Famously brash and infamously mobbed up Ohio politician James Traficant is the subject of a new documentary, Traficant – The Congressman of Crimetown, opening for a one-week theatre run in Cleveland this weekend. The doc will have a one-week theatre run in Traficant’s hometown of Youngstown and nearby Pittsburgh too. Directed by native Youngstowner Eric Murphy, it will be available at Vimeo, ITunes and Amazon in October.

The ever-colorful and outspoken Traficant was a U.S. Congressman for almost two decades before being booted from the House of Representatives in Washington following his indictment and eventual conviction and incarceration on racketeering and bribery charges in the early 2000s. He died in a tractor accident on his Ohio farm two years ago this week at 73 on September 23, 2014.

For more than a half-century, the city of Youngstown and the surrounding Mahoning Valley region was synonymous with organized crime activity, car bombs and rampant political and police corruption. Youngstown was rechristened “Crimetown” or ‘Bombtown” by members of the national media.

As a young man, Traficant excelled on the football field and played quarterback for the University of Pittsburgh. He also grew up rubbing elbows with future Youngstown mob heavies the Carabbia brothers (“Ronnie the Crab,” “Charlie the Crab,” and “Orlie the Crab”), Lenny Strollo, “Little Joey” Naples and “Ernie B” Biondillo.

Charlie the Crab, Naples and Biondillo were all slain gangland style, Strollo, the city’s No. 1 mafia figure throughout most of the 1990s, wound up entering the Federal Witness Protection Program, where he resides today at 85. The Carabbias belonged to the Cleveland mafia family. Strollo, Naples and Biondillo reported to the Pittsburgh mafia family.

In 1981, Traficant was elected Mahoning Valley County Sherriff. Four years later and after beating federal racketeering and corruption charges while acting as his own attorney, he won a seat in Congress as a Democratic rep from Ohio’s 17^th voting district located in the historically blue-collar Northeast portion of the state.

Traficant was indicted by the feds for a second time in 2002. This time, the charges stuck like glue and he did seven years in prison. Taking one last shot at his old congressional seat, he ran as an independent candidate in 2011 and lost the election to his successor and former aid Tim Ryan.

Eric Murphy originally conceived the idea of telling Traficant’s story on the screen working as an aid himself for Ryan, Traficant’s then-second in command and eventual replacement, while a student at Youngstown State University in the mid-1990s as the city’s mob faction imploded. Violent infighting and brazen intimidation tactics – Lenny Strollo ordered the execution of a prosecutor who survived the hit attempt and several bullet wounds in a Christmas morning shooting which occurred in 1996, only months after Strollo had Ernie Biondillo killed – shook the region to its’ core.

“It was a dangerous city back then, (prosecutor) Paul Gains got shot, they whacked Ernie Biondillo, everybody was running for cover,” Murphy recalls. “Youngstown’s original sin has always been corruption. James Traficant was a symptom of that environment.”

James Traficant in 1982 when he was Sherriff.

Traficant became an iconic symbol of the everyman in his climb up the ladder of Mahoning Valley politics, championing the area’s vast community of steel-mill and factory workers and successfully taking on the U.S. government.

“When he beat the first set of charges against him in the 1980s, he became a genuine folk hero in Youngstown,” Murphy said. “Growing up as a kid the topics of conversations at the dinner table were Jesus Christ, JFK and Jim Traficant. He was like the Sherriff from the movie Walking Tall.”

Murphy became fascinated by Traficant watching him give speeches on local television as a boy.

“He’d buy time at the local TV stations, get in front of the camera and start barking like he was a pro wrestler, like he was Randy “The Macho Man” Savage,” remembers Murphy with a laugh. “I didn’t know anything about politics then, I just knew this guy was awesome to watch.”

Initially, Murphy wrote a screenplay for a film based on Traficant’s life, shopping it around Los Angeles in the 2000s. In 2004, he shot a “short” starring seasoned Hollywood vet and Youngstown-native Ed O’Neill (Married With Children, Modern Family) as a loosely-based version of Traficant.

By 2009, he decided to begin planting the seeds to transition from telling the story in movie form to unspooling it in documentary form. O’Neill is one of the doc’s interview subjects. His uncle Joe O’Neill was not only the inspiration for his Al Bundy character on the hit Fox television show Married With Children but also a former judge and criminal defense attorney in Youngstown known for repping the notorious Little Joey Naples, shot dead in the summer of 1991 by a sniper’s bullet.

Watch the trailer for Traficant – The Congressman of Crimetown here.

The post Compelling New Documentary Focuses On Life & Times Of Youngstown Congressman James Traficant, Friend To The Mob And The Working Man appeared first on The Gangster Report.

For more than a decade, the Chicago mob experienced mass bloodshed from the so-called “Chop Shop Wars” of the 1970s and early 1980s, the Outfit’s violent takeover of the Windy City’s stolen-car racket. From 1971 to 1983, over 20 bodies dropped tied to the conflict, including a number of local organized crime figures tasked with leading the siege on the region’s vast network of independent car thieves such as James (Jimmy the Bomber) Cataura, Sam (Sammy the Mule) Annerino and William (Billy the Chopper) Dauber.

Chicago Chop Shop Wars Murder Timeline

June 17, 1971 – Robert (Bobby the Racer) Pronger disappears from a Southside diner

August 8, 1972 – Guido (Weeds) Fidanzi

September 2, 1972 – Roger Roach

September 3, 1972 – Mike Ragan

June 16, 1975 – Harry Holzer and his girlfriend Linda Turner are shot to death. Holzer was the co-owner of South Chicago Auto Parts with Outfit associate Steve (Stevie O) Ostrovsky.

November 1975 – Donnell Crawford

December 1975 – Jimmy Small

October 10, 1976 – Steve (Stevie O) Ostrowsky

Jamuary 13, 1977 – Norm Lang

March 4, 1977 – Pat Marusarz

June 13, 1977 – Richie Ferraro

June 15, 1977 – Joe Theo

July 3, 1977 – John Schneider

July 7, 1977 – Earl Abercrombie

July 25, 1977 – Sam (Sammy the Mule) Annerino

August 25, 1977 – Jimmy Palaggi

July 28, 1978 – James (Jimmy the Bomber) Cataura

May 23, 1979 – Timmy O’Brien

July 1979 – Don Lawson

May 24, 1980 – Robert (Chick) Kurowski

May 27, 1980 – Edmiro DeJesus

July 2, 1980 – William (Billy the Chopper) Dauber & his wife Charlotte are gunned down in their car following a high-speed chase with the infamous Outfit hit team known on the streets as “The Wild Bunch” after appearing at a court date

July 1981 – Charlie Monday

November 1982 – Harry Rosenbloom

January 2, 1983 – Robert Subatich

March 2, 1983 – Michael (Monk) Chorak

The post The Chop Shop Wars: Mafia In Chicago Assumed Control Of Car-Theft Industry In Bloody Fashion appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Seasoned Springfield, Massachusetts mob enforcer Rex Cunningham and is longtime gangland running buddy Brian Hoyle were indicted this week on a bevy of state racketeering charges, including counts of sports gambling, money laundering and loan sharking. They aren’t unfamiliar to handcuffs.

Wednesday’s indictment is the second organized crime case to hit the Springfield mob in as many months. Five Springfield wiseguys were indicted by the feds in the first week of August, headed by infamous Western Mass “bad boy” Ralphie Santaniello (49), the alleged ad-hoc co-crew boss in the region these days. Like the five-pack before them last month, Cunningham and Hoyle pled not guilty. Santaniello is being held without bail after it was revealed he threatened to kill an extortion victim.

The 65-year old Cunningham was groomed in the Springfield mafia – a satellite wing of New York’s Genovese crime family – by local mob elder statesman Mario Fiore and throughout the 1980s and first half of the 1990s, became known as the area’s most-feared collector working for the notorious Scibelli brothers, even stalking a debtor to his sister’s wake in order to assault him. Fiore is 80 and said to be in semi-retirement.

Masslive.com resident Western Mass mobologist Stephanie Barry reported back in the spring that two Springfield area watering holes tied to Cunningham were raided by state authorities in connection with a criminal probe into Cunningham’s activities. According to the indictment, Cunningham and Hoyle (59), both convicted felons, headquartered their current set of reputed rackets at the New O’Brien’s Corner Bar & Grill, one of the taverns raided in April.

