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Gangsters Inc.'s Posts - Gangsters Inc. 2015-07-05T12:27:34Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w http://api.ning.com:80/files/Ih-UvonHaGiYx63zjmqj7W3uj2yTZjTQnXj-CQ13Abg9CqEC*FRNCBonb5MXbD7cUxTrS*nI2M5EeL963JTtPLNoS18i1wIJ/icongangstersinc2.jpg?width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1 http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=2g2lucitjcn3w&xn_auth=no Organized Crime in North America tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-07-02:6329524:BlogPost:645 2015-07-02T10:30:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

United States

New York:

La Cosa Nostra:

The Bonanno Crime…

United States

New York:

La Cosa Nostra:

The Bonanno Crime Family
 The Colombo Crime Family
 The Gambino Crime Family
 The Genovese Crime Family
 The Lucchese Crime Family

Insulting mobsters with comedian Don Rickles
 The Humble Origins of Joe Masseria and Lucky Luciano
 Gangsters Inc. sits down with FBI agent Jack Garcia
 The Mafia and Labor Racketeering
 Genovese and Gambino Mobsters in Garbage Bust
 The Time I Hurt Mobster Henry Hill's Feelings
 New Edition of True Crime Classic Murder, Inc.
 Three Dead Mobsters, Three Different Stories
 Mafia Hits Caught On Video Tape
 Art Imitating Life Imitating Art
 The Rat Infested Mob
 Another Mob Social Club Bites The Dust
 Will Historic Mob Bust Really Go Down As Historic?
 Yidfellas: The Kosher Nostra
 The Mafia in the Second World War
 Mobsters in Prison: A Story From Behind Bars
 The Italian Mafia in The Netherlands
 Photo Gallery: American Murder Scenes

Other crime groups:

The Gangster Alpo From Spanish Harlem
 Supreme: Gangster giant towers over Queens rap
 Alex Rudaj (in prison)
 Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff (in prison)
 Leroy "Nicky" Barnes (flipped)
 Frank Matthews
 An Introduction To The New York Albanian Mob
 Folk Nation Gang Leader Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison
 Very Bad Men: How Jewish racketeers beat the system
 MS-13 Gang Boss Carlos "Silencio" Ortega
 Black Caesar: The Rise of America's Biggest Kingpin
 Former Gangsters Beefing About Books
 Bloods Gang Leader Charged With Three Murders
 New Arrests in Violent Albanian Drug Gang Bust
 The Israeli Mafia's brief invasion of New York
 Former Drug Kingpin Ike Atkinson Tells All In New Documentary

New Jersey:

La Cosa Nostra:

The DeCavalcante Crime Family

Others:

Chili Pimping in Atlantic City

Philadelphia:

La Cosa Nostra:

The Bruno Crime Family

Others:

Roland Bartlett (dead)

Chicago:

La Cosa Nostra:

The Chicago Outfit

Others:

Senator Declares War On Gangster Disciples
 George "Bugs" Moran (dead)
 Gangland History of the Chicago Boroughs
 Chicago: A Gangster History

Boston:

La Cosa Nostra:

The New England Patriarca Crime Family

Others:

The Blackfriars Massacre
 Boston Boss James "Whitey" Bulger Found Guilty
 Court Showdown Between "Whitey" and "The Rifleman"
 The Making of Mob Boss Whitey Bulger
 The Kennedys: Whiskey Barons in the White House
 Irish Mob Boss James "Whitey" Bulger Arrested

Detroit:

Detroit Mafia Boss "Black Jack" Tocco Dies
 Chester Wheeler Campbell: The 007 of the Detroit Drug Mob
 The Color Purple: Detroit's Early Mob
 The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

Baltimore:

Female Drug Boss Jean Brown
 Maurice "Peanut" King
 Baltimore: A Gangster History

Washington:

Profile: Washington D.C. drug boss Rayful Edmond
 The Murder of Fray; A Washington D.C. Street Legend

Florida:

Interview: Spotlight on Tampa Mafia with tour and magazine
 José Miguel Battle Sr. (dead)
 Santo Trafficante: Building the Family Business

California:

Profile: Armenian Power leader Mher Darbinyan
 Rap mogul Suge Knight shot six times at VMA party
 Los Angeles Capo Jimmy Caci Has Passed Away
 Prison Gangs and the Analogy of Hate
 Michael Harris: A Convicted Drug Kingpin Who Gave Denzel His Start on Broadway

Las Vegas:

Insulting mobsters with comedian Don Rickles
 Interview with mob lawyer-turned-mayor Oscar Goodman
 Las Vegas: Sin City
 The High Roller: Jimmy Chagra, Gambling & Poker

Kansas City:

Full-Time Gangsters Part-Time Rappers

New Orleans:

New Orleans mobsters caught with "sniper van"

Canada

Mobster shot to death at restaurant in Montreal
 The Canadian Connection: Flooding the U.S. with dope
 Montreal Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto (1946 - 2013)
 Mobster Di Maulo 14th victim of Montreal Mafia war
 Bonanno Boss Murdered Near Montreal
 Montreal Bust: Project Colisée
 Mafia of Montréal: A Short History

Various articles and interviews:

Cops make the deadliest Mafia hit men
 Always a gangster: Racketeering in the nursing home
 5 of the dumbest moves in Mafia history
 Top 5 of True Stand Up Wiseguys
 The Jamaican Shower Posse: A Family Business
 Jon Stewart's The Daily Show greatest Mafia hits… uh bits
 Reality TV Showing Audiences Fake Ganglands
 Exclusive Interview With Convicted LSD Kingpin Turned Author Seth Ferranti
 A Gangster Christmas: We got this!

 The Gangster Alpo From Spanish Harlem tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-07-02:6329524:BlogPost:66216 2015-07-02T06:15:55.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
 By Seth Ferranti

"On the back of the bike with Alpo/doin' a back down one-two-three/hopin' to stay alive/favorite spot, Rooftop"- LL Cool J

Alberto "Alpo" Martinez (photo above) was from East Rivers projects in Spanish Harlem, better known as the Eastside. "Alpo's building was on 105th and First Avenue," the Spanish Harlem hustler…

By Seth Ferranti

"On the back of the bike with Alpo/doin' a back down one-two-three/hopin' to stay alive/favorite spot, Rooftop"- LL Cool J

Alberto "Alpo" Martinez (photo above) was from East Rivers projects in Spanish Harlem, better known as the Eastside. "Alpo's building was on 105th and First Avenue," the Spanish Harlem hustler says. "Alpo was Puerto Rican, not Dominican. Very few people knew that because of his complexion and his swagger. Those who grew up with him in the area knew. He used to hang out in Wilson projects which were across the street. His childhood was good."

It's said Alpo never met his father and that he spent summers away from Harlem as a child at Fresh Air Fund camps. "Po always stood out. He went to camp. His mom was always taking him out. He was a dark skinned Puerto Rican. I called him negro. He spoke Spanish real well." The Spanish Harlem hustler says.

"I can't picture anyone not liking Alpo." He continues. The nigga's smile embraced everyone. Going to the Boys Club, he wanted to be a Marine, a cadet." A nice white family involved in the Fresh Air Fun camps took a liking to Alpo and after the summer program was over they would send for him. This family grew to love him. They wanted to adopt him, but it wasn't meant to be. Life had another fate for Alpo.

Alpo grew up in a single parent household, along with his three siblings. He had an older sister, a younger sister Monica, an older brother, who he had no real relations with because he was literally crazy, and his mom whom he loved dearly. "I have a wonderful mother, very strong Hispanic mother," Alpo said.

The neighborhood was mostly black and Puerto Rican, with a few white families still living in East Rivers and the surrounding projects- Wilson, New Metro North and Old Metro North. New Metro ran from 100th Street and 1st Avenue to 102nd Street and F.D.R. East River ran from 102nd and 105th Street to 1st Avenue and F.D.R. Old Metro North ran from 101st Street and 102nd Street to 1st and 2nd Avenues. Then Wilson completed the square, running from 105th and 106th Street to 1st Avenue and F.D.R. That equated to four projects in the middle of Spanish Harlem, running the span of six New York City blocks. A lot was happening in that small area and Alpo was usually in the middle of it.

East River was the biggest of the four projects with a total of 29 buildings. Twenty-three of those buildings were six story buildings with five apartments on each floor. There were six bigger buildings that were 15 stories high, with eight apartments on each floor. It was said that East River projects was a world of its own.

"From as far as I can remember Alpo lived in East River projects, because his sister Monica used to be a cheerleader on our Pee Wee and little league baseball team." The East River boriqua says. "His older brother Flaco was a straight nut case. Completely crazy, mental hospital type crazy. He used to freak out and go wild. They accused Flaco of trying to kill or rape some chick when he was young.

"There was always something going on in the hood, like block parties or whatever. The big park in the back of East Rivers, as well as the basketball court were the official jam spots, where DJ Dollar Bill from Wilson projects would set up shop with his equipment- two turn tables, big ass speakers and 100 extension cords hanging out of someone's apartment window giving them juice to jam. The neighborhood was a melting pot, because we had black, white and Spanish and everyone else that had to come live there, because you weren't there because you wanted to be there."

Alpo went to PS5382 in the Bronx, from elementary school up to the sixth grade on the Eastside, then he attended St. Lucy's Catholic school and went to Automotive Mechanical High School in Brooklyn for a minute. Jay-Z went there too. Alpo also attended Julia Richmond High School. But school wasn't where he would make his name at. He had a serious jones for the streets.

"I have no idea about how he got the name Alpo," the East River boriqua says. "I just know they called him that as far back as I can remember. That nigga went to one of those schools for troublemakers or kids who caught cases. He was a dusty kid, you know, nothing special, but not many from the hood were above the dusty level." In New York's Spanish Harlem it was a hard life and Alpo did whatever he could to stand out.

"He was like 140, a little scrappy dude, liked to pay attention. As he got older, he started filling out." The Spanish Harlem hustler says. "He took sparring and boxing lessons with Wilfredo Benitiz, but the pull of the streets was too much. Like any other kid, Alpo didn't want to depend on his mother. He had the eye of the tiger. Po had it, like Lebron and MJ." Alpo had street dreams and unlike others he had the heart to make them come true.

"There was definitely the Latin vibe big time in the neighborhood," the East River boriqua says. "It was Spanish Harlem when you hit the street, you knew that the name went perfect with the place. It was the type of neighborhood where everyone knew each other. Where the local grocery store, Julios, let people take credit until the welfare check came or you got paid on Fridays.

"Some families were dirt poor and others just a notch above them, so when you're living that kind of life day in and day out in the Mecca of the World, Manhattan, everybody wants to shine, everybody wants to rise to the ghetto superstar status. But wanting is one thing and actually going out there and making it happen is a whole other story.

"This motherfucker Alpo used to ride around the neighborhood on a ten speed doing wheelies with a mouth full of beans and a big ass straw from McDonald's shooting everyone as he rode by with beans. Dudes wanted to be friends with him because he was always into something and kids in the neighborhood knew that people respected and somewhat feared him because he would go at it with anyone."

As a child he robbed people and snatched pocket books. Alpo was in the life early, already in the mix by the time he was 13 or 14 years old. He was born in 1966, so by 1980 he was getting his. He had a knack for getting people to like him and he was always scheming on ways to make money. Alpo had no fear and that was attractive to older criminals.

"I had a friend on 105th that took me under his wing." Alpo said. Alpo started as a runner. A certain O.G. had him on the corner. Alpo was the first one out on the block; it'd be early in the morning and cold as hell. Alpo was maybe 13, he was young, but he was on the street grinding. He was really street smart for such a young dude. He used to hang out on Amsterdam selling heroin packets.

"The hustle was big in Harlem and back then dope was king. Coke was second, because crack hadn't hit the streets yet. Weed was everyone's bread drug." The East River boriqua says. "The local drug dealer respected everyone that lived in the buildings they hustled in front of and everyone respected him all the same. There were enemies like everywhere else, but there were some unwritten rules in the projects back then, that I'm sure don't exist now.

"Like if you were a straight arrow dude, that didn't agree with what was going on in front of your building, you didn't call the cops to address the issue, you simply addressed the issue. That's one thing about the projects, you could never underestimate the next man, because the projects were tough and there was always someone tougher than you wanting to make a name for himself.

"But even with all that, it was a beautiful place to grow up. When fights broke out between kids their whole family got it on- sisters with sisters, younger brothers with younger brothers, fathers with fathers- that was the unity that you saw in the hood." Life wasn't easy in Spanish Harlem, families stuck together.

"We knew Alpo personally, before anyone who isn't from East River did. We are from the same projects as he is and witnessed firsthand what others from New York didn't know. Before there was a Wayne Perry, there was a Randy Love who terrified the shit out of a lot of dudes in Harlem and New York period," the Spanish Harlem hustler says. Randy Love was the friend and O.G. that took Alpo on and put him under his wing.

"Randy Love was from across the street on 105th Street and 1st Ave, Wilson projects. Randy terrorized the shit out of all of Harlem. He was a gangster that was vicious before anybody ever heard of a Wayne Perry. His reputation was that he was not to be fucked with. He was a killer and niggas knew what time it was." The Spanish Harlem hustler says.

"Randy Love used to steal Greyhound buses from the Port Authority for fun and bring them back around the way. He used to put Alpo up to running into spots and staking out the joint, then they'd come back and rob the shit out of the Dominicans. Randy Love took Alpo under his wing, but he was mostly gone a lot, because he stayed on Rikers Island.

"I think Randy was the one who probably made him even tougher, because we all knew he was tough, but when he was starting to run with Randy, everybody knew that he was taking it to the next level. There were rumors that they were sticking up drug dealers and they robbed and killed a cash carrier that used to pick up the cash on a 112th Street dope spot. That cash belonged to the dudes from the lower Eastside and this led to a body being dropped damn near every day in the hood." Randy Love taught Alpo a lot about the streets, but Alpo was gaining other skills that would help him also.

"I was learning to drive. I was a good driver too. I was wild, things of that nature." Alpo said. "I was known for my driving. The first car I bought with my own money was a four door 77 Chevy Malibu. I put some music in it, turned the headers around and that was my joint. The car that really put me on the map was a Toyota Corolla. I used to drive crazy in it. I really thought it was a racecar.

"It was a blue five speed with fat wheels and a system in it. I'm talking 1981-82. I was still in Julia Richmond high school at the time. I thought I was the man. I crashed it. I didn't hit anybody so I jumped out the joint and just left the car. I jumped in a cab and got out of there. I loved that car. I used to be at the Rooftop with that joint on the sidewalk, like it was a BMW.

"I remember I got my first BMW out of 115th. That's when the 318 was out. I got it from a crackhead who smoked so much in my spot he had to give it to me to pay off his crack debt. It was a blue joint, with a sunroof and light gray seats. His family didn't know he was getting high and he smoked like 10 grand in my spot. His family ended up paying me some of the money and I let it go." The young Alpo was a gangster in training, a young reckless dude who didn't give a fuck.

"Our everyday environment is what set the ground work for him to want to shine." The East River boriqua says. "We all seen what the dope boys and coke stars had and how they made life in the projects look like they were living in a penthouse on 63rd Street and Central Park West overlooking the park. Everybody wanted that, Alpo just pushed toward it more. If I'm right, he came from a single parent home, just his mom. In that home he had one crazy ass brother and a younger sister. I'm sure the thoughts were for him to get some cash and get out of there so he could have his own place.

"The way that welfare apartments work is that the boys room together, so he probably had crazy ass Flaco sleeping in the room with him. Monica probably had her own room and the mom her own room. So here you are living tight as a motherfucker in the hood on 105th Street, one block from a good dope spot on 105th and 1st and 2nd Avenue.

"You damn near taste the money that is being made up the block, not to mention that we weren't far from the upper middle class whites that lived good in Manhattan. Ninety-sixth Street was like the unofficial border of the dirt poor to middle and upper class America so we were just nine blocks away from what felt like a world away in lifestyles." Alpo's involvement with Randy Love led him into the stick up game and he was a natural gun thug.

"We started robbing the Dominicans together." Alpo said. "We did stick ups. I remember when the Dominicans used to have weight up in their apartments on scales. We would rob them just for that. Because I looked so young they would just open the door. I would go in first, survey the area, and since I spoke Spanish, I would understand what they were talking about. After that, I'd tell my man the layout, where the guns were. Then we would go back.

"We were robbing them. The takes were good back then; we'd get $10 to 15 grand and half a kilo in cocaine. After the stick ups stopped we started selling dope for some big names. Then we branched off. My partner was always in and out of jail." With Randy Love at his side, Alpo had the whole Eastside on lockdown. Dudes were shook. "He had a posse. He blew up at 15. Wore the big gold chains at age 15. From Randy Love, he learned how ruthless he had to be. He had the stick up kids in check. He worked older men. They listened and respected him." The Spanish Harlem hustler says. "They bodied whoever the fuck got in their way. Randy Love is serving life in the state now, but back then he scared the shit out of these niggas and he and Alpo caught mad bodies together for years before Alpo met Rich Porter."

Seth Ferranti is author of numerous true crime books, Crack, Rap and Murder: The Cocaine Dreams of Alpo and Rich Porter. is one of his latest releases. You can order it online at all bookstores or visit Ferranti's website Gorilla Convict to get your copy there. You can also follow Ferranti on Twitter @SethFerranti

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

Black Caesar: The Rise of America's Biggest Kingpin

Supreme: Gangster giant towers over Queens rap

Gangsters Inc. sits down with FBI agent Jack Garcia

Spotlight on Tampa Mafia with tour and magazine

Profile of Washington D.C. drug boss Rayful Edmond

Profile of drug boss Leroy "Nicky" Barnes

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 Russian Mafia - Overview tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-06-29:6329524:BlogPost:123 2015-06-29T06:59:22.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
 Organized Crime has existed in Russia (former Soviet Union) for centuries. Under the communist regime corruption was as normal in Russia as snow falling during the winter. One of the big money makers for the Russian criminals was selling Western products on the black market, a market they controlled in the 1970s and…

Organized Crime has existed in Russia (former Soviet Union) for centuries. Under the communist regime corruption was as normal in Russia as snow falling during the winter. One of the big money makers for the Russian criminals was selling Western products on the black market, a market they controlled in the 1970s and 80s.

 It was also during this time that there was a wave of Russian émigrés who fled to North America. Most of these émigrés were Jewish, however a lot of Russians faked a Jewish passport, among them Russian criminals. Most of the Russians settled in Brighton Beach in New York, which has the largest Russian population outside of Russia.

 When the Soviet Union fell apart, Russian organized crime was unleashed unto the world. Russian organized crime can now be found everywhere, from the US to Israel to Spain and England. The Russians can be considered to be among the most powerful criminals in the world.

 Russian criminals are active in: Fraud, transnational money laundering, extortion, drug trafficking, weapon smuggling, auto theft, white slave trafficking/prostitution, hostage taking, extortion of immigrant celebrities and sport figures, transportation of stolen property for export, insurance and medical fraud, counterfeiting, credit card fraud, and murder.

PROFILES:

 Leonid Lebedev
 Sergei Tsapok
 Gafur Rakhimov
 Tariel Oniani
 Victor Bout (in prison)
 Aleksandr Solonik (whacked)
 Sergei "Mikhas" Mikhailov (Boss of the Solsnetskaya Organization)
 Evsei "The Little Don" Agron (whacked)
 Ludwig "Tarzan" Fainberg
 Semion Mogilevich
 Vyacheslav "Yaponchik" Ivankov (whacked)
 Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (The man who fixed the Salt Lake City Olympics)

 ARTICLES:

 A New Dawn For the Russian Mafia
 FIFA capo Sepp Blatter boozing with Russian mob boss
 Russian mob boss arrested in Thailand
 Spain police bust Russian Mafia gang Taganskaya
 Investigating the Russian Mafia on its home turf
 Georgian Crime Clan of Vors Busted in Europe
 Viktor Bout Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison
 The Dark Knight of Mother Russia
 Russian Mob in Miami
 The Russian Mafia in Spain: Operation "Troika"
 An American Businessman in Moscow: The Story of Paul Tatum

 Puparo's look on Russian O.C.

 Russia 1990 - 1994
 Russia 1995 - 1999
 Russia 21st Century

 The New England Crime Family tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-06-22:6329524:BlogPost:61193 2015-06-22T08:45:05.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
Estimate members: Unknown

 First Boss: Frank "Butsey" Morelli

 Primary activities: Involved in narcotics trafficking, video poker machines, robbery, extortion, loan sharking, gambling.

 Boss: Carmen DiNunzio

 Consigliere: Peter Limone

 Acting Boss: Anthony "Spucky" Spagnolo (under indictment)…

Estimate members: Unknown
 First Boss: Frank "Butsey" Morelli
 Primary activities: Involved in narcotics trafficking, video poker machines, robbery, extortion, loan sharking, gambling.
 Boss: Carmen DiNunzio
 Consigliere: Peter Limone
 Acting Boss: Anthony "Spucky" Spagnolo (under indictment)

ARTICLES:

Boston Mafia bosses hit the streets – War looming?
 FBI releases audio of Boston Mafia induction ceremony
 New England Mafia bust emphasizes mob's decline
 Joe Barboza: Boston Barbarian
 Boston Mafia bosses hit the streets – War looming? tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-06-21:6329524:BlogPost:65986 2015-06-21T19:37:33.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
 By David Amoruso

Never a dull moment in the Boston underworld. After barely surviving an internecine war and the beatings Whitey Bulger and the FBI dished out, the New England La Cosa Nostra family has been working hard to rebuild. This year, several top mobsters will hit the streets, raising the ever-pertinent question: Who's the boss?

The most…

By David Amoruso

Never a dull moment in the Boston underworld. After barely surviving an internecine war and the beatings Whitey Bulger and the FBI dished out, the New England La Cosa Nostra family has been working hard to rebuild. This year, several top mobsters will hit the streets, raising the ever-pertinent question: Who's the boss?

The most senior mobster on the list of possible candidates is 87-year-old Luigi "Baby Shacks" Manocchio, who was released from a federal prison in North Carolina last month and sent to a halfway house to prepare for his release.

Manocchio (right) led the New England Patriarca Family until he was arrested in January of 2011 in a nationwide bust together with 127 other mobsters from crime families in New York and New Jersey. In 2012, he pleaded guilty to shaking down Rhode Island strip clubs for protection money and was sentenced to over 5 years in prison. His sentence will officially end in November.

