Gotti Junior may have killed his kid brother, but Frank Silva Jr. says, 'Not interested'

Frank Silva Jr. can live without knowing who killed his kid brother, even if federal prosecutors can't.The New Jersey man, standing in his front door Friday, said he's ignored testimony this week that mob legacy John A. (Junior) Gotti stabbed and then taunted a dying Daniel Silva back in 1983
. "Not interested after 26 years," the 52-year-old Silva said flatly at his rural home. "You move on."
His brother's name dominated the first days of the racketeering trial, with an eyewitness implicating Gotti in the killing inside an Ozone Park bar
Mike Bonner recalled the fatal March night at the Silver Fox, where a dispute between second-generation gangster Junior and a local barfly exploded into a barroom brawl. As glasses and punches flew, the prosecution witness said, the then-19-year-old Gotti slid away from the juke box, pulled a knife and stabbed Silva.
Bonner recounted seeing the badly injured 24-year-old victim propped up on a bar stool, splattered with blood.
"He looked like he was in bad shape," Bonner said. "Blood all over his shirt."
Prosecutors said a sneering Gotti returning to taunt the mortally wounded Danny with a cruel Porky Pig impression: "Th-th-that's all folks!"
Bonner said Gotti's father paid $10,000 to a crooked detective to make the case disappear.
The details were lost on Frank Silva, whose son Daniel is apparently named for his late uncle.
His father, Frank Sr., died three years after his brother, Silva said, and his mom is in declining health.
Asked how he coped with Daniel's death, Silva offered a blunt two-word reply: "Never did." Silva declined to discuss the case or his brother. It's a position he's taken for decades, even before the latest link to Gotti.
"I don't speak of family matters," he said before asking a reporter and photographer to leave the property

Ex-Mobster Gets Full Military Honors At Funeral

Convicted mobster Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo was treated like a hero when he was laid to rest on Thursday. Before serving 24 years in federal prison, Angiulo served in the Navy. Angiulo was buried with full military honors for his service during World War II. The Navy funeral honors he earned serving during wartime are similar to those seen at Sen. Edward Kennedy's funeral last week, with six sailors to act as pallbearers and seven more for the firing party. The rules say as long as he wasn't convicted of capital offenses, he gets the military treatment. But some veterans told the Boston Herald they don't think Angiulo deserves the full honor. Angiulo was busted in 1983 after the feds bugged his North End headquarters for months. He was convicted of racketeering, loan-sharking and gambling charges. He served 24 years in federal prison before his release in 2007. He died last Saturday at the age of 90 from kidney failure

The First Mafia Family

He came to New York City in 1892 from Corleone, the town in western Sicily whose name Mario Puzo borrowed to create literature's most famous Mafioso.

A half-century before The Godfather, he was the face of organized crime in America

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That's the takeaway from The First Family, Mike Dash's highly researched and smoothly written book on the origins of the Mafia in the United States

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Focusing primarily on New York City and using an infamous mob hit - the 1903 Barrel Murder - as the jumping-off point, the book, on one level, is a police procedural set against the backdrop of the Italian immigrant experience.

Dash's straightforward account - he accurately describes it as a "narrative history" - provides context for the birth of an American underworld institution, but he in no way glamorizes the gangsters who dominate his story. Morello, shrewd, ruthless and calculating, emerges as the prototype of the ethnic crime boss, the sine qua non of New World Mafiosi.

Known as "Clutch" or "The Clutch Hand" because he had been born with a deformed right arm, Morello was, in the words of one inve stigator, "conscientiously and zealously bad," an individual who "enjoyed" being a criminal Read More

Ex-girlfriend tells of confronting Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi

