Word: valachi
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DIED. PETER MAAS, 72, writer who chronicled the lives of Mafia insiders; in New York City. He collaborated with such high-profile Mob informants as Joseph Valachi (The Valachi Papers, 1969), confidant to Vito Genovese, and Sammy (The Bull) Gravano (Underboss, 1997), whose testimony helped undo John Gotti. In between, Maas wrote the best-selling Serpico, about a steadfast New York City cop who exposed graft in the police ranks...
...1950s and early '60s; in Torrance, California. To examine the link between LSD and creativity he tested the drug on 1,000 volunteers, including Aldous Huxley, Cary Grant and Jack Nicholson. DIED. PETER MAAS, 72, best-selling author of true-life Mafia and police crime novels The Valachi Papers and Serpico, which were made into successful movies starring Charles Bronson and Al Pacino, respectively; in New York City. When Maas received $400,000 for the film rights to the story of Frank Serpico's struggle against corruption within the New York City police department, he gave half...
Like Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy, Underboss is fascinating for its anthropologically detailed portrait of a subculture some of us can't get enough of, Al Pacino or no Al Pacino. Both Gravano and Maas (author previously of The Valachi Papers) claim Gravano will get no money from this de facto memoir. But why a man who recently left the federal witness-protection program would want to draw such attention to himself is a mystery. Maybe, given his gift for aphorism, he's thinking about going out on the corporate lecture circuit. "There's enough people to shoot in the head...
...Arco's allegations are disturbing for several reasons. An articulate communicator with deep knowledge of interfamily operations, D'Arco is viewed by federal agents as the nation's most important Mafia rat since Joseph - Valachi, who provided the first real glimpses into organized crime 30 years ago. D'Arco has appeared on the witness stand in virtually every major Mob trial of this decade. If he is lying about Carey, his credibility as a witness is badly damaged. And if D'Arco is telling the truth, the credibility of the government is in question for sitting on hot information that...
...will probably serve in a high-security witness-protection cellblock, Gravano agreed to testify in Gotti's trial and others to come. He thus became one of the highest-ranking mafiosi ever to turn state's evidence and perhaps the most important gangland informant since Mob soldier Joseph Valachi turned on his Genovese bosses in 1963. Prosecutors hope Gravano's testimony, along with that of other witnesses, will help get the don out of his trademark double-breasted suits and into a prison uniform for the rest of his days...