The first member of the murderous Manson Family has been cast in the new Quinton Tarantino film, Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, currently in the first week of shooting and about life in Los Angeles in the late 1960s with the infamous Manson Family killings serving as the backdrop. Tarantino has tapped actress Dakota Fanning to play Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme, famous for her high-ranking status in the Manson Family hippie cult and for being convicted of trying to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1975.

Demonic recently-deceased cult leader Charles Manson started his “Family” in 1967 in San Francisco and soon moved south to L.A., planting roots on the outskirts of town and attracting an impressionable brood of young men and women eager to experiment with free love, an assortment of mind-altering drugs and religious curiosity. Manson and his roughly 100 disciples set up shop in Death Valley at Barker Ranch and then at Spahn Ranch, an old cowboy-movie and television set in the Simi Valley Hills resting in the foothills above the town of Chatsworth.

In August 1969, Manson ordered several members of the cult to go on a two-night killing spree in which pregnant actress Sharon Tate and seven others were gruesomely slain in a series of slayings that captured the attention of the whole world and spelled the unofficial end of the Flower Power Era. Manson told his followers he was Jesus Christ and preached an end-of-the-world scenario he called “Helter Skelter” named in honor of a Beatles song and concluding in Manson becoming king of the entire world.

Fromme wasn’t involved in the so-called Tate-LaBianca murders. Tate was the wife of Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Chinatown, The Piano). Today 69 years old, Fromme has been out of prison since 2009. She was an early Manson follower, having hooked up with the diminutive, musically-inclined hippie guru on Venice Beach in the spring of 1967, shortly after Manson had been let out of federal prison following a seven-year term for pimping and check fraud. An aspiring rock star, Manson made friends with big-name musicians, Dennis Wilson of The Beach Boys and Neil Young. Manson and his family actually muscled their way into living in Wilson’s log-cabin mansion. The Beach Boys recorded one of Manson’s songs (Cease To Exist/Never Learn Not To Love)

Fanning is best known for her childhood roles I Am Sam, Uptown Girls, The Cat in The Hat, Man On Fire, War of the Worlds in the 2000s. Later roles have included playing a central character in the Twilight films and appearing in this summer’s Ocean 8.

Dakota Fanning

Manson died behind bars of cancer in the fall of 2017 at age 83. It hasn’t been announced who Tarantino has selected to play Manson, a genuine American icon of evil in his movie. The 100-million dollar budgeted Sony Pictures project will be released on August 9, 2019, the 50-year anniversary of the first night of the Manson murders.

Tarantino is one of America’s most creative and critically-acclaimed filmmakers of the last quarter century. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood will be his tenth feature and the only time so far in his career that he’s tackled historical subject matter. High-powered actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, both previous collaborators with Tarantino, will co-star in the film, portraying fictional actor and stuntman characters respectively in close proximity to the stunningly-beautiful Tate, played by Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street Suicide Squad, I, Tonya). Al Pacino is playing DiCaprio’s character’s movie agent.

When Manson moved The Family to Spahn Ranch in 1968, he assigned Fromme to maintenance the ranch’s elderly owner George Spahn, who allowed the group to stay on his property rent free in exchange for manual labor. He nicknamed Fromme, soon to become his lover, “Squeaky,” for her high-pitched voice. Burt Reynolds is playing Spahn.

After Manson was locked up for the 1969 killings, Fromme acted as his main mouthpiece to the press. Fromme pointed a pistol at President Ford on the grounds of the California State Capitol in Sacramento on September 5, 1975, but never got the chance to pull the trigger. According to Fromme, the assassination attempt was her way of protesting environmental neglect.

Squeaky Fromme in the minutes after trying to kill President Ford

The post Dakota Fanning Fills “Squeaky” Fromme Role In Tarantino’s Manson Movie Project appeared first on The Gangster Report.

With former New England mafia boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme’s murder trial on the verge of being completed – the jurors got the case this week and have to decide whether or not Salemme, today 84, ordered the slaying of his business partner, nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro, in 1993 – the spotlight in  gangland judicial affairs from the region turns towards a trio of Salemme underlings, like retired Patriarca crime family don, Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio, Providence mob captain Edward (Little Eddie) Lato and Boston mob captain Mark Rossetti (seen above). Will any of them follow their one-time underworld superior into the defendant’s chair in court and be charged in similar cold-case homicide fashion?

“I think there’s another case coming down the pike pretty soon, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell you that,” one retired FBI agent said. “The Bureau is digging into some old murders in New England and they should be because there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered. Very little bloodshed from Cadillac Frank’s days as boss has been cleaned up indictment wise. We can sit here and debate all day why that is the case, however, that’s where we are two decades after his run on top came to an end”

Lato, 71, and Rossetti, 58, are both behind bars on racketeering convictions and were two of the swashbuckling Salemme’s strong arms during his violent reign in the 1990s. The more reserved and sophisticated 90-year old Manocchio, currently living in retirement down in Florida, was Salemme’s underboss. He got out of prison on racketeering charges in 2015, having led the Patriarca clan from when Salemme got locked up in the mid-1990s until he resigned his post in 2009.

In recent months, Manocchio and Lato have been implicated in the 1992 murder of renegade Providence mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan. Rossetti, outed by court filings as an FBI informant in 2011 following his arrest on drug, gambling, extortion and loansharking offenses, is a suspect in numerous gangland slayings from long ago, many occurring while on the federal payroll.

Salemme joined the Witness Protection Program in 1999, helping the Bureau convict corrupt FBI agent John Connolly,, but didn’t divulge all he knew about the murders on his watch. Hence, the DiSarro indictment that dropped in 2016 months after DiSarro’s remains were unearthed in Providence. Soon, Cadillac Frank’s former right-hand man Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, was telling the FBI that he lied too when he joined Team America and tied him to the DiSarro killing, admitting he was the one tasked with burying DiSarro’s body, and at least one other – the Hanrahan hit.

It’s unknown what if anything he’s told the feds about Rossetti and his possible link to a slew of unsolved homicides from the Boston area. While DeLuca was Salemme’s eyes and ears in Providence, Rossetti and his cousin Stevie, were Salemme’s muscle in East Boston, the territory Cadillac Frank found the most resistance in.

Hanrahan was slain in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood in the late hours of September 18, 1992 leaving a dinner with DeLuca’s best friend and fellow wiseguy Ronnie Coppola. DeLuca testified at Salemme’s trial to watching from across the street as deceased New England mob figure Rocco (Shaky) Argenti shot Hanrahan to death. Lato, slated for release from prison on a conviction for shaking down strip clubs next year, was accompanying Argenti on the job, according to what DeLuca has told investigators.

DeLuca, Argenti, Lato and Coppola were witnessed rendezvousing at a bar down the street in the minutes after Hanrahan was shot. Argenti died of cancer in 2002. He had risen to be Baby Shacks’ consigliere before he passed away. A grand jury has been impanelled since the spring of 2017 reexamining Hanrahan’s murder, according to sources with knowledge of the situation.

Manocchio was given responsibility for coordinating details of the Hanrahan hit by Salemme via DeLuca upon Salemme learning that Hanrahan had been plotting to kill him and Manocchio, per DeLuca’s most-recent revelations. Baby Shacks previously pled guilty to murder conspiracy charges tied to a double homicide in the 1960s and did a short prison stint almost 15 years later.

Rossetti was opened as a confidential informant by FBI agent Michael Buckley in the early 1990s at a time Rossetti was at the forefront of Cadillac Frank Salemme’s parade of vengeance and fervent campaign to clip all adversaries. Salemme sought to eliminate everybody associated with a mob faction from East Boston and the North End that had tried to block his ascendance to the throne years before – a 1989 assassination attempt at a suburban Boston pancake house still had him hot and bothered, hungry for blood.

There are more than a half-dozen murders from that period that Salemme is suspected of setting in motion, Rossetti is suspected of participated in and remain unsolved. Whether or not Buckley and the FBI knew of and or sanctioned Rossetti’s alleged involvement in these murders during his tenure as an informant is being probed by multiple government agencies and legislative bodies. Rossetti got promoted to a capo role in his capacity as an FBI mole.

“The circumstances around Rossetti don’t add up,” said one former member of law enforcement in New England. “A lot of us were in the dark…..he was getting a free pass for quite a while and everyone knew he was one of the mob’s biggest hitters.”

Rossetti, who once attacked a state trooper, was sentenced to 12 years in state prison in 2013 for overseeing a sprawling racketeering conspiracy from his Bunker Hill Social Club in East Boston. He had done fed time in the 1980s for knocking off an armored car and again in the first half of the 2000s for illegal firearm possession. Wiretaps from the 2010 state case intercepted Rossetti and Buckley talking on the phone about informant work. Called in front of a grand jury in the 1990s and asked about murders under the Salemme regime, Rossetti allegedly pled the Fifth Amendment.

East Boston wiseguy Michael (Big Mike) Romano’s has filed a civil law suit against the FBI in Boston last year for its work with Rossetti in connection to the murder of Romano’s son in the fall of 1994 at the height of tensions between Salemme and the breakaway crew from “Eastie.” The 60-million dollar suit makes wrongful death and gross negligence claims. Romano was convicted of murdering one of the men he felt responsible for killing his son.

The post Who’s Next To Fall In N.E. Feds Attempt To Revive Cold-Case Mob Murders, Manocchio, Lato or Rossetti? appeared first on The Gangster Report.

A post-Christmas beat down late last year will cost two members of The Outlaws motorcycle club in Michigan a year-and-a-half behind bars in state prison. Just days before they were scheduled to stand trial, Eric (Whiplash) Kerkau and Arthur (A-Bomb) Miller pled guilty to assault charges this week in Bay County Circuit Court in connection with the December 27, 2017 attack on a local resident Scott Peterson inside the Whyte Goose Inn bar just after midnight. Kerkau, 47, and Miller, 33, were upset with Peterson for reportedly snapping photos of them in Outlaws MC regalia on his cell phone.

Although facing a ten-year sentence, the pair of bikers copped a plea deal that guarantees them less than two years behind bars. Kerkau (seen above) and Miller had been carousing around town the night of December 26, making enough noise that Bay City Police received a call from the manager at Stables Martini & Cigar Bar reporting two men matching Kerkau and Miller’s description “causing a ruckus.”