Despite his old age, Manocchio can hold his own and remains a capable wiseguy. Boston mobster-turned-author Mark Silverman tells Gangsters Inc. that "he keeps his mind and body sharp. He's still in great shape, physically and mentally." Adding, "Rarely will he see anybody other than his trusted friends, guys that have been around since the Angiulo brothers' days."

However, despite his cautious manner, he had even retired to Florida at one point, the Feds snagged him in 2011. That is partly why Silverman is certain Manocchio will say farewell to the mob life. "I'm sure he's retired. He's paid his dues and deserves a little freedom for the rest of his golden years."

With Manocchio out of the picture, for now – you can never count out an aging mobster – we focus on another Patriarca Family powerhouse. Carmen "The Cheese Man" DiNunzio (57) became a free man on February 19 of this year and has been at the peak of the New England Mafia's hierarchy for around a decade. When Manocchio's successor, Peter Limone, was sent to prison on bookmaking charges, DiNunzio stepped up to fill the position of boss.

Together with his younger brother Anthony DiNunzio (56), Carmen ran a tight ship. Author Scott Burnstein describes DiNunzio as "a wiseguy peacemaker, someone who favors mediation over violence unless totally necessary." A retired FBI agent familiar with DiNunzio told Gangster Report, "Carmen's more a racketeer than a gangster, he doesn't get off on the blood and guts like a lot of guys that rise as high as he has."

He did, however, run with plenty of gangsters who did get off on violence and intimidation. When he had a falling out with Jerry Angiulo, the family's underboss at that time, after he allegedly shook down an Angiulo underling named Vincent "Dee Dee" Gioacchini, DiNunzio and his brother fled to the west coast where they worked with Chicago mobsters. One of the men they worked for was notorious hit man Anthony "The Ant" Spilotro. Portrayed by actor Joe Pesci in the movie Casino, Spilotro was beaten to death with baseball bats and buried in a shallow grave by Chicago mobsters in 1986.

While, according to most sources, Spilotro's violent streak did not rub off on "The Cheese Man", it did, apparently, rub off on his brother Anthony. Caught on wiretaps Anthony DiNunzio (right) is heard issuing many threats. During a meeting with an associate at My Cousin Vinny's restaurant in Malden in June of 2011, he made clear what would happen if anyone disobeyed him. "I get to watch you die in the ground," he said (un)knowingly conjuring up images of Spilotro's gory demise. "I stay there ten fuckin' hours until you're dead. And I'll dig you back up and make sure you are dead."

With the DiNunzio brothers on top, the Patriarca crime family was rumored to be able to put behind many of the beefs that originated during the internecine war that took place in the 1990s. Despite their success both men did not enjoy a long run.

In November of 2008, Operation Mobbed Up in Rhode Island took down 25 mob guys and associates out of Providence. Carmen DiNunzio was charged with extortion, gambling offenses, and charged with bribing an FBI agent. In the fall of 2009, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

Upon his brother Carmen's imprisonment, Anthony took over as leader until he too went down in 2012 when the Feds charged him with racketeering and extortion. He is due to be released in February of 2018.

While both DiNunzios were behind bars, Anthony "Spucky" Spagnolo took over. It was the first time in the history of the Patriarca family that the boss was from East Boston. The Boston faction's center of power was always based in the North End of Boston.

Interestingly, Spagnolo was at the center of one of the more recent disputes within the family. One of the men he had a beef with, Vincent "Dee Dee" Gioacchini, was the same man Carmen DiNunzio had shaken down back in the 1980s. Mark Silverman was in close contact with many Patriarca mobsters at that time and tells Gangsters Inc. what happened in Boston during the early to mid-2000s.

"A street beef between Anthony Spagnolo and the East Boston mafia street duo of Frederick "Freddy the Neighbor" Simone and Vincent "Dee Dee" Gioacchini had reached its boiling point," he says. "The two East Boston gangsters had served lengthy prison terms and wanted their old territory back. Spagnolo, who had since been promoted to capo of the Day Square Crew, was not about to let that happen. In traditional mafia style, the two gangsters reached out to Manocchio to settle the dispute. Fearing another all-out mob war, Manocchio dispatched his Rhode Island lieutenant, Matthew Guglielmetti (below), to Boston for a sit down. State Police wiretaps placed in the kitchen of Simone picked up some very damaging conversations alluding to the fact that Guglielmetti would be killed if the peace could not be brokered. Guglielmetti tried to convince Simone and Gioacchini that Spagnolo would back off and allow them to earn in his territory. It sounded good, but the duo did not believe him."

At that point, Silverman explains, they only had one option left: contact New York. That meant they sought help from the Genovese crime family. The Patriarca family had remained in frequent contact with the New York family for several decades. As authors Gerard O'Neill and Dick Lehr write in their book Underboss: The Rise and Fall of a Mafia Family, "[…] with New England divided along the Connecticut River. The Genovese family controlled such major cities as Hartford, Springfield, and Albany, while Patriarca had most of Worcester and exclusive control in Boston, Revere, and Maine."

But despite the alleged advice from the Genovese family's crew in Springfield, Silverman says, the beef continued. It wasn't until State and Federal authorities arrested Simone and Gioacchini on extortion charges that it finally came to an end.

Spagnolo himself, meanwhile, was arrested in October of 2014 and charged with extorting $50,000 in protection payments from a video poker machine company located in Revere for the past seven years. (Read more about that bust in New England Mafia bust emphasizes mob's decline)

That means 400-pound Carmen DiNunzio (left) is the person out on the streets right now who is most eligible to be boss. With Manocchio presumably retired and 81-year-old Peter Limone semi-retired moving around behind the scenes, DiNunzio does not face much opposition.

Unless Manocchio's trusted lieutenant, 65-year-old Matthew Guglielmetti, decides he wants to play a bigger role. Gugliemetti was released from prison last year after doing 11 years in prison on drug trafficking charges. Investigators alleged Guglielmetti pledged to protect a shipment of cocaine as it moved through Rhode Island.

Will there be a power struggle? Mark Silverman thinks not. The Patriarca family has learned from the war it fought in the 1990s: It's bad for business and the freedom of its members. Still, you never know. "As of today, there has been some jockeying for position, but no clear cut leader has emerged," Silverman says. "The once coveted position of boss now comes with price. According to Jeffrey Sallet, special agent in charge of organized crime in New England, the FBI will aggressively pursue their attack on leadership positions in New England organized crime."

With the indictment of seven consecutive bosses the FBI has sent a clear warning indeed to anyone who might be interest in taking the crown. Besides, even if one becomes king is there still a kingdom to rule over? Are there enough knights to execute orders?

"I believe the mob is just as dangerous as it ever was," Silverman says with confidence. "Today's wiseguys have learned how to keep things quiet. The guys out there making noise are just gonna bring heat so they won't last long. People believe the cliché - there's strength in numbers - and that is true to a certain extent. In the mob it's more about talent. Guys who've been around know how to stay around and the guys that are a constant headache get dealt with one way or another. Naturally there is a power vacuum, but every high level guy knows that's just bait. I don't think you'll see another all-out fight for power. You may see some guys go down to prevent a repeat of the Salemme/Carozza war. The feds don't wanna clean up another mess like that - internally and on the streets."

Gangsters Inc. wants to thank Mark Silverman for providing valuable information for this article. Silverman is the author of two bestselling nonfiction books, Marked Card and Rogue Mobster, which chronicle the Boston mob wars of the 1990s and early 2000s where over two dozen gangsters were killed over control of Boston's underworld. Silverman writes about his personal experiences getting inside the mob and becoming an integral part of the war. Silverman's books have been hailed as providing readers with the first inside glimpse into what went on at the street level, why people were killed, and what the stakes were. Silverman is a highly regarded public speaker who has made multiple media appearances. You can follow him on Twitter at @markymook

We also recommend our readers to check out the book Dirty Money by Joe LaFratta.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

The Blackfriars Massacre

The Making of Mob Boss Whitey Bulger

New England Mafia bust emphasizes mob's decline

Genovese crew charged with multi-million dollar scheme

Detroit Mafia Boss "Black Jack" Tocco Dies

The Humble Origins of Joe Masseria and Lucky Luciano

Gangsters Inc. sits down with FBI agent Jack Garcia

Cops make the deadliest Mafia hit men

Sicilian Mafia travel guide reveals island's underworld

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 About Gangsters Inc. tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-06-16:6329524:BlogPost:90 2015-06-16T09:31:22.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
Gangsters Incorporated went online on July 12, 2001 and has between 200,000 and 400,000 visitors on a monthly basis. In November of 2010 the site underwent a big change. From a regular website it turned into a social media platform and web community where visitors can read and post about organized crime. The site is run by David Amoruso and features original content by a large variety of authors.

If you have any questions you can e-mail us at…

Gangsters Incorporated went online on July 12, 2001 and has between 200,000 and 400,000 visitors on a monthly basis. In November of 2010 the site underwent a big change. From a regular website it turned into a social media platform and web community where visitors can read and post about organized crime. The site is run by David Amoruso and features original content by a large variety of authors.

If you have any questions you can e-mail us at email@example.com. You can also e-mail us regarding contributing to this site as a writer or the placement of ads and promos.

 David Amoruso holds a bachelor's degree in journalism. He is the co-author of The Encyclopedia Of International Organized Crime which was published in May 2005 and "Mafia: The Book the Mob Wouldn't Want Published" which was released in Australia in 2009. He has contributed to Mob Candy magazine and has been consulted by Paramount Pictures about possible ideas for a new motion picture about organized crime, as well as by newspapers and magazines from around the world as an organized crime expert. Since February of 2015, he is an official Crime Beat Radio contributor and is featured on the show as a crime expert and co-host.

 We are also on Twitter @GangstersIncWeb and available as a friend or like on Facebook

 The following people contribute to this site - Click on a name to read that writer's short bio:

 David Amoruso
 Peter (nickname)
 Puparo (nickname)
 Shannon Dougherty
 Joris van der Aa
 Pierre de Champlain
 Angelo Carmelo Gallitto
 Hollander (nickname)
 Peter Walsh
 Clarence Walker
 Maarten Anthonissen
 Tim Newark
 Steve Brown
 Ron Chepesiuk
 Thom L. Jones
 Seth Ferranti
 Rick Blumenthal
 Steven Ralph
 Peter Lance
 Christian Cipollini
 Kevin Heldman
 Carl Russo
 George Hassett
 Ron Fino (Gangsters Inc.'s very own expert on labor racketeering)
 Alexander Hortis
 Gavin Schmitt
 Europe - Overview tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-06-16:6329524:BlogPost:192 2015-06-16T09:30:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

 ENGLAND

 Anthony Dennis (fugitive)

 Gangster-turned-Cage Fighter Lee Murray…

 ENGLAND

 Anthony Dennis (fugitive)
 Gangster-turned-Cage Fighter Lee Murray (prison)
 Terry Adams (prison)
 Brian "The Milkman" Wright (prison)
 Curtis "Cocky" Warren (prison)

 IRELAND

 Hit attempt on Irish mob boss John Gilligan
 Irish gang has its own "supermarket" with dope and guns
 Eamon "The Godfather" Kelly (whacked)
 Martin "The General" Cahill (whacked)

 SCOTLAND

 Tam "The Licensee" McGraw (dead, natural causes)
 Arthur Thompson (dead, natural causes)
 Stewart "Specky" Boyd (dead, car crash)

 FRANCE

 Jacky "Mad Jacky" Imbert (living in freedom)

 HOLLAND

 Henk Orlando Rommy (in prison)
 Johannes "Johnny" Mieremet (whacked)
 Ferry Koch: King of the Rip (whacked)
 Dutch Crime Boss Murdered In Broad Daylight

SPAIN

 The Russian Mafia in Spain: Operation "Troika"
 Organized Crime Gangs Invade Spain
 Spain: Sunny beaches and lots of organized crime

 ALBANIA

 International Albanian Heroin Ring Busted in Italy
 Princ Dobroshi (in freedom)

 POLAND

 Polish-American Arms Trafficker is Feeling the Heat

 FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Sreten Jocic (in prison)

 RUSSIA

 RUSSIAN MAFIA SECTION

 ITALY

 EURO ITALIAN ORGANIZED CRIME SECTION

 Thom L. Jones' Mob Corner - Overview tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-06-16:6329524:BlogPost:490 2015-06-16T08:55:40.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

 Intro:

 Mob Corner is written by Thom L. Jones. A retired businessman, he has had a long interest in organized crime, and in particular the Sicilian and American Mafia.

 A hobby triggered by a book he read while studying at university "God…

 Intro:

 Mob Corner is written by Thom L. Jones. A retired businessman, he has had a long interest in organized crime, and in particular the Sicilian and American Mafia.

 A hobby triggered by a book he read while studying at university "God Protect Me From My Friends" a biography of the Sicilian bandit Salvatore Guiliano, which started him off into collecting and creating a database of books, articles, reports and internet sources that now amounts to literally thousands of pages of detailed information on the people and events that have changed the face of international crime over the last eighty years.

 Although living in New Zealand, and consequently somewhat removed from easy access to traditional research facilities, he has travelled the world extensively over the last thirty years, and still maintains this schedule, allowing him to keep up-to-date with events in North America and Europe.

 A contributor to CrimeLibrary.com; the now defunct BostonMafia.com and Mafia-International.com he is now presenting his crime articles and short stories of fiction at www.gangstersinc.nl hosted by David Amoruso and looks forward to continuing to attract and interest anyone fascinated by this absorbing subject.

Stories:

The Blackfriars Massacre

The Phantom of The Grand Hotel: Sicily, the Mafia, and a Mystery

Murder Blue in Melbourne, Australia: "Two dogs (cops) have to die!"

The Sound of Silence: How the Mafia in Sicily Communicates

Assault on Law and Order: Melbourne, Australia

The scoop on the man who brought down Genovese

A Mean Street in Queens: To Kill a Cop

The Woman in Black: Leoluchina Sorisi

The Man in Black: Gaspare Magaddino

The Kindness of Death

The Star of Forrest Hills

Give a Man a Gun: The story of Carmine DiBiase

Joe Barboza: Boston Barbarian

The Slaughter at Slaughterhouse Square

Kill The Chinaman

Man is the Cruelest Animal: The story of "Trigger" Mike Coppola

The Man Who Stole the French Connection

La Primula Rossa: The Story of Luciano Leggio (Part 1)
 La Primula Rossa (Part 2)

La Primula Rossa (Part 3 - Final)

The Evil That Men Do: The Killing of Robert Kubecka & Donald Barstow

 Whack Out On Willie Moretti

 The Trouble With Harry

 Dead Men On Leave

 Hit in Harlem

 A Death in the Family

 Get 'The Right Man': How the FBN Nailed Vito Genovese

 Lucky's Luck: How Charlie Luciano Got Out of Jail and Passed Go

 Death in the Afternoon: The Story of Carmine Galante (Part 1 & 2)

 Mob Meeting at Apalachin

 Being Ernest: The Life and Hard Times of Ernie Rupolo

 The Color Purple: Detroit's Early Mob

 The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

 Some Good Killers

 Yidfellas: The Kosher Nostra

 A Kiss is just a Kiss

 The Sun King of the Mafia

Thom's Short Stories:

Moon over Sicily

Snow Falling On Brooklyn
 Bridge over Troubled Waters
 Hampstead Blues
 Run Silent. Run deep

 The Blackfriars Massacre tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-06-16:6329524:BlogPost:65779 2015-06-16T08:52:38.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By Thom L. Jones

Boston, Massachusetts, has long had a reputation as a corrupt and base city. Not so much a Mob town as a Mob's town. It has been plagued by criminal gangs over the years-The Winter Hill, the McLaughlins, the Mullens, the Barbozas, Roxbury, Killeens, the Gustings and the Campbells, and of course, its own little Mafia cartel, which controlled The North…

By Thom L. Jones

Boston, Massachusetts, has long had a reputation as a corrupt and base city. Not so much a Mob town as a Mob's town. It has been plagued by criminal gangs over the years-The Winter Hill, the McLaughlins, the Mullens, the Barbozas, Roxbury, Killeens, the Gustings and the Campbells, and of course, its own little Mafia cartel, which controlled The North End. Over the years, gangsters and hoodlums fought to control their own turf, often leaving the bodies of their victims scattered at random across street corner, or floating in the Charles River, or stinking in some locked and fetid car trunk.

The city has seen its share of gangland killings: hundreds, more likely thousands, murdered over the last 100 years, but nothing quite like the Summer Street murders, or as they came to be immortalized in the media-The Blackfriars Massacre.

On June 29th, 1978, Bostonians opened their daily newspapers, or turned on their TVs and radios to discover that on the night of June 27th into 28th, five people had been shot dead in a place called The Blackfriars, a bar located at 105-111 Summer Street, at ground-level in a five-story office building, at the intersection with Bedford Street in Downtown Crossing, a shopping district to the east of Boston Common. An Irish-themed public house come restaurant, named after Blackfriars, a London theatre dating back to the 16th century. A little bit of culture on the mean streets of Beantown.

The bar (photo above) had been open since 1971, or earlier, or later, depending on the source of reference consulted. It ran a disco early in the evenings for those desperate enough at the end of their daily grind, served the food and drinks late, and let stuff happen. Stuff like people organizing drug dealing, extortion, and hijacking over their beers and Bushmills. The place was well known to the cops as a dallying stop for the criminal fraternity of the city.

The bar was owned by Vincent E. Solmonte, who was 35 and lived in an apartment in Quincy, and had another two hospitality spots in Boston, one a trendy bar called "Vincent's" on the waterfront, and according to the police, was a known cocaine trafficker. And allegedly, heavily in debt. He had been in partnership on Blackfriars up until 1975 with Dennis Mullins, who pulled out when Vinny decided he wanted to upgrade from a simple bar to a restaurant with disco on the side.

Solmonte was also under investigation by both the FBI since 1976 as part of a bankruptcy fraud case and the IRS. He had traveled to Switzerland in April and had been arrested for using a stolen credit card. What is known in the vernacular of mob speak as a "Shady Character."

On the morning of the 28th, Jerry Robinson, the cleaner, arrived at 4:00 am to start his day. He worked through the early hours, unaware that downstairs, in the small basement office, was a nightmare of a scene waiting to be discovered. At 8:00 am, he made his way down there, bucket and mop in hand and stepped into something so bad, it would no doubt have embedded itself into his brain and retina, and squeezed his memory cells until they cried out for mercy.

In the small, cramped basement office, dead bodies lay, seemingly everywhere. One sprawled on a chair, the rest crumpled and twisted on the floor around a desk. Blood filled the room, seeping across the floor, splattered in discursive and random Rorschach blots and streamers across the walls in the dingy room. It was a charnel house out of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch or Francisco Goya. Except this was real. Some of the dead were so badly mutilated they had to be identified by fingerprint matching. One had tried to shield himself from shotgun blasts by using his hands.

At eight o'clock Wednesday morning, the Boston police radio band began to crackle.

"How many you got there?" asked the police dispatcher.

"Five," came the response.

"How many ambulances will you need?"

"Never mind the ambulances; they're all gone."

When the police arrived they found five indeed dead. All had been shot by .25 caliber semi-automatic pistol, then, just to make sure, finished off by multiple blasts from two sawn-off shotguns. Some of the corpses were minus their heads or scalps. The crime scene experts determined the men had been playing backgammon around the table when they were surprised and killed. The victims were identified as:

Vincent Solmonte aged 35, the owner.

John A. Kelly aged 34, the night manager.

Peter Meroth, aged 34. He managed Shepherd's Pub, the other place owned by Solmonte.

Freddy R. Delavega aged 34

Charles G. Margarian, 36. He worked in the insurance business and was, allegedly, a world-class backgammon player.

Investigators concluded that the murders took place around 2:00am. Searching the premises, the police found a cache of firearms, a small stash of cocaine and marijuana, and $15,000 in cash in an unlocked safe. Everyone killed worked at the Blackfriars according to some sources. According to other sources, apart from Solmonte and Kelly, none of the them worked at the club. Meroth may have double-dipped between the two places he was connected to. However, everyone killed was known to the police.

A bunch of guys enjoying a game of chance when they were surprised by the worse possible chance, and brutally killed.

"The massacre of five men at the Blackfriar's has all the earmarks of a gangland execution. In all my years as district attorney, I've never witnessed a more shocking crime," Suffolk County District Attorney Garrett Byrne said.

Police Commissioner Joseph Jordan said, "It was a real wicked, vicious type of crime. It was a professional job. It was the biggest mass murder in the history of Boston, in my memory at least. "

Up to that time, it was.

The hurried press conference outside The Blackfriars confirmed this was going be a big one.

According to the Boston Herald, the killers only expected to find three men on the premises: Meroth, Delavega and Solmonte. Just how they knew this was never confirmed.

The police, however, knew their city and their customer base. It wasn't too long before detective work unearthed a short list of potential perps:

James J. "Whitey" Bulger (above), alleged leader of the Winter Hill Gang, an Irish-American crime family operating out of Sommerville, a Boston suburb. Bulger was also a top-echelon informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, joining Club America sometime in 1975. At his trial in 2013, the prosecutor described him, "as one of the most vicious and violent criminals ever in Boston.

Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, of Roxbury, a former member of the Winter Hill Gang and also top-echelon informant for the FBI since Valentine's Day, 1967.

Nicholas Femia, East Boston, a member of the Patriarca Mafia crime family, the Barboza, and the Winter Hill Gangs, who was involved in extortion and armed robbery.

James Martorano, killer and member of the Winter Hill Gang and later the Patriarca crime family, who was a friend of Kelly.

Robert Italiano, East Boston, Massachusetts.

William N."Bad Billy" Ierardi, Lynn, Massachusetts, a drug dealer.

Louis Litif (left). A Lebanese-American bookmaker from South Boston and an associate of Bulger, mainly used for the heavy stuff. In April 1980, he would end up trunk music after Bulger stabbed and shot him dead in a bar in South Boston.

The more they dug, the more the police were coming to believe that this was an organized crime hit, not some random, impulse killing. It was about money and drugs. But then isn't almost all OC crime about this?

Mullins didn't believe a word of it. Sure Vinny snorted the odd line and Jack enjoyed a spiff now and then. But that was it. He said.

Jack Kelly may or may not have been an important part of the massacre.

He had been hired by WNAC-TV in January 1974 as an investigative reporter and quickly made his name as both a field man and a newsroom anchor.

Tall, bearded and tousled haired, he was seen frequently in bars and restaurants with known criminals. Like any good reporter, he needed to develop sources. His philosophy was:

"If you want a story on a gangster, go to a cop. If you want a story on a cop, go to a gangster."

