Word: mafia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Leniency. The New York police share that suspicion and are hoping to find Yacovelli before the Gallos do. But there are other suspects, including Carmine DeBiase, a member of the Mafia family headed by the late Vito Genovese. By decree of the Gambinos, the Gallo contract was "wide open"-meaning that any executioner from any family could kill him and have the backing of the Gambinos. The Gallos think, however, that two Colombo men killed Joey: one of them, Rocco Miraglia, seems to fit the description of the assassin. Besides, Gallo's men recall that a few months...
Americans tend to regard Mafia wars with detachment and even titillation. There are even those who think that the killing has a salutary effect. The New York Daily News, for one, editorialized rather glibly last week: "We cannot help feeling that these killings are ridding society of some characters who won't be missed sorely, if at all, and are saving police, prosecutors and courts a lot of work and taxpayers a lot of money." It is rare, after all, that the innocent get caught in the crossfire...
...Ralph Salerno, a former New York City policeman and an expert on the Mafia, believes that the Mob killings could take a more ominous turn. "The gangsters do have rules about murders," he says. "There are rules against killing law-enforcement officials. Other rules forbid killing reporters. But if society does nothing about gang slayings, the gangsters may decide to change the rules and hit anybody who gets in their way. Remember, the rules are theirs-not ours...
There are other rules that, strictly observed, keep the Syndicate a tightly knit network closed to outsiders and so efficient that its activities-legal and illegal-are estimated to bring in more than $30 billion a year. The strength of the Mafia is based less on the corporate structure of a criminal organization than on the social organization of Sicily and southern Italy, whence most of the Mafiosi spring. There, notes Sociologist Francis Ianni, the rule of law is replaced by a social structure that is regulated by a code: each man must protect the family's honor...
Thus, to the Mafia, even murder is not abhorrent if it advances the fortunes of the family or wipes out a blot on its honor. "It's just business," killers in The Godfather explain to rivals whose friends and relatives they have machine-gunned or garroted to death. Not only that, but it is business with honor, and takes precedence over the law. Inside his family, says Ianni, the Mafioso is "highly moral and self-sacrificing." But outside, he recognizes no ethical force. Family members, as in Sicily, are bound together by "the web of kinship; of the participants...