According to the official police report, Miller approached Peterson and requested he delete the images he had taken with his IPhone, which resulted in a screaming match and Kerkau coming on the scene and throwing the first punch, flooring the victim. The two Outlaws proceeded to knee and stomp Peterson for a solid 20 seconds. Peterson was left with broken ribs and a detached retina.

Bay City is 100 miles north of Detroit. Outside of Motown, Bay City is home to the largest population of Outlaws in the state. The Outlaws MC is the most prominent biker gang in the Midwest, maintaining strongholds in Florida and other southeast locales, too. In 2007, Bay City Outlaws boss Leroy (Black Region Roy) Fraser was indicted along with 15 other club members and charged with a wide range of drug and racketeering offenses. The 60-year old Fraser heads the club’s “Black Region,” covering Outlaws territory in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, did four years of prison time. He was sprung in 2011.

The post Holiday Season Hostility: Michigan Outlaws MC Duo Destined For Prison Time appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Per a report by a suburban Boston radio journalist, former New England mob captain Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca is now being asked about the 1992 gangland slaying of Beantown wiseguy and restaurant owner Vinnie Arcieri after helping the feds convict his one-time boss, Patriarca crime family don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme of an unsolved underworld murder from that same time frame last week. Arcieri was gunned down outside his Orient Heights home in East Boston on December 8, 1992. DeLuca, 72, was Salemme’s right-hand man and emissary to the Rhode Island wing of the syndicate.

In an op-ed posted on the website of his radio station (1420 WBSM New Bedford) Thursday, on-air personality Chis McCarthy wrote that Salemme underlings are being questioned regarding the Arcieri hit and how or if it can be tied to the 84-year old Salemme’s reign atop the Patriarca clan in the first half of the 1990s. McCarthy further reported that one of the FBI surveillance photos of Salemme presented to the jury in his just-concluded trial for the 1993 murder of Boston nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro showed Salemme with a prime suspect in the Arcieri slaying, someone law enforcement is actively pursuing today. Salemme was found guilty for ordering DiSarro’s killing this past week.

Flashy, feared and power hungry, Cadillac Frank grabbed control of the New England mob in the wake of a civil war and used his newfound crown to seek retribution on those who opposed his swift rise to the forefront of the crime family following a release from prison in the late 1980s. Arcieri was one of more than a half-dozen murders that transpired on Salemme’s watch as Godfather and linked to bad blood between Salemme and a treasonous crew from East Boston. When he entered the Witness Protection Program from behind bars in 1999, Cadillac Frank denied involvement in any slayings during his five years running the organization, including the murders of Arcieri, DiSarro and rogue Providence mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan.

At Salemme’s recent trial, DeLuca testified Salemme had DiSarro, 43, clipped for stealing from a club they co-owned and the belief that he was snitching or about to snitch to the feds — DiSarro was strangled to death by Salemme’s late gangster son inside the Salemme residence located in posh Sharon, Massachusetts on the morning of May 10, 1993. According to his account, DeLuca was tasked with burying DiSarro’s body, delivered to Providence by Salemme himself.

The previous year, Arcieri got hit in December and Hanrahan, three months earlier, in September. The 39-year old Hanrahan was shot to death leaving a dinner in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood on the evening of September 18, 1992. Last fall, DeLuca pled guilty to conspiracy in the Hanrahan murder. He told jurors at Salemme’s trial for killing DiSarro that Salemme ordered Hanrahan dead once he got wind of a plot by Hanrahan to bump off both him and his underboss, Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio.

After Salemme went to prison in 1995, Manocchio, 90, took his place as boss, reining until 2009 when he stepped down. DeLuca has told authorities that Manocchio handled the details of the Hanrahan homicide and admitted in open court at Salemme’s trial that he watched the Hanrahan hit occur from a parked SUV across the street.

The post Media Report: Feds Probing Yet Another Cold-Case Murder From N.E. Mafia’s Salemme Era appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Reputed Detroit mafia associate Gino Accetola has pled no contest to theft charges in state court related to a credit card scam where he’s alleged to have stolen almost $150,000 from a local credit-card processing company he was using for his tanning salon chain, Miami Tan. He faces up to 20 years in prison but his plea, which is considered an admission of guilt in the legal system, will most likely shield him from a heavy sentence.

Accetola, 51, operates five Miami Tan outlets across the Metro Detroit area. The case stems from a request for $200,000 dollars in additional funds from the credit-card processing firm (Interlink Repayment Systems) that he said was to sell a new tanning product. The product had in fact been recalled by its manufacturers. According to his indictment, he only repaid $52,000 and used the remaining money to go on spending sprees and vacations with his girlfriend.

In an unrelated civil case from 2016, Accetola, a convicted felon, was found responsible for swindling almost 11 investors out of $4,000,000 in a construction-company linked Ponzi scheme. He’s been ordered to repay $12,000,000 to his victims, monies that have not been handed over according to the victims’ attorney. A chunk of the money pilfered, roughly $1,700,000, was gambled away at the MGM Grand Casino in downtown Detroit.

Throughout his perpetrating the Ponzi scheme, Accetola bragged of his mob ties. going as far as to blame his withholding the profits from the investments in bogus construction projects on his bosses in the mafia. Back in 2013, he pled guilty in state court to another fraud offense and received suspended 10-month jail stint. Per sources, Accetola is connected to the Tocco wing of Detroit’s Tocco-Zerilli crime family.

Gino Accetola

The post No Fun In The Sun: Detroit Mob Scamster Accepts Plea Deal In Most Recent Fraud Case appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The still hard-to-fathom saga of 1980s Detroit teen drug-world prodigy Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe has been going on for 30 years and will soon be brought to the big screen in the upcoming Matthew McConaughey eponymously-titled film. Newcomer Richie Merritt plays Wershe in his movie debut and McConaughey plays his dad. The magnetic and street smart Wershe went from graduating eighth grade to top-secret government mole to 16-year old narcotics-trafficking wunderkind to political prisoner all in a four-year period at the height of the country’s crack epidemic.

For the last three decades, the 48-year old Wershe has fought tirelessly for his freedom, even going back to work for authorities from his prison cell and aiding in the building of two historic cases. Incarcerated since he was 18, he is currently the longest-serving non-violent juvenile offender in the American justice system. Weshe is in the home stretch of his time behind bars and could be released before the end of the year.

McConaughey and Merritt’s White Boy Rick movie hits theatres nationwide September 21. Filmmaker Shawn Rech’s documentary White Boy is available on ITunes and a number of streaming platforms right now.

THE WHITE BOY RICK TIMELINE Pt. 1 (1984-1988)

June 1984 – A federal drug task force comprised of the FBI, DEA and Detroit Police Department recruits 14-year old Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe, Jr. to be a mole in the treacherous Motor City crack trade, tasked with infiltrating the infamous Curry Brothers Gang. Wershe quickly ingratiates himself to eastside crime lord Johnny (Lil’ Man) Curry, who is married to the sexy, sophisticated and curvaceous Cathy Volson, a favorite niece of Mayor Coleman Young. Shockingly, his father, Richard Wershe, Sr., an arms dealer and neighborhood street hustler, who had previously been a government informant, signs off on the operation and shares in the federal stipend.

September 1984 – Wershe starts ninth grade at Detroit Denby High School, his father’s alma mater.

November 1984 – Wershe is shot by Curry Brothers Gang member John (Johnny Slim) Walker, possibly for the Currys’ belief that he is an informant. Although he almost dies on the operating table at the hospital, he agrees to report the shooting as an accident, file an insurance claim and rejoin the Curry Brothers Gang.

December 1984 – Wershe drops out of high school (he had transferred to Detroit Finney High School after a confrontation with a teacher at Denby) and goes to work for the drug task force full time.

February 1985 – Curry Brothers Gang member Leon Lucas, the gang’s main “mixologist,” responsible for cutting most of the gang’s drug shipments, is raided by law enforcement resulting in the seizure of narcotics and cash.

April 14, 1985 – Wershe, 15, is sent by the task force to Las Vegas to attend the Marvelous Marvin Hagler-Tommy Hearns championship boxing match, provided a fake ID, first-class airplane and hotel fare and $1,500 spending cash. The goal of the trip was to try and establish Wershe’s perceived independence from the Curry Brothers Gang (also in attendance), while at the same time directing him to try and uncover the Curry brothers’ wholesale drug supplier.

April 16, 1985 – Wershe and the Curry Brothers Gang return to Detroit from Las Vegas the day after Hagler knocked Hearns out in the third round, with Johnny Curry angered by the fact that Leon Lucas failed to deliver on his promise of hotel reservations and fight tickets as a means of making amends for the money and drugs lost in the February raid.

April 29, 1985 – Damion Lucas, Leon Lucas’ 13-year old nephew, is accidentally killed in a drive-by shooting at Leon’s westside Detroit residence.

April 30, 1985 – Wershe provides intelligence to the task force that Johnny Curry ordered his henchman to do the drive-by shooting at Leon Lucas’ house in retaliation for the Las Vegas debacle.

May 1985 – Wershe tells the task force he was present with Johnny Curry when Curry engaged in a phone conversation with then Detroit Police Department Homicide Commander Gil Hill, known for playing the role of Eddie Murphy’s boss in the smash-hit Beverly Hills Cop movie trilogy, where Hill agrees to accept a $10,000 payoff to steer the Damion Lucas homicide investigation away from the Curry Brothers Gang. Subsequently another Lucas drug-world associate named LaKeas Davis is arrested in the case, but the charges are eventually dropped.

September 1986 – After more than two years on the government payroll and collecting an estimated $40,000 in compensation, Wershe and the federal drug task force break ties. The charismatic, business-savvy 17-year old immediately decides to continue on in the narcotics industry – minus a paycheck from Uncle Sam – and attempts to become a wholesale cocaine supplier on his own.

November 1986 – Wershe and crew member Robert (Scorpio) Ward are stopped by DEA agents getting off a commercial airline flight arriving at Detroit Metro Airport from Miami and Ward is arrested for possession of two kilos of cocaine. Ward is convicted and given a six-year prison sentence.

March 11, 1987 – Wershe’s partner in his wholesale operation Charles (7 Mile Chuck) Lewis is arrested for drug offenses and sent to prison.

March 21, 1987 – Wershe and his best friend and right-hand man Stephen (Freaky Steve) Roussell are arrested in a DPD raid at Roussell’s stash house on Hayes Street on the far eastside of Detroit where cocaine, automatic weapons, cash counting machines and bullet proof vests are seized. They are charged in state court with possessing 2.5 grams of coke, which amounted to approximately $200 in street value at the time.