Kelly (right) often drank and socialized at "Vincent's" a trendy bar on the Boston waterfront. It was here, he met and became friends with the owner, Vincent Solmonte, and made contacts in the underworld through people like Jimmy Martorano, Frankie Salemme, and various other gangsters and hoodlums, some of whom were linked into the murky world of James Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, two of Boston's most prolific criminals. He spent so much time in the company of crooks that he had himself become a suspect, and the BPD had opened a file on him.

In November 1976, following a series of major confrontations and controversial allegations involving the mayor, the police commissioner, and the liquor licensing authority, Kelly was sacked by the station management. He had to give up his South End apartment, which he shared with Solmonte and move back to live pertinently in Framingham with his wife and four children.

In September 1977, Kelly filed a $390,000 damage suit against WNAC, claiming the station had damaged his reputation as a reporter

Sometime in 1977, desperate for a job, he was hired by Solmonte to be the night manager at Blackfriars. Ironically, three weeks after his murder, he was due to start work as a freelance producer at WLVI-TV Channel 56. His first pilot program was slated for July 14th.

His violent death vindicated the many comments made by his friends and associates over the previous three years on how his unhealthy relationship with criminals would one day come to haunt him.

Less than a month after the killings, on July 12th., the police arrested two men and charged them with the murders at Blackfriars. Italiano and Ierardi were arraigned on multiple homicide indictments by a grand jury. Although a major suspect, Nicholas Femia was never charged. The fourth man assumed to be involved in the crime was never officially identified.

It was alleged by the police, that three pounds of cocaine with a street value of $300,000 was taken from the club on the night of the shooting, and was being offered for sale six hours later. Taped by an informant, Italiano (below) was heard saying he was going after the stuff (drugs) and claiming he didn't see the first shooting, "but after that, everyone had to go."

The trial of the two, which lasted twenty-seven days, ended on April 9th, 1979, and after a seven-hour adjournment, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict for both men.

Then things got really interesting. Information, which has a habit of finding its way to its greatest source of disclosure, started seeping out of the media, on the radio programs, in newspaper articles, and endlessly percolating around the bars and clubs of inner and outer city Boston. Some of it was in progress before, during and after the trial. Some hovered around for months, even years, but eventually surfaced. Most all of it clung to Bulger and Flemmi like a spoiled child pestering a parent.

As Louis L'Amour once said, "There're times when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning."

Following the mass murder at Summer Street, Bulger contacted his corrupted FBI handler, John Connolly and asked him to get copies of the BPD crime scene photographs taken at Blackfriars. He knew a real estate developer called Ted Bereson who had borrowed $60,000 from Solmonte. Bulger paid the man a visit and told him he had carried out the massacre and demanded that Bereson pay him the money he had owed Solmonte. When Bereson started to hesitate, Bulger laid out the images on the man's desk. The terrified man promptly paid up.

Suspect William N. Ierardi (right) would name James J. Bulger and Stephen Flemmi as two of the three triggermen in the massacre. Retired corrupt FBI Special Agent Michael J. Buckley said in court that he told FBI Special Agent John Connolly in 1993 that Ierardi later admitted that he had fabricated the involvement of Bulger and Flemmi in the unsolved massacre.

Kelly had hired Marilyn Di Silva, the girlfriend of Flemmi to work as a waitress at the bar. The twenty-six year old single mother of three girls, met Flemmi early in 1974, when working as a waitress at Chandlers, a local bar in the South End that was a mob hangout, partly owned by Howie Winter who had taken over the leadership of the Winter Hill Gang on the death of its leader, James McLean, who had created it back in the 1950s. Di Silva's best friend, Alexis, was dating a friend of Flemmi's, a hulking, brute of a man called Nick Femia. They would often finish up, late in the evening, drinking at The Blackfriars.

One night in June 1978, she told Flemmi she was going to the bar to see Solomonte and Jack Kelly. "Don't go tonight," Flemmi told her, and something in his voice told her to listen. The next morning, she learned that Solomonte, Kelly, and three other men had been murdered, gunned down during an apparent drug money robbery in the restaurant's basement. Flemmi insisted to her later, that he had no idea what was going to happen that night, that it had only been a fortuitous premonition. Yet his associate Nick Femia was always a prime suspect in the multiple murders, almost from day one.

Nicolas Femia, 38, was a massive, 240 pounds, overweight hulk, with a cocaine addiction, and a penchant for sawn-off shotguns which he wielded at times when carrying out extortion or disciplining exercises, and for wearing flashy, flamboyant clothing. He had a troubled relationship with James Bulger, with whom he had become associated through the Winter Hill Gang in 1976. Femia had started his criminal career working with Joseph Barboza, one of Boston's most unpredictable and violent thugs.

Read more about Barboza in Joe Barboza: Boston Barbarian

Years later, when Di Silva was visiting Flemmi in prison, he confirmed that Femia had been part of the hit squad that night in The Blackfriars.

After Femia (right) joined Winter Hill, Bulger informed Connolly that he was not to be considered a suspect in the Blackfriars case. Bulger did this in order to avoid any law enforcement surveillance and police interference in his activities. When Bulger and Femia fell out over Bulger's distaste for Femia's lifestyle and eating habits, Bulger reported back to Connolly that Femia had, in fact, been one of the killers. Femia would then remain under police surveillance as a suspect in a number of crimes until he was shot dead during a failed shakedown on a body shop in Condor Street, East Boston, in 1983. Femia still remains one of the suspects in the massacre, but his involvement has never, legally, been proven.

After the killings, Flemmi contacted FBI Agent Connolly and advised him that he believed Femia and two of his gang associates, Italiano and Ierardi had committed the murders. Flemmi confirmed that at some time previously, several members of the Winter Hill Gang had ambushed and badly beaten Italiano who was suspected of robbing a Winter Hill connected bookmaker of $12,000.

Marilyn Di Silva would hang out with Flemmi at Marshall's Motors in a garage in Marshall Street, Somerville. This was the headquarters of the Winter Hill Gang from the 1970s until Bulger cut and ran in 1994. He had no doubt read the comments of Mafioso Sonny Mercurio after he was indicted following the famous swearing in ceremony in Medford, in 1989:

"Power of the lam means you get a lesser sentence. I advocate everyone run away."

The Winter Hill Gang was a loose confederation of Boston area organized crime figures, predominantly Irish-American, with a small Italian-American faction. The gang's primary rackets included extortion of legitimate businesses, extortion of bookmakers, drug dealers, gambling dens and shylocks, gambling, bookmaking, loansharking, arms trafficking, money laundering, and narcotics trafficking; they were also known for their violent and numerous murders, as well as working endlessly at corrupting the Boston office of the FBI.

According to former mob associates, Bulger sent many of his fellow Winter Hill associates to jail via his FBI connection. Through his many tips, corrupt federal agents allegedly protected him from arrest and prosecution. This, according to court documents, allowed him to traffic in drugs, carry out multiple murders and crimes of extortion, with impunity. He fed the Feds what they were looking for, and they turned a blind eye to his multiple acts of criminality. He would murder thugs like Brian Halloran for being an informant, and then arrange to meet one of his FBI handlers to pass on his own brand of information to help them in their campaign to bring down the Mafia in Boston. In particular, the Angiulo brothers who ran the city under a franchise arrangement with Raymond Patriarca who was based down in Rhode Island.

Even though Blackfriars was never officially solved, it has been documented as being linked into organized crime. With more suspects than an Agatha Christie mystery, thirty-seven years after the bloodbath in the basement, we are no closer to the truth. It was a crime probably based on greed rather than revenge; opportunity in place of syllogism. It's shocking and egregious violence triggered as much by circumstance as any pathological jeremiad. At end of day, it's almost safe to assume, that somewhere, in a polemic about the Blackfriars Massacre, the name Bulger will surface as a signpost leading us to a possible truth. Jean-Jacques Rousseau claimed our greatest evil flows from ourselves. In the case of Bulger, it was more a torrent than a flood.

Boston is no stranger to the violence of mass murder.

Two years after Blackfriars, in September 1980, four workers at Sammy White's bowling alley in Brighton were murdered during a robbery that netted the killer less than $5,000.

Early January 1991, five men were killed in a social club in Boston's Chinatown.

A father and son walked into a Dorchester 99 chain restaurant in November 1995 and shot dead four men sitting in a booth.

December 7th, 2000, 7 employees at Edgewater Technology in Wakefield were shot dead by a disgruntled worker.

December 2005. Four men were shot dead in a Dorchester Centre basement.

Over a twelve year period from 2000 to 2012, murders in Boston per 100,000 population were consistently higher than the U.S. average. In some years, it is double, close to triple the country average. It is also higher for rapes, robberies, assaults, car thefts, and general thefts.

Boston is a tough place to have to live in. And relatively easy to die violently in.

The Blackfriars Pub is long gone. The revitalized office building now houses at street level, a Weight Watchers Store and next to it a GNC shop with the ironic message above the entrance "Live Well." This is approximately where the bar was located. At the end of the block is a Dunkin Donuts. Whoever leased these spaces obviously had a weird sense of humor.

Herman Melville, the American author, claimed our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.

The events that culminated in the Blackfriars that night in June 1978 would have had those strings twanging like a ukulele played by Jake Shimabukuro.

You can read more of Thom L. Jones stories at his Mob Corner at Gangsters Inc.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

The Making of Mob Boss Whitey Bulger

Give a Man a Gun: The story of Carmine DiBiase

The scoop on the man who brought down Genovese

A Mean Street in Queens: To Kill a Cop

The Man Who Stole the French Connection

Joe Barboza: Boston Barbarian

Copyright © Gangsters Inc. and Thom L. Jones 2015
 The Milwaukee Mafia Family: Don't Sell It Short tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-06-11:6329524:BlogPost:65965 2015-06-11T07:46:40.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By Gavin Schmitt

What does the word "Mafia" bring to mind? Murder, car bombs, bootlegging and other devious crimes. The back alleys of Chicago and New York. Al Capone and John Gotti. What the word rarely brings to mind is Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Mafia: Mobsters in the Heartland will change that…

By Gavin Schmitt

What does the word "Mafia" bring to mind? Murder, car bombs, bootlegging and other devious crimes. The back alleys of Chicago and New York. Al Capone and John Gotti. What the word rarely brings to mind is Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Mafia: Mobsters in the Heartland will change that — Milwaukee, though smaller, had its streets flowing with blood and illicit booze.

Dozens of people were shot, stabbed and blown apart in the streets of Milwaukee, their bodies left to rot in the ditch until discovered by unsuspecting passersby. Milwaukee is internationally known as a beer capitol, and this hardly stopped in the 1920s just because alcohol became illegal. It was a drink many were willing to kill for.

In the pages that follow, you will be introduced to turn of the century Milwaukee, its underworld, and its first Mafia boss: Vito Guardalabene.

Guardalabene grew up in Santa Flavia, northern Sicily, in an era of unrest. His village was a crucial commercial center — nothing was imported or exported without going through the hands of dock workers. The local Mafia controlled the nearby orchards that supplied the world with grapefruit. One strike and the whole region could grind to a halt.

Sailing from Sicily to Milwaukee, Guardalabene also brought his trusted crew, who you will get to know better in my book:

Peter Bellant, who brought with him wife Josephine Amato and three children: Angela, Anthony and Rose. The Guardalabene and Bellant families were close, with two Guardalabene children married into the Bellant family, and the merged families also ran a small bank that provided loans for immigrants when they reached the new world.

Sons Giovanni Battista and Angelo. The former came over in June 1900, meeting up with his brother-in-law Anthony Bellant on Chicago Street in Milwaukee's Third Ward. Angelo arrived later, in July of 1902, moving in with his brother.

Isadore Aiello, Vito's son-in-law through daughter Antonina. Aiello emigrated in May 1902.

Nunzio Maniaci left for Milwaukee in December 1902, and when he arrived, he married the sister of a Republican Party official with Giovanni Battista as his best man. At least three of Maniaci's ten sons later joined up with the Milwaukee mob.

The Balistrieri family, from the neighboring village of Aspra, were also part of this crew — at least five of the men in this family were Mafia members in Milwaukee.

Welcome to the world of the Milwaukee Mafia. Let's turn back our calendars and let our story begin with a Gangsters Inc. exclusive!

The Balistrieri Family: From Milwaukee to Las Vegas

No single name is better identified with organized crime in Milwaukee than Balistrieri, especially Frank Balistrieri (right) who was head of the Family (big F) for an amazing three decades, from 1961-1993. There are some things that ought to be said about the Balistrieri family (small F).

One of the most common misconceptions from those living in Milwaukee is that there is some connection between the Mafia and the Sendik's chain of grocery stores. There is not. Sendik's is owned by a Balistreri, and the guys in the mob had the name Balistrieri. Note the spelling difference. Yes, if you trace their ancestry back in Sicily a couple hundred years, they are related… but you really have to go out of your way. (Heck, there are countless siblings and cousins of known mobsters who were not "in the life" — being related doesn't mean anything!)

And the most common misconception for those who live outside of Milwaukee? They think that Milwaukee and Frank Balistrieri were small potatoes who amounted to nothing. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, it's true that Milwaukee never had the extreme level of mob activity that Chicago and New York did. But it should at the very least be considered on the level of Cleveland and Detroit, both of which are far better known.

Somewhere along the way, Milwaukee was written out of the history books and even more so out of the movies. In "Casino", author Nicholas Pileggi says Frank Balistrieri was behind the bombing of Frank Rosenthal and ordered the murders of Marty Buccieri and Tamara Rand. In the movie "Casino", the opening shot is of Rosenthal's car exploding (although the name is changed to Sam Rothstein. Does Milwaukee get the blame? Nope. The word "Milwaukee" never gets mentioned once in the course of the film, completely cutting them out of the Las Vegas story.

In Joseph Pistone's book "Donnie Brasco", at least part of the book involves him and another agent (Gail Cobb) actually bringing the Balistrieri organization in Milwaukee to its knees. But the film, with Johnny Depp and Al Pacino? Strictly a New York story. (Still a great movie, but apparently Milwaukee wasn't interesting enough to even get a mention.)

How many books have been written on Al Capone? Dozens, maybe more. A good portion of them will give passing mention to his rival Joseph Aiello. If nothing else, you might find a page or two about Aiello's murder. What we haven't seen yet is a book on Aiello himself, or Jack Zuta or Angelo Genna or most of the other Capone rivals. If we did, we would see Milwaukee playing a much larger role in the battle for Chicago. To a lesser extent, the Genna family had ties to Milwaukee. The Aiello family had strong alliances with Milwaukee, with marriage links and homeland connections (the Milwaukee Family and the Aiello crew both came from Bagheria in Sicily).

Absent from all history books, with the exception of "Milwaukee Mafia", is a critical Capone / Aiello meeting that happened in a Milwaukee suburb in 1927. Negotiated by Pete Guardalabene, who was the boss of Milwaukee at the time, Joe Aiello and Al Capone sat down for dinner in the city of Pewaukee. The meeting house belonged to a pianist at Guardalabene's Monte Carlo Club. Who all attended is not known and probably never will be, but the meeting was not a success. In an unusual twist, it ended not with bullets… but with both sides breaking out into a food fight. (Who won the food fight is open to debate!)

Let's return to Milwaukee's role in Las Vegas casinos. Of course, the mob had been mixed up with casinos since the 1940s, with Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and the Flamingo. But the Mafia can thank Milwaukee for getting them into the Stardust, the Hacienda, the Fremont and the Marina. The story is that San Diego real estate developer Allen Glick, head of Argent Corporation, was looking to invest in casinos, but did not have the money. So he turned to an outside source: his friend, Joseph Balistrieri (son of mob boss Frank Balistrieri). Some people have said Glick and Balistrieri met in college, though this doesn't seem to be the case. Regardless, Joe Balistrieri (photo below) provided that crucial Mafia-Vegas link.

Joseph introduced Glick to his father, who had friends in the Teamsters. Particularly a Milwaukee Teamster named Frank Ranney, but also Allen Dorfman in Chicago. Ranney and Dorfman opened the Central States Pension Fund and gave Glick millions of dollars with his new friend Frank Balistrieri vouching for him. Joe Balistrieri got a finder's fee, Glick got his casinos, and the Mafia now had another income source: the skim of these four casinos, especially the Stardust, where Chicago-Miami mobster Frank Rosenthal (see above) was installed as the manager. Like clockwork, Rocco Youse of Reno would pick up the skim and bring it back to Balistrieri. (Youse, incidentally, ran a chemical company called Del that sold "municipal chemicals" to cities and offered kickbacks to mayors and city purchasers. They would ultimately be shut down for this. The company's attorney? Joseph Balistrieri. Even more telling, after Youse's death, Milwaukee underboss Steve DiSalvo took over the company.)

What is the story with Allen Glick? We may never know. When the skimming operation came to light, Glick claimed ignorance and the government believed him. As shown in Pileggi's book "Casino", Glick claimed to be shocked when he was later confronted by Balistrieri and other mobsters for their cut. I'm not as convinced by Glick as the government was. He knew who to ask for the money. And it would be outrageously naive not to expect something in return for millions of dollars in loans, especially from organized crime figures. And then the Frank Rosenthal management issue. In "Casino" it is suggested that Rosenthal was kept on as manager despite being banned because Glick was threatened into it. While there may be some truth to this, if Glick was really concerned he could have stopped things much earlier or at least should have been aware that things were amiss. Something in here does not add up… could Glick really be that stupid?

Or perhaps Glick was really clever. He was able to use the Mafia and the Teamsters to fund his casino acquisitions. Despite the skimming operations, the casinos were still profitable and he was able to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle with a private jet and other luxuries. And then when the government came in, rounded up the mob and sent some of the biggest mob bosses to prison, Glick walked away smelling like a rose. No jail time, no fines to pay. He could sell off the casinos and come out the victor.

One other thing that makes Milwaukee interesting is how it was something of a hub or nexus for various mob families around the country. Milwaukee had plenty of connections in southern California, and ran a Wisconsin-California gambling operation with Andrew Lococo, a restaurant owner who had the world's largest tuna fishing boat. The Bonanno Family had ties to Milwaukee: Joe Bonanno had a house in Phoenix next to Milwaukee mobster Salvatore Megna, and Bonanno also had an interest in the Grande Cheese Company. (The FBI and Sicilian authorities believed heroin was being smuggled in through Grande.) Pete Carlino, mob boss in Colorado, was in Milwaukee a week before his murder. Milwaukee underboss Steve DiSalvo ran an aluminum siding company in New Orleans in conjunction with Carlos Marcello. And so on and so on… the network was almost limitless.

Maybe this is a little rambling and jumps around a lot. But if nothing else, if you made it this far, just remember not to sell the Milwaukee Mafia short. They are not Chicago and they are not New York, but in their own way they are a crucial piece of Mafia history.

Gavin Schmitt is the author of The Milwaukee Mafia: Mobsters in the Heartland and has written this piece exclusively for Gangsters Inc. He also wrote Milwaukee Mafia (Images of America Series) in which he combined his own Milwaukee mob photographs with those from various historical societies, libraries, archives, and the personal collections of relatives, police officers, and federal agents. Most of the images contained in this book have never before been made public.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

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Yidfellas: The Kosher Nostra

Cops make the deadliest Mafia hit men

Gangsters Inc. sits down with FBI agent Jack Garcia

The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

Sicilian Mafia travel guide reveals island's underworld

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.

 Camorra - Overview tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-29:6329524:BlogPost:833 2015-05-29T05:51:38.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
CAMORRA

 PROFILES:

 Camorra boss Pasquale Scotti (prison)

 Aldo Gionta (prison)…

CAMORRA

 PROFILES:

 Camorra boss Pasquale Scotti (prison)
 Aldo Gionta (prison)
 Augusto La Torre (pentito)
 Maria Licciardi (in prison)

 ARTICLES:

 Camorra's "sistema" rules supreme in corrupt Italy
 Puparo's History of the Camorra
 New death threat against crime author Roberto Saviano
 The Casalesi Clan of the Camorra

 FIFA capo Sepp Blatter boozing with Russian mob boss tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-28:6329524:BlogPost:65747 2015-05-28T09:50:42.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

The FBI dealt a huge blow to one of the world's most corrupt "legitimate" organizations, yesterday, when it charged nine officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) with racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracies after they enriched themselves through the corruption of soccer and…

By David Amoruso

The FBI dealt a huge blow to one of the world's most corrupt "legitimate" organizations, yesterday, when it charged nine officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) with racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering conspiracies after they enriched themselves through the corruption of soccer and its most prestigious tournament, the World Cup. FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, however, managed to escape indictment, for now.

How he achieved this is anyone's guess. Journalists and officials have compiled plenty of evidence of corrupt behavior by Blatter, but were unable to make anything stick in court. Until now, perhaps.

Blatter enforces a strict code of silence within FIFA and has a large following of loyalists eager for another payday. Unfortunately for him, his underlings are greedier than he thought. One of them, Charles Blazer, the long-serving former general secretary of CONCACAF and former U.S. representative on the FIFA executive committee, was caught by the FBI in an unrelated scheme and was given the choice to cooperate or go to prison. Blazer spilled his guts and taped numerous meetings and conversations with corrupt FIFA members.

And FIFA has many of those corrupt members scheming round the clock.

Several alleged schemes relate to the payment and receipt of bribes and kickbacks in connection with the selection of the host country for the 2010 World Cup and the 2011 FIFA presidential election. That election was won by current FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who, a FIFA spokesperson told reporters yesterday, was "relaxed and calm."

It's the typical reaction reporters and the public have come to expect from Blatter. After decades of scheming around the world without any crackdown by law enforcement, he grew more arrogant by the minute. Never was this clearer then when he awarded the 2018 World Cup tournament to Russia and the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.

Playing soccer in the middle of the summer in the heat of Qatar? Let's just agree that FIFA officials were blinded by the Qatar sun and millions of dollar bills.

And regarding Russia, well, Blatter had decided on that one somewhere around 2005 when he had a cozy meeting and a few bottles of expensive booze at the trendy China Club in Moscow with Russian Mafia boss Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (that's him on the far right toasting with Blatter on the far left.)

Tokhtakhounov was officially there in his role as chairman of the Russian Football Association, but unofficially he was there to get Russia to host the 2018 World Cup. And the one person to see about that, of course, is Sepp Blatter.

