Word: mafia
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Lifting 135 Ibs. of concrete blocks from the bottom of Jamaica Bay, the bloated body of a Mafia assassin named Ernie ("The Hawk") Rupolo floated ashore one morning in 1964 in New York City's Queens County. Rupolo's murder clearly looked like the gangland variety, which usually defies solution. This time, though, the killers had not displayed their customary efficiency in disposing of the corpse. Moreover, Queens County Assistant District Attorney James C. Mosley was convinced that they had made other errors too. In 1967, he brought a Long Island Mafia lieutenant, John ("Sonny") Franzese, and three...
...witnesses are afraid to testify. The opposition's maneuvers force him to present his case to the jury like "a movie run too fast, with a lamp too dim and half the frames chopped out." According to Mosley, the case marked the first time in 20 years that Mafia defendants had been brought to trial for murder in New York City. The book, most of which first appeared in LIFE, shows just how difficult it is to obtain a conviction in such cases. It also reminds the reader, who is left sharing Mosley's indignation, of the high...
Another legacy from the Sicilian Mafia is Cosa Nostra's almost mystical concept of respect. Something like the Oriental notion of "face," respect means more to a Cosa Nostra mobster than money. If he does not have the regard of his fellow members, he is nothing, even in his own eyes. An equally high value is placed on loyalty. It is not always honored, to be sure, but it nevertheless remains a powerful binding force within the organization. Indeed, the very human characteristics of respect and loyalty, together with the organization's dynastic structure, offer some clues to its remarkable...
CENTURIES before La Cosa Nostra was heard of in the U.S., the Mafia operated-even as it does today-as a brigand government in much of Sicily. Though many Italian immigrants had come to the U.S. to avoid just such oppression as the Mafia offers, a few among them formed a new Mafia in the new country. In the crowded "Little Italys" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the thugs found easy prey among people who had been taught to dread the terrorists' Black Hand...
...organization's code of conduct was partly Maranzano and partly Mafia omerta, a combination of such qualities as manliness, honor and willingness to keep secrets. Its requirements have never changed. The penalty for breaching the code: death. Except for the Chicago branch, which has always disdained the ornate, members are bound by an elaborate ceremony of medieval hocuspocus. Flanked by the boss and his lieutenants, the initiate and his sponsor may stand in front of a table on which are placed a gun and, on occasion, a knife. The boss picks up the gun and intones in the Sicilian...