April 2, 1987 – The entire Curry Brothers Gang is indicted on federal drug and racketeering charges. One of the predicate offenses included in the indictment accuses Johnny Curry of ordering the 1985 murder of rival dope man Eric Dunson. Curry cops a plea and is sentenced to 20 years in prison.

April 6, 1987 – Wershe and Johnny Curry’s wife, Cathy Volsan, the Mayor’s beautiful 24-year old niece, begin a torrid romance that puts Wershe in the crosshairs of enemies on both sides of the law and causes a fervor in the already-swirling media buzz surrounding his ascent.

May 22, 1987 – Wershe is pulled over by a DPD patrol unit in a routine traffic stop outside his grandmother’s house and after a fight breaks out on the front lawn involving him, his dad, his sister and the cops, he’s arrested for possessing eight kilos of cocaine found stashed more than a block away underneath a neighbor’s porch. The state charges the 17-year old as an adult under the now-defunct “650 Lifer Law,” bringing with it a sentence of mandatory life in prison without parole if convicted.

July 18, 1987 – Out on bail awaiting trial, Wershe turns 18 years old.

September 22, 1987 – Freaky Steve Roussell, Wershe’s closest friend and aid-de-camp in the dope game, is killed by the Best Friends Gang, gunned down with an Uzi by Best Friends boss Reggie (Rocking Reggie) Brown as he slept on the couch of his eastside of Detroit residence. Roussell’s cousin and Wershe crew member Patrick (Little Pat) McLeod, is wounded in the attack. Roussell and Brown had been feuding over a girl for several months.

October 13, 1987 – Wershe and crew member Robert (Bobby the Polack) Williamson are arrested by DEA agents with 11 pounds of cocaine stashed in a car trunk as they arrive at customer Brian McClendon’s house to meet McClendon’s newborn son.

January 4, 1988 – Amid an intense media firestorm drawing reporters from around the country, Wershe’s “650” trial begins in Wayne County Recorder’s Court in downtown Detroit. Wershe’s attorneys don’t enter evidence of his work with the federal drug task force into the trial record, although his father speaks to the press about it. Wershe, Sr.’s allegations are quickly denied by the FBI.

January 14, 1988 – Werhse is found guilty by the jury at his “650” trial and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, per the sentencing statute’s mandatory guidelines. His case inspires a pop-culture narrative that spawns storylines in television shows like 21 Jump Street and Miami Vice, a character in an Elmore Leonard novel and a shout-out in a Kid Rock song.

January 15, 1988 – Richard Wershe, Sr. is arrested by the ATF for selling silencers.

April 14, 1988 – Wershe is acquitted by a jury at a trial in Wayne County Recorder’s Court in his case connected to the Hayes Street raid back in March 1987.

April 23, 1988 – Richard Wershe, Sr. is convicted by a jury at trial in his silencer case and sentenced to six years in federal prison.

See Part 2 of the White Boy Rick Timeline here.

The post The White Boy Rick Timeline Part 1: Life On The Street For Motor City Underworld Icon appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The still hard-to-fathom saga of 1980s Detroit teen drug-world prodigy Richard (White Boy Rick) Wershe has been going on for 30 years and will soon be brought to the big screen in the upcoming Matthew McConaughey eponymously-titled film. Newcomer Richie Merritt plays Wershe in his movie debut and McConaughey plays his dad. The magnetic and street smart Wershe went from graduating eighth grade to top-secret government mole to 16-year old narcotics-trafficking wunderkind to political prisoner all in a four-year period at the height of the country’s crack epidemic.

For the last three decades, the 48-year old Wershe has fought tirelessly for his freedom, even going back to work for authorities from his prison cell and aiding in the building of two historic cases. Incarcerated since he was 18, he is currently the longest-serving non-violent juvenile offender in the American justice system. Weshe is in the home stretch of his time behind bars and could be released before the end of the year.

McConaughey and Merritt’s White Boy Rick movie hits theatres nationwide September 21. Filmmaker Shawn Rech’s documentary White Boy is available on ITunes and a number of streaming platforms right now.

THE WHITE BOY RICK TIMELINE Pt. 2 (1988-2018)

February 1990 – Wershe reconvenes his relationship with the FBI and agrees to help them make a case against a corrupt crew of Detroit cops running a protection ring for out-of-town drug dealers, escorting narcotics shipments to and from the airport in exchange for a $50,000 fee per trip. The sting, dubbed Operation Backbone, targeted but never ensnared Gil Hill.

May 22 1991 – The Operation Backbone indictment drops, charging police sergeant Jimmy Harris, a confidant of Mayor Coleman Young, and Young’s brother-in-law, Willie Volsan — Wershe’s girlfriend Cathy’s father –, as the ring leaders of an 11-man shakedown operation. Both are convicted and sentenced to hefty prison time. Harris would be granted clemency in his case by departing U.S. President George W. Bush in 2008.

June 1991 – Wershe is transferred into a federal witness-protection wing in Arizona and gives further assistance to investigators once again probing the accidental 1985 murder of westside Detroit youth Damion Lucas and Gil Hill’s alleged role in covering it up, dismantling the Best Friends Gang, the Motor City’s most notorious killing machine since the Prohibition beer wars, and tipping feds off in New York of a plot to murder then mafia don John Gotti, Jr. Wershe’s intelligence on the plan to hit Gotti, Jr. came from his living with a series of former mob figures in his Phoenix prison unit.

December 1991 – Wershe testifies in front of a federal grand jury investigating the murderous Best Friends Gang, a killer-for-hire crew on Detroit’s eastside that began bumping off drug dealers and taking over their respective organizations in the late 1980s. The Best Friends were suspected of playing a role in more than 80 gangland slayings in less than a decade of a reign. Best Friends boss “Rocking Reggie” Brown was convicted of killing Wershe’s closest friend and right-hand man “Freaky Steve” Roussell.

June 11, 1992 – Richard Wershe, Sr. is released from federal prison after serving four years on a conviction of selling gun silencers.

October 1992 – From his prison cell in Texas, Johnny Curry does an interview with The Detroit News and admits to meeting with Gil Hill twice in the week after the 1985 Damion Lucas homicide. Hill was the head of the DPD’s homicide division. Wershe told the FBI he was with Curry the day following the tragic Lucas killing, where a 13-year old boy got caught in the crossfire of a drug beef between his uncle and the Curry Brothers Gang, and heard him discuss with Hill a $10,000 payoff for the probe into the gang to go away.

December 8, 1992 – The whole Best Friends Gang goes down in a massive drug and murder case.

January 3, 1994 – Mayor Coleman Young retires after serving five terms in office. Young was the most powerful politician the city had ever seen. Doggedly pursued by federal authorities for suspected corruption, he was never charged with a crime.

November 4, 1997 – Gil Hill is elected as Detroit City Council President. He retired from the police department in 1989 and won a seat on the council that same year.

November 29, 1997 – Retired Mayor Coleman Young dies of emphysema at age 79.

July 2, 1998 – The “650 Lifer Law,” is thrown out by the Michigan State Legislature, allowing Wershe to now be eligible for parole on his mandatory life sentence.

March 4, 1999 – Former Eastside Detroit drug kingpin Johnny Curry, the leader of the infamous Curry Brothers Gang and Wershe’s underworld mentor, is paroled from prison after serving 12 years behind bars on his drug case.

November 2001 – Gil Hill loses his election bid for Mayor of Detroit to eventual convicted felon Kwame Kilpatrick. Hill was hounded by questions about the Damion Lucas murder investigation during the race and allegedly privately blamed Wershe for the issue and his election defeat.

March 27 & 28 2003 – Wershe gets his first parole hearing, a high-profile two-day affair held in downtown Detroit under a familiar flurry of media coverage, fierce opposition from the DPD and Wayne County establishment and featuring an appearance by musical artist and native Detroiter Kid Rock, who testified on Wershe’s behalf. The parole board denies Wershe his freedom back despite testimony from federal authorities vouching for his cooperation in the 1990s, cooperation deemed crucial in a number of top-priority investigations, busts and convictions.

March 24, 2005 – Wershe is indicted for playing a minor role in a multi-million dollar auto-theft conspiracy hatched from a Florida prison witness protection unit. He pleads guilty and is given an additional five-year sentence to run consecutive with his drug case instead of the standard concurrent term.

August 2006 – Wershe is kicked out of federal witness protection for his involvement in the auto-theft ring and returned to the Michigan Department of Corrections.

December 2008 – Wershe has his second parole request denied.

November 2012 – Wershe stages his first of many charity food drives from behind bars, a turkey donation bank for Thanksgiving at his old church on Detroit’s eastside.

August 2013 – Wershe has his third parole request denied.

September 4, 2015 – Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Dana Hathaway orders Wershe resentenced. Hathaway had recently placed the retiring Judge Thomas Jackson as Wershe’s trial judge of record.

September 20, 2015 – The Michigan Court of Appeals blocks Judge Hathaway’s ruling to resentence Wershe, claiming his only remedy to find relief from his life prison term is through the state parole board.

February 29, 2016 – Gil Hill dies of pneumonia in a Detroit nursing home at 84 years old.

August 25, 2016 – Portions of an interview with former Best Friends Gang hit man Nate (Boone) Craft from an upcoming documentary on Wershe’s case are released to the press and show Craft claiming he was hired by Detroit Police officials to kill Wershe in the 1980s. Craft, an admitted participant in 30 gangland slayings and FBI cooperator who did 17 years in prison, alleged Gil Hill was aware of police hit lists and would sometimes review and edit such lists.

August 26, 2016 – Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announces her office will no longer oppose Wershe’s quest for parole. Worthy had appealed the resentencing ruling in Wershe’s case less than a year prior.

March 30, 2017 – The documentary White Boy premieres at the Detroit Free Press Film Festival, where it  wins top prize.

June 7, 2017 – Wershe has his first full parole hearing in 14 years in Jackson, Michigan in a more subdued event than his initial go-around face-to-face in front of the board in the spring of 2003.

July 14, 2017 – Wershe is granted parole in a unanimous decision.

July 18, 2017 – Wershe celebrates his 48^th birthday.

August 22, 2017 – Wershe is sent to Florida to serve out his prison time in his car-theft case.

May 28, 2018 – The Florida prison system’s Clemency Board meet to discuss Wershe’s case.

May 29, 2018 – The documentary White Boy is released on streaming services.