Always eager to meet new big spenders with an interest in sports, Blatter saw no problem in hanging out and drinking some booze with Tokhtakhounov. Why would he? How could he have known this was a hardcore Russian mobster?

Well, he could've checked the Gangsters Inc. website where a profile of Tokhtakhounov has been up since 2002 or he could have googled his name to find out he was the man who had fixed the figure ice skating competition at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and was wanted by the FBI.

Not to mention that Tokhtakhounov had been convicted in Italy of money laundering and working with the Italian Mafia and spent one year in prison there before he was released and fled to the safety of Moscow. In Russia he continued his career which revolved around racketeering and sports.

Cheers to that, you can imagine Blatter saying.

You can also imagine what the FBI must've been thinking when it saw the FIFA president laughing and boozing at an exclusive Moscow nightclub together with a Russian mob boss they were seeking to arrest.

"[This] should send a message that enough is enough. After decades of what the indictment alleges to be brazen corruption, organized international soccer needs a new start—a new chance for its governing institutions to provide honest oversight and support of a sport that is beloved across the world, increasingly so here in the United States. Let me be clear: this indictment is not the final chapter in our investigation," stated Acting United States Attorney Currie at a press conference announcing the charges against FIFA.

Let us hope so. Since the capo di tutti capi is still out there. And I'm not talking about Russian Mafia boss Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Though, technically, he's still out there as well.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

The Dark Knight of Mother Russia

Russian Mafia Boss Rakhimov and the Socchi Olympics

Spain police bust Russian Mafia gang Taganskaya

Georgian Crime Clan of Vors Busted in Europe

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.

 Profile: Camorra boss Pasquale Scotti tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-27:6329524:BlogPost:65940 2015-05-27T19:02:51.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

Francisco de Castro Visconti seemed like the perfect example of an upstanding hardworking citizen. A resident of the tropical city of Recife on the north-eastern coast of Brazil, he ran a nightclub and food import business and was happily married with two beautiful kids.

Yet, he never really existed. Francisco de Castro Visconti was…

By David Amoruso

Francisco de Castro Visconti seemed like the perfect example of an upstanding hardworking citizen. A resident of the tropical city of Recife on the north-eastern coast of Brazil, he ran a nightclub and food import business and was happily married with two beautiful kids.

Yet, he never really existed. Francisco de Castro Visconti was just an identity used by Camorra hitman Pasquale Scotti (photo above.) During his 31 years as a fugitive, Scotti established a new life in Brazil while a bloody war raged through Naples.

To manage to not only evade justice for almost 31 years, but to also set up a brand new life – complete with voting rights and successful businesses – is evidence of Scotti's street smarts and savvy, behavior he first displayed back in the 1980s as a hitman for Raffaele Cutolo, boss of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO) or "New" Camorra Organization.

Though the Camorra had been active in the Campania region of Italy for decades earlier, Cutolo felt it had deviated from its origins and needed a return to its old ways. While in prison, he began recruiting young inmates into his organization. Once a member, the NCO took care of you and your family, in a good way. If you were sent to prison – again – the NCO would make regular payments to your relatives.

Cutolo's leadership and power inside prison and his organization's control outside it guaranteed a quick growth of the NCO, something the other, traditional, Camorra clans eyed with extreme suspicion.

As the NCO grew in numbers and strength, it became bold enough to make its move. In 1979, Cutolo demanded a cut from traditional Camorra boss Luigi Vollaro's illegal gambling centers and lottery in Portici. Vollaro sought help from the more powerful Giuliano clan – which he got. A squad of assassins was assembled resulting in dozens of gangland murders related to this dispute that year.

After NCO members shot and wounded clan leader Luigi Giuliano on Christmas Eve 1980, the traditional Camorra clans came together in one major alliance called the Nuova Famiglia (NF) or New Family.

In the ensuing war mobsters of both groups were killed, bombs were detonated, and bookmakers offered Neapolitans bets on whether the murder rate would go up or down. It peaked in 1982 when 264 people lost their lives in the carnage.

It was during this time that Pasquale Scotti made his mark as a capable hitman - authorities suspect Scotti's involvement in more than two dozen murders. He was one of Raffaele Cutolo's most feared assassins and also one of his most loyal friends. He commanded Cutolo's military wing.

The hostilities between the NCO and NF ended after authorities cracked down hard on the warring groups. In 1983, during several "maxi blitzes," hundreds of Camorristi were arrested and sent to prison. Cutolo was moved to a maximum security prison on an island near Sardinia to prevent him from communicating with his underlings.

After Cutolo's move to a maximum security prison, Scotti tried to reorganize the ranks of the NCO. But within a short time he too was arrested. On December 17, 1983, after a bloody shootout with police in which he was wounded, Scotti was brought in. After his arrest, he played an extremely dangerous game when he told authorities he wanted to cooperate and become a "pentito," turncoat. It was a ruse. While at a hospital in Caserta to receive treatment for the injuries sustained in the gunfight with police, he escaped and disappeared for the next three decades.

He was like a ghost. His presence was reported in Lombardy and various countries in Eastern Europe and South America. Renato Natale, the anti-mafia mayor of Casal di Principe, told The Guardian newspaper: "In the early 1980s [Scotti] was a big fish, but after that, when he became a fugitive, no one heard of him anymore." There were rumors he had died, was murdered or had switched to the 'Ndrangheta. An international warrant for his arrest was issued in 1990 and he was also placed on Italy's most wanted list.

By then he had already been living in Brazil for four years. He settled in Recife, a city (right) surrounded by tropical rainforests and sunny beaches. In 1995, he married his Brazilian wife with whom he has two sons. They lived in the Recife's Sancho district.

Ten years later, back in Italy, Scotti received a life sentence in absentia for 26 murders.

Despite his seemingly permanent disappearance, Italian authorities never quit looking for him. Some Italian media are saying police received information about his current whereabouts from pentiti, turncoat mobsters. Whether this information is true has yet to be confirmed.

What is true, however, is that the law was on to him. Yesterday, after 56-year-old Scotti - or Francisco de Castro Visconti - dropped off his two sons at school, four police officers swooped in and placed him under arrest.

At first he denied being the NCO hitman and loyal henchman of Cutolo, but then surrendered saying, "It's me, you've got me. Pasquale Scotti no longer exists, he died in the eighties."

Perhaps he did. Maybe he buried his old self much like Viggo Mortensen's character in the 2005 film A History of Violence. But there is no denying he once was that person. A man who committed horrendous crimes. You can't run from your past.

Of which his new family apparently knew nothing. "He told us in a statement that his family was not aware of anything," said Giovani Santoro, the communications officer of the Pernambuco federal police force.

Scotti could be protecting his family from prosecution, but he is probably telling the truth. Not telling his new wife about his past was the smart thing to do. It's one of the reasons he stayed hidden for so long.

Unfortunately for him, he now faces justice in Italy. As a member of the New Camorra Organization he is going back to the place where the seed of his organization was planted. In a small concrete room with bars. No doubt he'll see a lot of old faces he hasn't seen in a long time.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

Camorra's "sistema" rules supreme in corrupt Italy

Gangsters Inc. sits down with FBI agent Jack Garcia

The Casalesi Clan of the Camorra

Mafia boss Messina Denaro intimidating prosecutor

Sicilian Mafia travel guide reveals island's underworld

Omerta in Italy officially "sleeps with the fishes"

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.

 Bikers & Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs - Overview tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-22:6329524:BlogPost:494 2015-05-22T15:31:33.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

Outlaw motorcycle clubs have become an increasingly powerful presence in the world of organized crime around the globe. While they claim to exist for no other reason than to enjoy a free lifestyle and riding motorcycles many clubs and chapters have been busted for crimes ranging from extortion and drug dealing…

Outlaw motorcycle clubs have become an increasingly powerful presence in the world of organized crime around the globe. While they claim to exist for no other reason than to enjoy a free lifestyle and riding motorcycles many clubs and chapters have been busted for crimes ranging from extortion and drug dealing to racketeering and murder.

These clubs have always said they live outside the boundaries of conventional society and play by their own rules. Their wild and criminal behavior led them to be labeled as "One Percenters," a reference to a comment allegedly made by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA) in which it stated that 99% of motorcyclists were law-abiding citizens, implying that the last one percent were outlaws.

They were eager to live up to that label.

The most famous outlaw motorcycle club is undoubtedly the Hells Angels MC. But in its wake other clubs have formed and carved out a substantial piece of territory. Most of these clubs formed in the United States and opened chapters around the world in the years thereafter. Other notable American-born clubs are the Bandidos, the Mongols, and the Outlaws. But as those clubs spread out into other countries, local clubs became bolder as well, and pretty quickly you had regional outlaw motorcycle clubs fighting against the more established ones.

Here at Gangsters Inc. we aim to keep you informed on all these clubs from all around the world. For your convenience we have listed them by club. When an article mentions more than one club and it is unclear who is the main subject of the piece it will be listed below under "various."

Hells Angels:

Massive funeral procession for murdered Hells Angel

Hells Angels shoot Mongols in deadly freeway gunfight

Media-savvy Hells Angels turned notoriety into business

Spanish Hells Angels Hit Hard in European Bust

Australian bikers fighting wars while cashing with the Cartel

German Bikers Prepare For War (Hells Angels vs Bandidos)

Biker News: War Down Under

Trouble For Canadian Hells Angels

Amsterdam's Hells Angels Leave Their Home

Biker News: Murder, Arrests, One Break Up & A Ban

Biker News: War is in the Air

Biker News: Brawling For Territory

Biker News: Brothers Betraying Brothers

Biker News: Gang war in Australia, Angels go to trial in Denmark

Biker News: Charity Drive or Gang War?

Biker News: Hells Angels Busts in New Zealand and Germany, Trial

Biker News: Dutch Hells Angel Murdered, Rhode Island President Buried

Europol Issues Warning: "Hells Angels Expanding into Eastern Europe"

Outlaw Bikers in Finland 1997-2005

Outlaw Bikers in Finland 1994 to 1997

The Great Northern Biker War

Bandidos MC:

Outlaw bikers go on international murder spree

Bandidos plant flag in Netherlands, Hells Angels unhappy

Outlaw Bikers in Finland 1997-2005

Outlaw Bikers in Finland 1994 to 1997

The Great Northern Biker War

Mongols MC:

Hells Angels shoot Mongols in deadly freeway gunfight

No Surrender MC:

Biker boss resigns because he wants to talk to the cops

Biker boss wounded by hitman, says club will handle problem

Wild outlaw biker shooting caught on video

Outlaw bikers join fight against ISIS in Iraq

Various:

How to destroy outlaw biker gangs

More outlaw bikers gunning for ISIS

Biker News: Dutch Biker War Avoided?

Fiction & Reality:

Sons of Anarchy final season trailer shows vengeance

Reality TV Showing Audiences Fake Ganglands
 Outlaw bikers go on international murder spree tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-22:6329524:BlogPost:65820 2015-05-22T12:30:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

This month has been the bloodiest one yet in the entire history of outlaw motorcycle gangs. And it's not even over. The spotlight was on Waco, Texas, where nine bikers were killed. But earlier this month, in the Netherlands, three bikers were wounded in a shootout. And yesterday, in Germany one was badly injured, while another died…

By David Amoruso

This month has been the bloodiest one yet in the entire history of outlaw motorcycle gangs. And it's not even over. The spotlight was on Waco, Texas, where nine bikers were killed. But earlier this month, in the Netherlands, three bikers were wounded in a shootout. And yesterday, in Germany one was badly injured, while another died after being shot in the head. The Bandidos motorcycle club played a big role in the majority of these recent incidents and law enforcement is taking notice.

High Noon at Twin Peaks

It was the Wild Wilde West all over again. And just like in those days, this showdown took place at noon. On Sunday, May 17, at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas, members of the Bandidos and Cossacks outlaw motorcycle clubs had gathered to talk about some issues. Talk escalated quickly into a fistfight, which turned into an all-out gunfight that spilled over into the restaurant's parking lot and involved over 30 angry bikers shooting at one another.

When officers broke up the fight 9 bikers were dead and 18 wounded. The other attendees, around 170, were placed under arrest. Their mugshots plastered across numerous media outlets for all to see. Afterwards, according to CNN, "investigators combing the crime scene have found more than 300 weapons, and they expect the numbers will go up."

Though it remains unclear what started this rampage - the outlaw bikers are not talking to police to give their side of the story – there are plenty of rumors and theories. "The Waco brawl […] is believed to have been not directly over a parking space or a bathroom stall spat, as had been reported early on. The new theory is that an accident may have kick started the melee," The Daily Beast reported. A police sergeant told the website that, "Somebody had their foot run over and started the disturbance in the parking lot."

Furthermore, the sergeant said there was also an interloper at the coalition meeting. "We know an additional biker gang that was not invited to this meeting showed up," he told The Daily Beast. "Hence, what we were calling somewhat of a turf war, if you will."

An anonymous biker informant told CNN a similar story. "The Bandidos are the biggest motorcycle gang in Texas, and they don't allow other motorcycle gangs to enter that state. They will allow other motorcycles clubs to exist, but they're not allowed to wear that state bottom rocker. If they do, they face the onslaught of the Bandidos," he said.

Marking territory in Europe

The last decade saw a huge increase of outlaw motorcycle gang chapters throughout the world. Many of the established clubs like the Hells Angels and Bandidos either expanded into new territory or tried to stop other clubs from encroaching on theirs.

In Europe, bikers are currently in the midst of exactly such a turf war as was mentioned before. The Hells Angels in the Netherlands were long considered the dominant biker gang in Europe, but to their dismay, they have seen several clubs challenge their hegemony in the country of tulips and windmills. Clubs like Satudarah and No Surrender are expanding rapidly and have opened chapters in Hells Angels territory.

Meanwhile, their fiercest global rivals, the Bandidos, have also set up shop in the Netherlands and have been welcomed with dynamite as several bombs exploded at the residence of their Dutch president.

Violence begets violence and it didn't take long for the Bandidos to return the favor.

On Thursday night, May 7, the Bandidos wounded three members of the Red Devils, considered the biggest support club of the Hells Angels, during a fight in Sittard. Shots were also fired in an altercation between members of the two clubs.

With Belgium and Germany just across the border from Sittard, a city in the south of the Netherlands, the bikers have an easy get-away. The Bandidos already have a presence in those, and many other European countries. In Scandinavia they have fought a fierce battle with the Hells Angels over territory and similar violent incidents have taken place in Germany.

The latest burst of violence occurred yesterday in the German town of Würselen, located just across the border with the Netherlands. According to police, two rival groups were having a heated argument at a bar. Around 9pm, shots were fired from the street outside into the bar. An 18-year-old member of a biker gang was hit in the head and died, while a 28-year-old man was shot in the stomach and badly wounded. It is unclear who fired the shots or why.

Nor is it known which biker clubs were involved. However, German police have been in contact with their Dutch colleagues to see if there perhaps is a link with the violence that occurred earlier this month.

Can biker gangs be stopped?

What is clear to all is that something needs to be done about outlaw motorcycle gangs. In recent decades they have become a bona fide global organized crime threat and they continue to grow in numbers and expand their territory, despite extra pressure from law enforcement.

Exactly what needs to be done remains unclear. Gangsters Inc.'s piece How to destroy outlaw bikers has tried to give authorities some useful tips with the help of two experts on outlaw motorcycle gangs, but whether these tactics will work remains to be seen.

As former ATF agent Jay Dobyns told us, "They are embedded as a part of Americana. From Altamont to Sons of Anarchy - they saturate our culture and are an important piece of our country's fascination with crime and punishment. They are America's export of organized crime. We will never, ever eliminate them."

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

How to destroy outlaw biker gangs

Hells Angels shoot Mongols in deadly freeway gunfight

Media-savvy Hells Angels turned notoriety into business

German Bikers Prepare For War

Spanish Hells Angels Hit Hard in European Bust

Bandidos plant flag in Netherlands, Hells Angels unhappy

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 Sicilian Cosa Nostra - Overview tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-09:6329524:BlogPost:615 2015-05-09T10:22:48.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
SICILIAN COSA NOSTRA

 Introduction written by Angelo Carmelo Gallitto

 PROFILES:

 Gianni Nicchi…

SICILIAN COSA NOSTRA

 Introduction written by Angelo Carmelo Gallitto

 PROFILES:

 Gianni Nicchi
 Giuseppe "Scarpuzzedda" Greco
 Matteo Messina Denaro
 Bernardo "The Tractor" Provenzano
 Leoluca "The Brother-in-law" Bagarella
 Giuseppe "The Cashier" Calo
 Salvatore "Toto" Riina
 Benedetto "The Hunter" Santapaola
 Stefano "The Prince" Bontade
 Calogero "Don Calo" Vizzini
 Cosa Nostra Murder Scenes Gallery

 ARTICLES:

The Phantom of The Grand Hotel: Sicily, the Mafia, and a Mystery
 Billions of euros seized from Sicilian Mafia's boss of bosses
 The Sound of Silence: How the Mafia in Sicily Communicates

Mafia attacks shopkeeper in Palermo for refusal to pay

Mafia boss Messina Denaro's identikit has been updated

Mafia boss Messina Denaro intimidating prosecutor

Sicilian Mafia travel guide reveals island's underworld

Sicilian Mafia boss Toto Riina: Prosecutors have to die

Italian Prison Too Tough On Mafia Boss Provenzano?

Mafia-State Trial Exposes Italy's Corrupt Political System

How Not to Shoot the Mafia

Cosa Nostra Families and Reputed Current Bosses of the Palermo Province

Santa Claus Joins Fight Against Cosa Nostra

The Structure of Cosa Nostra
 Italian police are closing in on Cosa Nostra Boss
 Another Boss of Bosses Falls From Grace (Salvatore Lo Piccolo)
 Mob-murders Cool Off in Italy
 Cosa Nostra: Pledging loyalty until the end

 PUPARO'S COSA NOSTRA:

 Cosa Nostra in Catania Province
 Cosa Nostra in Siracusa
 Puparo's Agrigento Cosa Nostra material
 Puparo's Cosa Nostra material - Part 1 Palermo Introduction
 Puparo's Cosa Nostra material - Part 2 Palermo 1970s
 Puparo's Cosa Nostra material - Part 3 Palermo 1980s
 Puparo's Cosa Nostra material - Part 4 Palermo 1990s
 Puparo's Cosa Nostra material - Part 5 Palermo 2000

 The Phantom of The Grand Hotel: Sicily, the Mafia, a Mystery tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-09:6329524:BlogPost:65708 2015-05-09T10:19:23.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By Thom L. Jones

Located in the historical center of Palermo, Sicily. Founded in 1874 and renovated in 1907 by one of the great masters of the Art Nouveau Style, Ernesto Basile, the exquisite Grand Hotel Et Des Palmes hotel exudes historical charm. Grand décor of marble floors and antiques combine nicely with very latest technology to…

By Thom L. Jones

Located in the historical center of Palermo, Sicily. Founded in 1874 and renovated in 1907 by one of the great masters of the Art Nouveau Style, Ernesto Basile, the exquisite Grand Hotel Et Des Palmes hotel exudes historical charm. Grand décor of marble floors and antiques combine nicely with very latest technology to make your stay a memorable one. The recently restored restaurant, bar and banquet room can host all your personal and professional events in great style turning them into unforgettable moments.

 - From the web site of hotel 2015.

There have been some unforgettable moments that's for sure.

It sits on Via Roma at number 398, occupying a block between Via Principe Granatelli and Via Mariano Stabile, seven stories high, with a palm tree to the right and left of the imposing entrance.

Above the doorway, engrave into the entablature, are the words Grande Albergo, the original name of the building.

Built in 1874, originally as a private residence for the Yorkshire, English, Ingham-Whittaker families, specifically Benjamin Ingham, who were involved in the Marsala wine trade, the villa hosted old and sick cantankerous German Richard Wagner, along with his wife, Cosima Liszt, as the composer created part of his famous opera, Parsifal, while a guest in 1882. A little while later, Renoir the painter, popped in to paint Wagner's portrait; prime minister Francesco Crispi lived here for a period, from 1885, and French writer Guy de Maupassant also made a visit; Vittorio Orlando, another prime minister, stayed here frequently after the residence was purchased by entomologist Enrico Ragusa and converted into a hotel in 1907, by the same architect who designed the magnificent Teatro Massimo opera house a few hundred meters to the west of the hotel.

American playwright Arthur Miller came on a visit to Sicily and stayed here, and Uruguayan author José Enrique Rodó passed away in his room in 1917, as did French poet and novelist Raymond Roussel who died of a drug overdose in 1933. Francis Ford Coppola and Al Pacino (whose grandparents emigrated to America from Corleone) stopped by when they were in Sicily during the production of the film The Godfather.

Coppola allegedly had his own bed shipped to the hotel from America.

The hotel also hosted actress Sophia Loren, musician Ray Charles, as well as Giulio Andreotti, the knight of darkness of Italy's Christian Democrat party and Michele Sindona the Mafia-connected banker with ties to the Vatican.

Luchino Visconti di Modrone, Count of Lonate-Pozzolo, the famous Italian film director, along with actor Burt Lancaster were guests in the early 1960s during the shooting of The Leopard, the film adaptation of Sicily's most famous book of the same name. Ava Gardner, the Hollywood movie star was a customer at the hotel while filming in Sicily in 1960.

Sliding in and out from time to time was a squat, coarse-looking, peasant of a man, always dressed in rough clothes, stained by the tobacco he continually chewed. This was Giuseppe Genco Russo, the Mafia boss of Mussomeli and thought by many as the successor to the late Don Calogero Vizzini as the top Mafia figure on the island. The hotel staff hated him for his disgusting habit of spitting onto the carpets.

The American government requisitioned the hotel on behalf of its military in 1944, by which time the name had changed to its current somewhat chichi French appellation. US Army Colonel Charles Poletti, in charge of civil affairs for the military, set up a base here where one of his translators and aides was New York Mafioso Vito Genovese, who had fled to Italy in 1937 to avoid a murder charge. Although Palermo was heavily bombed by the allies, the hotel escaped almost unscathed. One missile did fall into the lobby by the front door, damaging a table, but luckily, did not explode. Another actually passed through the hotel, on March 22nd 1943, entering and exiting the room of Baron Vincenzo Greco Militello without causing any injury to the startled guest, who had been enjoying an afternoon nap, before exploding outside. The fly on the wall never got a better day than that!