The pair was busted together on racketeering charges in 1992 and did stiff terms behind bars as guests of the federal government (Cunningham was released in 2011, Hoyle came out in 2009). Back in the 80s and 90s, Cunningham’s home base was Dillon’s Tavern.

If convicted in this current state case, they face maximum 25-year prison sentences. Cunningham’s ruthlessness was on display in the following snippet of FBI surveillance from the early 1990s, where he’s caught bragging about beating a man unmercifully who borrowed $15,000.

“Oh yeah, well I got ’em, his sister died. we sat outside the wake. That’s where I got ’em. I went myself because, I prefer that. I sat outside the wake. I followed him, a perfect tail. Followed him and as he got out of the car, I grabbed him and threw him outta of the fucking car. I took him behind the Gaslight (Lounge). Had three guys waiting there, we beat him with fucking pipes, tire irons. I dropped his car keys on his chest. I told him we just beat your ass. And I said I’ll call an ambulance for you. We left him bleeding all over the place….When he got out of the car at first, I said to him the bad news is, I said, the bad news is this aint no meeting like I told you. And I said nobody’s here but me and I’m gonna beat your ass. Then I smashed him in the face and he went down and them three guys come out from behind a dumpster a couple minutes later. And I backed off and I said, ‘one guy at a time and don’t hit him in the head’. He went down pretty quick and he didn’t wake up ’til the next week”

In an interview with Barry in late 2011, a little less than a year after he was sprung from prison, Cunningham discussed the good ole days compared to the modern-day mob landscape in Springfield.

“We had a tough group of guys…..if you did something wrong you took a beating,” he said. “There’s still money on the street. Everyone is still taking bets, but it’s a free for all….its’ a viper’s nest of snakes and rats.”

The post Rex-In-Effect Again: Springfield Mobster With Reputation For Ferocity Goes Down In State Bust appeared first on The Gangster Report.

United States prosecutors in Boston intend on dusting off former witness and Patriarca crime family associate Tommy Hillary for use in their upcoming murder case pending against one-time New England mafia don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme – pictured above – , according to court filings regarding the discovery process late last week in Massachusetts federal court. The 71-year old Hillary was raised as crime family namesake Raymond Patriarca’s surrogate son and turned government informant in the early 1990s after getting busted alongside Salemme’s son in a Hollywood extortion scheme. He hasn’t taken the witness stand in nearly 20 years

Salemme, also once closely aligned to Patriarca’s regime which ended more than three decades ago, was yanked out of the Witness Protection Program himself back in the summer and charged with taking part in the 1993 gangland slaying of Boston nightclub impresario and mob associate Stevie DiSarro, who was partners with Salemme in a South Boston bar called the Channel and had begun cooperating with federal authorities. Hillary has been free since 2000, having served eight years in prison and testifying against corrupt Teamsters Union officials on the east coast.

The six-page court document, first acquired and reported on by ace television investigative journalist and resident Patriarca Borgata mobologist Tim White of WPRI in Providence, Rhode Island Friday, also reveals the government’s granting of immunity to five New England mob associates, including the brother of Salemme’s former second-in-command, Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca and four former DeLuca underlings all, like him, hailing from the Providence side of the Patriarca clan.

DeLuca, 71, entered the Witness Protection Program in 2011 and was arrested for lying to investigators regarding his knowledge of the DiSarro murder in July. He’ll plead guilty later this month and testify against the 83-year old Salemme, admitting that he was responsible for disposing of DiSarro’s body.

Per last week’s filing, the government has given immunity to Bobby the Cigar’s younger brother Joe and one-time knock-around buddies Billy Ricci, Charles (Harpo) Garabedian, Richard Cinquegrana and Roland Wheeler. Garabedian and Wheeler are the only ones without criminal records. Garabadien denies any involvement in the DiSarro murder conspiracy.

Ricci was nailed in a drug conspiracy earlier this year and cut a deal with the feds, copping to a weapon charge and pointing authorities to his property in Providence as to where to find DiSarro’s remains. The converted industrial mill Ricci owns on Branch Avenue was just a construction site in the spring of 1993 when Bobby and Joe DeLuca took possession of DiSarro’s body from Salemme and buried him there.

DiSarro was slain on May 10, 1993, according to the August indictment, inside the Salemme family home in suburban Boston, strangled to death by Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. as his dad watched on and his friend and mob associate Paul Weadick held his victim’s legs. Weadick, already a convicted murderer, was indicted with the elder Salemme in the summer for DiSarro’s homicide. The government categorizes him a close friend of current acting New England mob boss Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio. Salemme, Jr. died of AIDS in 1995.

Frankie Boy Salemme, Jr. and Tommy Hillary were indicted together in 1992 for shaking down FBI agents posing as a Hollywood film company trying to do business in New England and willing to pay off the Patriarcas to grease labor-union personnel on the east coast so they purportedly could use non-union workers on future projects shot in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The federal sting was dubbed “Operation Dramex” and became the inspiration for the 2004 Alec Baldwin movie The Last Shot.

Starting in the late 1980s up until they were indicted, Salemme Jr. and Hillary were regularly being sent to Los Angeles by Cadillac Frank to scout potential west coast rackets for the Patriarca syndicate to dabble in. Unfortunately for them, their point man in Southern California, Boston-transplant Ralphie Franchi, was informing for the FBI from the second they stepped foot in LaLa Land.

Hillary was roommates with his surrogate father, Raymond Patriarca, who quasi adopted him as a boy, in a Providence apartment in the final years of Patriarca’s life. The scowling New England Godfather died of a heart attack in 1984. Cadillac Frank Salemme rose through the ranks of the mob as one of Patriarca’s main enforcers, serving 16 years in prison for trying to kill a mob attorney representing a witness against Patriarca with a car bomb.

Salemme ruled the New England underworld throughout the first half of the 1990s. He was jailed in 1995 and flipped in 1999. Because of Hillary’s Irish heritage, he couldn’t be inducted into the mafia. Hillary signed his cooperation agreement with the government in the months before the Salemmes conspired to kill DiSarro, believed to be skimming money from the club he co-owned with the mob in addition to his status as a cooperator. Despite not being a ‘made man,’ Hillary was a trusted lieutenant and strong arm for Patriarca and then Cadillac Frank.

The Salemmes were silent partners with DiSarro, 43 at the time of his death and a Providence native, in the Channel, a music venue-turned-go-go bar, located in Boston’s prominently Irish “Southie” neighborhood. Cadillac Frank is half-Irish. Paul Weadick was employed by DiSarro at the Channel after completing a seven-year prison stint for manslaughter in the 1982 mob slaying of Joe Mistretta. Law enforcement surveillance logs from the early 1990s show Hillary spending hours at a time in a private office in the back of the night spot.

Another silent partner in the Channel was Stephen (Stevie the Rifleman) Flemmi, the former No. 2 in charge of Southie’s Winter Hill Gang led by infamous Irish crime lord and confidential FBI informant James (Whitey) Bulger. According to last week’s filing, he will be in line to testify against Salemme at the DiSarro trial as well. Salemme, Bulger and Flemmi all grew up together and were allies on the street.

Bulger and Flemmi were given ownership stakes in the Channel after getting the club several operating licenses using their various contacts within the local municipality. Flemmi began cooperating in 2003 and immediately told the FBI that he had unintentionally walked-in on DiSarro’s execution taking place in Salemme’s living room. Bulger’s doing life in prison for murder and racketeering and had his life of crime detailed in the 2015 film Black Mass starring Johnny Depp.

The post Raymond Patriarca’s ‘Adopted Son’ Set To Testify Against Patriarca Protégé, Fmr. Boss Of N.E. Mob In DiSarro Murder Trial appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Chicago Mob 1980s Hit List Time Line

Outfit Murders – 1980-1989

Damage Toll: 33 bodies found, 31 slayings in the decade

July 2, 1980 – Chicago mob enforcer and Chicago Heights crew member William (Billy the Chopper) Dauber and his wife Charlotte are gunned down in their car after leaving a court appearance by the Wild Bunch, the Outfit’s top hit team. The heavily-feared and physically-imposing Dauber was one of those tasked with consolidating all the Windy City’s independent car thieves and chop shop owners under the Outfit banner. Facing drug and weapons charges, Dauber, a suspect in a number of gangland homicides himself, had started cooperating with the FBI in the months preceding his slaying.

