Word: mafia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Godfather. Marlon Brando in the film that doesn't mention the Mafia once. Savoy...
...mean. Joey took pleasure in breaking the arm of one of his clients who was sluggish about paying protection money. He punctured an enemy with ice picks. He had gained his status by serving as one member (Colombo was another) of a five-man execution squad of Mafia Boss Joe Profaci in the late '50s. Police claim they had scored 40 hits. By then he and his brothers had carved out a chunk of the Brooklyn rackets; they turned against Profaci, touching off a gang war in which nine mobsters died and three disappeared...
Hearty Hood. Gallo's defiance of Mafia tradition did not mark him as particularly savvy. Neither did his open claim that he was about to write his memoirs. Other gangsters do not appreciate such literature. There was, for example, a $100,000 contract-for his death, not his papers-out on Joseph Valachi, who wrote in detail of his life with the Mob (he died of natural causes in prison). But Author Marta Curro, the wife of Actor Jerry Orbach, eagerly agreed to help write the book because she had discovered that Joey was "a great person, brilliant, absolutely...
...life in those last days: a steel-tough gunman in racket circles; a philosophic, warm conversationalist outside the Mob. Whether he was really at home in both roles, or just a good actor, he was clearly convincing. Actress Joan Hackett found him fascinating well before she knew of his Mafia connections. "I liked him completely apart from any grotesque glamorization of the underworld," she recalls. "I thought his attempt to leave that life was genuine. He was the brightest person I've ever known." But Gallo also conceded that "I'll never make it in the straight world...
...give the Justice Department pause when it decides whether to retry the Harrisburg Seven, in a case that has already cost the Government an estimated $1,500,000. Indeed, the conspiracy law, invoked against such varied defendants as Charles Manson, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Bobby Scale and members of the Mafia, has lately come under attack as one of the most elusive and elastic on the books. According to legal critics, U.S. prosecutors have increasingly and often unfairly exploited the fact that a conspiracy charge requires less evidence of actual injurious conduct than any other crime. There is also rising concern...