September 14, 2018 – The Hollywood film White Boy Rick will be released to limited theatres and is slated to go “wide” the following weekend.

See Part 1 of the White Boy Rick Timeline here.

The post The White Boy Rick Timeline Pt. 2: From Within Prison Walls The Struggle For Second Chance Is Real appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Being a rapper has proven a hazardous profession in some cases the past three decades — just these last two weeks, the rap world lost a trio of promising young lyrical fire spitters, a tragic list led by flourishing Florida artist XXXTentacion. Sadly, a multitude of violent slayings can be linked to the rap music industry since the groundbreaking genre gained mass popularity in the mid-to-late 1980s. Let’s take a look at the most significant homicides tied to rap artists over the last 30 years.

THE RAP WORLD MURDER TIMELINE (1987-2018)

August 27, 1987 – New York DJ and early-hip hop music impresario Scott (La Rock) Sterling

*Co-founder of the influential east coast rap contingent Boogie Down Productions is shot to death behind the wheel of his jeep in the Bronx projects

August 8, 1990 – New York rapper Brandon (B-Doggs) Mitchell

*Founding member of the Motown Records rap group Wreckx-n-Effect from Harlem is killed in argument over a girl at picnic in the wake of the group’s first album hitting shelves months earlier

October 6, 1990 – Texas rapper Daniel (D-Boy) Rodriguez

*The Puerto Rican rapper is killed in carjacking in Dallas

December 16, 1993 – West Coast rapper Charles (Charizma) Hicks,

*Shot and killed in Palo Alto, California

April 18, 1994 – Louisiana rapper Edgar (Pimp Daddy) Givens

*The Cash Money Records artist is killed in a New Orleans housing project in an alleged domestic dispute

November 30, 1995 – New York rapper Randy (Stretch) Walker

*Live Squad member and Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. affiliate is killed in Queens on the one-year anniversary of the famous Quad Studio shooting-and-robbery attack survived by him and Shakur, which served as the seminal event in the notorious East Coast-West Coast Rap War

January 1, 1996 – San Francisco rapper Kyle (Mister Cee) Church

July 31, 1996 – Bay Area rapper Seagram (aka Seagram Miller)

*The first Bay area rapper signed to Scarface’s Rap-A-Lot in Houston who is killed in East Oakland

September 13, 1996 – Historic West Coast-affiliated rap superstar Tupac Shakur

*killed in a Las Vegas drive-by following attending a Mike Tyson boxing match (succumbs to wounds a week after the attack)

November 10, 1996 – Tupac Shakur affiliate and Outlawz rap group member Yafeu (Kadafi) Fula

*The lone witness to the Shakur slaying is killed inside a New Jersey housing project

January 15, 1997 – New Orleans rapper and Cash Money Records afilite Robert (Kilo-G) Johnson, Cash Money affiliate

March 9, 1997 – East Coast rap icon Christopher (Notorious B.I.G.) Wallace

*Murdered in a drive by on a promotional tour of Los Angeles after leaving a party

April 5, 1997 – New Orleans rapper and Cash Money Records artist Albert (Yella Boy) Thomas

*Founding member of the rap group UNLV

February 3, 1998 – Houston rapper Patrick (Fat Pat) Hawkins

January 11, 1999 – Texas rapper Steven (Granpappy Mafioso) Eduok

*Gunned down in the parking lot of a Houston nightclub and recording studio by an assailant toting a AK-47

February 15, 1999 – New York rapper Lamont (Big L) Coleman

*On the verge of a Roc-A-Fella contract, killed in a Harlem drive-by

March 28, 1999 – New York rapper Raymond (Freaky Tah) Rogers

*Founding member of the Lost Boyz rap group, killed outside a Sheraton Hotel in Queens

May 21, 1999 – Detroit rapper Karnail (Bugz) Pitts

*Founding member of D-12 and Eminem affiliate is killed in a fight at BBQ in the weeks after Eminem rocketed to international superstardom

May 2, 2000 – Elektra Records artist and east coast rapper Raeneal (Q-Don) Quann

*Founding member of the NAAM Brigade rap group, killed in a Philadelphia

July 4, 2000 – DJ Quick protégé Jonny (Mausberg) Burns

*Murdered in a Compton, California drive-by

July 26, 2001 – New York rapper Eric (E Moneybags) Smith

*His murder was ordered by legendary east coast drug kingpin Kenny (Supreme) McGriff, who had aligned with the music label Murder, Inc.

October 30, 2002 – Rap pioneer and DJ legend Jason (Jam Master Jay) Mizell

*Killed in a recording studio in Queens

October 31, 2002 – New Orleans rapper and Cash Money Records artist Derrick (Bulletproof) Williams

*Nephew to Cash Money Records founder Ronald (Slim) Williams and Bryan (Baby) Williams

February 2, 2003 – San Francisco rapper Ricky (Hitman) Herd

May 19, 2003 – Georgia rapper Jason (Camoflauge) Johnson

*Killed in his hometown of Savannah leaving PurePain Recording Studios

October 24, 2003 – East coast rapper and SPICE 1 and Kool G Rap affiliate Jasun (Half a Mill) Wardlaw

*Killed in a Brooklyn housing project

November 26, 2003 – New Orleans rapper and No Limit Records artist James (Soulja Slim) Tapp

*Killed inside his mother’s house

September 18, 2004 – Detroit rapper Antonio (Wipeout) Cadell

*Killed in a feud with fellow Motor City rapper Blade Icewood

November 1, 2004 – Bay Area rapper Andre (Mac Dre) Hicks

*Killed in Kansas City, Missouri drive by shooting

April 19, 2005 – Detroit rapper Darnell (Blade Icewood) Lindsay

May 24, 2005 – Kansas City rapper Anthony (Fat Tone) Watkins

*Killed in Las Vegas

April 11, 2006 – Detroit rapper and D12 founding member DeShaun (Proof) Holton

*Killed in a shooting at an after-hours club on Motown’s far north eastside

May 1, 2006 – Houston rapper James (Big Hawk) Hawkins

June 11, 2007 – East coast rapper, Byrd Gang co-founder and Jim Jones affiliate Rayquon (Stacks Bundles) Eliot

*Killed in Queens, New York

March 25, 2008 – New York rapper Leval (Cavlar) Lyde

*Killed outside a Brooklyn seafood restaurant after an argument with fellow patrons in a parking lot turns violent

April 20, 2008 – New Orleans rapper and Hot Boys affiliate Michael (VL Mike) Allen

January 4, 2009 – New York white rapper Joe (29-E) Ryan

*Killed in Seattle after a recent move to the Pacific Northwest

March 18, 2009 – Akon protégé Roderick (Dolla) Burton

*Killed in Los Angeles over beef starting in his hometown of Atlanta

October 30, 2009 –Felon-turned-rapper Mike Beck killed in Brooklyn

*Affiliated with historic east coast hip hop figures Rakim and Fat Joe

December 10, 2010 – Cash Money Records female rapper Renetta (Magnolia Shorty) Lowe

*Killed in New Orleans behind the wheel of her Mercedes Benz

May 15, 2011 – West Coast rapper Montae (M-Bone) Talbert

*Killed in a drive by in Inglewood, California

November 10, 2011 – San Francisco rapper Markesee (Killa Keise) Henry

December 4, 2011 – East coast rapper John (Tommy Hill) Wilson

*Founding member of the R.A.M. Squad rap group, killed in front of club in Philadelphia after having testified against a set of Philly drug dealers months earlier

December 16, 2011 – Mario (Slim Dunkin) Hamilton

*Killed in Atlanta by fellow rapper Vinson (Young Vito) Hardimon

June 7, 2012 – Baton Rouge, Louisiana rapper Melvin (Lil’ Phat) Vernell III

*Trill Entertainment label dynasty scion is killed in the parking lot of Georgia hospital while awaiting the birth of a child

September 4, 2012 – Chicago rapper Joseph (Lil’ JoJo) Coleman,

January 2, 2013 – Atlanta rapper Justin (Yung Teddy) Mitchell

April 26, 2013 – Atlanta rap label owner James (OG Double D) Lewiel

*Killed cruising in his Maybach in a drive-by on the I-20 Expressway

June 20, 2013 – Louisiana rapper and Meek Mill-signee Addarren (Lil’ Snupe) Ross

*Killed in fight over video game

June 21, 2013 – Philadelphia rapper James (Jimmie Wallstreet) Davis

*Killed on the porch of his mother’s house

September 1, 2013 – Texas rapper Jeremy (Jit) Hill

*Killed outside a Houston strip club

September 23, 2013 – West coast rapper Kevin (Flipside) White

*Founding member of the OFTB Gang rap group

September 26, 2013 – Midwest rapper Louis (L.A. Capone) Anderson

*Killed leaving a recording studio in Chicago

December 28, 2013 – T.I. protégé Glenn (Doe B) Thomas

*Killed in his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama

January 3, 2014 – G-Unit and 50 Cent affiliate Jamal (Mazaradi Fox) Green

April 9, 2014 – Chicago rapper and Interscope Records artist Mario (Blood Money) Hess

*Rapper and Kanye West-affiliate Chief Keef’s cousin

May 31, 2014 – Chicago rapper McArthur (OTF NuNu) Swindle

*Killed in a Southside Chicago shopping mall parking lot

February 2, 2015 – Bay Area rapper Dominic (The Jacka) Newton

*Killed in East Oakland

May 17, 2015 – New York rapper Lionel (Chinx Drugz) Pickens

*Killed in Queens

May 29, 2015 – Chicago rapper Shoquon (Young Pappy) Thomas

June 23, 2015 – Bow Entertainment founder and Louisiana rapper Shannen (Young Ready) Hudson

July 11, 2015 – Chicago rapper, Glo Gang member and Chief Keef affiliate Marvin (Capo) Carr

*Killed in a drive-by in Chicago

September 7, 2015 – Detroit rapper Bryon (Dex Osama) Cox

September 23, 2015 – Chief Keef affiliate and Glo Gang member Marquese (Wolf Da Boss) Tann

*Killed in a Los Angeles marijuana dispensary robbery-homicide

March 4, 2016 – Georgia rapper Trentavious (Bankroll Fresh) White

*The 2Chainz and Gucci Mane affiliate is shot inside a Atlanta recording studio allegedly by fellow rapper “No Plug”