November 28, 1980 – Greek wiseguy, social club operator and Chicago mob shakedown victim Nick Valentzas is shot to death in an Elmwood Park parking lot. Valentzas had worn a wire and testified in a federal extortion case involving the Outfit after his refusal to pay a street tax led to a vicious beating

March 14, 1981 – Chicago mob enforcer, hit man and Wild Bunch member William (Butch) Petrocelli is found beaten, strangled and tortured to death after getting caught stealing money he was supposed to be filtering to imprisoned wiseguys’ families

May 6, 1981 – Outfit associate and convicted felon Fiore Forestiere is found shot in the head five times in a van in River Grove

May 18, 1981 – Outfit associate and jukebox company owner Sam Farrugia is found stabbed to death, his throat cut in the back of a station wagon in River Forest

August 5, 1981 – Outfit associate, drug dealer and chop-shopper Charles Monday is found dead in the trunk of his car on West Schubert Avenue

August 7, 1981 – Outfit associate, drug dealer, chop shopper Anthony Legato, Monday’s partner, is found in the trunk of his car beaten to death

September 13, 1981 – Chicago mob soldier Nick D’Andrea was found tortured and shot to death in the trunk of his car, accidentally killed while being interrogated by his bosses in the Outfit over the botched hit on Chicago Heights capo Al Pilotto .

October 3, 1981 – Chicago mob soldier and Pilotto’s No. 2 in charge Sam (The Gobber) Guzzino is found shot in the head, his throat slit in a ditch on the side of a suburban road. Guzzino was in charge of the ill-fated Pilotto murder contract.

June 3, 1982 – Outfit associate, bookie and Cicero crew member Bobby Plummer is beaten to death inside his Lake County mansion that doubled as a backdoor high-roller casino and stuffed in the trunk of his car

October 8, 1982 – Outfit associate and indebted gambler John Manfredi is shot in the back of the head in the basement of a Berwyn, Illinois pizza parlor

January 11, 1983 – Outfit associate and chop shopper Bobby Subatich is shot in the back of the head and stuffed in the trunk of his car

January 20, 1983 – Labor-union racketeer, insurance magnate and longtime Outfit front Allen Dorfman is killed in the parking lot of a Lincolnshire, Illinois hotel leaving a lunch meeting with fellow top-tier Outfit associate Irving (Red) Weiner. Dorfman was headed to prison after getting conviction alongside then-Grand Avenue capo Joseph (Joey the Clown) Lombardo in a high-profile racketeering conspiracy case

March 2, 1983 – Outfit associate, car thief and Grand Ave. crew chop-chop specialist Michael (Monk) Chorak is shot to death behind the wheel of his car. The Chorak slaying concluded the so-called “Chop Shop Wars,” on-and-off sprees of violence in the local car-theft industry lasting a dozen years and totaling some two dozen casaulaties

July 14, 1983 – Chicago mobsters and hit men John Gatuso and Jasper (Big Jay) Campisi are found strangled, stabbed and tortured to death in the trunk of Gatuso’s Volvo in suburban Naperville, Illinois. Gatus, a former cop, and Campisi had botched a hit on Northside gambling lieutenant, Ken (Tokyo Joe) Eto earlier in the year, leading to Eto taking refuge as a witness for the federal government

December 16, 1984 – Outfit associate and underworld finance whiz and banking specialist Anthony Crissie is shot to death. Crissie had once worked as the head of a bank and was being pressured by the FBI and IRS to divulge information on his business partners in mob.

January 10, 1985 – Outfit associate and notorious Northside crew enforcer Leonard (Little Lenny) Yaras is gunned down as he walked into work at his Rogers Park uniform factory headquarters. He was suspected of skimming gambling proceeds he was responsible for collecting Yaras’ dad was Davey Yaras, a respected Jewish Chicago mob lieutenant and enforcer who died of a heart attack in the early 1970s in Florida where he watched after Windy City mafia affairs in the Sunshine State.

February 9, 1985 – Chicago mob soldier Charles (Chuckie English) Inglese is gunned down in the parking lot of Horwath’s Restaurant in Elmwood Park shortly after returning to the fold in the Outfit following a near-decade semiretirement spent in Florida. Inglese had been slain former Chicago Godfather Sam Giancana’s right-hand man and gambling boss and began beefing with Outfit brass upon his return

February 12, 1985 – Prolific independent bookie Hal Smith is beaten and tortured to death, stuffed in the trunk of his car after feuding with the Outfit’s Cicero crew’s Lake County faction over street tax

July 26, 1985 – Chicago mob solider, Northside crew member and porno racket boss Patsy Ricciardi was shot to death and stuffed in the trunk of a stolen car following him being suspected of informing for the FBI

January 13, 1986 – Outfit associate Mike Lentini is shot to death behind the wheel of his car

January 27, 1986 – Outfit associate Richie DePrizo is shot to death. DePrizo was on the verge of being indicted for fraud related to city of Chicago construction projects

March 16, 1986 – Outfit associate and indebted gambler Joe Cocozza is shot to death behind the wheel of his car

June 7, 1986 – Outfit associate and west coast crew member Emil (Little Mal) Vaci is kidnapped and shot to death in Phoenix, Arizona after testifying in front of a federal grand jury investigating Chicago mafia activity in Las Vegas. Vaci worked in mob-backed casinos in Vegas and ran travel junkets from Illinois to Nevada in conjunction with the Outfit

June 14, 1986 – Chicago mob Las Vegas crew boss Anthony (Tony the Ant) Spilotro and his younger brother and protégé Michael are beaten and strangled to death in the basement of a Bensenville, Illinois residence, their bodies dumped in a shallow grave dug in a Northwest Indiana cornfield. Spilotro’s rogue behavior and mounting legal problems made him expendable.

September 14, 1986 – Chicago mobster, hit man and Southside crew enforcer Giovanni (Big John) Fecarotta is shot to death in front of a bingo hall on Belmont Avenue after botching the Spilotro brothers burial exactly three months to the day of his own slaying

November 13, 1986 – Outfit associate Tommy McKillip is stabbed and shot to death, found in the back of a Chevy Blazer truck

September 23, 1987 – Outfit associate and salon owner John Castaldo is shot to death, his body left in a River Forest alley not far from the one of two beauty parlors he owned. Castaldo was in heavy debt to Chicago mob figures

August 14, 1988 – Outfit associate John Pronger is shot to death on his porch as he opens the front door of his house for his killers

November 22, 1988 – Outfit associate and bookie Phil Goodman, connected to the former Spilotro crew in Las Vegas, is beaten to death inside a motel room

December 1989 – The remains of slain Chicago mob victims Robert (Broadway Bobby) Hatridge and Mike Oliver are unearthed in DuPage County, more than 20 years after they went missing, in a makeshift Wild Bunch graveyard less than a mile away from where Wild Buncher Joseph (Jerry the Hand) Scalise lived. Oliver was a machinist and small-time hood in the porno racket and killed in an adult bookstore. Hatridge was a thief and drug pusher from Ohio tied to New York’s Bonanno crime family and its’ Pizza Connection heroin smuggling ring who left for a meeting with Scalise and never came home.

The post Chicago Mob 1980s Murder Timeline: Ripping & Running In The Reagan Era ChiTown Style appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Chicago Mob 1990s Hit List

Outfit Murders – 1990-2000

Damage Toll: 10 bodies

*Violence in the Windy City mafia dipped sharply in the 1990s, the amount of gangland slayings were down 21 hits from the previous decade

May 14, 1990 – Outfit associate Jimmy Pellegrino found shot in the back of the head, wrapped in a tarp and floating down the Des Plaines River

July 2, 1990 – Outfit associate and bookmaker Victor Lazarus is found shot in the back of the head in a Northside parking lot. Lazarus, 86, took action in both Las Vegas and his hometown of Chicago

November 6, 1991 – Outfit associate Edward Pedote, a stolen jewelry fence and convicted burglar and drug dealer from Naperville, Illinois is bludgeoned with a table leg and shot in the face in a Chicago furniture store

November 21, 1991 – Outfit business associate and real estate liquidator Wally Lieberman from ritzy Northshore Chicago suburb Northbrook is shot to death in Cicero. Lieberman was connected to imprisoned Outfit lieutenant Robert (Bobby the Gabeet) Bellavia. His wife was Bellavia’s secretary. Bellavia was jailed months earlier on a racketeering and murder indictment centered around the Cicero crew’s Lake County wing

November 5, 1992 – Outfit associate and drug dealer Sam Taglia is shot twice in the back of the head, his throat slit and his body stuffed in the trunk of his car. Chicago mobster Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena was put on trial but acquitted for the Taglia hit. Vena was seen with Taglia in the hours before his killing

November 5, 1994 – Outfit bookie and native-Italian Giuseppe Vicari is beaten and shot to death inside his Westside Chicago restaurant, La Casa De Caffe. Vicari had been in the United States for five years and was under indictment in a gambling case at the time of his murder

January 6, 1997 – Jewish Chicago mob associate and then-independent bookie and loan shark Herbert (Fat Herbie) Blitzstein is killed inside his Las Vegas home in an ill-conceived takeover of Blitzstein’s rackets hatched in tandem by representatives from the Los Angeles and Buffalo mob crime families operating in Nevada. Blitzstein was a lieutenant under the Outfit’s slain Las Vegas crew boss Tony (The Ant) Spilotro in the 1970s and 1980s.

