Word: bonanno
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...Bonanno may indeed be the proudest of America's Mafiosi: Sicilian-born, son of a don, bootlegger at 21, gunrunner for Al Capone at 24, a New York don himself at 26 and a ruthless aspirant to the title of capo di tutti capi, boss of all bosses. So at age 74, supposedly sunning out his years in Tucson, "Joe Bananas" began writing the story of his life. His tentative title: "The Prince of the Honored Mafia...
...agents and state officials swarmed into his Tucson home with search warrants as the don, still in pajamas, looked on helplessly. They went directly to the secret paneled buco, or hiding place, in his bedroom and fished out 250 pages of his memoirs. State agents quickly photocopied them. Bonanno became so agitated he threw...
...more than a month, the FBI has been analyzing the notes. The early reviews are favorable: "It was a trove of Mafia intelligence," says one Arizona official. TIME has learned that the manuscript reflects Bonanno's scorn for the Mafia's current commissioners, scalawags who were mere car thieves and moonshiners when Bonanno and four others established the Mafia ruling commission in 1931. They are unworthy of association with a royal Bonanno, writes Cosa Nostra's foremost snob, who claims to have had an audience with a Pope and a handshake with President Roosevelt...
...Bonanno's scorn for his colleagues on the commission got him in trouble. He invaded their territories and ignored their calls for conciliatory meetings. And finally, the other dons believed, he schemed to kill three of his rivals, Stefano Magaddino, Carlo Gambino and Thomas Lucchese. In his memoirs, however, Bonanno is all innocence. He was merely trying to talk to them. "Carl [Gambino] and Tom [Lucchese] ... [were] told that I was going to kill three -a dirty and desperate conspiracy...
Believing, probably correctly, that Bonanno's motives were more sinister, the commission decided to move against him. Bonanno writes that Sam Giancana of Chicago, Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia and Santo Trafficante of Tampa were appointed to do the job. Bonanno was kidnaped by two gunmen near his lawyer's Park Avenue apartment. Referring to himself by his initials, Bonanno confirms the theory that he was held captive near New York City while the commission debated his fate: "J.B. was kidnaped, kept in [illegible] house on parkway, 18 months...