Sometime around the middle of October 1957, (different sources give different dates) it supposedly hosted a congress of Sicilian and American Mafiosi who gathered for a few days in the Sala Azzurra the Blue Room, which can hold up to eighty, to talk about crime and drugs and whatever gangsters chit-chat about when they aren't running around killing each other. Genco Russo would have most certainly been present, as a man referred to by agents of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics as "the chief of the Sicilian Mafia."

Which he wasn't. That was Andrea Fazio, the boss of Trapani.

Twenty-five years later, Palermo was the heroin capitol of the world.

However, of all the interesting, newsworthy players that walked through the doors or slept in a bedroom or drank in the bar, none came anywhere near the tall, distinguished-looking man in the white linen suit, who for close to fifty years wandered through the hallways chomping on a fat Cuban, Romeo and Juliet cigar. He would have to be the most fascinating and elusive of all the guests who ever stayed at a hotel, anywhere in the world. And the longest, permanently paying client, without fear of competition.

Just who he was and why he lived his life in this hotel has been a source of interest and no little confusion for crime researchers and writers, in general, over the years. Sometimes, looking for the truth about anything to do with the Mafia is like looking for a turtle with a moustache, possible but generally, unlikely. What we find is not always what we are looking for. Even on the good days.

The man at the heart of this story is called Giuseppe di Stefano (left,) maybe Baron di Stefano, maybe not. A man of immense wealth, a landowner of some magnitude, or perhaps none of this. Possibly a Mafioso, maybe something else. Allegedly living at the hotel in exile, banished there by the Mafia. Or not.

Toto Librizzi, the head barman at the hotel, knew him as well, if not better, than most. He claimed that "di Stefano maintained it was a fairy tale that he had been sent into exile by the Mafia of Castelvetrano. It was simply a rumor."

Or was it? A Sicilian with a glance will confer more than a Neapolitan can with a million words. So said Renato Guttuso the famous Sicilian painter who was a frequent guest at Des Palmes and often dined with the Baron.

If it was an exile, the man controlling the destiny of Di Stefano would have been Giuseppe Marotta, capo of the Castelvetrano Mafia clan in the troublesome times following the end of World War Two. Or then again, maybe it was Senor Coppola.

Five feet two with eyes of blue, Francesco Paolo Coppola had been born in Partinico in 1899. After a busy life of crime, he fled Sicily, suspect in several murders, in 1926, heading for the promised land of America. He lived in New York, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles and Rock Island, Illinois, with spells in Mexico. He had helped notorious union leader Jimmy Hoffa's rise to power in the Teamsters Union. Twenty-two years after his arrival, he was deported back to Sicily, with a CV that included murder, bootlegging and numerous drug-trafficking indictments. He arrived in Sicily in January, 1948 and was soon back into the swing of things. Within six months, he was the boss of the Partinico Mafia family.

His return timing was fortuitous. On July 17th, 1948, Santo Flores, the boss of the clan, died, sitting down. It was probably the only way to go as he was so morbidly obese he needed two men to support him when he tried to walk. He was with some of his friends, chewing the fat in the Piazza Duomo when Salvatore Giuliano, the infamous bandit came along and machine-gunned them all into eternity. A dispute over payment for a kidnapping. Something like that. Salvatore had been under the protection of Flores, but thing were starting to turn to custard.

Angelo Siino a Mafioso police informant, would claim many years later, that Giuliano was, in fact, a soldier in the Mafia family of San Giuseppe Jato. The killing of the family boss was the start of a chain of events that would lead to Giuliano sprawled dead in a courtyard, in Castlevetrano in the morning sun, two years later.

Coppola was, according to author Gaia Servadio, "the criminal overlord of one of the most populated areas of Sicily and was implicated in drug trafficking incidents and every major Sicilian criminal incident. Most capocosche never reached beyond their neighborhood, Copolla, however, had vast political links and was the maker of Sicilian and Roman deputies."

He had, quite possibly, been the Mafia authority behind the murder of Giuliano, the deus ex machina, allegedly finalizing the details of the killing with Ugo Luca (Carabinieri Colonel in charge of a specially created group, the CFRB, set up in 1949 to track down and destroy Giuliano and his band,) the night before the bandit chief was shot dead in Castelvetrano early on the morning of July 4th, 1950.

So the bandit kills the Mafia boss and the new boss helps to kill the bandit who he had been supplying with bombs and guns, funded, it was alleged, by the American CIA through former OSS boss William Donovan.

Undoubtedly an Axelrod complexity of cooperation!

Frank may have been part of the mob meeting at the hotel in 1957, maybe with his best buddy, Charlie Luciano, the infamous New York Mafioso deported to Italy in February 1946, who Frank thought of as "a most exquisite person." Frank had, in fact, started his American career under Luciano before moving to Detroit in the 1930s.

Luciano had stayed at the Grand in April 1946 when he was thrown out of the US and deported back to Sicily, his birth place. The British Consul at the time reported on Luciano's sojourn at the hotel. "This bandit, or ex-bandit, is very much in the public eye," said the report. "He has two luxurious American motor cars; dresses and lives expensively and is often seen in the company of an elegant but vulgar Italo-American woman, Virginia Massa."

Luciano returned to the hotel for the third time on March 23rd, 1961, for a two-day visit, staying in Room 216. He had come to Sicily by boat from Naples. While here, he telephoned, then met up with, Genco Russo who arrived the following day. They huddled in a closed meeting for over two hours. Luciano held a second session on the same day with his cousin, Salvatore Salemi, Mauro Di Mauro, an investigative reporter for the pro-communist newspaper, Lóra ( he would disappear in September 1970, a victim of lupara bianca-white shotgun, how the Mafia disappeared its victims,) and a mysterious little man called Agostino La Lomia.

More on him later.

Luciano left the following day, flying back to Naples on Air Alitalia Flight 119. He would have had an early start. His aeroplane left Punta Raisi airport at 9:45am.

Maybe Frank Coppola met up with Di Stefano if in fact he did attend the 1957 meeting. The mysterious guest had by then, been a permanent resident of the hotel for eleven years. It was even rumored the Baron had been involved in the setting up of the meeting.

He had it seems, two regular visitors, one at least from America, who were Mafia. One was Calogero Orlando, who according to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics, (FBN) was one of those attending the 1957 meet.

He was born in Terranisi, (a twenty-five minute car drive north of Partinico,) in 1906, and at the age of 16, left Sicily, with $400 in his pocket and high hopes to find his fortune in America, locking into the Mafia family of Detroit and making enough money to be living by 1960, in relative luxury, in a two-story colonial home in the Fieldston section of The Bronx in New York.

Long a target of the FBN, who believed he imported heroin into the USA in tin goods, barrels of olive oil and giant wheels of cheese, for use in his food wholesaling and retailing business, Orlando Food Company based on Hudson Street in Manhattan. When he died in Florida in 1980 at the age of 74, it would be almost certain he had achieved his dream of finding his fortune.

The other man who called to visit was Giacinto Di Simone. He is almost as vague and shadowy a figure as Di Stefano himself.

He was connected with some kind of wine business, based near the railways station in Castelvetrano, and sometime in the 1950s, along with Di Stefano and some other investors, bought up an old, abandoned prison in Palermo, demolished it and sold the vacant lot to the Bank of Sicily who built their headquarters there, before relocating to the Via Magliocca.

In the 1960s it was reported that representatives of the town council of Castelvetrano visited the mysterious hotel guest to arrange the purchase of a large block of land he owned on Via Campobello, which they subsequently developed as a housing and industrial complex.

Over Easter, 1998, Giuseppe Di Stefano died in his suite at the age of 92.

As a rule of thumb, hotels remove their dead through the back entrance. Not a good image carting a coffin through the front door as rich and important guests are checking in. They made an exception for the man who have lived most of his life at 398 Via Roma. The entire staff apparently formed up to salute him goodbye. His funeral was organized by Giacomo Maniscalo, who had attended Di Stefano in the last ten years of his life as a hotel staff member. A private service and cremation were held at Cemetry dei Rotoli, north of the city.

Giuseppe Di Stefano had lived in The Grand Hotel et Des Palms for over fifty years.

But why and how he got there is without a doubt a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, to cite Winston Churchill.

It goes something like this:

He was Baron Sciacca, living on a vast estate in Belvedere, to the north of Castelvetrano. One day, sometime in 1946, while out hunting peasants, with two of his greyhounds, he came across a young man stealing almonds from a tree. Firing his shotgun, presumably to scare off the thief, he inadvertently kills the youth.

That's version one.

Version two has the thief being brought into the Baron's presence, who in rage, kicks him in anger and unwittingly damages the boy so badly, he dies.

Version three, has the Baron out for an afternoon spin in his car, and yes, he knocks this boy down, and he dies.

The one constant in all the stories is that the boy is related to the Mafia of Castelvetrano, and they demand justice, in full.

Traditionally, Mafia would simply take revenge by killing their enemy. Blood washes blood and all that kind of stuff. Di Stefano's position as a nobleman of considerable wealth, however, creates something of a dilemma, a sticky situation. The mob sits down and after many arms waving and deep pauses and agonizing, decide on their solution. The Baron will live but must leave his palatial home and vast estates and spend the rest of his life in exile. He agrees, and catches the next train to Palermo, checks into Grande Albergo and settles down to live the rest of his life in a suite that would change location over the years but finally settles on room 204.

However.

Vito Marino claims in an article on the web at Caselvetranonews.it Giuseppe Di Stefano was born April 13th, 1906 to Giuseppe and Giovanna di Leo at Via Ruggero Settimo 6. This looks promising until you realize that there is no such street. Via Settimo runs into Via Ruggero VII and both contain a house numbered 6. Maybe a hundred years ago it was one street called by that name. Maybe not. More confusion. Turtle revisited!

He had two brothers, Giovanni and Mario. One becomes a lawyer, the other an accountant. But what actually does Giuseppe become?

Rich apparently.

According to the article, he may have married an aunt and through her, acquired the title of Baron.

Alternatively, the Milan-based weekly magazine Famiglia Christiana, in an article published in 1995, maintained Di Stefano's wealth came from an inheritance through an aunt that he never married. This was apparently confirmed by Giuseppe Bongiorno, a sometime mayor of Castelvetrano, Senator in Rome, and at one time, attorney to Giuseppe Di Stefano.

Yet another source claimed the Baron of Sciacca married a young girl and on his death left her as the sole heir to his estate. Di Stefano at this time, the source claimed, was the campieri or estate manager of the baron's property. This was a common occupation of Mafioso in rural areas. He courted the widow, Concettina, and eventually married her. She then became sick and died, but not before making a will in the favor of her husband.

Between the litany of Di Stefano's alleged criminal act against the young boy and the genesis of his career as the world's longest paying hotel guest, there is a mind-numbing Sea of Saragossa, a horse latitude of tangled confusion and unresolved province that is begging a solution, although it will never happen.

So, if the estate manager becomes the Baron, did he, in fact, run afoul of the local Mafia?

That's the big can of worms.

Vito Marino supposed the killing of the young boy was an accident and was recognized as such.

Di Stefano had moved to Palermo simply to be closer to the seat of power in Sicily and to administer his economic interests that went beyond land holdings. He chose to live in a hotel rather than a house for convenience.

Sicilian historian and journalist, Gaetano Basile, believed based on his research, Di Stefano was a Mafioso who chooses to live in the hotel from choice. He was wealthy enough to be able to afford it. Money never seemed a problem. In the hot, summer months, he would move into the Grand Hotel Villa Igiea, another beautiful old baroque home converted in 1908 by Ernesto Basile into a luxurious hotel, on Salita Belmonte, where he could enjoy the cool breezes blowing in off the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. He would travel to Naples each year to either enjoy the opera season or the pleasures of the flesh with a mysterious woman or both, maybe at the same time.

He once attended the theatre in Turin, with his namesake, the well-known Italian opera singer, and Maria Callas. He had a regular suite at the Principe di Savoia, a five-star hotel in Milan and a major landmark in the city.

He would meet on a consistent basis with an official of the Bank of Sicily, which handled his financial affairs, and each day a barber visited to maintain his beard and hair. He allegedly had four-hour lunches, entertaining his friends and associates, and would often instruct the chef on the preparation of meals in traditional and sometimes forgotten, recipes of Sicilian cuisine. He would specify fresh fish to be delivered from Mazara del Varro, a port in western Sicily, spending up to 100 Euros (about US$105) on this daily extravagance, and fruits and vegetables from Castelvetrano.

He spent his mornings caring for and watering the exotic plants in the greenhouse on the roof of the hotel, and some afternoons would stroll the streets around the hotel.

For a man in perpetual exile, it would appear to have been a good life.

The hotel manager said in 1996 in an interview with an AP reporter:

"The myth of the baron is a mystery," said Enzo Caruso. "Sicilians like mysteries. They like to think that a man can live in the shadows. Secrets represent knowledge, so the more secrets he has, the more important a man is."

Caruso acknowledges the publicity isn't bad for the hotel though its history speaks for itself.

Eight years before his death, Di Stefano became the subject of a movie released in 1990: Dementicare Palermo- The Palermo Connection- with iconic actor, Vittorio Gassman, playing the part of the mysterious hotel guest. The film was based on a novel written by French author Edmond Charles-Roux.

Towards the end of his life, Di Stefano retreated to the privacy of his hotel suite. Attended by nurses and hotel staff, confined to a wheelchair, he lived his last years truly as an isolationist, fulfilling the fable and rumors that had frothed around him for so many years. He died peacefully in his sleep on April 5th, Easter Sunday.

Toto Gaziano an executive with the Bank of Sicily remembers the Baron laughing at the rumors that swirled around him like mists of opportunity. An urban legend looking for a home.

"This is a story passed down in a distorted way. Something must have happened in Castelvetrano, many years ago. But no one has condemned the Baron Di Stefano to Palermo into exile. It was his choice to live away from his country residence. He's gone," he said, "like a candle goes out."

The Grand Hotel Et Des Palmes has been described as art nouveau, belle epoch, an old, noble lady asleep in the heart of Palermo. Like any hotel with a long history, it has had its share of scandals and ghosts.

In July, 1937, a British secret agent was allegedly knifed to death in room 242. In 1961, a man thought to be an envoy of some authority, while spying it was believed on the Mafia, fell seven stories down through the skylight into the lobby. Giovanni Di Carlo, the hotel's maintenance manager, along with two other men removed the body, leaving only shattered glass, bloodstains and an English wristwatch among the debris. On at least two occasions noblemen fought duels across the marbled floor of the hotel's lobby, and if one mysterious Baron wasn't enough to satisfy the curiosity of Palermo and Sicily, for good measure, the hotel hosted two!

One of Sicily's most eccentric landed gentry was Baron Agostino La Lomia who had been born in Cianicatti, a commune in Agrigento, in 1905, and was the last in his noble lineage. Growing up and living in a world that seemed alien and unfriendly, he essentially, invented his own. He became notorious for his bizarre and eccentric lifestyle and famous for his poems and writings. He was a member of the Secular Academy of Parnassus Canicatti, founded in 1922 which also included such famous Italians as Pirandello and Salvatore Sammartino.

La Lomia's ancestors under the reign of the Bourbons had become substantial landowners and were awarded titles and important roles in the government of Sicily. By the time he came along, things were on a downward track. He inherited the family home in Ciancatti, a palace in Via Cataneo, in 1928 and used it as a base, surrounded by servants, gardeners and drivers, seven or more, in all. In 1947, he hosted a stay by Charlie Luciano, returning a favor for when he had visited Charlie in New York.

A short, stocky man, bald with a full white beard, he traveled everywhere with a cat and a blackbird in a cage and was a regular at film festivals across Italy and France. He stayed often at the hotel, claiming that he had been conceived in room 124 and insisted on booking into it on his visits. He would write himself letters, addressed to the Grand, and insisted the concierge should shout out his name when they arrived, so visitors and guests knew who he was. He dressed in a crumpled linen suit, often with a cloak thrown over, and always a straw hat with a large feather adorned in it.

His philosophy was "everything in life is more or less important nonsense." It was a dogma he seemed to follow with great enthusiasm.

I wonder how often the paths of the two Barons crossed? One tall, haughty, completely aloof. The other, short, dumpy, completely weird.

These were two of the ghosts that now occupy space in a building filled with the heady scent of mystery and intrigue taken beyond the liminal of conjecture that would have perhaps fascinated Agatha Christie or Edgar Allen Poe.

The symbiotic relationship between Giuseppe Di Stefano and the Grand Hotel et des Palmes is without dispute. It was a mutualistic alliance forged by either fate or simply convenience. We will never know for sure which one.

Like the hotel in which he lived more than half his life, he left behind a legacy. Not of bricks and mortar, not of candelabras and ballrooms, and the pomp and circumstance of a luxurious lodging, but something much more fundamentally appealing and attractive: a cryptogram, a Gordian knot of the most frustrating complexity:

The mystery of who he really was and why he did what he did.

In the end, he still remains something of a mystery. We should not be surprised: for every human being is a mystery and nobody knows the truth about anybody else.

A.A. Milne.

With reference to British spy, Kim Philby.

You can read more of Thom L. Jones stories at his Mob Corner at Gangsters Inc.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

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Copyright © Gangsters Inc. and Thom L. Jones 2015
 Drug Cartels tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-01:6329524:BlogPost:25218 2015-05-01T09:54:08.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
 By David Amoruso

 Besides financial fraud, trafficking in narcotics is still the crime that pays the most. Groups and individuals from across the world have experienced the huge and seemingly easy profit drugs bring. Be it cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, or weed: it all translates to money. And lots of it.…

By David Amoruso

 Besides financial fraud, trafficking in narcotics is still the crime that pays the most. Groups and individuals from across the world have experienced the huge and seemingly easy profit drugs bring. Be it cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, or weed: it all translates to money. And lots of it.

 With the huge amount of money come power and envy and the drug world is known for its violent flare ups. In Florida the so-called Cocaine Cowboys left the streets dripping in blood. While Pablo Escobar had made so much money trafficking cocaine, he had acquired enough power to take on the Colombian government in a war that reminded more of Iraq than South America.

 Though, we at Gangsters Inc. will also report on drug groups in Asia, Europe, Jamaica, and North America, our focus will be on South America. That area has always been the center of the cocaine trade and smuggling into the United States. Mexico is currently involved in a drug war that cost the lives of over 34,000 in the past four years. As Mexican authorities are working closely with American agencies to combat the powerful drug cartels, the violence is spiraling out of control with gruesome beheadings and mass murder on a weekly basis.

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 DEA hero in War on Drugs honored by Secretary of Defense tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-01:6329524:BlogPost:65559 2015-05-01T09:51:20.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

When President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs" in the summer of 1971, many regarded it as a hyperbole for increasing the size and presence of federal drug control agencies. For many years that's what it was. But with the Mexican drug cartels killing federal agents and the fight against drug farmers in Afghanistan…

By David Amoruso

When President Richard Nixon declared a "war on drugs" in the summer of 1971, many regarded it as a hyperbole for increasing the size and presence of federal drug control agencies. For many years that's what it was. But with the Mexican drug cartels killing federal agents and the fight against drug farmers in Afghanistan flaring up the war on drugs has become exactly what it claims to be.

A war.

Like in any war, this one, too, has plenty of heroes. This week, the Defense Department honored one of them.

DEA Special Agent Joseph Piersante (right) became the first-ever member of the DEA to receive the Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom. Piersante was struck by enemy gun fire while on a counter-terrorism and narcotics mission in Afghanistan in 2011.

The Defense of Freedom Medal is the civilian equivalent of the military's Purple Heart. The first recipients honored were those Defense Department civilians injured or killed as a result of the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on 9/11.

According to a press release by the DEA, "Piersante's recovery from this life-threatening event has been nothing short of miraculous. Through hard work and determination, as well as incredible doctors, EMTs, team members, therapists, trainers, family, and friends along the way, he has returned to his Special Agent duties at DEA FAST headquarters in Virginia. In addition, Piersante has inspired many in and out of law enforcement, participating in speaking engagements, motivational opportunities, and training in areas such as overcoming adversity, never giving up, and putting your life on the line for the good of our great nation. His inspirational story will continue forever to be told not just by him, but by many in and out of DEA."

Since the incident, Special Agent Piersante has received numerous awards from a variety of organizations, including the Federal Congressional Badge of Bravery from the United States Congress, and from his alma mater, Adrian College in Michigan, where he played football.

Below is an ABC News report on the DEA FAST team's operations in Afghanistan. As the reporter points out, "Despite what it looks like, this is not a U.S. military operation. This is the DEA."

The Secretary of Defense Medal for the Defense of Freedom (right) itself consists of a golden circle framing a bald eagle holding a shield which exemplifies the principles of freedom and the defense of those freedoms upon which our nation is founded. The reverse of the medal is inscribed with "On Behalf of a Grateful Nation" with a space for the recipient's name to be inscribed. The laurel wreath represents honor and high achievement. The ribbon is the red, white and blue. The red stripes commemorate valor and sacrifice. The wide blue stripe represents strength. The white stripes symbolize liberty as represented in our national flag. The number of red stripes represents the four terrorist attacks using hijacked airplanes and the single blue stripe represents the terrorist attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

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Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 TRAILER: Tom Hardy plays Kray twins in crime epic Legend tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-05-01:6329524:BlogPost:65557 2015-05-01T08:30:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

Ever since they came on the scene in the 1950s, Ronnie and Reggie Kray, known as the Kray twins, have dominated the London crime scene and the public's fascination as well. And they continue to do so. This year, actor Tom Hardy will play both brothers in the epic gangster flick Legend.

Based on John Pearson's book…

By David Amoruso

Ever since they came on the scene in the 1950s, Ronnie and Reggie Kray, known as the Kray twins, have dominated the London crime scene and the public's fascination as well. And they continue to do so. This year, actor Tom Hardy will play both brothers in the epic gangster flick Legend.

Based on John Pearson's book The Profession of Violence, with a screenplay by Brian Helgeland - who won an Oscar for writing LA Confidential, Legend focuses on the Kray's rise in London's East End in the fifties and their inevitable downfall in the "swinging sixties," which concluded with both brothers serving life in prison for two gangland murders.

London's underworld has always been a moviemaker favorite. From the tense A Long Good Friday starring Bob Hoskins as a crime boss on the verge of making it legit, Guy Ritchie's larger than life villains of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch to masterpiece Layer Cake starring Daniel Craig, the city of London offered both filmmakers and moviegoers plenty of locations and stories to work with.

And if groovy London isn't your bag of tea, then you'll be pleased to hear that the Italian American Mafia will have some screen time as well. Actor Chazz Palminteri (A Bronx Tale, Analyze This) plays Angelo Bruno, the Philadelphia mob boss who had business interests in London and had to deal with the erratic Krays.