July 2, 1997 – Outfit associate and Chicago businessman William (Bill the Pallet Man) Benham is killed inside his own office by Windy City mob loanshark and Southside crew member James (Jimmy Poker) DiForti

May 15, 1998 – Mike Cutler, set to be a witness against the son of Outfit’s Southside crew capo Frank (Tootsie) Caruso in a racially-motivated attempted murder case involving the beating of a 13-year old boy, is shot to death on the Westside after a night of partying with friends

December 23, 1999 – Chicago mafia lieutenant, hit man and Southside crew member Ronnie Jarrett is gunned down en route to a funeral. He doesn’t die until January 25, 2000. Jarrett was once a part-time member of the notorious Wild Bunch assassin crew in the 1970s and 1980s and had been feuding with Outfit street boss John (Johnny Apes) Monteleone.

The post Chicago Mob 1990s Murder Timeline: Clipping & Climbing In The Clinton Era ChiTown Style appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Veteran Detroit mob figure Frank (Frankie the Bomb) Bommarito died of natural causes this week, cashing in his chips at 87 years old and free from government constraints for the past two decades. The colorful and fiercely-loyal Bommarito had been hospitalized earlier this month with symptoms of heart and kidney failure. Some in law enforcement think he might have held either first-hand or very strong second-hand information related to the infamously-unsolved 1975 disappearance and murder of labor union boss Jimmy Hoffa.

For years, “The Bomb” was legendary Detroit mafia chief Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone’s right-hand man. A multiple-time convicted felon, his last conviction was for insurance fraud in 1993, the same year he beat charges of overseeing a Giacalone crew subunit of burglars, collectors and extortionists operating on Detroit’s working class lower eastside. The government’s star witness recanted his testimony and the racketeering counts were dropped.

Giacalone passed away in 2012. He and his older brother and fellow mob heavyweight Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone are believed by the FBI to have organized the details for the iconic Hoffa hit. Tony Jack died of old age in 2001 under federal indictment for widespread racketeering activity. Bommarito’s status as Billy Jack’s best friend and longtime top lieutenant led investigators to speculate he could have been used by the Giacalone brothers in the murder itself or more likely the disposal of Hoffa’s body (still never found).

“Frankie lived life on his own terms, love or hate ’em, he did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to and how he wanted to do it,” said a Detroit mob associate. “That guy was one of a kind, a true original. Wherever he is right now, he’s making people laugh.”

Known for a big personality and wisecracking antics, in 2013, Bommarito, an unabashed karaoke enthusiast, shopped a reality television show titled ‘The Bombfather’ centered on his retirement years. FBI wires from the 1980s intercepted him serenading rows of fruits and vegetables while employed at Farm Fresh Produce, a wholesale fruit and vegetable vendor in Detroit’s historic Eastern Market which served as Billy Giacalone’s then-headquarters.

“We’d pick the Bomber up on bugs singing to the lettuce and cantaloupes every morning when he opened the place,” recalled retired FBI agent Mike Carone. “He’d sing them Sinatra, Louie Prima, all the classics. He was a real character and obviously lived a full life considering his chosen profession.”

According to federal records, Bommarito served as the Detroit mob’s liaison to the local motorcycle gangs and African-American underworld. An FBI surveillance team watched as Bommarito shuttled members of the syndicate’s Giacalone faction from Detroit to Dexter, Michigan and an inauguration ceremony held at an upscale hunting lodge anointing Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco boss of the crime family in the summer of 1979.

Tocco died of heart failure two years ago. The Giacalones were Tocco’s street bosses. They had been running the Family on a day-to-day basis since the early 1960s.

“The Bomb was always in the mix in the Giacalones heyday, if you saw Tony Jack and Billy Jack somewhere, he wasn’t far behind,” Carone said.

The post Longtime Motor City Mobster, Possible Hoffa Case Link, ‘Frank The Bomb’ Finally Bows, Checks Out Of The Game At 87 appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Chicago mob’s Westside crew is being eyed in a series of recent daytime robberies in the city’s Jefferson Park neighborhood, per sources in Illinois law enforcement. Last week, the Chicago Police Department issued a public alert about the “backdoor break-in jobs,” burglaries that take place in the afternoon focusing on residents who are away at work and have lax or no security systems. There were five reported robberies in the month of September. Among the items reported missing were large amounts of cash, jewelry and police electronics equipment

Traditionally, the Outfit’s Westside regime, more commonly referred to as the Grand Avenue crew on the streets, has been known as a crew that specializes in burglaries and high-end heists. Windy City Westside mob stalwarts Robert (Bobby Pinocchio) Panozzo and Paul (Big Paulie) Koroluk went down in a state racketeering bust two years ago centered around a robbery ring they ran targeting drug gangs. The pair was convicted together on burglary charges in 2006

The 57-year old Koroluk took an 18-year plea bargain back in the spring. Panozzo, 56 and once the reputed “chief of staff” for alleged Grand Avenue capo Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena, is cooling his heels as a guest of the government awaiting trial on those charges as well as an additional extortion charge arising out of federal court in Rockford, Illinois.

Vena, 68, is said to have risen to street boss these days. Vena’s 66-year old brother in law, Chuckie Russell, a convicted felon and reputed burglar, allegedly has been seen spending time in Jefferson Park since the beginning of the summer, GR sources claim. Jefferson Park is on the city’s Northwest side, mob territory belonging to Vena’s Grand Avenue gang of wiseguys, thieves and assorted misfits.

Russell was born in West Virginia and relocated to Chicago in the 1970s. He did almost two decades behind bars for raping a woman and then throwing her out of a window in 1993. Chicago Crime Commission files tie Russell to legendary Grand Avenue crew enforcer and hit man Francis (Frankie the German) Schweihs, who died of cancer in 2008 while in prison awaiting trial in the landmark Operation Family Secrets murder and racketeering case.

Rumors of a federal indictment naming Vena and members of his crew in a racketeering conspiracy, possibly involving unsolved homicides, have proven unfounded. The FBI did confirm to media outlets back in August that Vena is considered a top suspect in the 2006 disappearance and murder of Outfit underboss Anthony (Little Tony) Zizzo.

The post SOURCES: Windy City Mafia’s Westside Regime Getting Glims From Cops For String Of Neighborhood Break-Ins appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Pittsburgh mob underboss-turned-FBI informant and witness for the government Chucky Porter passed away this week from kidney failure. He was 84 and living back in suburban Penn Hills in the final years of his life.

The half-Italian Porter was known as a major earner in both east coast and Midwest underworld circles and was the No. 2-in-command in the LaRocca crime family in the late 1980s and early 1990s, serving under Steel City Godfather Mike Genovese at the peak of Genovese’s reign. Porter and several associates were indicted in a giant drug, gambling and racketeering case in the spring of 1990. Convicted at a high-profile trial later that same year, Porter eventually flipped and according to prosecutors dispensed a treasure trove of mob secrets and helped thwart a reported half-dozen gangland assassinations during his extensive cooperation, earning him an early release in 2000.

Heavily respected and trusted nationwide, he provided the feds intelligence on more than just the LaRocca clan too which made him extremely valuable as a turncoat. Because of his role as a mafia dignitary he often aided in the mediation of disputes between various regional Italian mob syndicates and was able to give up information on crime families in Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, New England, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and Youngstown as well. His former boss Genovese died in 2006 of natural causes, pretty much dropping the curtain on any semblance of the mafia in the Pittsburgh area.

Genovese officially took over the Pittsburgh mob from organization namesake Sebastian (Big John) LaRocca in 1984 and inducted Porter into the crime family in a 1986 ceremony. Starting his ascent through the local mafia ranks as a storied street tough in the city’s large Lawrenceville neighborhood, Porter spent time working as a postal worker prior to becoming Genovese’s right-hand man.