A former girlfriend of gangster Stephen “The Rifleman’’ Flemmi testified tearfully yesterday that she accused him in 1986 of murdering her daughter but did not know for sure that Deborah Hussey was dead and that the mobster had participated in the slaying until 14 years later.
Testifying in a wrongful-death lawsuit that blames the FBI for the slaying because Flemmi was a protected informant, Marion A. Hussey said she confronted him outside a hospital where their son had been taken after a car accident. Hussey, 69, of Weymouth, had three children with Flemmi, whom she never married. Her daughter, Deborah Hussey, was from a marriage that had ended in divorce.
Marion Hussey said she had not heard from Deborah in two years and feared that Flemmi had something to do with the 26-year-old’s disappearance. The young woman had told her mother in 1984 that Flemmi had molested her for years. Deborah Hussey also caused tension in the couple’s Milton home because she abused drugs, engaged in prostitution, and robbed bookmakers, her mother said.
“I said to him, ‘You killed my daughter,’ ’’ Marion Hussey recalled, referring to the confrontation outside the hospital. “He was taken aback. He was in shock. He grabbed a pole. His knees bent.’’
Hussey’s lawyer, Ann M. Donovan, of Newton, asked her whether Flemmi denied killing her daughter. “I don’t remember what his exact words were,’’ Hussey replied.
Flemmi, who is serving a life sentence for 10 murders, testified previously during the trial at US District Court in Boston that Deborah Hussey was among two women he lured to homes in South Boston on separate occasions in the 1980s. Both times, the 75-year-old gangster said, he silently watched as his partner James “Whitey’’ Bulger quietly emerged from a back room and strangled them.
Deborah Hussey’s body was unearthed in 2000 from a Dorchester grave, 15 years after her murder.
Her family is among three suing the federal government in the civil wrongful-death trial. The others are relatives of Flemmi’s onetime girlfriend Debra Davis, who was allegedly strangled by Bulger in 1981 at age 26, and relatives of Louis Litif, a South Boston bar owner and bookmaker who was shot to death in 1980.
The families are seeking unspecified damages for the victims’ pain and suffering and the families’ loss of financial and emotional support. US District Court Judge William G. Young is presiding over the nonjury trial.
The plaintiffs contend that the FBI created a dangerous condition by failing to control Bulger and Flemmi, both of whom were FBI informants. The informants reported to John J. Connolly Jr., a corrupt agent who was sentenced to 40 years in prison in January for leaking information to Bulger and Flemmi that led to the killing of a Boston businessman in Florida in 1982. Bulger, 79, is wanted for 19 killings and has been a fugitive since 1995.
The Justice Department counters it had no idea that Bulger and Flemmi planned to kill the three victims. One of the Justice Department lawyers said during his opening statement that Marion Hussey lived on “blood money’’ from Flemmi for years and cannot blame the FBI for her daughter’s murder

Colombo crime family, Joseph Colombo Boss

June 28, 1971. The body of mob boss Joseph Colombo is put in a police vehicle minutes after being shot by a non-gangster during a rally of the Italian American Coalition at Columbus Circle. Colombo lingers in a coma for years. Rival Joey Gallo was suspected of arranging the hit but was never charged. The Crime Family is on its last legs .http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/galleries/ny_mobs_greatest_hits/ny_mobs_greatest_hits.html#ph12#ixzz0L1okB4Ij&C

Joseph Massino, Bonanno Crime Family Rat

JOSEPH MASSINO--Massino became the first sitting boss in Mafia history to turn informant. The longtime head of the Bonnano family, Massino was notoriously security conscious, instructing his subordinates to refer to him merely by tugging on their earlobe.
Things started to go bad for Joe when his brother-in-law and underboss, Salvatore “Good Looking Sal” Vitale, testified against him. Shortly after his 2004 conviction on racketeering charges that would have put him in prison for life, Massino decided to become an informant. He taped his underlings in prison threatening to kill a prosecutor.http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/galleries/rats_mob_informants/rats_mob_informants.html#ph6#ixzz0KL4MogON&D

Ex-Mafia fixer, mob rat, Mike Franzese offer of help the sport could not refuse

Michael Franzese claims little insight into the secretive detective work of the tennis authorities as they continue to clean up the sport but the ex-New York mafia boss, a former match-fixer in US sport, has worked on the Association of Tennis Professional's education programme to warn players of the dangers of gambling, and has no doubt that fixing goes on

I was asked back in 2006 to address the players," he said, talking to The Independent at the recent Play the Game conference in Coventry. "I've had a lot of consultation with the ATP. They're concerned about the problem and they are as proactive as they can be. People would be naive to think that gambling, fixing and attempted fixing isn't happening in tennis. Players told me stories of being approached. It's happened. It still does.