June 25, 2016 – Baltimore rapper Tyriece (La Scoota) Watson

*His manager was killed days later

November 10, 2016 — Houston rapper Chris (3-2) Barriero

*Part of H-Town’s iconic Rap-A-Lot Records regime

January 26, 2017 — Jacksonville rapper Maurice (Ramboe Slice) Hobbs

April 29, 2017 – New Orleans rapper and Cash Money/Rich Gang member Desmone (BTY YoungN) Jerome

May 2, 2017 — Chicago rapper Ulysses (Bando Bandz) Pole

June 8, 2017 — Alabama rapper Paul (Bam Bam) Carter

August 6, 2017 –Atlanta rapper Jibril (Yung Mazi) Abdur-Rahman

*Kevin Gage disciple

September 6, 2017 — Washington D.C. rapper Theodore (30 Glizzy) Pigford

*He was the third member of the Shy Glizzy crew to be murdered in less than 18 months

September 9, 2017 — Louisiana rapper Garrett (Da Real Gee Money) Burton

October 9, 2017 — Detroit rapper Rodney (Doughboy Roc) Yeargin of the CTE-signed Dopeboyz Cashout crew

*Young Jeezy’s disciple

October 21, 2017 — California rapper Roberto (Blackie Fontana) Diaz

June 18, 2018 — Fast-rising Florida rapper Jahseh (XXXTentacion) Onfroy 

June 18, 2018 — Pittsburgh rapper Travon (Jimmy Wopo) Smart 

*Wiz Khalifa disciple

June 30, 2018 — Toronto rapper Smoke Dawg

*Opening act for Canada’s favorite son in the rap game Drake

The post Rap Artist XXXTentacion’s Murder Makes GR Reflect On Infamous Hip Hop Murders Of The Past appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Chicago mobster and reputed hit man Anthony (Tough Tony) Calabrese died of cancer recently in a federal prison in Indiana. The 57-year old Calabrese was suspected by authorities of being the triggerman in two unsolved Outfit murders, but incarcerated on an armed robbery conviction. A plea to his trial judge for a medical release earlier this year failed and a clemency request based on his condition sent to the White House was rejected in April.

Calabrese was found guilty at a 2008 trial of sticking up three businesses — a leather shop, a butcher shop and a tattoo parlor — and sentenced to 62 years behind bars. The FBI fingers him as the shooter in the Thanksgiving Day 2001 gangland slaying of notorious Outfit lieutenant, Anthony (Tony the Hatchet) Chiaramonti and as part of the conspiracy to murder Chinatown mobster Ronnie Jarrett two years before that.

Court records from his armed robbery case show Calabrese ordering the hammering of the hands of the owner of the tattoo parlor he robbed (revenge for tattooing the underage daughter of a mob superior of his) and beating up a member of his heist team for being disloyal. Prior to his arrest, Calabrese owned an auto body shop and reported to leaders of the Outfit’s Cicero crew.

Calabrese’s right-hand man Bobby Cooper was the star witness at Calabrese’s trial. While talk of his mob ties were barred from the court proceedings by the judge, Cooper told the FBI that he drove the getaway car on the Chiaramonti hit where Calabrese shot Tony the Hatchet to death inside the vestibule of a fast food fried chicken place. He tipped the feds off to rumors of Calabrese being the shooter in the Jarrett murder, too.

Tony Chiaramonti, 67, got caught in a power struggle within the Cicero crew, pitting the early 1990s regime, which he belonged to, versus the crew’s New Millennium leadership headed by future Outfit street boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno and upset Elmwood Park crew heavyweight Rudy (The Chin) Fratto by swindling a nephew of Fratto’s in a join business venture. Sarno and Chiaramonti were locking horns over video poker machine routes in the years after Chiaramonti was released from a prison sentence for racketeering.

An FBI surveillance unit witnessed Chiaramonti get into a shoving match with infamous Outfit hit man Francis (Frank the German) Schweihs outside a Cicero pancake house in the days before he was slain. Schweihs had been sent to “reel” Tony the Hatchet in, per sources close to the situation, and keep him from continuing to make waves.

Cooper admits to driving Calabrese to a Brown’s Chicken & Pasta location in Lyons Township, Illinois on the evening of November 20, 2001 and seeing Calabrese chase Chiaramonti from the parking lot into the restaurant foyer before gunning him down. Minutes earlier, Chiaramonti had arrived at the fast food outlet, fresh from his Thanksgiving meal, in his brand-new black-colored BMW sedan.

Ronnie Jarrett, 55, was angered by being passed over for a Chinatown crew leadership post in the wake of longtime capo Angelo (The Hook) LaPietra’s death and angered Outfit bosses by openly trafficking in narcotics. He was shot five times outside his Bridgeport home on the morning of December 23, 1999, as he was getting into his car to drive to the funeral of fellow Chinatown crew member Charles (Guy) Bills, and died in the hospital just over a month later.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Jarrett sometimes filled in as part of a mob enforcement subunit given many of the Chicago mafia’s most difficult hit assignments dubbed the Wild Bunch. His murderer was traveling in a mover’s truck found ablaze in a nearby parking lot that same day.

Calabrese’s viciousness was on full display in the following excerpt from an FBI wire being worn by an associate of his that he and Cooper threatened to kill and stomped with steel-toed boots in the office of his auto detailing business (Tony C’s First Impressions in Alsip, Illinois) for a perceived slight and the belief that he might be informing for the government.

Calabrese: Ya know any of this stupid little shit that you see around here, you keep your mouth shut about? I mean, you understand what will happen if you don’t, right?

Victim: Tony, come on, do I look like I want to end up dead?

Cooper: Nobody said that.

Victim: I know the seriousness of what goes on here, I ain’t stupid.

Calabrese: There ain’t nothing serious going on. But when people get in trouble, sometimes the fucking make shit up. I don’t want you making anything up, that’s all. I fucking bust my balls here every day, all day long. I got enough problems. I don’t need nobody starting rumors or any fucking shit like that.

Cooper: Where you living at these days, pal?

Victim: In a hotel.

Cooper: Which hotel?

Victim: Why you guys gotta know that? Is that necessary?

Calabrese: ‘Cause we’re asking.

Victim: Tony, I don’t know if I feel comfortable telling you guys. I don’t feel safe about that.

At this point, Calabrese and Cooper attack the victim and begin stomping him

Calabrese: You disrespectful motherfucker. Fuck you. What did you just say, you fuck? Fuck you!

Victim: I’m sorry Tony. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.

Calabrese: Go fuck yourself you cocksucker. Motherfucker. Your an ungrateful motherfucker, you know that. I did everything for you. I put food on your plate and you’re going to act like this towards me?

Victim: I’m sorry, Tony. I said, I’m sorry. I’ll never disrespect you again, I swear.

Calabrese: You’re a punk ass bitch. Bobby, get his ass back up, so I can look him in the eye. You wanna feel safe? I’m gonna give you something to feel safe about. This is the last time I’m going to tell you. Remember what happens, motherfucker.

Victim: I will, I promise.

Calabrese: Let me tell you something. If anything happens around here. If anything happens to me, if I see one fucking cop, one fucking fed. I swear, we’re going to fucking kill you. You can take that to the fucking bank.

According to sources in law enforcement, Calabrese was “made” into the Chicago mob by Fat Mike Sarno as reward for his two high-profile hits and as part of a group of Cicero crew loyalists Sarno built his powerbase around. These same sources claim, Calabrese was sponsored for induction by Sarno’s then-No. 2 in charge, James (Jimmy I) Inendino, another former Wild Bunch member and reputedly the current crew chief in Cicero.

Today, Sarno, 61, is eight years into a 25-year prison stint for extortion. He’s considered one of the top suspects in the 2006 disappearance and murder of Outfit underboss Anthony (Little Tony) Zizzo, who like Tony Chiaramonti, was a Cicero crew stalwart of the “old guard” feuding with Sarno over video-poker machine routes.

The post Chicago Mafia Enforcer Checks Out Of The Game From Behind Bars, Dies A Suspect In Pair Of Outfit Hits appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The unrest in the Canadian underworld continues. There were three mob-related shootings in the past week across the border, two resulting in fatalities. For the past decade, crime syndicates in Montreal and Toronto have been under siege by upheaval in the country’s first family of the mafia, the Rizzuto clan out of Quebec, a series of intertwined conflicts that has accounted for a spate of gangland slayings now numbered in the hundreds.

Last Tuesday, Montreal Irish mob lieutenant John McKenzie survived an attempt on his life outside a suburban gym in a Laval strip mall. Montreal Italian mobster Steve Ovadia wasn’t so lucky the following day, as he was shot dead leaving a Laval eatery Tuesday. On Friday, Toronto wiseguy Cosimo E. Commisso, the 33-year old cousin of Ontario mob boss Cosimo (The Quail) Commisso, was killed alongside a female companion in front of his home.

The Commisso clan are at the forefront of the Canadian Calabrian mafia. Calabria is a region of southern Italy. The Quail is one of the country’s most powerful crime lords. For the past few years, the Commissos have been feuding with a gang known as the Wolfpack Alliance. In 2016, the younger Commisso (seen in the photo above) butted heads with Wolfpack Alliance affiliate Anastasios Leventis, having just landed in Toronto from Montreal where he had been sent by the Rizzuto syndicate to collect outstanding debts. Leventis was killed in January 2017.

The 48-year old McKenzie is a loanshark in the West End Gang, Montreal’s de-facto Irish mafia. McKenzie was best friends with slain West End Ganger Richard (Slick) Griffin, the organization’s liaison to the Rizzuto crime family until he was killed in July 2006 over a dispute involving a gambling debt. According to police sources, McKenzie assumed ownership in two local taverns from debtors who owed him money from juice loans.

Ovadia, 45, was an associate of current Rizzuto regime leaders Leonardo Rizzuto and Stephen (Little Sauce) Sollecito. Longtime Montreal Godfather Vito Rizzuto, Leonardo’s dad, died in December 2013, his mob family and blood family in tatters after a war erupted upon his incarceration in the United States in the 2000s for the infamous “Three Capos” murders in New York back in the 1980s.

The tensions haven’t ceased in the five years since the elderly Rizzuto passed away, allegedly from an aggressive bout of cancer. Rizzuto walked from Colorado federal prison sentence in 2012, returning to Canada and seeking to avenge the betrayal of a laundry list of loyalists-turned-enemies.

