Word: nostra
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Bronzed from a District of Columbia jail sun lamp and sucking a juice-filled plastic lemon to soothe his sore throat, he mumbled a litany of remembered violence on the sidewalks of New York in the '30s. He described the bloody revolution among rival Neapolitan and Sicilian Cosa Nostra families in the New York-New Jersey area that took 60-odd lives with stiletto and chopper, involved intricate double and triple crosses and led to the ascendancy of Vito Genovese as the Mafia's "boss of bosses...
...duration he might also outgrow his paranoid delusion that there exists a secret brotherhood among architects whose cosa nostra is the clever foisting of "cheap", "disfiguring", "sleazy", "hideous", "bad", "unsightly", "unbalanced", "ugly", "monstrous", and (finally) "unattractive" buildings upon the architecturally uneducated public among whom Mr. Weil is the example par excellence. K. Paul Zygas...
When Hoodlum Joe Valachi appeared before Arkansas Senator John McClellan's Permanent Investigations Subcommittee last week, he rasped out a 31-hour rhapsody of names, crimes and Cosa Nostra syndicate secrets. Valachi's song held nothing new for U.S. lawmen: he had been holding private recitals for them for more than a year. But his testimony might provide some ideas for show biz scriptwriters...
...appearance before the committee might gain. Bobby spoke about new wiretap laws and extending immunity from prosecution for racketeers who cooperate with the Justice Department. McClellan said vaguely that he had in mind some kind of law to "prohibit membership in such a criminal and secret organization as Cosa Nostra." And Joe Valachi thought organized crime should probably be outlawed-largely because "the bosses been thinking only of themselves for years...
...Valachi's testimony does nothing else, it has already produced a shocking commentary on the underworld jungle in the U.S. prison system. When Joe went to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on a narcotics conviction in 1960, the Cosa Nostra "boss of bosses" Vito Genovese, a prisoner, was there too. Valachi said Genovese arranged for them to be cellmates. One night in their cell Genovese said to Valachi...