Word: massino
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...Massino trial is the latest--and, the feds hope, final--chapter in a century-old soap opera that began in the early '30s with Luciano's anointing of Sicilian-born Joseph Bonanno, then just 26, to rein in one of New York's warring crime gangs and sit on the newly formed Mafia Commission (Bonanno died in 2002 at 97). Bonanno's son Bill, 72, admits he ran the family for a brief, chaotic period in the '60s (true) and claims that he and his father were Mario Puzo's inspiration for Michael and Vito Corleone (debatable). He subscribes...
Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano. Disappeared in August '81. The government says he was whacked as payback for unwittingly letting Pistone infiltrate the family. A year later, a decomposed corpse was found in a Staten Island swamp with a bullet wound to the head. Investigators say Massino approved the hit. David Breitbart, Massino's lawyer, says it's not Napolitano and will demand, "Habeas corpus...
Gelando (George from Canada) Sciascia. Found dumped in the Bronx in March '99 with five bullet holes in his head and torso. The coiffed Sicilian ran the Bonannos' Montreal franchise. According to court documents, he quarreled with another captain, Anthony Grazino, over the latter's supposed cocaine use. Massino, the government claims, backed Grazino and said Sciascia "had to go." This is the one murder charge that doesn't date back to the Reagan years, and Massino could be executed for the crime because it occurred after '94--when a federal murder-in-aid-of-racketeering law was updated...
...Thirty-five defendants are facing 23 murder or attempted-murder charges." Rapid-fire indictments have scooped up Bonannos from Staten Island to the Bronx. In addition to squeezing informants and clocking countless hours of surveillance, two C-10 agents used "forensic accounting" techniques to follow a paper trail through Massino's murky bookkeeping. The knockout blow was delivered in September, when James (Big Lou) Tartaglione recorded acting Bonanno boss Anthony (Tony Green) Urso allegedly conspiring to murder the families of Bonannos who were cooperating with the encroaching G-men. "Why should rats' kids be happy where my kids or your...
...might recognize it in Big Joey, who reintroduced the sternest Mafia traditions and insisted that his men honor them. Massino (who often used the alias Messina in his early days) was born in '43 and raised in Brooklyn, where he befriended Vitale and in his teens married Vitale's sister Josephine. The couple settled in Howard Beach, Queens, where they still live in a house decorated with white marble and crystal chandeliers...