Porter was the second significant mob figure in the country to die this week and the second former historic Pittsburgh wiseguy to drop dead in recent months: Detroit mobster Frank (Frankie the Bomb) Bommarito, a “person of interest” in the iconic Jimmy Hoffa kidnapping and murder from 1975, died at 87 of heart and kidney failure on Monday and Eugene (Nick the Blade) Gesuale, Porter’s main muscle for many years, was felled by a stroke this past summer while in retirement in Florida following a lengthy prison term.

Chucky Porter c. 1990

The post One-Time Steel Town Mob Underboss Chucky Porter Dies At 84, Sent Pittsburgh Mafia Reeling With His Cooperation In 1990s appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Retired Major League Baseball star and convicted felon Denny McLain’s reputed ties to the New York mafia are explored in a new book penned by former U.S. Secret Service agent Nino Perrotta, who investigated a phone-card scam allegedly perpetrated in tandem between McLain and New York’s infamous Gambino crime family in the late 1990s. Perrotta’s book is called Dual Mission. Charged alongside several top Gambino syndicate leaders in a 1998 federal racketeering indictment, the case against McLain, 72, was eventually dropped.

Deadline Detroit ran an excerpt from Dual Mission this week on its website. You can see the article and read the excerpt here.

A two-time CY Young Award winner and the last MLB hurler to post a 30-win season, McLain has been dogged by rumors of intermingling with the mob since his professional pitching prime in the late 1960s. McLain went 31-6 in 1968, leading his Detroit Tigers to a World Series championship, claiming an American League MVP award and his first of two straight Cy Youngs.

The year before, the Tigers’ ace missed two starts deep in the 1967 pennant race which they wound up narrowly losing to the Boston Red Sox due to a toe injury law enforcement sources attribute to a physical altercation with Detroit mob captain Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone and related to a hefty unpaid debt belonging to the Chicago born-and-bred McLain. Giacalone and his older brother Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone controlled all the illegal gambling in the area and were suspects in multiple gangland slayings.

According to underworld lore and statements made by federal informants, McLain racked up close to $50,000 in debts tied to betting on horse racing and encountered an ornery Billy Giacalone at a Labor Day weekend party held on a yacht docked on the Detroit River where Giacalone intentionally stomped on his foot. Giacalone was far from star struck upon seeing his celebrity debtor at the gathering.

“I don’t know how they do things in Chicago, fat boy, but in this town you pay what you owe no matter who you are,” he is alleged to have told the husky-built McLain prior to obliterating his toe with the heel of his boot.

In 1970, McLain served three separate suspensions issued by MLB, one for running an illegal gambling operation himself, one for dousing a pair of sports writers with a bucket of water and still another for bringing a gun on the Tigers’ team airplane. MLB investigators found McLain had booked bets for a local mob-backed gambling outfit overseen by Don (Donnie Dice) Dawson, a highly-placed associate of the mafia in Detroit and one of the most prolific bookmakers in the country throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

Dawson admitted to paying players on the Detroit Lions to fix pro football games. Lions Hall of Fame defensive lineman Alex Karras was suspended by the NFL for the entire 1963 season for his gambling affairs, ownership stake in a mob-connected bar and grill in downtown Detroit and links to Dawson, the Giacalone brothers and other Motor City mobsters as well. Tony Jack died in 2001 of natural causes, his baby bro Billy Jack followed more than a decade later in 2012.

FBI surveillance logs from the 1970s show McLain dining and socializing with Chicago mob enforcer Anthony (Tony the Ant) Spilotro in Las Vegas. McLain spent a great deal of time in Las Vegas, even holding gigs at hotels on the Strip playing the organ. The small, but ferocious Spilotro was the Chicago mob’s point man in Vegas and on the west coast and died viciously, beaten, stomped and strangled to death in June 1986 for gross insubordination in a gruesome killing depicted in the movie Casino.

McLain pitched his last game in the pros in 1972 for the Atlanta Braves. Retirement wasn’t kind to him. Twice he was imprisoned, first in 1985 for racketeering and narcotics conspiracy charges out of Tampa, Florida and then in the 1990s for stealing three million bucks in pensions from workers at a meat-packing plant he owned in Chesaning, Michigan. The racketeering and drug bust was overturned on appeal and he pled guilty to lesser charges in 1988.

McLain’s co-defendant in the racketeering and drug case was New Jersey organized crime figure Frank Cocchiaro. Court records named Cocchiaro a protégé to slain Monmouth County mob boss Anthony (Little Pusso) Russo of the Genovese crime family.

While McLain was serving time in prison for his pension fraud case, he got himself indicted with 40 members and associates of the Gambino mob out of New York stemming from his ownership of a telecommunications company in Michigan. The indictment alleged McLain was teaming with the east coast wiseguys – and in some cases even ripping them off – in a series of phone-card scams aimed at duping foreigners. Federal wiretaps intercepted chatter between several different sets of Gambinos mentioning McLain and his company by name in their conversations about the alleged scams.

McLain’s son-in-law told investigators he and McLain traveled to New York on a number of occasions to meet with Gambino mob soldier Anthony (Tony the Carpenter) Plomitallo and discuss details of the racket. Plomitallo was a driver, bodyguard and emissary for then-Gambino boss John Gotti, Jr., who pled guilty in the case much to the chagrin of his incarcerated father, John (The Dapper Don) Gotti, the iconic, image-obsessed 1980s and early 1990s Big Apple Godfather. “Old school” Gambino capo Greg DePalma was also nailed in the case.

The elder Gotti succumbed to cancer behind bars in 2002. Today, Gotti, Jr. is said to be retired from the mafia. McLain has repeatedly denied ever knowing Gotti Jr. and currently lives back in suburban Detroit.

The post Denny McLain & The Mafia: Cy Young-Winning Pitcher Played Ball With The Mob In MLB Career And After appeared first on The Gangster Report.

With the Chicago Cubs fighting for their first World Series championship in over a century, historic Wrigley Field and the surrounding Wrigleyville neighborhood is a hotbed of activity these days – the Cubs are slugging it out with the L.A. Dodgers in the National League playoffs right now. Some people speculate that the Chicago mob’s last hit might have taken place in the area six years ago.

Reputed Outfit associate Norberto (The Bull) Velez was gunned down in his West Addison Street apartment building, a stone’s throw away from the storied ball park, on November 26, 2010 in a Thanksgiving Day slaying that remains unsolved. The 31-year old Velez worked as a bouncer at the iconic Cubby Bear bar and grill located just outside the confines of Wrigley Field and is alleged to have quarreled with Chicago mobsters from the city’s Westside Grand Avenue crew regarding a debt on a loan he had taken out a year earlier. The Cubby Bear first opened its’ doors in 1953.

Sources categorized Velez as a “collector” and “sometime bookie and drug dealer” for the Outfit on the Northside where bustling, party-heavy Wrigleyville is. Since the late 1990s, Chicago’s Northside has been under Westside mob rule. Suspected Grand Avenue crew capo Albert (Albie the Falcon) Vena, an alleged hit man who beat homicide charges at a 1995 trial, is the focus of a multi-agency federal criminal probe, according to members of Windy City law enforcement.

If Velez’s murder was related to Outfit affairs, sources say, it would have had to at least be sanctioned by Vena due to his position in the local mafia hierarchy and the fact that any business Velez did on the street fell under his jurisdiction. The diminutive, yet highly-feared 68-year old Vena rose through the Outfit ranks as a collector on the Northside. Back in the summer, the FBI named Vena as a suspect in the 2006 disappearance and presumed murder of disgruntled Chicago mob underboss Anthony (Little Tony) Zizzo.

The investigation of Vena went into high gear, per sources, after Outfit associate and Grand Avenue crew enforcer Jeff Hollingshead began informing in December 2013 while in prison staring at kidnapping and home invasion charges which he eventually received a 15-year sentence for. Hollingshead, 50, was in Vena’s inner circle, a first cousin to Vena’s second-in-command, Christopher (Christy the Nose) Spina and a driver and bodyguard for Vena lieutenant Robert (Bobby Pinocchio) Panozzo, before being jailed.

At the time of Velez murder in the late fall of 2010, Hollingshead was living in Wrigleyville in the same apartment that Velez resided in and was killed at and per sources was tasked with overseeing Outfit activity in the neighborhood. Panozzo, 56, is currently behind bars facing a state kidnapping and racketeering case and a federal extortion beef out of Rockford, Illinois.

