The Mafia Lives On

One of the things that makes the Mafia so dangerous when compared to drug trafficking groups or other criminal groups is their ability to keep doing business no matter what.   The Bonanno family has been hit hard in the recent years.  The FBI went after them with a vengeance and they took down the administration.  The Bonanno family had been the only one of the five families in New York that had never had a made guy turn rat.  That all changed when underboss Sal Vitale flipped on the family and his brother in law the boss Joey Massino.  Then Joey Massino did the unthinkable: he flipped.  Joey not only flipped, he also wore a wire on acting boss Vinny Basciano and took him down.  One of the guys caught up in the prosecution was John Palazzolo.

Palazzolo was inducted into the Bonanno family in 1977 just like Massino, during that time it was under the leadership of boss Rusty Rastelli.    Palazzolo was tasked with killing another made guy named Anthony Coglitore, who was involved in blowing up another member.  

In 1991 Palazzolo was called again to take part in another murder.  This time it was another made guy, Russell Mauro.  Mauro had been involved in selling drugs, but when everyone else went down and he did not, the Bonannos figured he was cooperating.  They decided to murder him and Palazzolo was the guy to lure him to the murder site.  Mauro was killed, stuffed into a body bag and placed in the trunk of a 1985 Lincoln that was left on a street in Queens.

The body was badly decomposed by the time the cops found it and there were few clues.

Palazzolo, as you can see, has a long criminal history that included fraud, theft of interstate shipments, loansharking and extortion.  When he was picked up in the big Bonanno family take down, he had just finished parole.  He ended up pleading guilty to conspiracy to murder Mauro in aid of racketeering in April of 2006, and he was sentenced to 10 years.  

Palazzolo was released in 2012 at the age of 80, and he was right back to work with the Bonanno family. He was on parole and was not supposed to associate with felons.  Palazzolo was soon the street boss of the Bronx faction of the Bonanno family. Things were not going well and the Bronx faction was losing power to the others in Queens, so Palazzolo decided to make his move.

He started meeting with various men in the family.  One of those he met with was Fat Anthony Rabito. Fat Anthony is the Consigliore of the family and is a long time member of the family.  Fat Anthony had taken part in the murder of the three Capos during the internal war and had pleaded guilty to Racketeering.    

The problem is the FBI was watching when Palazzo and Fat Anthony had a lengthy meeting outside a Bayside Queens Diner parking lot.   Palazzo then met with another family man who was close to the boss Mikey “Nose” Mancuso.

The FBI decided they needed to make a move because they believed that Palazzo was going to make a move and it would cause more violence in the family.

Last week they took him down, which is surprising because the last time Palazzo was sentenced, back in 2006, he claimed that he had prostate cancer, Crohns disease and that he had to take 12 pills a day.  Today he is 82 years old and a veteran of the mafia.  Guys like him are the most dangerous because they have the years of knowledge.

The judge who was on his last case back in 2006 was the same judge on his case this week. The judge asked the US Attorney. “Is there still a leadership of the Bonanno family?” and she replied  “Unfortunately, yes.”  No matter who is locked up, or who dies, there is always someone else willing to step up and take the role.  

The Massino Family: The Last Boss

There are five Mafia families in New York. Of the five families, only one boss was left on the street, the rest were all locked up, with “acting bosses” or panels running in their absence.  

The last one left on the street was Joey Massino, boss of the Bonanno family.  Joey Massino had been in prison when Rusty Rastelli, the previous Bonanno family boss had passed away. The captains voted him in as boss and he inherited a family that had been in constant conflict for 25 years.  The ranks had been thinned and the remaining family was about 80 made members strong.

Joey started to change things for the better right away.  He suggested that his men close the Social Clubs because they made easy targets for the FBI.  The feds could set up surveillance and watch 50 men very easily at once.  Joey’s logic was simple, if his men were scattered the FBI could not be in 50 places at once.  

He also dropped the mandatory attendance of weddings, wake and other family events for the same reason.  Then he changed the rules on being made, he wanted anyone proposed for membership be around the crew for a minimum of 8 years.  After Donnie Brasco he decided there was no way the FBI would keep a Special Agent undercover for 8 years just to be made.

Joseph Bonanno, the founder of the modern Bonanno family had written a book.  The book spoke about the Cosa Nostra and even the Commission.  Joey felt that this was huge breach of Omerta and it was an embarrassment.  Joey changed the family name internally to the Massino Family.  He then started building up the family after so many years of neglect.  Each family was allowed to fill positions of those who had died and they were also allowed 10 new members a year. A list would be passed among the families of those proposed. The family would swell to 190 made members and 17 capos with people in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Canada.