Police observed Ovadia meeting with Leonardo Rizzuto and Little Sauce Sollecito and a 24-year old drug dealer named Mario Campellone in September 2015. Three days later, Campellone popped up dead. Rizzuto is reputed to have grabbed the reins of the Montreal mafia from his father. Sollecito is alleged to be his underboss. The mob war that has engulfed Canada in the last nine years took the lives of Rizzuto’s brother and grandfather and Sollecito’s dad.

The post War Games Across The Border: Busy Week In Canadian Mob Affairs As Trio Of Shootings Rock Underworld appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Irish mobster John McKenzie threatened to kill an Italian button man in Montreal’s Rizzuto crime family in 2006 in the days after his best bud, business partner and fellow West End Gang lieutenant Richard (Slick) Griffin was gunned down in a feud with the Rizzuto clan, per a source in Canadian law enforcement. McKenzie, 48, survived a shooting in suburban Montreal last week when he was ambushed coming out of his gym located in a Laval shopping mall Tuesday afternoon.

In January 2017, McKenzie’s house was burned to the ground by rivals. McKenzie is a reputed loanshark in Canada’s Irish mafia, known locally as the West End Gang. Following word of McKenzie’s threats reaching Rizzuto crime family brass, according to this source, McKenzie was called to a sit down and told to cool his jets. He and Griffin had operated joint rackets together for years and co-owned multiple drinking establishments.

The Rizzutos have been besieged by internal strife for the last decade. Upon veteran don Vito Rizzuto being sent to prison in the United States in the late 2000s, members of his crime family and real family began getting picked off one by one by a group of renegade factions that joined forces to unseat the Rizzutos from power.

The 41-year old Griffin got into trouble with the Rizzuto organization in the years prior to it bursting into full-blown warfare. Griffin, who sometimes went by the nickname “Ricky Threads” for his sharp fashion-style, acted as the West End Gang’s go-between with the Rizzutos and was one of the gang’s top narcotics traffickers. Months before Griffin was killed, in early 2006, he partnered with the Rizzutos on an ill-fated ten-million dollar drug-smuggling deal, an attempt to transport 1,300 kilos of cocaine from Colombia to Montreal that fell apart when police intercepted the first shipment at a port on the country’s southern shore.

So Griffin was already on thin ice with Rizzuto leadership when in the weeks after the bust he blocked the Italians from collecting an $800,000 gambling debt owed to them by Frank Faustini, a business associate of his who ran up the hefty tab betting on sports with an on-line Rizzuto bookmaking ring. Faustini had accrued the debt two years previous and even endured a beating over his failure to repay it. On December 15, 2004, Faustini was summoned to a mob-owned bar in Laval and attacked by Montreal Mafiosi Frank (Chit) Del Balso and Lorenzo (Skunk) Giordano. The beating was captured on audio surveillance and a police stakeout across the street saw a bruised and battered Faustini was seen being ushered to his car by Giordano dressed in a blood-stained shirt.

Further audio surveillance installed by Canadian law enforcement caught Rizzuto patriarch Nicolo (Uncle Nick) Rizzuto, Vito’s father and main advisor, and Rizzuto capo Rocco (Sauce) Sollecito, discussing Faustini’s debt and the fact that Faustini had just sent $2,000,000 to the Bahamas for another business deal he was partnered with Griffin on using a mutual friend and attorney as his courier. A wire intercept from the winter of 2006 heard Del Balso recounting to a bookie underling of his how Uncle Nick Rizzuto confronted the lawyer responsible for carrying the cash to the Caribbean and afterwards was complaining that Griffin was preventing him from getting access to the money Faustini owed.

Del Balso was once again caught on a wire talking about the debt on the evening of June 8, 2006 in back-to-back phone conversations with Faustini and Griffin. First he warned Faustini that someone was going to get their “head cracked open” if the 800K wasn’t repaid soon and then implored Griffin to avoid upsetting the elder Rizzuto and to quit interceding on Faustini’s behalf. Griffin insisted he had the situation under control and that Rizzuto wasn’t upset with him. Later that month, Del Balso was heard informing Griffin that Rizzuto was indeed blaming him for the inability to recover Faustini’s debt and that if it wasn’t squared away soon he would be in physical danger.

On July 12, 2006, Griffin was killed in a hail of bullets in the driveway of his Notre Dame de Grace neighborhood home. Two days following the slaying, Sollecito was talking on a bugged cell phone with his son Stephen (Little Sauce) Sollecito and said “It would be a shame if someone got arrested over that piece of shit,” and moments later asked his son if he had heard about the hit transpiring in front of Griffin’s house. At the end of the call,the elder Sollecito commented that the Rizzutos had done the West End Gang a favor by “taking out that motherfucker.”

Law enforcement surveillance units watched from afar on the morning of July 21 when Faustini and the aforementioned attorney brought Del Balso a bag filled with money. Faustini went on to be indicted in a drug conspiracy case along with Nick Rizzuto and Rocco Sollecito.

Uncle Nick Rizzuto, Sauce Sollecito and Skunk Giordano have all been killed in the current mob war raging in Montreal. Stephen Sollecito and Rizzuto’s grandson Leonardo, are said to be running the crime family these days. Vito Rizzuto died of cancer in 2013 at 67.

The post Montreal West End Ganger Called On Carpet By Rizzuto Mob In Wake Of “Slick” Griffin’s ’06 Slaying appeared first on The Gangster Report.

A television station in Las Vegas reported this week that an arrest is imminent in the long-gestating Tupac Shakur murder case. Shakur, one of the most beloved rappers and hip hop music icons of all-time, was shot to death just off the Vegas Strip in September 1996 after attending a Mike Tyson boxing match. His slaying set off what came to be known as the East Coast-West Coast rap war. According to the recent report, new intelligence in the cold-case probe was gleaned from a Netflix docu-series exploring Shakur’s killing in which a man named Duane Davis claimed in an exclusive interview that he was in a car with the assailant in the homicide when it occurred.

Below is a timeline of events tied to the bi-coastal feud that resulted in a rash of still-unsolved murders, including the killing of Shakur’s friend turned rap-world rival, Notorious B.I.G., in March 1997.

THE EAST COAST-WEST COAST RAP WAR TIMELINE (1994-2015)

November 30, 1994 – The Quad Studios Shooting: Tupac Shakur is robbed, beaten, shot five times and left for dead as he arrived to record a verse on Bad Boy Records affiliate Little Shawn’s album at New York’s Quad Studios in Manhattan. The high-profile shooting and attempted murder sets off a decade of unrest in both Bad Boy and Death Row organizations. Puffy Combs and Tupac’s rapper protégé-turned-rival the Notorious B.I.G. were at the studio at the time recording B.I.G’s Junior Mafia group side project. Tupac blamed the Bad Boy contingent for either arranging the setup or knowing about it and not alerting him and the war was on, further instigated in subsequent months by Tupac’s accusatory comments to the press related to Combs and B.I.G and his feelings of betrayal.

September 23, 1995 – Suge Knight’s best friend and bodyguard Jake (The Violator) Robles is shot dead outside Atlanta’s Platinum City Club after Knight’s Death Row entourage scuffled with Puffy Combs’ Bad Boy camp inside the establishment with both record labels in attendance for a party thrown by Dirty South hip hop impresario Jermaine Dupree for his birthday. Combs’ bodyguard Anthony (Wolf) Jones is alleged to have pulled the trigger.

November 30, 1995 – Rapper, actor and one-time Tupac confidant Randy (Stretch) Walker is killed in a drive-by behind the wheel of his car on his way home from dropping his brother off in Queens following a night of partying. Walker’s murder fell on the one-year anniversary (almost to the exact minute) of Tupac’s shooting at Quad Studios which he was present for.

September 13, 1996 – The iconic Tupac Shakur succumbed to injuries suffered six days earlier when he was shot in the passenger’s side of Suge Knight’s BMW by an assailant in a passing vehicle while stuck in traffic just off the Las Vegas Strip headed to Knight’s nightclub for an after party thrown on the evening of the Mike Tyson-vs.-Bruce Seldon fight.

September 13-20, 1996 – In the week after Tupac’s death, a series of retaliatory shootings and slayings occurred in Los Angeles, estimated to have caused more than a half-dozen murders and injuries.

November 10, 1996 – Tupac’s childhood best friend and fellow hip hopper Yafeu (Kadafi) Fulu of the Tupac-backed Outlawz rap group is killed in Orange, New Jersey at the apartment of his girlfriend. Fulu was one of the only witnesses in Tupac’s murder.

March 9, 1997 – Oversized hip hop legend Christopher (The Notorious B.I.G) Wallace is shot to death sitting in the passenger’s seat of an SUV by an assailant in another vehicle after departing a party at L.A.’s Peterson Automotive Museum while on a trip to the west coast to promote his new album. Eerily, the album was titled Life After Death.

June 1, 1997 – One-time Suge Knight bodyguard Aaron (Heroin) Palmer – pronounced HAIR-RON – is killed in a drive-by at a traffic light in Compton, California on his way home from attending a Death Row-sponsored barbeque and touch football game

May 29, 1998 – Crips gang member Orlando (Baby Lane) Anderson, the reputed triggerman in Tupac’s murder, is killed in shootout in front of record store in Compton.

April 4, 2000 – Death Row affiliate and L.A. gangbanger, William (Willie the Chin) Walker, is killed sitting in a van on a desolate dead-end Compton street, shot in the head at close range

April 25, 2000 – L.A. gangbanger Vence (Big V) Buchanan, the reputed triggerman in the “Chin” Walker hit, is kidnapped, tortured, beaten and shot to death, his body left in a Compton graveyard. Buchanan’s brutal murder was reportedly videotaped by the perpetrators, allegedly dispatched by Suge Knight.

March 25, 2001 – Death Row affiliate and L.A. gangbanger David (Tilted Brim Dave) Dudley, reportedly believed to be one of the assailants in the heinous Buchanan homicide, is killed in front of a friend’s house in Compton.

April 3, 2002 – Death Row affiliate Alton (Buntry) McDonald, Suge Knight’s best friend and former bodyguard, is killed at a gas station, shot to death as he filled up his tank. Like Dudley, McDonald was a suspect in Buchanan’s slaying. Dudley had been gunned down a year prior in front of McDonald’s home.

June 7, 2002 – L.A. gangbanger Eric (Scar) Daniels, believed to be the triggerman in McDonald’s murder, is murdered himself in a retaliatory strike said to be ordered by Suge Knight.

October 16, 2002 – Death Row affiliate Henry (Hen Dog) Smith, Suge Knight’s best friend and former bodyguard, is killed outside a fried chicken joint in Compton sitting in his jeep, shot six times in the head.