"After I spoke [to the players] I got emails and telephone calls, they confided in me. I spoke via an interpreter to some Russians. I don't know how much attention they were paying but [another player] said to me they were the ones that needed to because they're the most guilty. That's exactly what I was told." --http://cftaf1234.wordpress.com/mini-mice-cheese-factory/

Franzese, 58, is the son of the notorious John "Sonny" Franzese, a key figure for years in the Colombo family, one of New York's five Mob clans. Sonny was a ruthless hitman, and has spent 32 years in prison since 1970. Now 92 and out on bail, he is the oldest parolee in the US.
Michael followed in father's footsteps in his twenties and made hundreds of millions of dollars, primarily from bootlegging, racketeering and tax scams, with a healthy sideline in match-fixing, mainly on NBA basketball games and NFL football.
"We'd prey on athletes' weaknesses," he said. "We'd find a player who gambled, extend him credit until he's far out of his depth – hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then we'd offer an easy way to repay. It was all about shaving points."
In US sports betting, the most popular gamble is "the spread". Franzese and his bookies would target players in teams that were strong favourites, and simply "request" the winning margin was lower than expected. In such details huge profits lay.
His extraordinary life story took a twist after an eight-year prison term and after falling in love with a girl (now his wife of many years) who wanted him to go straight. He left the Mafia, and lived to tell the tale by never grassing. He had a contract on his head, however, and still does.
"I was in that life for 17 years so I took a lot of precautions when I left it behind me, although I never co-operated [with the police], and never entered a witness protection programme. When I was in jail, they kept me in lockdown. I was in the hole for three years, they wouldn't let me out on the yard for my own safety. It was tough for years after I came out, effectively on the run for our safety."
How is he still alive? "I outlasted just about everybody in my life [who'd want me dead]. They're either dead or in prison for the rest of their lives. And I didn't testify against anyone."
The NBA and NFL have used Franzese's services to warn athletes about corruption for many years. He makes a living from public speaking and writing, and his latest book I'll Make You an Offer You Can't Refuse: Insider Business Tips from a Former Mob Boss is out now.

Anthony Rotondo

ANTHONY ROTONDO--Anthony Rotondo’s father, Vincent, was a captain in the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante family, but he wanted his son to be a lawyer. Rotondo initially started down that path, picking up a degree in business administration from St. Francis College in Brooklyn. But the lure of the mob soon beckoned, and his father ultimately proposed his son for membership.
Then in 1988, his father was gunned down as he sat in his car outside his Bath Beach, Brooklyn home. The younger Rotondo assumed his father’s position, but turned informant in 1999 after nearly the entire hierarchy of the family was arrested,. He claimed he did so in part because of building resentment over his father’s murder.

Black Book member Masterana dies in the Dominican

Frank Masterana, a gambler and bookmaker known from the Strip to Santo Domingo, died Sunday at age 80 in the Dominican Republican, according to a longtime family friend.
A member of Nevada’s list of excluded persons, better known as the Black Book, Masterana was born in Canton, Ohio Jan. 26, 1929, and moved to Las Vegas to work for “Doc” Stacher in the early 1950s.
An illegal bookmaker much of his adult life, Masterana’s name was placed in the Black Book on Oct. 19, 1988. He became known as an associate – a reluctant one, to hear Masterana tell it – of Anthony Spilotro in the early 1980s.
Following a couple trips to prison, Masterana moved his base of operations to the Dominican Republican, and according to reliable sources at the time of his death he ran more than a dozen sports betting outlets in Santo Domingo.
I met Frank many years ago when he was between government staycations. He was an intriguing character whose life was defined by illegal gambling and his son Frank's quadruplegic condition. In those days, in part to avoid detection, Masterana looked a little like Willie Nelson with a long ponytail and salt-and-pepper facial hair. He was an old-school survivor, an outlaw with a soft spot for his kids. John L. Smith Las Vegas Review Journal

Donato "Danny" Angiulo, part of notorious mob family, dies

Former New England Mafia capo regime Donato "Danny" Angiulo, who was part of a powerful mob family that ruled Boston's underworld from the 1960s through the mid-1980s, died Sunday night at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center after a long illness. He was 86.
His brother, Gennaro "Jerry'' Angiulo, was the underboss of the Patriarca crime family until an FBI bug planted in his North End headquarters in 1981 captured conversations about murder, extortion, illegal gambling, and loansharking that led to Boston's first sensational Mafia trial and the end of the Angiulos' reign.
In 1986, a federal jury convicted Donato Angiulo and his brothers, Gennaro and Francesco, who was the mob's accountant, of racketeering charges, and a third brother, Michele, of illegal gambling.
An Angiulo associate was caught on FBI tapes boasting that South Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger and his sidekick, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi were friends of the Mafia and would kill for them. More than a decade later it was revealed that Bulger and Flemmi were longtime FBI informants who had provided information about the interior of Angiulo's headquarters that assisted agents in planting the bug.
Donato Angiulo's nickname was "Smiley," but prosecutors alleged during his trial that he had a fierce reputation on the street and served as a capo regime, running a crew of Mafia soldiers. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for racketeering, gambling and loansharking. He was freed from federal prison in 1997, after serving 11 years, and returned to his Medford home.
"He was a great family man and a very decent guy,'' said Boston attorney Anthony Cardinale, who represented Donato Angiulo's brother, Gennaro, during the eight-month federal racketeering trial.
Cardinale recounted that he had been stricken by a virus and hospitalized just before final arguments were about to get underway in the trial.
"I remember waking up in the hospital and there was Danny, just sitting there...he had come to the hospital and sat there to see how I was,'' Cardinale said. "That was typical of the kind of guy he was."
Before Donato Angiulo became ill and was hospitalized, he often was spotted in the North End, having lunch. He was the son of Sicilian immigrants, who ran a North End grocery store, and was raised on Prince Street with five brothers and a sister.
The Dello Russo Funeral Home in Medford confirmed today that it is handling arrangements for Donato Angiulo and said visiting hours will be Thursday from 4 to 8 pm. at the funeral home. A Mass is scheduled for Friday at 11 a.m. at St. Leonard Church in Boston's North End.