The post Cold-Case Wrigleyville Murder Might Have Ties To Chicago Mafia, Victim Bounced At Famous Watering Hole appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Aging and infirmed New England mob captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent is set to be released from prison in the coming days. The 75-year old St. Laurent has been behind bars for most of the past two decades for a pair of federal extortion convictions and a bust in an ill-fated murder-for-hire plot. He hails from the Patriarca crime family’s Providence, Rhode Island faction and served the final years of his most recent sentence at a prison hospital in Massachusetts.

In his younger days on his way up the local mob ladder, St. Laurent served as the crime family’s legendary namesake Raymond Patriarca’s point man in controlling all the bookmakers in the Providence area, according to FBI records. Patriarca died of a heart attack in 1984, around the same time the Saint was reportedly promoted to capo status.

Nailed on extortion charges in 1999, St. Laurent did the next six years in prison. Released in early 2005 he resumed his racketeering ways, lasting only a year back on the streets until he was indicted again in another extortion case in April 2006 resulting from his longtime taxing of bookies operating in the southeastern part of Massachusetts.

During his 13 months of freedom in the mid-2000s, St. Laurent tried unsuccessfully to solicit the murder of heated mob rival Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca. On multiple occasions, St. Laurent approached two separate wired-for-sound FBI informants requesting that they kill DeLuca on his behalf, shooting him in the head and telling him “this is from the Saint” before they pulled the trigger. St. Laurent was feuding with DeLuca over the fact that he believed Bobby the Cigar was spreading the rumor that St. Laurent was a rat and St. Laurent’s further belief that DeLuca had tried muscling in on his rackets while he was incarcerated.

Ironically, DeLuca entered the Witness Protection Program five years ago. He was arrested in connection to a murder conspiracy this past summer and is once again cooperating with federal authorities. DeLuca, 71, has admitted to burying the body of mob associate, Stevie DiSarro behind a converted mill in Providence in May 1993 after the nightclub owner and FBI informant was slain in suburban Boston at the residence of then-Patriarca borgata boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme allegedly by Salemme, his son and protégé, the now-deceased Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. and mob associate Paul Weadick, hours earlier.

DeLuca was Cadillac Frank Salemme’s underboss and main representative in Rhode Island. The 83-year old Salemme, who entered the Witness Protection Program in 1999 while incarcerated on racketeering charges, and Weadick, a plumber, convicted murderer and seasoned mob associate considered closely aligned with current acting New England mafia boss Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio, have pled not guilty in the DiSarro homicide and are set to stand trial.

Per sources, the bad feelings between St. Laurent and Bobby DeLuca date back 25 years to St. Laurent thinking he was “passed over” by Salemme in favor of DeLuca as Salemme’s No. 2 and Rhode Island rep upon Salemme officially assuming the reins as don in 1991. From that point forward, sources say, St. Laurent and DeLuca began butting heads because St. Laurent resented DeLuca’s more prominent position in the Patriarca hierarchy.

St. Laurent, DeLuca and Salemme were all aligned together in the Patriarca crime family war of the late 1980s and first portion of the 1990s when Salemme’s ascent to the throne was challenged by a Boston-based contingent led by capos Joseph (J.R.) Russo and Vincent (Vinnie the Animal) Ferrara. Salemme survived an assassination attempt in June 1989 when he was shot several times in the parking lot of a Saugus, Massachusetts’ International House of Pancakes.

Anthony St. Laurent in a mug shot from the 1980s

FBI agents watched on two months later as St. Laurent and Patriarca syndicate Providence wing power Nicky Bianco traveled from Rhode Island to attend a high-level peace meeting with Russo and Ferrara at a hotel restaurant in Randolph, Massachusetts. Both St. Laurent and Salemme are suspects in the fall 1992 slaying of infamous east coast mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan, per sources in New England law enforcement.

The heavily-feared Hanrahan, a frequent collector of outstanding debts for the Patriarca clan, was shot to death in Providence on the night of September 18, 1992 after having dinner and drinks with a group of wiseguys in the city’s Federal Hill neighborhood. He was supposedly trying to shakedown a bookmaker already paying protection money to St. Laurent. Two years prior, Hanrahan and Salemme were indicted side by side in an attempted kidnapping case.

According to FBI informants, the bookie that the 39-year old Hanrahan approached to extort immediately contacted St. Laurent who sent him to an underling named Gordon O’Brien in the St. Laurent stronghold of Taunton, Massachusetts who in turn called Salemme on the phone in Boston to inform him of Hanrahan’s unsanctioned strong-arm tactics. Hanrahan told the people he was with the night he died that he was coming into a “big score” later that evening. St Laurent allegedly accepted a large payment from the bookie in question in the 48 hours leading up to Hanrahan’s murder.

St. Laurent’s son, Anthony, Jr., was indicted and convicted alongside his pops in the Saint’s last two extortion busts. The younger St. Laurent walked free in March.

The post The Saint Comes Marching Home: Notorious N.E. Mafia Figure On His Way Home After Long Stint In The Can appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Popular and high-profile Detroit criminal defense attorney Richard Lustig, a master litigator and wheeler dealer in the courtroom who represented some of the Motor City’s most notorious felons in his near five decade lawyering career, died this past week at 73 years old, succumbing to complications from a recent stroke.

Lustig famously crafted favorable deals for legendary Detroit drug lord Milton (Butch) Jones and jailed mob associate Don Wells, who pointed authorities to a dig site in the government’s long, tireless quest to find the remains of slain labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa. He also was known for representing mega bookmaker and trusted Detroit mafia advisor Allen (The General) Hilf, one of the nation’s top underworld sports gambling specialists from the 1970s until his death of kidney failure in 2014.

Hilf and Lustig were often seen sitting together courtside at Detroit Pistons game sharing in their lifetime love of pro basketball. Lustig was in attendance at Hilf’s January 2014 funeral when “The General” was buried with a pair of dice in his hand. Reputed current Detroit mob don Jack (Jackie the Kid) Giacalone, Hilf’s best friend, was a pallbearer.

According to FBI informants, Hilf fixed Pistons games during the franchise’s “Bad Boy Era” of the late 1980s and early 1990s where Hall of Famers Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars led the team to repeat NBA championships (1989-90). Thomas was investigated for his alleged role in point shaving and illegal gambling activities as part of a federal probe into the Jewish Hilf and his Italian mob pals, even called in front of a grand jury in 1990, however, never charged with any wrongdoing. Hilf and Giacalone were indicted on racketeering and gambling charges in 1991.

Back in 1984, Lustig negotiated a surrender and sweetheart plea for Butch Jones, the self-proclaimed “Henry Ford of heroin,” and boss of the landmark Midwest narcotics gang, Young Boys, Incorporated (YBI), who had been on the run from the law for over a year hiding out in Arizona. YBI had transformed the local drug trade from their base on Detroit’s Westside. The majority of the organization was indicted in the fall of 1982. Jones, suspected of ordering the murders of YBI co-founders, Raymond (Baby Ray) Peoples and Dwayne (Wonderful Wayne) Davis, did just under eight years behind bars in the case.

Lustig got convicted drug dealer and mob associate Don Wells out of prison early in 2006 after Wells told the FBI he was staying at mafia enforcer and labor union goon Rolland (Big Mac) McMaster’s Hidden Dreams Ranch in suburban Detroit the day former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa went missing from a restaurant parking lot in the summer of 1975 just a few miles away and witnessed “suspicious activity” on the ranch late that evening. The FBI searched McMaster’s then-property and came up empty.

Hoffa was feuding with the mob at the time of his death regarding his desire to reclaim the Teamsters presidency following a prison term of his own for bribery, fraud and jury tampering. For years, the tall and imposing McMaster served as Hoffa’s main muscle in the union ranks.

Wells got busted for running a marijuana distribution ring in 2004, using cartage trucks to transport his product from Texas to Michigan. He was originally hit with a 10-year prison sentence prior to revealing his purported knowledge in the Hoffa case and Lustig using it as a proverbial get-out-jail-free card for his client.

The post Well-Liked Motown Lawyer Lustig Passes Away, Did Excellent Legal Work For YBI’s Jones, Detroit Mafia’s ‘General’ appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The New York Times ran a lengthy and compelling feature story recalling the life and times of baseball player-turned-mob hit man Maurice (Pro) Lerner this week penned by Dan Barry. Lerner, who died peacefully of natural causes three years ago at 77, was one of the New England mafia’s most-feared hired guns during the 1960s at the peak of legendary don Raymond Patriarca’s reign. Read Barry’s story here.