Joey decided to break up his Massino family, so he put Sal Vitale in charge of so many capos, TG aka Anthony Graziano in charge of others and Tony Green Urso in charge of the rest.  He made this move for a number of reasons, but a main reason was that his brother-in-law, Sal Vitale, and John Gotti had plotted to get rid of him and take over the family in 1993.  Joey has stated that it was a good thing John Gotti had been away when he got home or he would not be on the stand testifying.

Joey called a meeting of the heads of the 5 families in the year 2000 and told the men to only come if they could make decisions.  Louie Bagels attended from the Lucchese Family, Joe Waverly came representing the Colombos, Peter Gotti came for the Gambinos and Skinny Larry attended for the Genovese.  They were to set important policy for the mafia across the country. They wanted guys who came home from prison to have to wait 10 years before they could be made.  They didn't want guys who took drug beefs still doing the same thing in the families.  They finally settled on a 5 year waiting period.  He told the other families at the meeting that the Massino family would only be inducting full-blooded Italians.  That was the only big meeting of all the five families while Joey was the boss.  

Early January 2003 Joey could see that the FBI was all over him.  They watched him day and night.  No matter where he went they followed him and they had guys outside of his house all night.  He knew that they were going to arrest him.  He knew that they had gotten his accountant to turn over all his records.  The noose was tightening, so on January 7 he slipped the FBI and met Bruno and Vinny Basciano at a diner close to his house.  There he told them he was going away and that he was leaving a panel to run the family.  He had found out from a lawyer on New Years’ Eve that Frank Coppa had flipped so he knew he was finished.  Vinny wanted to kill Sal Vitale before he was arrested, but Joey squashed it.  On January 9th the FBI came and took Joey away.  He asked them if they had gotten Sal and they said yes.  Joey knew that it was over and soon he found out how many guys had flipped on him.  It would turn out to be 7 guys who flipped on him, including his brother-in-law Sal Vitale.   

In January of 2004 the FBI came down with another massive indictment and took down the Bonanno family’s panel.   Joey sat through the trial where all his closest friends testified against him and he was convicted and facing life.  It was then he learned that the Feds were putting together a death penalty case against him for the murder of George from Canada. They said it was because George had accused TG Graziano of being on cocaine but it was because he murdered a wiseguy’s son in Canada.

Joey decided to flip but not until he saw what happened with the trial.  He was in his 70’s at the time, and he learned that the FBI was going to go after his wife.  He had married Josephine Vitale in 1960 and he had worked hard first in a factory and then on a food truck to provide for her.   He had built up his food truck business branching out to stocking other peoples trucks.  He had a deli and a catering business and he had saved this cash.  He had won the lotto 4 times and put that money away.  He had invested heavily in real estate for his family.  The FBI was going after his wife for money laundering.  The Bonannos had stopped giving him money from his book and shylock on the street.  Vincent Basciano had made himself acting boss and told people that the Commission okayed it.  Vinny took Joey’s money guys and placed them in his crew.  He made guys and broke and promoted Capos.  Then he had Randy Pizzola killed to show people he was boss.  The Genovese wanted to kill Vinny because they said he was like John Gotti in his suits but Joey told them no.  Joey went to a proffer with Edward McDonald as his shadow council. When the Government decided against the death penalty he started wearing a wire.

Vinny Basciano now locked up with him and was running his mouth.  He had made Michael Mancuso the acting boss but the rest of the family wanted to hear from Joey.  The Family was split into factions again.   Then it came out that Joey had flipped, the first official boss in the Cosa Nostra to flip and wear a wire.  Josephine gave the FBI 7 million in cash, over 500 gold bars and 5 properties to satisfy the forfeiture judgement against him.  She was allowed to keep 6 properties including her home, his mother’s house and four rental properties.  The rentals gave his wife an income of 270k a year.  

Joey would be sentenced to time served in 2013.

Mob Wives just announced a new cast member by the name of Natalie DiDonato, from Philadelphia.  Could she be related to Andrew DiDonato?

Andrew DiDonato: Surviving the Mob

Frank "Curly" Lino

Born on October 30th, 1938 in Gravesend Brooklyn Frank "Curly" Lino had his life's path already mapped out for him.   Frank's mother married Frank Lino Sr in a marriage arranged by the boss of the Genovese Family, Vito Genovese.  Frank would never get past the 10th grade at Lafayette High School in Brooklyn because he started running with a Mafia farm team: the Avenue U Boys.  He used to pull off robberies with the Avenue U Boys but he was soon running a floating game for a made Genovese Soldier.

