Word: colombos
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...Vingo, a Colombo family loan shark with a fearsome reputation for violence...
Entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., his wife, and Rabbi Meir Kahane, who recently concluded an alliance between his militant Jewish Defense League and Colombo's league, were among the few nonfamily members to pass Vingo's muster. Davis, who emerged from the hospital grim and tight-lipped after visiting with the Colombo family, refused to comment on the shooting, saying only that Colombo has "our prayers...
Until Joe Colombo burst into headlines more than a year ago, the pattern of silence had never been broken. In an America now angrily aware of the Cosa Nostra, Colombo wanted to return to the omerta of turn-of-the-century Little Italys, where Mafia was a whispered word and bosses were not bad gered by grand juries, tax investigators and wiretaps. To accomplish his goal, Colombo tapped deepseated, legitimate grievances among Italian Americans and ? shocking editorial writers and Mob capos alike?jumped into press conferences and picket lines. He sought to make Cosa Nostra private once more...
Ironically, Colombo's deviation from old-line Mafia methods resulted from his adherence to the traditional code of family loyalty (see box, page 21). When his son Joseph Jr. was arrested in April 1970 on a charge of melting coins into silver ingots, Colombo acted at once. He took the usual steps of putting up bail and hiring a top lawyer to look for irregularities and loopholes. Then he did something new. He began picketing the FBI, claiming that he and his family were being harassed. After several months of daily demonstrations, the Italian-American Civil Rights League was formed...
...that in television series it sponsored the FBI would not track down criminals belonging to something called the Mafia. Plans for a $3.5 million hospital were announced; recently the league set up a children's summer camp. A year after the first pickets marched in front of FBI headquarters, Colombo was honored as league man-of-the-year. Thirteen hundred people came to the dinner marking his "undying devotion to the Italian-American people and all humanitarian causes...