In his days before the Jewish-born Lerner, born and raised in Brookline, Massachusetts with dreams of big-league fame (garnering him his nickname as a teenager), bounced around the minor leagues in the late 1950s and the first part of the 1960s, playing alongside future MLB stars like Tony Perez, Rusty Staub, Roy White, Tommy Agee and Rico Petrocelli and hitting an impressing career .308 before trading in his cleats, glove and bat for a revolver and brass knuckles.

The Pro’s Hit List – Age Of Aquarius New England Assassin Style

January 1965 – Low-level New England mobster Bobby Rasmussen was found dead in a snowbank in Wilmington, Massachusetts, shot in the back of the head with a .38 caliber pistol, allegedly by Lerner as punishment for attempting a shakedown of Pro Lerner’s gangland mentor John (Irish Red) Kelley. Informants told police that Rasmussen was lured to Lerner’s apartment and killed there.

June 1967 – Kelley crew member Tommy Richards vanishes in the days before Kelley was slated to go on trial for boosting over a million dollars in cash from a postal truck heist five years earlier in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Richards was allegedly part of the heist team and Kelley was said to have worried about Richards’ ability to keep quiet under intense government scrutiny. Informants told police that Lerner killed Richards by shooting him at point blank range as Kelley watched on and their victims reportedly pleaded “I never did anything to hurt you guys,” prior to Lerner filling him with lead. Kelley would be acquitted in the robbery.

December 1967 – Kelley crew member George (Billy A) Agisotelis is allegedly shot to death in the face by Lerner as the pair drove in Lerner’s automobile, according to an FBI informant. Agisotelis was charged and acquitted with Kelley in the Plymouth postal truck heist.

April 20, 1968 – New England mob figure and renegade bookie Rudy Marfeo and his bodyguard Anthony Melei are gunned down inside a Providence, Rhode Island grocery store after Marfeo fell out of favor with Patriarca and refused to pay a street tax. A little over a year later, Kelley flipped and joined Team America, fingering Pro Lerner as the shooter in the double homicide and future New England mob boss Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio as the go-between in the murder conspiracy on behalf of Patriarca. Lerner was convicted at trial in Rhode Island in 1970 and smacked with two life prison sentences, however, Kelley would subsequently admit to exaggerating details of the slayings at the behest of a corrupt FBI agent and the Pro was set free after the case was tossed and he copped a plea to lesser conspiracy charges, receiving time served in 1988. Upon his release from prison, Lerner moved out west and retired. Patriarca died of a heart attack in 1984. Manocchio is currently in retirement in Providence after five years in prison on extortion charges following a dozen years running the crime family in the late 1990s and a majority of the 2000s.

The post The Pro Tour: New England Mafia Assassin ‘Pro’ Lerner’s Hit Parade Gets NY Times Treatment appeared first on The Gangster Report.

According to exclusive Gangster Report sources, the rumor that New England mob captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent is or was a federal confidential informant stems from a leaked affidavit signed by noteworthy Boston underworld turncoat Stephen (Stevie the Rifleman) Flemmi that somehow made it into the hands of east coast wiseguys or their associates. In the affidavit dated December 3, 1999, Flemmi – seen above – admits he was told by his handler in the FBI back in the late 1980s that St. Laurent was also informing for the government.

The 75-year old St. Laurent was released from a decade-long prison sentence for extortion and an attempted murder conspiracy earlier this week. The intended target of St. Laurent’s murder plot was former fellow Patriarca crime family capo Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, who angered St. Laurent for spreading the rumor that he was a rat and trying to muscle in on the Saint’s portfolio of rackets while the Saint was away serving time behind bars in the early 2000s.

DeLuca himself flipped five years ago and entered the Witness Protection Program in 2011. He was arrested this summer for lying to the FBI in his debriefing regarding his knowledge of the 1993 murder of nightclub owner and New England mafia associate Stevie DiSarro and has since admitted to burying DiSarro’s body behind a converted mill in Providence, Rhode Island.

DiSarro’s remains were unearthed in March. DeLuca’s one-time boss in the mob, Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, the don of the Patriarca clan for the first half of the 1990s, is facing homicide charges in the DiSarro slaying, ripped out of the Witness Protection Program in August, weeks following his former second-in-command Bobby the Cigar.

The tension between St. Laurent and DeLuca, 71, allegedly began in the fall of 1990 when the Boston-stationed Salemme selected DeLuca over St. Laurent to be his No. 2 in charge and proxy in Providence. Two years prior, St. Laurent was having problems in Las Vegas which led to Stevie Flemmi, the right-hand man to notorious Boston Irish mob boss and controversial “CI” James (Whitey) Bulger, discovering the Saint was most likely a government informant as well.

Bulger and Flemmi were “opened” as confidential informants in the 1970s and FBI agent John Connolly, who grew up idolizing Bulger in the South Boston neighborhood they were both raised in, was their handler. Their scandal-plagued relationship got chronicled in the 2015 Hollywood film, Black Mass.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Salemme, closely aligned with Bulger and Flemmi on the street, had dispatched lieutenants of his out west to California and Nevada in order to plant a proverbial flag and generate criminal activity for the Patriarcas in fresh territory. Per sources, St. Laurent spent a considerable amount of time in Las Vegas during this period (even getting “Black Booked” from Sin City casinos) and started shaking down any bookmakers and loansharks he could find.

One of these bookies, according to Flemmi’s 1999 affidavit, was already paying protection but St. Laurent was undeterred and threatened to harm the man’s teenage daughter if he didn’t cough up cash immediately – the bookie subsequently went to his unnamed mob benefactor and had a murder contract slapped on St. Laurent’s life resulting in a series of sit downs between mob higher ups back east throughout the summer of 1988. When Flemmi brought this specific piece of intelligence to Connolly, he was told by Connolly that St. Laurent was a FBI confidential informant too and he and Bulger were to intercede on St. Laurent’s behalf to help the contract get lifted which they did and it was.

Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent

Bulger, Flemmi and Cadillac Frank were all indicted together on racketeering and murder charges in January of 1995. Both Flemmi and Salemme went on to enter the “Program.” Bulger went on the run for 16 years until he was apprehended in California in 2011 and convicted at trial two years later.

The Flemmi affidavit was prepared as part of the federal racketeering case eventually filed against Connolly less than a month following it being drafted and signed in December 1999 – Connolly was convicted on those charges and further second-degree murder charges out of state court in Florida linked to his dealings with Bulger, Flemmi and their depraved Winter Hill Gang. Sources tell Gangster Report that a photocopy of the affidavit leaked in 2001 and the information on the affidavit or the photocopy itself made it into Bobby DeLuca’s hands causing him to start circulating rumors of St. Laurent’s top-secret cooperation.

St. Laurent attempted recruiting two different FBI informants to kill DeLuca, telling one on tape in the spring of 2006 that he got the okay for the hit on DeLuca from then-New England mob don Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio. In response to the wired-up informant’s worries of repercussions for murdering a “made man,” St. Laurent offered to se up a meeting in-person with the since-retired Manocchio and get the sanctioning from the horse’s mouth, so too say.

“I’ll take ya right to him,” he told him with the tape rolling.

The post GR Sources: Rumblings In New England Mafia That ‘The Saint’ Talked To Feds Tied To Leak Of ‘Rifleman’s’ Affidavit appeared first on The Gangster Report.

One just walked out of jail. The other just went back in. Both are suspects in the unsolved September 1992 murder of New England mob associate Kevin Hanrahan, a feared Irish enforcer and collector for the Patriarca crime family for well over a decade slain gangland style in Providence’s historically mafia-run Federal Hill neighborhood.

Per exclusive Gangster Report sources, 75-year old New England mob captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent and 83-year old former Patriarca syndicate boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme are considered top suspects in arranging the Hanrahan hit, which according to ace Rhode Island mobolgist and award-winning television reporter Tim White of WRPI Target 12 News back in August, is getting a fresh look from federal and state investigators these days. White previously reported two FBI informants have told the government that Salemme ordered Hanrahan’s murder because of Hanrahan’s attempted extortion of an already-protected bookmaker operating in Southeastern Massachusetts.

The bookie that the tall, broad-shouldered and quick-tempered Hanrahan was trying to shakedown “belonged” to St. Laurent, per sources and federal court filings. The Saint accepted a large payment of cash from the bookie in the 48 hours before Hanrahan was clipped, per court records.