Legend is the latest ode to London's grimy gangland and looks set to be a riveting one. It will hit theaters in September of this year. You can view the trailer below.

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Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 TRAILER: Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-25:6329524:BlogPost:65248 2015-04-25T20:49:34.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

The trailer of Black Mass has been released and shows Johnny Depp as infamous Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger. The film is based on the book Black Mass and…

The trailer of Black Mass has been released and shows Johnny Depp as infamous Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger. The film is based on the book Black Mass and promises to be a bonafide hit. Check out the trailer above and any of the stories about Whitey Bulger below.

More on Whitey Bulger:

Boston Boss James "Whitey" Bulger Found Guilty

Court Showdown Between "Whitey" and "The Rifleman"

Irish Mob Boss James "Whitey" Bulger Arrested

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Copyright © Gangsters Inc.

 Crime Beat: Milwaukee Mafia, Hollywood drug deals, more tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-23:6329524:BlogPost:65242 2015-04-23T08:59:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

Crime Beat: Issues, Controversies And Personalities From The Dark Side on Artist First Radio Network is pleased to announce its forthcoming schedule for April 30, 2015, through July 16, 2015. Topics covered include The Queen of True Crime, The Milwaukee Mafia, drug dealing in Hollywood, Hip Hop and the recording industry, going undercover in the drug…

Crime Beat: Issues, Controversies And Personalities From The Dark Side on Artist First Radio Network is pleased to announce its forthcoming schedule for April 30, 2015, through July 16, 2015. Topics covered include The Queen of True Crime, The Milwaukee Mafia, drug dealing in Hollywood, Hip Hop and the recording industry, going undercover in the drug trade, and more.

Here is the lineup:

April 30 - Ann Rule, author of The Stranger Besides Me, and other books. See www.authorannrule.com ;

May 7 - Heidi Cady, author of Smoke (Hollywood and marijuana smuggling) See https://www.facebook.com/heidi.cady ;

May 14 - LA Snow, Rapper and author of Rhyme to Riches. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StlMdNcvCJo ;

May 21 - Gavin Schmitt, author of the Milwaukee Mafia: Mobster in the Heartland. See http://www.bookdepository.com/Milwaukee-Mafia-Gavin-Schmitt/9781569805152 ;

May 28 - Jon D'Amore, author of The Boss Always Sits in the Back. See www.jondamore.com ;

June 4 - Carlos Toro, DEA undercover agent and Carlos Lehder's boyhood friend. See

June 11 - James Grady, author of Last Days of the Condor. See www.jamesgrady.net. And John Glatt, the author of The Lost Girls (The true story of the Cleveland abductions): See www.johnglatt.com ;

June 18 - Frank DiMatteo, author of Lion in the Basement: Growing Up in the Gallo Crime Family. See http://www.mobcandymag.com/ ;

June 25 - Shanna Hogan, author of The Stranger She Loved. See www.shanahogan.com ;

July 2 - Dana Owen, author of Shot Gunned. See www.shotgunned.net. And Michael Schlossberg, author of Tweets and Consequences: Social Media Disasters in Politics and How You Can Avert a Career Ending Mistake. See www.voteschlossberg.com ;

July 9 - Jerry Clark, author of Pizza Bomber: The Untold Story of America's Most Shocking Robbery. See www.pizzabomber.com. A command appearance.

July 16 - Vito Colucci, author of Rogue Town. See www.coluccipi.com. A command appearance.

On the air since January 28, 2011, Crime Beat is a weekly hour-long radio program that airs every Thursday at 8 p.m. EST. Crime Beat presents fascinating topics that bring listeners closer to the dynamic underbelly of the world of crime. Guests have included ex- mobsters, undercover law enforcement agents, sports officials, informants, prisoners, drug dealers and investigative journalists, who have provided insights and fresh information about the world's most fascinating subject: crime.

CRIME BEAT is currently averaging 180,000 listeners in 130 plus countries each week, and the figure is growing. All shows are archived at www.artistfirst.com/crimebeat.htm for 24-7 listening. Crime Beat is hosted by award-winning crime writer and documentary producer Ron Chepesiuk (www.ronchepesiuk.com) and broadcast journalist and freelance writer Will Hryb.

Ronald Herd, the popular Internet radio host and regular listener of Crime Beat, said: "Crime Beat sounds like an organized crime greatest hits collection...I am loving it!" Tom Hart of Atlanta, Georgia, writes: "I am a BIG fan of your show and enjoy the variety of guests you have on your show. "Keep up the good work." Carolyn Yarema of Toronto, Canada writes, "fabulous program guys' ... my husband Chi Chi and I never miss the show."

Crime Beat airs weekly every Thursday at 8 P.M. EST on the Artist First World Radio Network at http://www.artistfirst.com/crimebeat.htm. To contact the Crime Beat radio program for interviews, e-mail email@example.com or call 803-366-5440.

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Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 Organized Crime in Australia tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-19:6329524:BlogPost:38439 2015-04-19T07:02:49.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w
 As the sixth largest country in the world, Australia has a lot of room for people who are looking for new territory to commit crimes. Discovered by Dutch explorers, Australia eventually fell under British rule. The British used the far-away continent as an isolated prison in the sun after they lost control of the…

As the sixth largest country in the world, Australia has a lot of room for people who are looking for new territory to commit crimes. Discovered by Dutch explorers, Australia eventually fell under British rule. The British used the far-away continent as an isolated prison in the sun after they lost control of the United States. Britain sent its most hated inmates to penal-colonies in Tasmania and New South Wales.

This peculiar practice did not harm the Australia's growth or development. It is among the most wealthy and prosperous nations on earth and a favorite among tourists who, out of free will, come to enjoy the beautiful nature and cities the country has to offer.

Despite the happy ending, Australia has got its fair share of problems with organized crime. From outlaws like Ned Kelly (nineteenth century) and Mark "Chopper" Read (1970s and on) to the Italian Mafia and biker gangs, Australia has them all.

Gangsters Inc. will bring you the news and stories behind these gangsters and criminal groups. Below you can find our most recent postings dealing with Australia and its criminal elements.

ARTICLES:

Murder Blue in Melbourne, Australia: "Two dogs (cops) have to die!"
 Assault on Law and Order: Melbourne, Australia
 Honest businessman or Australian 'Ndrangheta boss?
 'Ndrangheta Mob War in Australia
 The Calabrian 'Ndrangheta in Australia
 Italian-Australian Gangsters & Mafiosi
 Italian-Australian Gangsters & Criminals

BIKERS:

How to destroy outlaw biker gangs
 Australian bikers fighting wars while cashing with the Cartel
 Biker News: War Down Under
 Biker News: Gang war in Australia, Angels go to trial in Denmark
 The Bonanno Crime Family - Overview tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-17:6329524:BlogPost:909 2015-04-17T14:58:33.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

Estimate members: Around 100

 First Boss: Joseph Bonanno.

 Primary activities: Involved in…

Estimate members: Around 100
 First Boss: Joseph Bonanno.
 Primary activities: Involved in narcotics trafficking, home video pornography, robbery, extortion, loan sharking, gambling, phony telemarketing schemes, pizza parlors and espresso cafes.
 Boss: Michael Mancuso
 Acting Boss: Thomas Di Fiore

BOSSES:

 Thomas Di Fiore (in prison)
 Michael Mancuso (in prison)
 Salvatore Montagna (whacked)
 Joseph Massino (flipped)
 Carmine Galante (whacked)

 CONSIGLIERI:

 Anthony "T.G." Graziano (in prison)

 CAPI:

 Jack Bonventre (prison)

 SOLDIERS:

 Benjamin "Lefty Guns" Ruggiero (dead, natural causes)

 ARTICLES:

 WTC contractor with mob ties busted for $1.5M fraud
 Former Bonanno boss Massino's HQ becomes bakery
 The Canadian Connection: Flooding the U.S. with dope
 Bonanno goodfellas turned in by former boss Massino
 Montreal Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto (1946 - 2013)
 Bonanno Family Leadership Busted
 Bonanno Boss Murdered Near Montreal
 How the Sicilian Mafia flooded the US with heroin
 Montreal Bust: Project Colisée
 Mafia of Montréal: A Short History
 Aftermath of a Hit (Murder of the three captains)

 Profile: Bonanno crime family capo Jack Bonventre tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-17:6329524:BlogPost:65533 2015-04-17T14:57:05.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

"What the fuck is there? Everybody runs to the law. Everybody's a fucking rat. Everybody, they're fucking horrible." – Bonanno gangster Jack Bonventre

Bonanno mobster Jack Bonventre knows all about "the life" and its many hardships. Bonventre was convicted of a federal charge of illegal gambling in 2007, for which he…

By David Amoruso

"What the fuck is there? Everybody runs to the law. Everybody's a fucking rat. Everybody, they're fucking horrible." – Bonanno gangster Jack Bonventre

Bonanno mobster Jack Bonventre knows all about "the life" and its many hardships. Bonventre was convicted of a federal charge of illegal gambling in 2007, for which he was sentenced to nine months behind bars, to be followed by three years' supervised release, and a $30,000 fine. Prior to that, in April of 2005, he was convicted in New York state court of falsifying business records in the second degree, a Class A misdemeanor, for which he was sentenced to conditional discharge, five days community service and a $250 fine.

The hardships, however, are compensated by the money, power, respect, and beautiful women. That's what draws men to a life of crime over and over. But lately, "the life" has been changing, and, well, it isn't what it used to be. Especially when you are part of the New York Bonanno crime family. Ravaged by informants and turncoats, this family had its own boss become a witness against his former underlings. When your own boss flips on you, who can you trust?!

For Bonventre, it seems, that man is Jerome Asaro. Bonventre has been a soldier in Asaro's crew since 2003 and, despite all the rats that jumped the Bonanno ship during and since that time, Bonventre is extremely content with Asaro as his skipper.

So much so that he even turned down a promotion to consigliere. On March 8, 2013, Jerome's father Vincent Asaro was caught on a wire stating that Bonventre had been offered the administration position of "consigliere," but that he had turned the offer down because he "didn't want to leave Jerry [Asaro]."

Things were fine as they were for Bonventre. Why mess up a good thing? That seemed to be his attitude. Besides, when Jerome Asaro was behind bars, Bonventre had stepped up to become acting capo of his crew.

Authorities claimed he managed a "lucrative overseas illegal gambling operation involving sports betting."

FBI recordings of Bonventre and others confirm his participation in such illegal activity. They also show how things have changed compared to the days of the crime family's namesake Joseph Bonanno, during the Mafia's heyday in the 1950s. For example, during a December 21, 2009 recording, Bonventre expressed his annoyance at how he has to deal with bettors who refuse to pay up.

"You can't put pressure on these people because they run to the law," Bonventre is overheard saying. "They run to the law. And then, you know what, it's a lot cheaper to fucking, take a fucking hit for a few thousand then it is to pay a fucking lawyer. Because that's what's gonna happen. The minute you squeeze 'em a little bit they run to the law. They run to the fucking law immediately. Immediately. Immediately . . . What the fuck is there? Everybody runs to the law. Everybody's a fucking rat. Everybody, they're fucking horrible."

Unbeknownst to Bonventre, the Bonanno wiseguy he was telling this to had himself decided to "fucking rat" and was taping the entire conversation.

In late January, 2014, Bonventre, Jerome and Vincent Asaro, John Ragano, and Bonanno acting boss Thomas Di Fiore were arrested and hit with racketeering charges. Father and son Asaro had even been linked to the 1978 Lufthansa heist made famous by the movie Goodfellas.

Fortunately for Bonventre, he only faced extortion and gambling charges. He pleaded guilty to collecting a loansharking debt from another mobster and awaited his sentencing at home under house arrest.

The feds, meanwhile, pulled no punches in trying to get the judge to hand Bonventre the harshest sentence possible. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicole Argentieri and Alicyn Cooley pointed out how Bonventre was offered the position of consigliere. Such an offer is not made to just any wiseguy, they claimed, the offer was proof that Bonventre holds a powerful and prominent position within the Bonanno family.

Bonventre's attorney, however, says the prosecutors were making things much bigger than they are. "Assuming that this is even true, traditional organized crime families in New York are now weaker than 20 or 30 years ago and the Bonanno family in particular has been largely decimated by arrests and defections. Being considered for consigliere does not have the same meaning as it once did," he wrote to the presiding judge.

On April 15, 2015, the judge sentenced 46-year-old Jack Bonventre to 21 months in prison.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

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The Canadian Connection: Flooding the U.S. with dope

WTC contractor with Mafia ties busted for $1.5 million fraud

Bonanno Boss Murdered Near Montreal

How the Sicilian Mafia flooded the US with heroin

The Man Who Stole the French Connection

Death in the Afternoon: The Story of Carmine Galante

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 Murder Blue: "Two dogs (cops) have to die!" tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-16:6329524:BlogPost:65415 2015-04-16T14:30:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

Part Two

By Thom L. Jones

Robbery is a very high-risk occupation. People who go around committing robberies cannot expect to be greeted with open arms. It's not as if they were in the habit of attending Sunday School.

  - Kel Glare.…

Part Two

By Thom L. Jones

Robbery is a very high-risk occupation. People who go around committing robberies cannot expect to be greeted with open arms. It's not as if they were in the habit of attending Sunday School.

  - Kel Glare. Chief Commissioner, Victoria Police.

South Yarra is an inner-city suburb of Melbourne, lying about four kilometers to the south-east of the business district. The main shopping areas are Toorak Road and Chappel Street, crammed with trendy boutiques, bars, cafés, and restaurants. Today, it is home to some of the city's most prestigious, multi-million dollar addresses. In 2005, The Age newspaper confirmed, following a survey, that South Yarra was Melbourne's most livable area.

In the early hours of Wednesday, October 12th, 1988, it was anything but.

About two hours before dawn, two young police officers on the graveyard shift received a call in their divisional police van, from Victoria Police Operational Headquarters, communication room D-24. The call was date-stamped 4:39am.

"Prahran 3-11, if you can slip down to Walsh Street, in South Yarra, Mr. Ellis of Walsh Street, states there's a white Holden Sedan, not known what the rego is (registration plate). It's got its lights on, a smashed window, and is in the middle of the road."

Peter Ellis was the manager of a newspaper agency in South Yarra. As he left his flat at number 220 Walsh Street on the way to his early morning shift, he noticed the car and reported it by telephone, to the Prahran Police Station on arrival at his office. The station then forwarded the message to police communications center D-24.

The police van acknowledged the call at 4:39am.

What happened next became the legend of Walsh Street.

In the famous 1962 John Ford film, "The Man who Shot Liberty Valance," one of the characters, a newspaper editor, remarks, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

What came to be known as The Walsh Street Massacre generated information, controversy and publicity, on a scale never seen before in connection with police activity in Australia, so that the line between fact and legend blurred, sometimes to the point that observers found it's hard to distinguish between the two.

It was an attack on law and order that shocked the nation. It led to one of the most extraordinary cases in Australian legal history.

The criminal trial it engendered, produced 230 witnesses, 900 witness statements, 700 exhibits, 6500 information sheets, 700 audio tapes, and 12000 telephone recordings. It was estimated that the total cost was in excess of $30 million.

It remains, to this day, one of Australia's most notorious, and unsolved crimes. Numerous books, a play, television programs, the film "Animal Kingdom," campaigns for justice, scholarly studies, features, news items, and literally hundreds, maybe thousands of articles, have helped keep alive an event that caused, and still to this day, causes pain and suffering among police officers in Victoria. Twenty-seven years after the event, the case is still making headlines.

The message into Prahran 3-11 was the ninth received since the two officers manning the vehicle had started their shift at 11:00pm the previous night, working out of Prahran Police Station in Malvern Road. Their beat was Prahran, South Yarra, Toorak, Richmond and St. Kilda. Over 16 square kilometers of retail, light industrial, commercial and private housing containing 70000 plus people.

Driving the van, was Constable Steve Tynan, 22, along with Probationary Constable Damian Eyre, 20, riding passenger, and taking the calls from comm. center.

Steven Tynan, was the senior that night. He had joined the police at the age of 19, and like all recruits, spent 18 weeks at The police Academy before graduating. He had joined the Prahran Station early in the year.

Damian Eyre had been a police officer for less than a year. His father and brother were "on the job," and his only ambition after school, was to join them.

Steve Tynan and Damian Eyre

Tynan drove the van into Walsh Street from Domain Road, heading north. Halfway into springtime, the temperature this early in the day would have been around 8-10 degrees Fahrenheit. They were less than three kilometers from their base.

The street swelled into a small rise about 200 meters ahead, near the intersection, off to the left, which is Acland Street. Just passed here, the headlights of the van would have picked up the suspect vehicle sitting in the middle of the road, almost opposite a block of apartments at Number 222.

Although it was a dark and cloudy night, two spaced out street lamps to the left of the vehicle threw out a soft, yellow haze mingling with the police van's headlight beams.

Tynan stopped the divvy van a few meters short of the white Commodore, and the two officers got out and walked up to examine the car. It was 4:47am,

The Holden belonged to David Wilkinson who worked for the Myers Department Store group. He had returned home from his job about midnight, parking and locking his car, leaving it on the street, near his flat, number 212. Some time later, at approximately 3:55am or even earlier, the car was broken into, started with a screwdriver, turned around and driven about 20 meters before being left in the middle of the road. Whoever abandoned the vehicle, wanted to make sure someone would notice it and report it to the police. Which is exactly what happened.

The abandoned car had actually been seen by a taxi driver coming through the street around 4:00am but he had neglected to report it. He claimed that the bonnet was up, but the car was undamaged.

The car thieves waited, probably in the shadows of a lane running alongside the apartments at number 222 to the right of the car. After they had witnessed the action of the cab driver, they had smashed in the back window, on the passenger side, and left the driver's door wide open. Maybe they hoped this damage would have the desired effect. It did.

The two police officers moved up to examine the vehicle. Constable Tynan slid into the driving seat and started to check out the interior as Damian Eyre moved to the passenger side and jotted down details of the registration sticker onto his clipboard before moving around the front of the car. He probably leaned in or squatted down beside Tynan. Neither man had any idea how quickly their lives were to end.

Out of the darkness of the shadows, a man moved forward quietly towards the car and the two officers. Stepping up close, he presented a Japanese KTG semi-automatic sawn-off shotgun and fired, first at Constable Tynan, the SG shot coming from about one meter away, into his head, blowing him across the inside of the Commodore, into the passenger seat, then the shooter was swinging into the other officer. The SG cartridge contained nine lead balls, each slightly smaller than a .38 bullet. Devastating at close range.

Detectives and forensic examiners believed Eyre was squatting at this stage and the gunman had fired over his head. The second officer leaped up, turning, and the gunman fired again, the shot careering across the back of the policeman across his upper left shoulder. Incredibly, badly wounded as he was, his left shoulder shattered and pulped, Eyre, grabbed the shotgun and the two men must have wrestled with it. Two more blasts echoed through the street, one spattering the wall of the nearby apartment building. As the two men struggled for possession of the weapon, another man emerged from the shadows, grasping the constables'.38 caliber revolver, pulling it from its holster, and then shooting the officer in the head. As he fell into the street, to lie near the back wheel of the Commodore, the killer fired another round into the dying man's body.

The men who had committed the shootings ran off into the night taking both guns with them.

It was all over in a minute or less.

Jean Borg, who lived at 225, across from the scene of the shooting, awakened by the commotion, looked out of a window and saw a man running down a lane towards Punt Road, about 100 meters to the east. Jill and Carolyn Jarrett heard loud reports and voices shouting, "Stop. Stop." then "No." followed by shots.

An 18 year old student, John Rose, who lived in Airlie Street, which dog-legs onto the cut that ran alongside the apartments at 222, leading onto The Righi, a lane that then connects to Punt Road, heard the gunshots and looked out of his window. He saw a man running down the lane and into Airlie Street, jumping into a small, white car parked by the roadside. Seconds later, another man followed him and then the car sped off, north, no lights showing, into the darkness.

Another witness, Serina Coates, watching from a flat on Punt Road, opposite The Righi, saw two men run down into the road. One leaped over a fence at Number 923, and disappeared, the other stopped under a tree by the roadside and leaped into a dark-colored van that appeared out of the night. The vehicle also headed north into the night.

Jillian Ball, a nurse, was wakened by the noise and heard gun shots. Dressing quickly, she rushed into the street and tried to give aid to the two fallen officers, but realized there was little she could do. She remembers how much blood there was. Blood everywhere. The street shiny and slick. Black and oily under the street lights.

Interestingly, two of the many witnesses interviewed, independently, confirmed that they heard the voices of women during the scuffle.

Calls were coming into the communications center, from responding police cars, the first:

"Two members down. Urgent. For God's sake get an ambulance. We need a Mica (Mobile Intensive Care Ambulance.)"

And soon the area was filled with more police cars then the ambulances. Overhead the police helicopter fluttered back and forward, its Midnight Sun strobes flooding the area with a white glare.

There were little the forces attending could do for the victims. They organized for the two officers to be stabilized -amazingly at this time, they were still alive- and then they were rushed off to the nearest hospital. They were dead on arrival at The Alfred which would have been less than five minutes away at this time of the morning.

Officers and detectives secured the crime scene, and then began the first stages of what was to become the biggest investigation ever undertaken by the Victorian Police. It would last for 895 days.

Police were soon swarming the area searching streets and gardens, apartments, drains, parked cars, knocking on doors, interviewing anyone they could wake up. By the middle of the following day, they were almost sure that between two and four men had been involved in the killings, using probably two getaway cars, parked well away from the scene.

A specialized task force, code named Ty-Eyre (made up from combining the two constables names) was set up but ran into problems almost from the get-go.

John Silvester, a prominent Melbourne reporter stated:

"Police almost immediately set up the Ty-Eyre task force, on October 21st and promised it unlimited resources, but from the beginning there were deep problems.

The investigators had no computer system, could not collate information reports as they flooded in and it took weeks before the task force was provided with vital analysts. Police had just been given the power to tap telephones and some of the secondhand equipment they used was prone to failure. Cheap listening devices were found when suspects swept for bugs. And, there were no clear lines of leadership. Two strong-willed and determined police, John Noonan and Dave Sprague were given joint command that eventually led to a split in the task force. To add to the pressure, other members of the police force started conducting their own heavy-handed investigations."