Frank has lived a charmed life.  It may not have been the best life but he lived it to the max.  In May of 1962 he got involved with two other men to pull off a robbery of a tobacco store in Brooklyn.  While it was going down two NYPD Brooklyn Detectives were shot and killed.  Frank was picked up soon afterward and beaten severely in the station house by other detectives who he claimed stapled his hand and shoved a broomstick up his ass.  He did have a broken leg and arm.  The NYPD has put broomsticks up others asses, so who knows.

The court placed him on 3 years probation after he threatened to sue the city.  The other men were given the death penalty that was later commuted to life in prison.

This was not the last time Frank would be a torture victim due to his criminal activity.  During the heyday of the Mafia, the real life “Luca Brazi” for Junior Persico, a man named Hugh "Apples" Macintosh (or just Mac) grabbed Frank out of a bar. Mac brought him to a basement where he beat him and tortured him for two days trying to make him give up the names of his friends that had a beef with Persico.  He never gave up their names even after he was beaten so badly he suffered a weird eye twitch - a blinking twitch that remained for the rest of his life. So Mac let him go after telling him 'the reason you are being let go is because you didn’t rat. If you did we would have killed you"  Frank was so afraid he never looked back until he was well away from that place.

He was made on his 40th Birthday in 1977 in Little Italy.  It has been said it was because of his cousin Eddie Lino who was with John Gotti and a major drug dealer.  Gotti was very close to Joey Massino at this time.  

Frank was asked by his Capo Sonny Red Indelicato to drive him to a peace meeting at a social club in Brooklyn. Sonny Red decided to have Frank drive him to the meeting instead of his son Bruno because he did not really trust the other Capos. He told his son Bruno to kill all the Zips and the rest of the Capos if he did not return. There was a lot of internal strife in the Bonanno Family at the time because the self proclaimed boss Carmine Galante had been murdered by Bruno and others on orders from the Commision. Rusty Rastelli was the real boss but he was locked up, so his most trusted Capo Big Joey Massino was working hard to keep the family together.  The Zip Faction, The Canadian Faction, Sonny Black and Joey Massino all lined up against the other three capos.  Sonny Red, Dominick Trinchera and Philip Giaccone were all opposing Rusty but they were called into this last ditch peace offering.  Things seemed to be going fine when Frank saw three hooded come down the stairs into the club.  He saw Joey Massino hit Sonny Red in the head with something and another man jump out of a closet with a gun.  He saw Giaccone thrown up against a wall and shot before he fled so fast that nobody on the hit team could stop him.

He then went into hiding but the powers that be did not want him dead.  They wanted Bruno who had escaped the massacre.  Frank was close to him and knew where he was hiding out.  He met with the Underboss of the Gambino Family who gave him a chance to live, if he murdered Bruno.  Frank pretended to be looking for Bruno, when he really already knew where he was.  The Bonanno Family powers gave the contract to Sonny Black who then gave it to Lefty Ruggiero and Donnie Brasco.   Things went downhill from there because Donnie Brasco was an undercover FBI Agent and the Commission's case came down and Bruno was picked up.  

Frank was then asked to bring Sonny Black to a meeting because it had come out that Donnie Brasco was an FBI Agent and he was vouched for by Sonny Black.  Sonny knew he was not long for this world so he left his jewelry at home for his wife.  They got to the house where the meeting was to take place and Frank showed him to the basement.  Sonny went first and a few steps down Frank shoved him and when he fell the shooter fired into his body but the gun jammed.  Sonny Black told them to "Hit him one more time, Make it good"  They did.  They would cut off his hands because he shook them with an FBI Agent and Frank Lino's son helped dispose of Sonny Black.  The world of the Mafia is crazy because years later when I was at BaMontes in Brooklyn a guy wearing a black over coat was walking back and forth smoking a cigarette.  I was watching him and Nicky Santoro a Bonanno Capo told me that he was Sonny Black’s kid.  So Sonny's kid is still around those guys.

Frank did it all on the street, from drugs, robbery, pump and dump, extortion to Gambling.  He made money from Family Union contracts with school buses.  He had conspired with the Lucchese Family to kill a Gambino associate until Sal Vitale the Underboss had a sitdown with Nicky Corrozzo who told him I dont care what the kid did, what he stole its done, we have big plans for him.  So that was it for that hit.  Good for Frank because when he was locked up later he was going to get shanked in the yard of a prison.  When the huge Bonanno family indictments came down he learned that Sal Vitale had flipped and he knew it was over.  He flipped becoming the first of many Bonanno's to testify for the Government.  He would implicate his own relatives in many Mafia crimes and for that he was rewarded with just 8 years by the judge and is now out and a free man.

I hope he lives a good life and enjoys his freedom.  He is older and he knows what he did.