JLSMITH: mobster Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent Sr., leaves Las Vegas black mark:

Anthony "The Saint" St. Laurent Sr., what are we going to do with you?

Didn't we show you enough respect for one street guy's lifetime back in September 1993 when we added your name to Nevada's infamous List of Excluded Persons?


We bestowed upon you the highest honor Nevada awards mobsters and racketeers and cheats by placing you in the casino Black Book. (Population: 35.) The honor comes with a lifetime membership, and you're banned from setting foot in any of Nevada's sacred gambling halls.

You didn't lose sleep over it, I realize. But your Black Book membership was a signal Nevada gaming authorities believed you were a clear and present danger to the credibility of the casino industry. read more
John L Smith Review Journal

mafia: Nick Rizzuto gunned down in Montreal:

Nick Rizzuto Jr.'s assassination will have further repercussions on the organized crime underworld, say crime experts.
The son of Vito Rizzuto, the reputed head of Canada's mafia, was killed Monday as he was standing beside his car near an apartment complex in Notre Dame de Grace.
He was shot numerous times in the chest.
"The murder took place in the weakest moment of the Rizzuto crime family history," said Antonio Nicaso, who has made a career out of writing books on Canada's crime families. "They look more like disorganized crime than a powerful organization."
Nicaso said the family started running into trouble after Vito Rizzuto was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of racketeering and pleading guilty to being present at the scene of a triple murder. Read more: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/rizzuto-shooting-weakens-family-s-power-crime-experts-1.469017#ixzz204Hy5OHm

Brando, Sinatra, and John Gotti

According to Victoria Gotti's new book, "This Family of Mine:"
* John Gotti and Brando hung out. Matthew Broderick once approached Gotti at a restaurant to ask if the godfather would have a drink with him and Marlon Brando. Gotti declined, but sent a bottle of bubbly to the actors. When Broderick made a second plea, Gotti brought Brando to his Ravenite Social Club. "That night, the reel-life godfather came face-to-face with the real-life godfather," Victoria writes. * He was pals with Leona Helmsley. Victoria writes that Helmsley denied the feds permission to "infiltrate" the wedding of John "Junior" Gotti at the Helmsley Palace by posing as staff, and instead hung a 20-foot Italian flag on the hotel's facade for the affair. When Gotti died, it was Helmsley's jet that brought his body back to New York. * He despised Frank Sinatra. "My father hated Sinatra, and wouldn't dare attend a concert of his," Victoria writes. "In fact, Dad never attended a concert in his life . . . He said they were 'too loud' and 'a breeding ground for trouble.' "

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

Alex "Bobo" Rocco , Winter Hill hood and Hollywood actor

Hollywood actor Alex Rocco was born Alexander F Petricone in Boston.Mass Petricone was known by the nickname “Bobo” in his early years as a hard fisted hood in the infamous Winter Hill Gang
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According to Vincent Teresa in “My Life in the Mafia,” it was Rocco whose girlfriend Charlestown mobster Georgie McLaughlin tried to pick up on Labor Day weekend 1961, setting off the bloody Irish Gang War.
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Rocco was arrested along with Winter Hill boss, Buddy McLean, as a suspect in the October 1961 murder of a gangster but was never charged.

.Petricone then bolted out of bullet riddled Boston and moved to Sunny California in 1962, and began using the name Alex Rocco. . He took acting classes and lost weight.

Rocco made his movie bones and scored the solid-gold role of Mobster,Moe Green, in the Godfather. The Winter Hill Mobs most famous felons watched the movie and rooted for Moe Green to whack out Michael Corleone

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