Over $50000 was raised quickly by business interests to help equip the task force, but the money disappeared into the general police fund. If logistic problems weren't enough of a problem, the top-brass decision to make things even more difficult by appointing two officers to lead the task force, automatically creating tension and division.

Detective Senior Sergeant John Noonan and Inspector Dave Sprague (photo left) were the men selected to lead the operation. Noonan was a homicide investigator with a reputation for being a hard case. Sprague, a meticulous, career-oriented policeman, who would rise to the rank of Commander in the Victoria police.

Initially, the force consisted of twelve officers drawn from the Armed Robbery Squad, Major Crimes and Homicide-a gold club of investigators.

Hundreds of police were working for the Ty-Eyre task force as it reached its momentum. The Victorian Police Bureau of Criminal Intelligence took the unprecedented move of dropping an ongoing and long-term investigation into cocaine importing to assist in the investigation. The Drug Squad and the National Crime Authority in Victoria also offered their assistance. By November 1988, at least a dozen people were involved in 24-hour surveillance of suspects. The State Government offered a $200000 reward for anyone who could furnish information to help the police inquiries.

Two weeks after the killings, the Victorian government passed legislation allowing phone-tapping by state police. It went through the system softly-softly. Previously, the Australian states had to work with federal police who had this power only if they wanted to use their recordings as evidence. Five months later, the legislation was made public.

Senior Sergeant John Noonan (photo right) had returned home late the previous night from his investigation into the killing of Graeme Jensen at Narre Warren, forty kilometers away to the south-east. He hardly had time to catch his breath when he was called into the Walsh Street investigation as head of a four-man squad to be the initial investigators of the crime scene. It did not take him long to establish that the two events were inextricably connected.

Highly regarded by the force as a hard-nosed investigator and feared by the bad guys, he didn't as one observer noted, "......take crap from anybody, including his bosses." For the next four years, the case would absorb all his time and energy.

The Task Force was made up of detectives from major crimes, homicide, and armed robbery squads, assisted by rank and file officers from every department within the Victoria Police. By October 24th, Noonan confirmed they had isolated at least 20 potential suspects. The pressure on the group was enormous, eighteen hour days being the norm, and the command structure was creating its own problems.

There was also much anger and frustration within Victorian policing so that some officers outside the task force embarked on their own vigilante action. There were stories that circulated of illegal raids, physical attacks on known criminals, and even a suspect being abducted and tortured by men wearing balaclavas.

According to key Ty-Eyre investigator Jim O'Brien, these cowboys unwittingly sabotaged the task force's work.

The unit was initially under the leadership of Detective Chief Inspector Brandon Cole, current head of the Homicide Division. His number two was Detective Inspector Sprague and number three Noonan. It seemed straightforward, but within weeks, lines were blurring and by March, 1989, when Cole returned to his original position as head of homicide, it was down to two leaders, each with his own specific agenda.

Noonan was quickly promoted to the rank of Inspector and saw himself as the chief investigator, with Sprague as the administrator- the paper-jockey.

Colin McLaren a detective on the task force, described the two "as one akin to a tightly coiled spring and the other a loose lace ribbon."

Problems were compounded by the "interference" of Vaughan Werner, the assistant commissioner of crime, who allegedly insisted that forensic reports came to him first rather than the investigative staff. The task force was also at loggerheads with the other groups attached to help in the inquiry.

As the unit waded through the mountain of paperwork it generated and sifted through numerous informant reports, cross-checking against the other police squads that were assisting, it became apparent that the key to the identities of the killers lay in the link between Graeme Jensen and his connections with the infamous Pettingill crime family. In fact, within hours of the killings it was widely circulated in the Blue World that the shooters were part of the armed robbery gang that had included Jensen.

Oak Park is an outer-city suburb of Melbourne, about 11 kilometers from the downtown area.

On March 31st, 1988, a branch of the State Bank located there, was attacked by a gang of armed robbers who fired a shotgun during the raid, leaving shell cartridges behind. The Armed Robbery Squad which had been set up in 1971, and by1987 was handling twenty incidents a week, believed the robbers were part of the Pettingill clan, often referred to by law enforcement as The Flemington Crew. They knew that the crew was led by Victor Peirce. The distinctive-looking weapon brandished during the bank raid was observed to have been used in three other armed robberies in the period November 1987 to August 1988. The forensic link between these cartridges found at Oak park and the ones left behind at the scene of the double murder became crucial to the case being built by the Walsh Street task force. They matched, and the police needed to find the shotgun.

The Japanese model firearm used in the bank raids and the double killing was imported into Australia in limited numbers, only forty-two guns had been delivered to the distributor. The task force had to eliminate forty-one of them from their enquiry. They got it down to the last two which they discovered had been stolen from Bob Reid's Sports Store in Monee Ponds, and finally nailed the suspect gun as serial number JSA 53108. In May, 1989, a gardener tending a flower bed near the tram tracks, close to the fifth tee at The Royal Park Golf Course in inner-city Parkville, found the missing gun, wrapped in a black plastic bag, buried in the soil.

Police visited the home of Victor Peirce at 86 Chestnut Street in Richmond, the day after the police shootings. He was not at home. He had already gone into hiding and was staying with his sister, Vicky, at her Brunswick home. Across the city, similar raids were taking place on addresses of known associates and suspected gang members. On one day alone, December 6th, 1988, over one hundred raids were carried out on drug dealers, armed robbers, and other known criminals. Some of them were brutal. The cops were sending a message to Melbourne's underworld:

"Until the killers are found, we are going to hit you, and hard. We are going to shake the shit out of the underworld."

They kept their promise not only with the criminal fraternity, but especially with a house.

On January 5th, 1989, twenty police officers flattened the Peirce house on Chestnut Street. They were searching for clues to the Walsh Street murder-firearms, ammunition or any other evidence- that could be related to the killings. Seven large trucks from the Richmond Council were required to remove the debris and remains. It was not the first time police had come calling at number 86; they had been at least three times in 1987, digging up the backyard in connection with armed robbery suspicions about Victor Peirce. Dave Sprague was there to supervise the total destruction of the property on this occasion.

By this time, Victor was safely locked away in prison.

He had surrendered to the police at St. Kilda Station on October 13th, accompanied by his lawyer, to answer what he thought would be charges relevant to armed robbery. Instead, he was questioned then arrested in connection with the murder of armed security guard, Domenic Hefti, killed in the Brunswick hold up earlier in the year. Peirce would stay in custody for thirty months. The Hefti charges were withdrawn two months later and in December 1988, along with half-brother Trevor Pettingill, Anthony Farrell, and Peter McEvoy, he was arrested and charged with the Walsh Street murders.

Trevor Pettingill had been kidnapped late November, 1988, taken to an isolated area and badly beaten by a group of four masked men. Before they released him, they said, "Go to the police. Tell them the truth." It was assumed these men were either police officers acting as vigilantes or criminals sick of the police harassment the Melbourne criminal underworld was currently experiencing.

Prior to Walsh Street, Victor Peirce was simultaneously managing two extra-marital affairs. One with Sandra Faure, Graeme Jensen's partner, and the other with a girl called Sissy Wills. Her brother, Tip Richards, had worked briefly with the Pettingill Crime Family, and subsequently became an informant for the task-force. He testified that Trevor Pettingill had confessed to him while they were both at a bar in Melbourne, of his part in Walsh Street.

Along with the testimony of Jason Ryan, this declaration by Richards essentially constituted the Crown case against Pettingill, a man who looked like he had the right pedigree as a professional criminal with a police record listing thirty-two convictions at the time he was remanded in connection with Walsh Street.

Tony Farrell is the joker in the pack when it comes to this story. From a Port Melbourne family well-known to the police, he was about the same age and a close friend of Jason Ryan.

From the start of the investigation, the police had pinned him as not a key figure, rather someone who might know who was. When picked up by the task force on October 26th, he had mentioned McEvoy as a person who was, or knew who was involved, in the killing of the two police officers.

On November 1st, in fear of his own safety, he had voluntarily surrendered to the police. His committal for trial was based entirely on the evidence of Jason Ryan who claimed Farrell had returned to the South Yarra flat with blood specks on his tracksuit pants. Although the police recovered them, they were never offered in evidence at the trial. His alibi for the night of October 11th through 12th was that he was drunk and high on marijuana at a flat in South Yarra.

Anthony Farrell and Trevor Pettingill

With these four secured, the Task Force could concentrate on finding the missing pieces: Jedd Houghton and Gary Abdallah the two other criminals suspected of being in the Peirce gang. If they could track them down, and lock them into the jigsaw puzzle that was Walsh Street, maybe, just maybe, they could complete the picture.

It wasn't to be.

Thirty-six days after the two constables were ambushed and murdered, Jedd Malcolm Houghton (photo right) was surprised by officers of SOG (Special Operations Group) on November 17th in his caravan at Ascot Lodge, Bendigo, in rural Victoria, 150 kilometers to the north-west of Melbourne.

The SOG had been formed in 1977 to provide an armed response to criminal terrorist activity and were known to the Victorian Police as The Sons of God.

Houghton was shot dead at close range by two officers who stormed the vehicle. One gunshot wound was 100 millimeters. (less than four inches) from his chest. The police claimed he threatened the raiding party with a .357 magnum revolver. His girlfriend, Kim Cameron, who was him at the time of the police assault, claimed he was asleep on the bed.

Five months later, on Sunday, April 9th, 1989, Gary Abdallah was shot seven times by a police officer.

He had been arrested when pulled over in his car, then taken by the two officers back to his apartment in Drumond Street, Carlton. The police had wanted to question him in regard to the attempted murder of a policeman's son, some weeks previously, in the city center. He had run him over, twice, while driving a Sigma sedan. Then, in a confrontation in the dwelling, when he presented a handgun, (which was later found to be an imitation,) he was shot six times, from a range of about two meters, and once more in the back of the head.

After forty days in a coma, he died from the head wound,

The two officers involved refused to give evidence at the coroner's inquest. The lawyer representing Abdallah's family claimed Cliff Lockwood, the detective who fired the weapon, "shot him like a dog on a short leash."

Prior to the shooting, there had been rumors that he would be killed as payback for Walsh Street.

Many people believed that revenge had overcome reason within the Victorian Police.

According to John Kerr, court reporter and author, Victor Peirce believed for example, that the words and actions of the Armed Robbery Squad, "screamed we are due process and we're into capital punishment."

He may have had reason to believe this. Lindsay Rountree, an armed robber and associate of the Flemington Crew, had been arrested by the squad and was in police custody in early October, 1988. He claimed he heard detectives state that Victor was marked for execution by them. Somehow, he passed this information on to Peirce.

A lawyer representing a man charged in relation to the Walsh Street killings said in court, while objecting to his client being held in custody, "he is probably safer in Pentridge (prison) than on the streets where he could be subjected to a bullet in the back of his head."

At the time he was shot, Abdallah had been reporting three times a week to the police station in Coburg, as part of his bail condition while on remand for charges relating to a $300000 fire at a discotheque called Simons in Northcote, an inner-city suburb.

With four of the Flemington Crew behind bars, two dead and gone, the forensic evidence looking good, the Task Force needed an ace-in-the-hole to complete their prosecution framework.

They found it, twice, within the Pettingill family. On October 12th. 1988, Jason Ryan was arrested in connection with the Walsh Street killings. Twelve days later, he rolled, and became an informant and subsequently a witness, for the prosecution, and entered into the witness protection program.

At this point in time, he was the only one charged in the Walsh Street murders.

He was under considerable pressure to offer a version of events that dovetailed the police investigation. As Rod Settle pointed out in his book Police Informers: Negotiation and Power, Jason and the police were entangled in a pattern of power relationships which among other things, is not conducive to clinically-objective truth-telling in the courtroom.

There's an old Australian police saying that informants are like manure: very useful, but nobody wants to handle them. Inspector Noonan was more than happy to slip on his rubber gloves and start shoveling.

Ryan claimed he dobbed in his uncle Victor Peirce, "because those two policemen had nothing to do with Jensen's death."

A young (seventeen year old) vulnerable and frightened adolescent, he had begun his criminal career as a drug mule for another uncle in the brutal and homicidal Pettingill family, Dennis Allen, the eldest son of Kath. A narcotics dealer, armed robber, pimp, police informer and multiple killer (the police claimed he was responsible for at least eleven murders,) Allen was on his best days, a psychopath, and at his worst, a sociopath monster.

By the age of 13, Jason Ryan was drinking and doing drugs. Life was all downhill from there.

According to Wendy Peirce, "No one wanted him. Even his mother thought he was a cunt."

Between January 1985 and October 1988, he had been involved in 31 burglaries totaling in excess of $100000. At fifteen, he had stabbed a man in a bar brawl, and he had certainly been a witness to, if not an actual participant in, many of Dennis Allen's murders.

He had stories to tell. The impressionable and obviously terrified youth, gave the police several statements that varied from interview to interview. He would change them four times. In one, given to Inspector Noonan, he had flagged Abdallah as the Crew's getaway car man, who had set up the Commodore on the night of Walsh Street.

In another, he named Emmanuel Alexandridis, a seventeen year old nobody, and small-time crook, as being implicated in the Walsh Street plot, along with Abdallah, Jedd Houghton, Anthony Leigh Farrell, Peter McEvoy, Trevor Pettingill, and Victor Peirce. Evidence down the track would prove this to be patently untrue as Alexandridis was untangled from the conspiracy.

Jason claimed Farrell had boasted he had ripped out the police revolver from Constable Eyre's belt.

"I took the gun off the policeman," he allegedly said, "and shot him twice."

And yet in other testimony, this time, by Lindsay Rountree, he claimed Victor had said to him:

"Jason knows who pulled the trigger, Jedd and me."

Jason Ryan (photo right) was the first building block the Task Force erected on their wall of revelation.

However, it turned out to be made more of straw than cement.

An investigation, as Rod Settle points out in his book, "is fraught with ambiguities and duplicity and almost every aspect of a complex investigation and prosecution takes on a deeper significance when seen as part of a tangled web of betrayal and trust."

Sir Walter Scott knew his onions when in his famous poem Marmion, he proclaimed:

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive!"

The second and bigger block by far, was the mother lode, literally, the woman who had lived with Victor Peirce and borne him three children, Wendy.

She had been interviewed by a Homicide Squad Detective, Jim Conomy, on November 9th 1998, but had refused to implicate Victor in Walsh Street, claiming they had spent the night together in a motel in Tullamarine, a northern city suburb. On July 18th, 1989, she became the star witness in the case being built against the Walsh Street killers.

She signed off a thirty-one page statement compiled over three days with Sprague and Detective Colin McLaren, that revealed everything the Task Force was looking to confirm in their own investigations. Implicating her husband and others in Walsh Street, tabling the shooters as Houghton and McEvoy, and Abdallah as the car-shifter, she confirmed that Victor had left the motel in Tullamarine, (Peirce's alibi for the night of the shooting) at 11:30pm and was absent until the following morning.

He had planned and set the operation up.

She claimed that late that night, (October 11th) he had got out of bed, dressed and left the unit, claiming he was off "to knock them dogs," --kill police. He came back about 7:30am. He said he'd killed the "jacks" with Jedd and Macca (McEvoy.)

The ambush had been planned in its early stages, in a flat in Davies Street, in Brunswick belonging to Vicky Brooks, the sister of Victor, where McEvoy lodged. The details were finalized in another flat, this one at 2 Gordon Grove, South Yarra, two blocks east of Walsh Street, owned by a girlfriend of Anthony Farrell, called Belinda Rice. She and her sister, Colette, shared unit 4. It may have been the destination of one the figure seen by Serina Coates on the night of the killings. Although she back-tracked when giving evidence, claiming her memory was no longer clear. The panel van testimony was crucial to the crown's case that at least four men had been at the scene of the Walsh Street killings.

It has been suggested that, in fact, neither of these meetings took place and that the logical venue for any planning of this nature would have been the house in Chestnut Street, Richmond.

It was at this meeting or meetings, wherever they occurred, that Peirce (photo right) and Houghton allegedly nominated themselves as the intended shooters.

It all seemed too good to be true, and like her nephew Jason's testimony, it turned out it was.

Two and a half years after the murders in Walsh Street, the trial to determine the guilt or innocence of the alleged killers, began, on February 5th, 1991, in the supreme court of Victoria.

Lawyers for the prosecution were confident that the testimony of the wife of Victor Peirce would send the accused to prison, for a very long time. She was to be their jewel in the crown.

However, the moral hazards and asymmetric risks in seducing this woman into an informant's rule were never truly appreciated. It would have devastating consequences.

Wendy Peirce was the ninety-fourth witness to be called, but she never appeared before the jury.

In her evidence in the pretrial voir dire (the closed hearing before a jury was selected) at the Supreme Court, in January 1991, she recanted her previous statement, effectively sabotaging the prosecution.

Wendy's apparent move to and from the prosecution seemed to have been a well-thought out ruse to weaken the case against her partner. She effectively ran with the hares and hunted with the hounds. The idea would have come from Peter Allen, Victor's half-brother, considered one of the best jail-house lawyers in Victoria. He had told her if she somersaulted on the prosecution, the most punishment she'd get would be eighteen months inside. He was right on the nail.

In December 1992, she was tried and convicted of perjury and sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment.

Jason's testimony was shot down in flames by the defense lawyers. His credibility hammered and his sordid background exploited. Like a moth drawn to those flames, he self-destructed on a pyre of legal innuendo and connotation. He was described in court as both a manipulator and manipulated as well as a puppet of Detective Inspector Noonan. Defense lawyer, David Ross, QC, representing Anthony Farrell, claimed, "Jason Ryan was a liar of epic proportion."

It was Ryan who held the key to the jury's decision. If they doubted his story they must have struggled to find signs or indications elsewhere on which to find the accused guilty. The prosecution had not offered them a compelling reason to do so.

So much of the testimony presented to the jury was a pastiche of some truth, part truth, debatable truth and simply lies. After almost three years of investigation, what ended up in the courtroom was confusion, overlaid by disregard, sandwiched between distrust and suspicion operating as the main machinery powering the prosecution's case. Statements from career criminals, many of whom would have an axe to grind, trying to cut deals and curry favors with the law, simply emphasized the sense of desperation that was emanating from the Crown who had seen their case collapse like a pack of cards when Wendy withdrew her evidence.

After a seven-week trial, the jury retired, and six days later on March 26th, 1991, at 10:35am, came back to court with their verdict of not guilty for all the accused.

The Crown case was history from its opening address. They had no eye-witnesses to the crime. No admission of guilt from the defendants. No conclusive link between the murder weapon and the accused. And a distressing lack of accord with the evidence of the various informers they called, who formed the main platform of the case for the prosecution.

The four men in the dock had chosen on remand, to make unsworn statements and this had exempted them from cross-examination in court. It also allowed them to offer potentially untrue testimony that could not be tested by the Crown. So the jury could have been presented with lies masquerading as the truth, but with no way for the prosecution to question its credibility. If, in fact, the trial was justly processed within the legal system, the verdict was manifestly unjust. The Walsh Street trial emphasized the urgency for the reform of the rules of evidence, in particular, unsworn statements. The Evidence Unsworn Act Vic.1992 was created ensuring this could not happen again.

Within minutes of the verdict, police communications sent out a message to all of its mobile units and to every officer on patrol:

"Announcement all units. The verdict in the Walsh Street trial was all four not guilty. Repeat, not guilty. All units are warned. Keep yourself under control." D24 operator March 26, 1991.

Peter McEvoy (photo right) was the only defendant who admitted, that he was one of the Walsh Street killers.

According to John Silvester, he was a strange, unstable bottom-dweller, who spent a lot of his life in prison. Tracy Graupaer, a friend of Anthony Farrell, thought he looked like E.T. A gawky, 1.9 meter tall Edward Scissor-Hands type without the mechanical attachments, he first came to the attention of the police because of his link into a gang of youths who attacked and sexually assaulted over twenty teenage girls in the Heidelberg suburb of Melbourne. While in prison on charges related to this, he met Victor Peirce. Although linked into the Pettingill Crew through this connection, he was apparently closer to Graeme Jensen than Victor. At the time of Walsh Street, he was a seasoned armed robber at the age of thirty-three.

Known in prison as "Bubble-head" because of his bizarre cranium and his propensity for violence as a substitute for courage, he also had a reputation as a "lash," a man who does not readily pay his debts, and outside prison, as someone who chased others men's wives or girlfriends. He was also despised by the criminal fraternity because he had two brothers on the right side of the law: one a cop and the other a prison guard.

He allegedly went berserk when he heard the news of Jensen's death, screaming, "Two dogs (police) have to die!"

According to Vicky Brooks, McEvoy telephoned her on the night of October 12th and told her he would not be home. He arrived back at her flat about 11:30am the following morning. She claimed he confessed he had been part of the killing team.

"Yeah, that's right," he said to her, "we knocked the jacks."

Vicky also claimed that the day after the killings, McEvoy walked into the flat flourishing a copy of the Melbourne Herald with a front page dominated by Walsh Street and said, "Right whack. One of ours for two of theirs."

 A peripheral figure in a mis-en-scène filled with characters better suited to Kafka than Dr. Seuss, Jason Ryan's mother moved from her Brunswick flat and relocated to another home in Melbourne's vast hinterland. She found herself a new job and new friends and essentially abandoned her family connections.

Just before the trial began, she entered the witness protection program.

Wendy Peirce in her testimony stated: Macca took the (Damian Eyre's) handgun. Victor was pissed off with him for that."

In 1992 while imprisoned in Pentridge for his part in an armed robbery at Bentleigh, in August 1988, he was attacked and badly injured by men who suspected he was a police informer.

On his release, he moved from Victoria to new South Wales and in 2009 was arrested and convicted of fracturing a man's collarbone with a baseball bat. He was living in a suburb of Newcastle when on February 5th, 2010, he was arrested by police for being drunk and disorderly. At this time, he was listed on the record as a "disability pensioner." It has been claimed that during this arrest, he had snarled at the officers:

"The sweetest thing I ever heard was the police officer's last words as he was dying."

Subsequently, a police video recording of the arrest and questioning, confirmed he actually said "The sweetest thing I heard about was the police officer's words as he was dying."

However, during his prison time at Loddon, a medium security prison in central Victoria, prior to him leaving the state in 1995, he ran afoul of one of the guards, Peter West, and was heard by other guards saying:

"I wish I'd shot that West instead of those two coppers."

McEvoy was given a 9 months prison sentence for the altercation in Newcastle.