Sliwa Sued For Mob Slander

Magazine publisher Frank DiMateo has filed a lawsuit against Degenerate Dirtbag Curtis Sliwa over a YouTube video the Guardian Angels leader made, charging DiMateo’s publishing company was part of an organized crime money laundering outfit. .In his January 20 YouTube video (which has been taken down by Sliwa), Sliwa is seen crouched down next to a news kiosk in a New York City Subway (btw, it is against the law to photograph the New York City subway station and it is unknown if Sliwa had permission to shoot there) holding DiMateo’s MobCandy magazine. In his trademark rat-a-tat-tat, moolah-schmoolah delivery, Sliwa contends the magazine is “put out by the Gambino-Gotti crime family.” He then states MobCandy does not have sponsors and asked, “how are they able to exist when they have no advertising?”. Answering his own question, Sliwa concluded, “Maybe they’re laundering money through vendors, drug dealers, criminals — people with lots of fat cash, who got to be able to launder it properly before they can use it — [a] great opportunity for these mags.”

Mafialife.com’s Chris Chiarmonte posted a video response to Sliwa’s charges, proving that the lifestyle magazine actually has many sponsors and Mob Candy is a legitimate,

MOB BIG IS GOING POST-AL

Crime boss Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano is sick of waiting a month and a half to read the New York Post.

But the convicted Bonanno big will be stuck reading old news for the foreseeable future after a federal judge ruled yesterday he must stay in strict solitary confinement, where his papers come drastically late and visits with his girlfriend and their son are prohibited.

It's the second time the mobster already convicted of one murder and awaiting trial for ordering another has lost a bid to be moved from the notorious Special Housing Unit of Manhattan's Metropolitan Correction Center.

He's been there since July 31, 2006, under the harsh Special Administrative Measures ordered by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

In his petition to be moved, Basciano noted that the restrictions prohibit him from seeing his grade-school-aged son and the boy's mother, Basciano's longtime girlfriend, Debra Kalb.

Neither minors nor non-family members are allowed in solitary.

Basciano also complained that there was a 40- to 45-day delay in receiving his Post.

"We do not understand why there must be any delay with his receipt of a daily newspaper," his lawyer, Jane Simkin Smith, wrote in a February letter to the court.

The feds argue that Basciano, who allegedly slipped a "hit list" to another inmate in 2006 that included the names of federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis, a prosecutor and cooperating witnesses, remains dangerous

A rare memory of steak-eating Spilotro

John L Smith review journal

Former mobster Anthony Fiato, who grew up with the Boston mob and became a powerhouse member of the Los Angeles La Cosa Nostra before cooperating with the FBI, read with interest my recent post on the nature of greed whether you’re a gangster like Tony Spilotro or a “financier” of the ilk of Bernard Madoff.

It reminded him of one of the times he came to Las Vegas for a meeting with Spilotro, who had considerable street clout from Chicago
to Las Vegas and out to Los Angeles. His Chicago bosses had tough Tony pegged as that city’s representative on the West Coast.

Fiato, the subject of my book “The Animal in Hollywood,” came to Las Vegas with the infamous Mike Rizzitello to meet with Spilotro regarding the completion of a drug deal at a local steakhouse.

“Tony did love good steak, and cash was his favorite dessert,” Fiato writes on his Hollywood goodfella blog (WordPress.com.) “I chopped up a drug score with Tony over a New York steak dinner in the Flame, a steakhouse in Las Vegas.”