July 24, 2003 – Death Row affiliate and L.A. gangbanger Wardell (Poochie) Fouse, the alleged triggerman in the Notorious B.I.G hit, is killed on his motorcycle in drive by shooting in Compton. Fouse had survived at least three other attempts on his life during the previous five years, including being shot in the “Chin” Walker slaying.

November 11, 2003 – Bad Boy affiliate Anthony (Wolf) Jones and an associate of his named Lamont (Riz) Girdy, are killed outside the Atlanta nightclub Chaos after a party thrown by Jermaine Dupree’s SoSoDef Records. Wolf Jones was Puffy Combs’ former bodyguard and allegedly the triggerman in the Jake Robles murder practically a decade prior. Legendary drug kingpin Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, the founder and leader of the transcendent Black Mafia Family (BMF), is the No. 1 suspect in Wolf Jones’ homicide.

September 23, 2015 – Crips gang member Terrence (Bubble Up) Brown, the reputed wheelman in Tupac’s murder, and an associate of his named Marquis (Wolf Da Boss) Tann are killed execution style at the Chief Keef Glo Shop marijuana dispensary in Compton owned by rapper Keith (Chief Keef) Cozart. Tann managed the dispensary.

The post Rap War Timeline: Charges About To Be Brought In Tupac Shakur’s Murder, Per Las Vegas Media Reports appeared first on The Gangster Report.

According to sources in law enforcement, one of the first things Keith (Conan the Barbarian) Richter did when he took the reins as the national president of The Pagan’s Motorcycle Club was to order a push into the northern part of New Jersey. Back in the spring, New Jersey Pagan Robert (Hell Boy) DeRonde was arrested for beating a member of the Newark Hells Angels chapter with a metal baseball bat. Immediately following the incident, federal authorities in the Garden State circulated a memo warning of violence related to Richter’s mandate and increasing tensions between The Pagan’s and the Hells Angels.

Headquartered on the West Coast, the Hells Angels opened up its Newark chapter in the 2000s. The Pagan’s are the most prominent motorcycle club on the East Coast and currently maintain a foothold on biker activity in South Jersey, the Jersey Shore and nearby Philadelphia. The club was founded in Maryland.

Richter, 58, comes from The Pagan’s Long Island, New York chapter, where he was the president in the 1990s before being sent to prison for putting a murder contract out on a local strip club manager who rebuffed extortions efforts from the club. A former Sergeant at Arms in the national Pagan’s hierarchy, Richter did 14 years behind bars and was released in 2012. Richter’s successor as boss of the Long Island Pagan’s, Jason (Roadblock) Blair was incarcerated for ordering the murders of several Hells Angels, continuing a turf battle that dates back to the 1970s..

The 54-year old Hell Boy DeRonde was nailed on narcotics trafficking charges in 2010. He was busted with Blair. Per a police report, in April, DeRonde tracked a Newark Hells Angel from his clubhouse to a gas station and attacked him, putting the Hells Angel in the hospital with broken ribs and a cracked skull.

Keith “Conan the Barbarian” Richter

The post New Pagan’s MC President Tasks Club With Expansion, Violent Attack Ensues In Newark appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Continuing to combat the forces pulling from Motown that flood Appalachia with drugs, a judge in West Virginia sentenced Detroit native Donald (Tank) Smith to life in state prison for a series of narcotics offenses, incarcerating him under a habitual offender statute. He was indicted four times between 2016 and 2017. The 35-year old Smith will be eligible for parole in 2033.

The state of West Virginia, especially the city of Huntington, where Smith’s most recent four cases spawn from, has been battling a drug pipeline from the Motor City for decades. Just this year alone, Smith is one of more than a dozen Detroiters to be brought to justice in the Huntington area for narcotics-trafficking activity. Smith’s criminal activity started in Detroit in the early 2000s before moving to Ohio and Kentucky.

West Virginia authorities have filed three major indictments targeting drug pushers from Michigan since the beginning of the year. Two crew leaders of the Young N’ Scandalous Gang out of Detroit’s Northwest side Brightmore neighborhood, went down in February. The Peterson Family organization went down in the spring.

The post The Detroit-West Virginia Drug Connection Absorbs Another Blow, “Tank” Smith Slapped With Life Term appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Reputed Chicago mafia associate John Crededio, a one-time driver and confidant of 1980s Outfit boss Joe Ferriola, died of natural causes this week. The 72-year old Crededio was at the forefront of bringing Hollywood to the Windy City. He owned Chicago Studio City, one of the most prominent movie and television production companies in the Midwest, located on Taylor Street near Chicago’s Little Italy.

Crededio got into the entertainment business in the 1970s, first renting out equipment and studio time for local television commercials and magazine shoots prior to opening his own production house. His Chicago Studio Rentals building on Washington Street just west of The Loop business-district, was sold to celebrated nationally-syndicated talk show host Oprah Winfrey and her Harpo Studios venture in 1986.

Two years before that, in the summer of 1984, Crededio was called to testify before a federal grand jury investigating organized crime and refused to answer questions, evoking his Fifth Amendment rights. The grand jury was probing the affairs of the Outfit’s then-Cicero crew captain Joe Ferriola, among other Chicago mob leaders as well. In addition to looking after his Cicero regime, Ferriola was in charge of overseeing an elite hit squad known as the Wild Bunch, a group tasked with carrying out all of the organization’s top murder assignments.

Joe Ferriola

FBI surveillance logs from the late 1970s and 1980s documented Ferriola often being chauffeured around town by Crededio. The two were neighbors in the upscale suburb of Oak Brook. Crededio talked to reporters at the time with pride regarding his close friendship with Ferriola, but vehemently denied playing any role in the area’s mafia.

Ferriola became don of the Chicago mafia on an acting basis in 1985 upon his predecessor, Joseph (Joey Doves) Aiuppa going on trial for racketeering stemming from the skimming of Las Vegas casinos and led the syndicate for a total of three years. Stricken with severe health issues, he was forced to step down in 1988.

Within the underworld, Ferriola is most well known for being the man that finally brought an end to the flamboyant and quite savage reign of the Outfit’s Las Vegas crew boss Tony (The Ant) Spilotro, which was depicted in the Martin Scorsese movie Casino. Per informants, Ferriola ordered Spilotro’s murder on the night he was inaugurated as the crime family’s official Godfather in January 1986 at a ceremony held in a private banquet room at the Czech Lodge in North Riverside attended by the city’s mob brass.

Spilotro and his younger brother Michael were beaten and strangled to death in June 1986 inside a suburban Chicago basement. Ferriola died in March 1989 at 61 after receiving a heart transplant in Texas.

The post Alleged Chitown Mob Affiliate, Local Movie & TV Production Chief John Crededio Passes Away appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Outlaws Motorcycle Club family lost Ocala, Florida chapter member Carlton (Speedy) Gerlock recently. Speedy Gerlock died in a Doral, Florida prison last month while serving a life sentence for a murder committed in the 1970s. He was 77 years old. Although headquartered out of the Midwest, the Outlaws MC dominate biker affairs in Florida and other parts of the American southeast.

Gerlock was convicted of shooting J.T. Hinson to death following a bar fight in Pasco County on January 5, 1977. Hinson had fought with Gerlock and fellow Outlaws MC brother George (Bam Bam) Terek in the tavern before the two bikers went to retrieve weapons, returned and blew him away in front of a number of witnesses inside the establishment.

Months earlier Bam Bam Terek had gotten into a gun fight with Hillsborough County police during a drug raid. Terek and Gerlock were convicted of Hinson’s homicide at an August 1978 trial. Turncoat Ocala Outlaws chapter member Edward (Monkey) Laschinski was the trial’s star witness. Laschinski was killed in a motorcycle accident less than a year later.

Carlton “Speedy” Gerlock

The post Florida Outlaws MC’er “Speedy” Gerlock Goes Down For The Count, Dies Behind Bars At 77 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

New Orleans musician Bill Bonham pled guilty to manslaughter this week in the murder of Big Easy mobster Kent (Frenchy) Brouillette, a larger-than-life gangland character tied to Carlos (The Kingfish) Marcello, the city’s longtime mafia boss who died back in the 1990s after attaining worldwide infamy for bragging of his role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The 52-year old Bonham stabbed Brouillette to death inside a local flophouse on December 3, 2015 during a fight over Brouillette pawning a number of Bonham’s instruments to feed his drug habit. Brouillette was 79.

Bonham faces up to seven years in prison when he’s sentenced in the fall. Those around the city’s music scene knew Bonham as a guitar player in a series of area rock and jazz bands. Upon his return home from a trip out of state in late 2015, he found his collection of expensive instruments pilfered and proceeded to attack Brouillette, blaming him for the theft.

Flashy and colorful, Brouillette served as a political fixer, pimp and narcotics lieutenant under Marcello, but in his later years fell into severe squalor because of his substance abuse. In 2014, he published a book titled Mr. New Orleans – The Life of a Big Easy Underworld Legend with author Matthew Randazzo. Spending money as fast as he made it, Brouillette often vacillated between living lavishly and being in the poorhouse.

The Marcello crime family is an organization of the past, having pretty much dismantled in the years following the syndicate’s namesake and patriarch passed away from natural causes in 1993. Mob activity in New Orleans is a miniscule enterprise these days in contrast to Marcello’s heyday when the crime family was massively powerful and controlled vice inside the French Quarter and well beyond. New Orleans was the first American city to have an Italian mafia presence with mob affairs dating back to the 1800s.

Marcello and other mafia dons have been suspected of conspiring to kill President Kennedy, blown away by sniper fire in November 1963 as he paraded through the streets of Dallas. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had known connections to the New Orleans mob.

Brouillette acted as Marcello’s go-between with corrupt politicians and policemen, including Louisiana Governor and U.S. Congressman Edwin Edwards. He took pinches for running prostitution rings in 1964 and then again in 1971.

Carlos Marcello

The post Killer Of New Orleans Wiseguy & Fixer “Frenchy” Brouillette Takes Plea, Cops To Manslaughter appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Despite rumors of his demise circulating the Toronto and Montreal underworlds, respectively, in recent months, Canadian mafia lieutenant Daniele (Dark Danny) Ranieri remains on the run from the law. The 33-year Rizzuto crime family crew boss, a fugitive for more than two years, wasn’t one of the victims of a well-publicized drug-world massacre in Los Cabos, Mexico, late last year, Royal Canadian Mounted Police confirmed to the local media last week.