He had previously been fined for making a telephone threat on March 29th to staff at the S. Kilda Road Crime department headquarters, in Melbourne.

Silvester called him, "a stupid, sadistic sexual pervert and a cop killer."

He may well be all of that.

A year after the trial, Victor was arrested and indicted on several charges involving drug trafficking and on April 23rd sentenced to prison. He served six years between 1992 and 1998. When he came out in May that year, Wendy, interviewed by the press, said:

"We are going to make a new start. We are going to grow old together and live happy ever after."

If only.

Although as John Maynard Keynes said, "It's better to be roughly right than precisely wrong."

In 2005, New Zealander Derryn Hinch, who has made his living as a "shock-jock" on Australian radio, berated Wendy on one of his programs. He called her a hypocritical, immoral, conniving, criminal bitch. That was when she admitted that she never planned to ultimately testify against her husband. It was all part of the game. She had confessed to John Silvester, earlier in the year, that Victor had in fact been part of the conspiracy that early morning in October, although she claimed the actual shooters were Jedd Houghton and Peter McEvoy.

Law and order failed the system of justice in the case of Victor Peirce et al. He himself, however, was never more than a "lock and load" away from natural justice.

It came to him at 9:15pm on May 1st, 2002 in Port Melbourne. Notorious as the home-base of the infamous Painters and Dockers Union, a conglomerate of thugs, desperadoes and killers never seen before or since, in Australia's labor history, the area was now slowly surrendering to inevitable inner-city gentrification which has done more than police forces anywhere in the world, to segue bad things and people into yuppie playgrounds and respectability.

He was sitting in his car, a 1993 model maroon Commodore, outside the Telstra retail shop, on Bay Street, when another Commodore, this one white, pulled up alongside him. Boringly nondescript; no flash squirrel on the back or lowered suspension or flash signage to catch the attention. Nothing to catch the attention.

The perfect hit car.

Holden Commodores seemed to have played an ongoing element in the downfall of Victor Peirce from Narre Warren to Walsh Street and now, the Port.

The passenger walks slowly to Peirce's car, raising a .45 semi-automatic pistol and starts shooting. The first slug hits the drivers-side door pillar. The target by now, is raising his right arm in a natural, but futile defensive action, when the second and third bullets courses through his elbow, down into his chest, ripping open his lungs and liver. The shooter returns to the car which drives slowly away south, towards Beaconsfield Parade.

Victor Peirce is a dead man sitting. Stabilized by paramedics, he is rushed north, by ambulance, to The Alfred Hospital, where like the two police officers fourteen years before, Victor Peirce dies of his wounds.

His killer was Andrew Veniamin, a hit-man used at times by the Italians in their war to control Melbourne's underworld. Why the killing went down was never determined, in a court of law at least. A drug deal gone bad, an insult avenged. It could have been any one of a dozen reasons. It was believed that Peirce was waiting for someone, the one who set him up, to arrange a drug purchase.

A prime target as the man behind the man with the gun was Bulgarian Nik Radev, himself to be gunned down a year later. Another potential suspect as the finger man was Vince Benvenuto, (who had been the suppliers of drugs to Victor,) whose brother Frank was shot dead in May 2000. Their father, Liborio had been the undisputed godfather of the Calabrian 'Ndrangetha in Melbourne until his death in 1988.

Vince was actually tried for the crime in 2009, but acquitted. The prosecution claimed the murder was an act of revenge against a man Vince Benvenuto believed had murdered his brother. Victor Peirce had actually worked as Frank Benvenuto's bodyguard during the late 1990s. Ironically, the last cell phone message Frank sent, minutes before he died, was to Peirce.

To the media, Victor's death was a simple gangland killing.

As it turned out, the hit was a wee bit more complicated than that.

Frank Benvenuto was almost certainly killed by Andrew Veniamin who along with Peirce had been contracted by Frank to kill underworld figure, Mick Gatto. But he found out and promised Veniamin the chop unless he whacked Frank first. Veniamin was obviously more scared of Gatto than Benvenuto. When Victor learned of the double-cross he swore revenge on Veniamin and Gatto. So Andrew asked Gatto for help in setting up Victor and Vince Benvenuto, a trusted narcotic supplier to Victor, was brought into the picture. Although he had supplied drugs to Peirce for some time, and was aware that Victor was a friend and one-time bodyguard of his brother, he had come to somehow believe that Peirce had been his brother's killer and was, therefore, more than happy to help arrange the whack out on Victor.

Back to Sir Walter Scott. In spades!

The driver of the getaway car, Faruk Orman, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2009 for his part in the hit on Victor Peirce.

On hearing of Peirce's death, Detective Inspector John Noonan said:

"It's just nice that people pay for their sins, isn't it."

His mother, the notorious Kath Pettingill knew it was coming down. "Without a word of a lie, every day since Walsh Street I have expected this to happen to Victor," she was reported saying.

In 2004, Veniamin was shot dead by Mick Gatto, his one-time boss, and a powerhouse in the gangland war that ravaged the city from 1998 until 2010, and killed at least 36 people.

At the time of his murder, Victor Peirce was working as a stevedore on the Melbourne docks. Police believed he had moved into the pill and powder market: amphetamines, ecstasy, and cocaine. Once a crook, always a crook.

Infamous Victorian gangster, Mark "Chopper" Read remembered him, "........he thought selling drugs was a legal occupation. These blokes have never worked out that there is no place for middle-aged gangsters. They don't know when to give it away. They have trouble distinguishing their friends from their enemies."

Lachlan McCulloch, an undercover police officer with the Melbourne Drug Squad, who had infiltrated Victor's Pettingill family, had an even less complimentary opinion to express.

"They were not smart people. Victor was a real low-life. I found him to be a dill. If he was organized crime, Melbourne is pretty safe."

Lachlan had been known to the Pettingills as "Lenny Rogers." Matriarch Kath (photo below,) on discovering his perfidy, allegedly offered a $20000 bounty for his testicles.

She had sired ten children who have either gone to their graves early or into prison or into the witness protection service. Two of them were indicted but found not guilty of the Walsh Street murders.

She now lives out her sunset years in the township of Venus Bay, South Gippsland. 173 kilometers south-east of Melbourne, it's a holiday retreat with a permanent population of about 500. Here at the age of seventy-nine, she fills her days knitting baby vests and calling bingo numbers at the local community center. She is one of two women in this story who carry the stigmata of lost causes.

The other is Wendy Margaret Peirce.

She was a teenage office worker, from a legitimate family background, when at the age of seventeen, she met Victor Peirce, an apprentice gangster who had already done time. In 1980, at the age of twenty-three she joined the Pettingill Family, and nothing would ever be the same again.

Following Walsh Street, she struggled through the rest of the 1990s as Victor went off again to prison on drug charges. After his death in 2002, her life dissolved into almost a Shakespearean tragedy: a damaged protagonist immersed in an exigent situation characterized by tragic flaws creating fateful consequences.

With her life collapsing around her, heavily in debt, estranged from most of her family, suffering from psychiatric problems, and now living in a Housing Commission flat in Port Melbourne, relying on $650 every fortnight as a disability pension, to cover her basic needs, she careered from one personal disaster to another.

In 2004, she was in court for assault and fraudulent document charges.

In 2008, she was sentenced to prison for six months for threatening two women, one of whom had been a girlfriend of her late husband, Victor.

In 2009, she was tried and convicted of causing serious injury to a man who face was slashed with a meat cleaver while he was drinking at the Clare Castle Hotel, a pub in Port Melbourne.

In December 2009 her daughter Katie, 22, died of a drug overdose, possibly. Her death certificate stated, "pneumonia in the setting of mixed drug toxicity."

In 2012, Wendy was arrested and charged with shoplifting.

In February 2014 her son, Christopher, broke into the home of an 80-year old woman and stole her life savings. He went to prison for thirty months.

In March 2014 Wendy (photo below,) now fifty-eight, was back in court on charges of failing to pay traffic fines, sixty-one infringement notices, dating back eleven years. She was ordered to do 500 hours of community work to pay off the fines.

As Adam Shand, Australian crime journalist said:

"It's easy to feel pity, but Wendy's story is the inevitable trajectory of all empires of crime. For after years of reckless hedonism, there are decades, sometimes generations, of pain and despair."

Ten years after Walsh Street, Melbourne and Australia awoke to the news that it had happened again. The unbelievable had taken place once more in a suburb in this city. Two police gunned down by unknown killers, this time, in the eastern suburb of Moorabbin.

On August 16th, 1998, police officers, Sergeant Gary Silk, and Constable Rodney Miller, were shot dead by Bandali Michael Debbs and Jason Roberts.

According to John Silvester, writing in The Age:

"In October 1991 Debs, first with his nephew Jason Ghiller and later with his daughter's boyfriend, Jason Roberts, committed 38 armed robberies around Melbourne.

They picked soft targets such as large suburban restaurants, terrorized customers and staff and then fled into the darkness. The pattern did not point to any established crooks and as they were unknown in criminal circles there was no chance of an informer creating a breakthrough.

In August 1998 police ran a secret operation, codenamed Hamada, which identified 60 likely targets that might be hit by the armed robbery crew. Ten were highlighted as the most likely and on that shortlist was The Silky Emperor in Warrigal Road, Moorabbin.

Two respected policemen, Sergeant Gary Silk, and Senior Constable Rod Miller, were staking out the restaurant when they pulled over a Hyundai hatchback in Cochranes Road. Detectives believe Debs and Roberts had made a pact to shoot police without warning if they were ever pulled over, and that is exactly what they did, killing Silk and Miller."

The case was another of the magnitude of Walsh Street, and it was two years before the killers were brought to justice and this time, sentenced to life imprisonment on February 24th, 2003.

There are 329 police stations in Victoria.

Officers Eyre and Tynan, Silk and Miller, were all based at the same one: Prahran.

It was as Yogi Berra was won't to say: "Deja Vu. All over again."

The Metropolitan area of Melbourne covers over 2000 square kilometers, divided into thirty-one local government areas containing over three hundred suburbs.

Degrees of separation. Small-worlds theory. Mere coincidence. A hidden key to a network interaction. Call it what you will.

Bandali Debbs lived on Springfield Drive, less than ten minutes by car from 7 Morray Court which had been the home of Graeme Jensen. One a tiler and part time armed robber, and one a full time armed robber. Both living in the same neighborhood. Perhaps they even knew each other. Maybe they drank in the same pub, went shopping in the same mall. Linked together by some amaranthine congress into a level of evil that most humans, fortunately, never have to experience.

In a surreal coincidence, another that seems to haunt this story, this tangled weave, Debbs' youngest son, Joseph, died of a drug overdose in December 2003, in a house in Greensborough. Seven years later, Wendy Peirce's daughter, dies a similar death, in the same suburb.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible. Albert Einstein who said this, knew a lot more about life than simply the matter that made it.

There are memorials to those two young police officers killed in Walsh Street.

Across Melbourne, an eternal flame flickers in perpetuity at The Police College in Glen Waverly. A commemorative rose garden blooms year in and out at the Prahran station. A dedication plaque was unveiled in Walsh Street, on October 27th, 1988, but this seems to have mysteriously disappeared. There is a memorial to them and all the police who died in the line of duty in the Kings Domain Gardens, two hundred meters to the west of Walsh Street. A memorial scholarship in their names was established to give study grants to members of the Victorian Police. The Tynan Eyre Memorial Foundation was created to assist hospitals and raised in excess of one million dollars. There was even a race horse-The Tynan and Eyre Welter- named after them. Twenty-seven years after their shocking and unnecessary deaths, they are still remembered, not only by their immediate family, but also by their much bigger one: their Blue Family.

It's unlikely they will ever forget them.

Maybe they died that early morning in October for no other reason than they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The place could have been anywhere. The time could well have been something even less predictable. According to some sources, there never was a time when violence was not part of Australia's D.N.A. Those early settlers may well have a lot to answer for. By 1939, for example, Melbourne had proportionately a higher crime rate than London.

As author Nicholas Freeling commented: "Crime is the pathology of the human condition, the moment at which the delicate balance of metabolism tilts into morbidity."

However, the city, if it ever had it, it lost its innocence in one decade: the 1980s.

In 1986, there was the Russell Street Bombing, an attack by criminals on the very bastion of law and order, the city's police headquarters. This was followed by the Hoddle Street Massacre in 1987, a mass shooting involving twenty-six people, followed by the Queen Street Massacre another multiple shooting incident with a tally of nine deaths and five injuries, in the same year. And then, in 1988, there was Walsh Street.

Bill Longley a factional leader in the Painters and Dockers Union, a stand-over man on the docks in the 1960s and 1970s a feared hard man in the union who served time for murder, when interviewed on National ABC Radio said:

"Melbourne is your murder capital. You know, it's not only the murder capital of Australia, you could say it was one of the murder capitals of the world, because it's been going on ever since I can remember, you know, always your odd gangland shooting. Always, always."

In September 2014, the Queensland Commissioner of Police at a memorial service to honor all Australian police who had given their lives while serving the community, highlighted the risks every officer faced, every day. Each police officer swore an oath to protect and serve the community, Commissioner Stewart said.

"There are times, however, when no matter how dedicated, committed, and courageous our officers are, they face unbeatable odds."

Walsh Street remains one of Australia's most infamous and unsolved crimes.

It was not simply a brutal and seemingly senseless double murder. It was in effect, an attack on society. Radio station 3AW reported, "For the first time in Australia, criminals have declared war on society by executing two innocent policemen."

This story, inextricably linked to the violent death of Graeme Jensen, begins and ends in Narre Warren.

According to John Kerr, Narre Warren became a black police labor pool for young male recruits, established around 1840, (three years after the first Australian Aboriginal mission was set up in South Yarra) who killed and disposed other blacks before dying of drink-related diseases and despair at ripe old ages like seventeen and twenty-seven.

The place name, translated into English, means "No Good."

It's hard to argue with that in the context of this narrative.

Some of the facts for this story came from:

Walsh Street by Tom Robb which is one of the definitive accounts of the Walsh Street killings.

Read Part 1 of this story here.

You can read more of Thom L. Jones' stories at his Mob Corner at Gangsters Inc.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

Honest businessman or Australian 'Ndrangheta boss?

'Ndrangheta Mob War in Australia

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Joe Barboza: Boston Barbarian

Copyright © Thom L. Jones & Gangsters Inc. 2015
 WTC contractor with Mafia ties busted for $1.5M fraud tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-15:6329524:BlogPost:65411 2015-04-15T06:00:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

Prosecutors charged alleged Bonanno crime family associate Vincent Vertuccio with conspiracy to defraud the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in connection with the One World Trade Center project located in lower Manhattan.…

By David Amoruso

Prosecutors charged alleged Bonanno crime family associate Vincent Vertuccio with conspiracy to defraud the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in connection with the One World Trade Center project located in lower Manhattan. He was also hit with money laundering and tax crimes.

Vertuccio from Maspeth, Queens, controlled and directed the activities of Crimson Construction Corporation (Crimson), a company that was awarded a contract for work at the One World Trade Center project in lower Manhattan worth approximately $11.4 million. In seeking the contract, Vertuccio directed an employee of Crimson not to disclose Vertuccio's role in Crimson because of his ties to organized crime.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristin Mace told The New York Daily News that 60-year-old Vertuccio, "has longstanding affiliations with former Bonanno bosses Joseph Massino, Vincent 'Vinny Gorgeous' Basciano, and current boss Michael 'Mikey Nose' Mancuso."

After being awarded the contract, Crimson received more than $1.5 million in connection with the One World Trade Center project, of which, authorities allege, significant sums were diverted into a bank account held by Vertuccio's mother and used to pay for renovations to Vertuccio's daughter's house. As a result, Crimson was unable to meet its obligations at One World Trade Center and was terminated from the project. Vertuccio, with the assistance of his accountant Praful Pandya, also is alleged to have submitted false and fraudulent individual tax returns for tax years 2008 and 2011.

Prosecutors claim that after Vertuccio became aware of an ongoing grand jury investigation into his conduct, he and his lawyer, John Servider, conspired to alter invoices and sales receipts issued by a Manhattan jewelry store so as to remove the alleged mob associate's name from the records before they were returned to the grand jury.

"Today serves as an unfortunate reminder that as alleged in the indictment, organized crime continues to plague the region's construction industry. Accordingly, we remain vigilant in protecting Port Authority projects and programs from fraudsters who line their pockets at the expense of law-abiding citizens," stated Michael Nestor, Inspector General of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

Bonanno Family acting boss Thomas Di Fiore

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Bonanno Boss Murdered Near Montreal

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The Man Who Stole the French Connection

Death in the Afternoon: The Story of Carmine Galante

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 The Real Deal Forum is back up (update) tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-05:6329524:BlogPost:65110 2015-04-05T10:00:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

The Real Deal discussion forum is back up. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to have things fixed faster if it happens again.

If you have any questions regarding the forums you can reach us at…

By David Amoruso

The Real Deal discussion forum is back up. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to have things fixed faster if it happens again.

If you have any questions regarding the forums you can reach us at firstname.lastname@example.com

Kind regards,

David Amoruso and the team at Gangsters Inc.
 New York Bloods gang boss gets life in prison tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-03:6329524:BlogPost:64846 2015-04-03T14:01:46.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

New York Bloods street gang leader Ronald Herron, also known as "Ra Diggs," was sentenced to 12 terms of life in prison plus 105 years, yesterday. He was convicted last year, following a month-long jury trial, of all counts, including racketeering, murder, drug trafficking, and robbery. He is also guilty of his own downfall, bragging…

By David Amoruso

New York Bloods street gang leader Ronald Herron, also known as "Ra Diggs," was sentenced to 12 terms of life in prison plus 105 years, yesterday. He was convicted last year, following a month-long jury trial, of all counts, including racketeering, murder, drug trafficking, and robbery. He is also guilty of his own downfall, bragging about his criminal exploits in his rap songs and videos.

Herron's violent set of the Bloods Street Gang operated in and around the Gowanus and Wyckoff Gardens housing developments in Brooklyn, New York. There, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta E. Lynch said, "[he] unleashed brutal, unrelenting violence on his community while glorifying his criminal lifestyle as a crack-dealing gangster. Herron styled himself a rap artist, but the evidence proved that he was a murderous thug who sought power through violence, fear, and intimidation."

Lynch added that Herron's sentencing puts an end to that.

Gangsters Inc. reported the indictment of Herron back in February of 2012. His arrest was a logical next step in the gang boss' career. Rather than keep a low profile, Herron (right) craved attention and fame, posting videos of himself on the Internet in which he identified himself as the leader of the "Murderous Mad Dogs" set of the Bloods street gang. Claiming that he was the leader of a "murder team" he rapped he had previously "beat a body," referring to his acquittal on murder charges years earlier. The videos showed Herron firing weapons and threatening to use them to kill people. Herron also posted messages on Twitter in which he boasted that he had "beat the stabbing," "beat the attempt," and "beat the body."

It's no miracle he was caught.

At trial, the government proved that Herron committed numerous crimes of violence in support of his drug trafficking operation around two New York City public housing communities located in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn. The jury found him guilty of the 2001 murder of Frederick Brooks.

Herron was acquitted of that murder in state court in 2002 after witnesses refused to testify because they were threatened by the Bloods leader and his associates – The same murder he rapped about when he said he "beat the body." This time around, more than fifty witnesses stepped up and testified in court about Herron's criminal deeds.

Back in 2002, after being released from state custody and consolidating his control over the drug trade in Gowanus and Wyckoff Gardens, Herron murdered Richard Russo in 2008 and Victor Zapata in 2009.

Now the young crime boss – he is still in his early thirties – will be spending the rest of his life behind bars. Well, the rest of his life times twelve plus 105 years behind bars to be exact. Plenty of time to write some rap lyrics and shoot a video. He's got the street cred down pat already.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

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Black Caesar: The Rise of America's Biggest Kingpin

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Copyright © Gangsters Inc.
 Jon Stewart's The Daily Show's greatest Mafia hits… uh bits tag:gangstersinc.ning.com,2015-04-01:6329524:BlogPost:64842 2015-04-01T10:00:00.000Z Gangsters Inc. http://gangstersinc.ning.com/profile/2g2lucitjcn3w

By David Amoruso

Whether you're a flaming liberal or a staunch neocon, you have to appreciate Jon Stewart's wit and humor. Especially when The Daily Show host takes on the Mafia. Born in New York City in the 1960s, Stewart has exhibited a fascination with all things Mafia since he began his career as a comedian and has frequently done mob bits on his show -…

By David Amoruso

Whether you're a flaming liberal or a staunch neocon, you have to appreciate Jon Stewart's wit and humor. Especially when The Daily Show host takes on the Mafia. Born in New York City in the 1960s, Stewart has exhibited a fascination with all things Mafia since he began his career as a comedian and has frequently done mob bits on his show - that's bits, not hits.

At Gangsters Inc. we can appreciate such humor. That is why, in light of Stewart's departure from The Daily Show this year – he will be replaced by Trevor Noah, we have compiled a list of the best Mafia-related bits Stewart and his The Daily Show did on Comedy Central.

Click on the picture or link to view the video

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show discover the location of Gambino crime family turncoat and former underboss Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano. Stewart does his best to give the Mafia directions to Gravano's home, but things don't go as planned as can be seen in the follow-up segment.

If being outed wasn't enough for turncoat Sammy the Bull Gravano, he was also busted for running a drug ring in Arizona. Jon Stewart breaks down his arrest as only he can, adding that as a result of running such a successful operation Gravano received the MacArthur Genius Grant.

The Godfather Part 4 with Leonardo DiCaprio as a young Sonny Corleone? Jon Stewart ain't having it. Honk honk.

When Jon Stewart finds out the government bought Chrysler and General Motors with his tax dollars, he can't help but to go all Goodfellas on them.

Representative Marge Roukema wants Congress to sign a resolution that will "criticize entertainment that portrays Italian Americans as gangsters."

Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones also left the show this year. That is a big loss since he wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. Here he can be seen cursing out a waiter while having dinner with former mob associate Lou Ferrante. Ferrante lectured Jones on the destructive consequences of government overregulation on the Mafia.

Follow Gangsters Inc. on Twitter and Facebook.

If you enjoyed this article you might also enjoy reading:

The Canadian Connection: Flooding the U.S. with dope

'Ndrangheta and Gambino crime family in global drug bust

Gangsters Inc. sits down with FBI agent Jack Garcia

Sicilian Mafia travel guide reveals island's underworld

Top 5 of True Stand Up Wiseguys

Copyright © Gangsters Inc.