Sasso, gang banger... It was not a mob hit; it was personal. Robert Sasso, 33, the grandson of a Teamsters boss who worked for John Gotti, allegedly shot another man four times early on Friday. The victim, who was described as a "pal,"  called 911 as he lay dying. Earlier, Sasso had picked up Dean Oku, 29, in a white Ford Fusion and drove him to the Whitestone jetty so the pair could smoke weed at close to 2:30 am. While parked, overlooking the water, Sasso pulled a gun and shot him in the chest and thigh. Sasso then drove off, leaving the man on the jetty. Oku called 911 and when the police finally arrived, he was asked, “Why’d he shoot you?” “An old beef,” Oku said. He was taken to New York Hospital in Queens and nearly died, but reached surgery in time to have his condition upgraded to critical.

Bet you didn't know Sicily has two Mafias. La Stidda ("star") There's Cosa Nostra, of course. And there's La Stidda (Sicilian for "the star"), a Sicilian-based Mafia group that's a direct rival to Cosa Nostra. All members wear the same star-shaped tattoo. La Stidda was created by "Men of Honor" (members of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra) who broke apart following the murder of Mafia-boss Giuseppe Di Cristina during a major Mafia war of the early 1980s. In addition to the Cosa Nostra , there are two other historical Mafias in Italy: the Neapolitan Camorra and the Calabrian Ndrangheta. A fourth also is recognized, the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita, which was originally formed in the 1970s to rival the traditional Camorra. La Stidda is something like Sicily's version of the Sacra Corona Unita. As noted in Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic (Alexander Stille), it largely consists of ...

From IBT : The autobiography of a jailed Mafia killer has been selected as finalist for a Sicilian literary award, prompting the resignation of a juror who claimed the choice offended the memory of the author's victims. Literary critic Gaspare Agnello said that the decision to admit a book by Cosa Nostra affiliate Giuseppe Grassonelli (titled Malerba ) to the final has soiled the name of the prize dedicated to Leonardo Sciascia, a late Sicilian writer who helped raise awareness on Mafia issues through his work. Noting that the mobster never repented of his crimes, Agnello said that awarding him "would be an offence to his many victims, whose blood is still fresh". To add to the controversy, one of the other selected finalists, Caterina Chinnici, is the daughter of a prosecutor killed by the Mafia in a 1983 bomb attack in Palermo.

Vinny Gorgeous "Stephen has a nine millimeter handgun with a fitted silencer that I had given him before my arrest in 2005. That deadly weapon was mine." --Dominick Cicale, former capo under Vinny Gorgeous UPDATED: Former Bonanno capo Dominick Cicale , a key government witness against ex-acting boss Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano and other crime family cohorts in 2012, is calling for the judge to throw the book at his erstwhile boss's son, Stephen Basciano.