RCMP speculates the young, powerful and quick-tempered mob leader is either in Mexico, the United States, Cuba, Italy or Venezuela. Six drug dealers were found hanging from three different bridges in the resort town on the same night last December.

The last sighting of Ranieri was in Havana around Christmas in 2015. Before his 30th birthday he had been given oversight of the Montreal-based Rizzuto crime family’s Toronto wing, per a number of sources, media reports and government documents. It’s alleged Ranieri grabbed the reins of the Toronto crew upon the 2014 murder of his mentor, Juan (Joe Bravo) Fernandez, in Sicily.

Headquartered in Bolton, Ontario, Ranieri was a building contractor and feared mob enforcer, known on the street for being ambitious and eager to please his superiors in the syndicate. He has already served three prison-stints (two federal, one province) for robbery, assault, bookmaking and firearm offenses. When he was locked up, Ranieri got caught peddling drugs and had time tacked on to the end of his last sentence for threatening a corrections officer. It was in prison where Ranieri met and became friends with Fernandez, who was legendary Montreal mafia don Vito Rizzuto’s main muscle in the Toronto area.

Joe Bravo was deported from Canada in 2012. While Fernandez was in Europe — finally settling in Sicily –, the coffee-skinned, heavily-tattooed Ranieri became his eyes and ears on the street. Ranieri famously had “Cosa Nostra” tatted across his chest. In 2010, Joe Bravo was intercepted on tape telling other higher-ups in the Montreal mob that he wanted to propose Ranieri for membership in the crime syndicate.

The unabashed loyalty Ranieri afforded Fernandez actually alerted Sicilian police to Fernandez’s whereabouts in Palermo. Dark Danny’s visit to Sicily in July 2012 allowed the cops to pinpoint Joe Bravo’s exact location, as a surveillance squad followed Ranieri from the airport to a meeting with his boss at the Hotel Da Franco Il Conte in the town of Bagheria. Palermo’s anti-mafia unit was tipped off to Ranieri’s pending arrival a task force in Canada which had been alerted by an informant of Dark Danny’s pending trip overseas.

According to his indictment, Ranieri’s face-to-face with Fernandez in the summer of 2012 was to warn him of Rizzuto’s displeasure with his lack of support in the raging mob war that was enveloping Canada, as multiple factions in the Montreal crime family joined forces to try and unseat the incarcerated Godfather at the tail end of doing eight years behind bars in America for a triple murder back in New York in the 1980s. The running tally of bodies in the mob war approaching it’s ten-year anniversary next year is in the triple digits. Rizzuto died suddenly of cancer in 2013.

Daniele’s name made it into testimony in April as part of a drug and racketeering trial in Toronto. One witness told jurors that Daniele taught him to put Vaseline on his face and hands prior to doing murders to avoid getting gun residue on yourself. On a piece of audio surveillance played for the jury heard one mobster telling another, “Danny, that guy right there is a psychopath, he’s crazy man…..I hung around the guy for a week, after that, I was like ‘I can’t keep this guy by me no more…he’s fucking crazy (he’s going to bring all kinds of heat). I don’t need that.”

The post Law Enforcement: Toronto Gangster Still Avoiding Capture, Fugitive Mob Figure Not Killed In Mexico appeared first on The Gangster Report.

New York’s Sex, Money & Murder Gang is synonymous with the drug game in the Bronx, the same way the zoo and the Yankees are to animals and baseball. Started in 1992 by teenage Peter (Pistol Pete) Rollack, as ambitious as he was deadly, SMM went on to rule the streets of the Soundview Homes Projects and the Castle Hill Projects, eventually sprouting satellites in other cities and identifying itself with the United Bloods Nation.

The first incarnation of the gang crumbled by the end of the decade and the dawn of the New Millennium, with most of Rollack’s inner circle rolling on him in court. British author Jonathan Green’s book on the SMM click, titled Sex, Money, Murder – A Story of Crack, Blood & Betrayal, was released on the market earlier this month and packs quite a punch. His raw story telling skill and deep street sources paint a vivid and in-depth portrait the gang’s rise and fall.

Let’s break down the major players in the Sex, Money & Murder heyday man-for-man:

Peter (Pistol Pete) Rollack – The studious, psychopathic and movie-star handsome founder the Sex, Money & Murder Gang in the Bronx’s Soundview Homes Projects and grew it into a powerhouse in the thriving New York drug trade of the early 1990s before being imprisoned for the rest of his life on homicide and racketeering charges.

*Pistol Pete descended from New York drug game royalty — his dad Leonard (Petey the Boxer) Rollack was a top lieutenant for legendary Harlem kingpin Leroy (Nicky) Barnes.

David (Twin) Mullins – The underboss of the Sex, Money & Murder Gang who came from Soundview’s Castle Hill Projects, Mullins’ Thanksgiving 1997 murder spawning from Pistol Pete’s jealousy, spelled the end of the gang’s original core and structure.

Emilio (Lead Pipe) Romero – Pistol Pete’s street boss and successor as shot caller when Rollack was smacked with his life sentence.

Shawn (Sugar Shaft) Stokes – Pistol’s Pete’s head of security and the man responsible for killing Twin Mullins on behalf of an incarcerated Rollack: the hit occurred during an annual Thanksgiving Day football game for Bronx dope boys in the Soundview Homes Projects.

Savon (Yaro Pack) Codd – Sex, Money & Murder’s business manager and the gang’s crew boss in Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

George (G-Dub) Wallace — Pistol Pete’s uncle, early supplier and top advisor at the height of his rein.

Byron (B-Love) Thomas — Third-in-command on the street upon Rollack getting locked up in 1995, ranking behind only Twin Mullins and Lead Pipe Romero.

*B-Love becomes street boss of the gang after Rollack and Leadpipe Romero are both locked up and Mullins is murdered (Leadpipe emerges back on the street following B-Love’s bust and heads the SMM crew into the early 2000s while playing both sides of the fence as a confidential informant).

Andre (The Bear) Brown – Lead Pipe Romero’s bodyguard and main enforcer.

Rufino (Ro Ro) Turner – Lead Pipe Romero’s brother and first right-hand man.

Corey (Little Bear) Brown — Bear Brown’s baby brother and Lead Pipe Romero’s second right-hand man

Emphraim (E-Man) Solar – Twin Mullin’s bodyguard and driver.

Anthony (Big Ant) Hardy — Pistol Pete’s bodyguard and driver.

Juan (Dapper John) Castro – Sex, Money & Murder’s main wholesale cocaine supplier.

Kevin (Crackhead Bemo) Aller – Sex, Money & Murder’s resident schlock and crew leader in Kingston, New York.

Shelton (Coolie) Smith – Sex, Money & Murder’s crew boss in Maryland.

David (TV Dave) Gonzales — Sex, Money & Murder’s crew boss in North Carolina.

Jasmine (Total Package) Mansell – One of Sex, Money & Murder’s most loyal enforcers.

Robinson (Mac 11) Lazala – One of Sex, Money & Murder’s most loyal enforcers.

The post The Big Sexy: Bronx’s Sex, Money & Murder Gang Roll-Call: Boastful NYC Drug Crew Ran Streets In Soundview appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Audio surveillance released this week as part of a giant racketeering and drug case recently filed against members of The Pagan’s Motorcycle Club in Rhode Island and Massachusetts serves to further demonstrate Pagan’s reputed national president Keith (Conan the Barbarian) Richter’s growing desire to expand his club’s presence into parts of the country previously unchartered. Back in the spring, it was reported that Richter encouraged Pagans in New Jersey to annex biker turf in Newark run by the rival Hells Angels by any means necessary, resulting in a baseball-bat attack of a Newark Hells Angel at a gas station down the street from the Hells Angels clubhouse.

Months earlier, Richter had set his sights on conquering Rhode Island.

Pagan’s Providence president Deric (Big Tuna) McGuire flashed on the law enforcement radar last fall. His cell phone was bugged from June 2017 through March 2018. At Richter’s urging, McGuire planted The Pagan’s flag in Rhode Island last summer. Previously, McGuire was more known as a proficient Providence dope boy than a big shot in the biker world.

On the tapes made public via an affidavit filed Tuesday morning in the case arising out of state court dubbed Operation Patched Out, you can hear Richter making arrangements with McGuire to start a Pagan’s chapter in the Providence area. McGuire, 33, opened The Pagan’s first Rhode Island clubhouse in his hometown of Woonsocket. He’s the lead defendant in the Operation Patched Out indictment which dropped in May, includes 57 Pagan’s and Pagan’s associates spanning Providence to Boston and charges more than 200 felonies (220 in all) in it.

“It’s a new age out there brother, it’s the Pagan’s age, now,” Richter tells McGuire on one tape.

The Pagan’s are the most powerful motorcycle club on the East Coast and currently lord over biker activity in Baltimore, Virginia, Delaware, Long Island, South Jersey, the Jersey Shore and Philadelphia. The club was founded in Maryland back in 1959.

The 58-year old Richter is the former president of The Pagan’s Long Island, New York chapter and at one time served as the national club’s Sergeant-At-Arms. Richter ran his suburban New York chapter in the 1990s prior to being sent to prison in 1998 for putting a murder contract out on a strip club manager who rebuffed his extortions efforts. At some point after his release from behind bars in 2012, per sources, Richter rose to the club’s national presidency.

Before he was the boss of the Rhode Island Pagan’s, McGuire led a club called the Thug Riders. McGuire’s entire Thug Riders crew traveled to see Richter in Elizabeth, New Jersey in August 2017 on a trip in which they were all “patched over” to The Pagan’s, per McGuire’s indictment. Having pled not guilty in the case, McGuire was denied bail and is being held in state custody until trial.

In April, South Jersey Pagan Robert (Hell Boy) DeRonde allegedly beat a North Jersey Hells Angel with a metal baseball bat after getting a pep talk from Richter. The Hells Angel victim was in the hospital for a week with a cracked skull and several broken ribs. DeRonde, 54, is a convicted felon and in custody awaiting trial for the assault .Immediately following the incident, federal authorities in the Garden State circulated a memo warning of violence related to Richter’s expansion mandate and subsequent increasing tensions between The Pagan’s and the Hells Angels.

The post Police Tapes: Pagan’s MC Set Up R.I. Chapter In ’17 As Part Of East Coast Expansion Mandate appeared first on The Gangster Report.