St. Laurent got released from a 10-year prison stint for extortion and attempted murder last week. Salemme, who headed the mafia in New England mafia for the first half of the 1990s and entered the Witness Protection Program in 1999, was arrested this past summer for his alleged role in another mob execution, the May 1993 murder of Boston nightclub impresario and FBI informant Stevie DiSarro, a partner of Salemme’s in a Southie bar and live-music venue called the Channel.

A law enforcement source tells Gangster Report Salemme’s former underboss Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca recently provided new details surrounding the Hanrahan hit after being pulled out of the Witness Protection Program back in July and charged with lying to investigators in his initial 2011 cooperation debriefing about his knowledge of the DiSarro slaying. The 71-year old DeLuca cut another deal for himself and has admitted to burying DiSarro’s body in Providence, where he acted as the Boston-stationed Salemme’s representative until Cadillac Frank was imprisoned in 1995.

DeLuca and St. Laurent, another Salemme loyalist headquartered in Providence, experienced a falling out in subsequent years resulting in the Saint getting convicted behind bars in 2010 for trying to take a murder contract out on his rival. St. Laurent offered the job to a pair of FBI informants.

Another main lieutenant of Cadillac Frank’s in Rhode Island (and sometimes Connecticut) was strapping Kevin Hanrahan, who at only 39 years old was already a legendary leg breaker and hit man in east coast underworld circles. When he was 22 he was shot at a popular nightspot in Providence called Club Aries and refused to identify the assailant to police cementing his reputation as a standup guy.

Hanrahan was suspected in taking part in at least a half-dozen mob murders, attempted murders and conspiracies, including the 1982 gangland homicide of Providence wiseguy Raymond (Slick Ray) Vecchio inside Vincent’s Italian restaurant in Federal Hill literally steps away from where he would meet his own fate a decade later and the 1984 killing of Joan Carroll, a female co-conspirator of his in a narcotics business found strangled to death on the side of a Massachusetts road. He was charged in the Carroll murder but beat the case.

Kevin Hanrahan

Not long into Salemme’s reign as don, Hanrahan, according to sources, began to chafe under his leadership methods – he complained to associates that Salemme and his inner circle were greedy and that he was being undercompensated for his services. At this same time, St. Laurent began butting heads with an extortion victim of his who sought to stop paying protection or at least lower his tribute installments on his bookmaking activities.

In the days after Labor Day 1992, according to federal court documents, Hanrahan approached the Saint’s bucking bookie and told him that he now belonged to him and that he owed him $100,000 in back compensation.The bookie went to St. Laurent for help and was sent to see seasoned mob associate Gordon O’Brien, who looked after the Saint’s territory in Taunton, Massachusetts where the bookie operated. With the bookie present at his house, O’Brien (since deceased) phoned Salemme in Boston and appraised him of the issue. The bookie, who went on to become an FBI informant, was ordered to deliver St. Laurent $25,000, which he did on September 16, 1992, and resume protection payments of $300 per week on his sports gambling business, which he did as well.

He was told he didn’t need to worry about Hanrahan anymore. Two days later nobody did.

Late on the evening of September 18, 1992, Hanrahan was shot at point-blank range in the face and head by a pair of assassins as he walked on Atwells Avenue in the heart of Federal Hill en route to pick up what he thought was a “big score.” Hanrahan was felled at the corner of Atwells and Pequot and died at the hospital shortly thereafter.

Earlier in the evening, he dined with prominent Providence mobster Ronnie Coppola at the Arch, an upscale Federal Hill eatery, and bragged to the crowded table he had a “big score” in the works. According to people at the meal, Hanrahan made plans to meet Coppola and his entourage at nearby Jimmy Burchfield’s Classic Restaurant, for an after-hours drink following a meeting he had. Hanrahan never returned from the meeting and Coppola was seen congregating with Bobby the Cigar DeLuca and fellow New England mob power Eddie Lato in a booth at Burchfield’s instead in the minutes after Hanrahan was shot. Lato, 69, is currently in prison for extortion.

DeLuca and Coppola were both groomed in the mob world by longtime Patriarca clan Providence capo Edward (Eddie Mulligan) Romano. Coppola was killed in the spring of 1994, shot in a dispute over a card game at Providence’s Hockey Fans Social Club. Salemme, O’Brien and Hanrahan had been indicted together in 1990 in kidnapping conspiracy. When he was arrested in August, Cadillac Frank was living in suburban Atlanta under the alias Richard Parker.

The post The Kevin Hanrahan Hit: Salemme, St. Laurent Getting Fresh Look For Possible Role In N.E. Mob Murder appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Deceased New England mobster Ronald (Rum-Shot Ronnie) Coppola acted as the “set-up man” in the gangland slaying of heavily-feared Patriarca crime family strong arm Kevin Hanrahan 24 years ago, an unsolved Providence, Rhode Island homicide receiving renewed attention by investigators in recent months, according to sources familiar with the state and federal probe. Coppola’s best friend, then-Patriarca underboss Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, has revealed fresh intelligence on the Hanrahan hit after being arrested in July while living in the Witness Protection Program in Florida for lying to the FBI regarding what he knew about separate notorious east coast mob murder. DeLuca, 71, pled guilty to conspiracy in the Hanrahan murder this week.

Coppola, who was killed himself two years later in a dispute that arose at a card game, dined with Hanrahan the night he was shot to death in Federal Hill (Rhode Island’s Little Italy) on September 18, 1992 and allegedly passed word to him that he was being summoned to a post-meal meeting with other unnamed mobsters in which he was gunned down on his way to. The 39-year old Hanrahan reportedly angered his superiors in the mafia for his rogue behavior.

Some with intimidate knowledge of the situation, believe Coppola, 55, may have been unaware he was sending Hanrahan to his execution. Less than a half-hour following Hanrahan taking five bullets to the face, head and neck at the corner of Atwells and Pequot, Coppola took a meeting with DeLuca and another New England mob button man, Edward (Little Eddie) Lato, in a booth at Jimmy Burchfield’s Classic Restaurant at the same time he was originally supposed to reconvene with Hanrahan there and left looking “ashen,” per first-hand accounts. Hanrahan succumbed to his wounds at the hospital.

Coppola had treated Hanrahan and a group of friends that evening to an expensive steak dinner at the Arch, back then a trendy restaurant in Federal Hill, according to police records. During the meal, Hanrahan boasted of a “big score” he expected to come into soon. Hanrahan, per court filings, was in the process of trying to poach a bookmaker from Patriarca syndicate captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent, like Coppola and DeLuca spawning from the crime family’s Providence faction.

Last week, a physically-ailing St. Laurent, 75, was released from a federal prison hospital on the heels of a decade behind bars for extortion and attempted murder. In 2006, the Saint tried unsuccessfully to recruit a pair of FBI informants to kill DeLuca for him. DeLuca and St. Laurent were busted together in 1993 for running a bookmaking business together out of the Foxy Lady strip club.

An FBI informant told authorities that Hanrahan was muscling one of St. Laurent’s bookies for a shakedown of $100,000 and that the bookie went to St. Laurent for help, who in turn sent word through an intermediary to then-New England mob don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme in Boston of Hanrahan’s unsanctioned overtures. On September 16, 1992, the bookie gave St. Laurent $25,000, per court documents related to the Saint’s murder-for-hire conviction and Hanrahan was bumped off 48 hours later.

DeLuca acted as Salemme’s aide-de-camp in Rhode Island. Cadillac Frank Salemme was dragged out of the Witness Protection Program this past summer too and smacked with charges tied to the May 1993 murder of mob associate, Boston nightclub owner and confidential FBI informant Stevie DiSarro (he’s pled not guilty). According to sources, the 83-year old Salemme and St. Laurent are getting eyed by investigators for possibly setting the Hanrahan hit in motion.

Rum-Shot Ronnie Coppola, nicknamed after his drink of choice and his well-known hard-partying ways, came up with Bobby the Cigar DeLuca in a Patriarca crew ran by old-school Providence capo Edward (Eddie Mulligan) Romano out of the El Dorado restaurant in the city’s North End. They were arrested together in 1971 for pistol-whipping an indebted gambler in front of a Romano-controlled social club. Coppola was nailed for defrauding a man out of a horse ranch in 1973 and after a stint in prison emerged as Romano’s right-hand man and conduit to his North End gambling, shylocking and shakedown rackets until late in the 1980s when they had a falling out and he realigned with DeLuca, who had wisely attached his fortunes to Salemme’s rising star.

Salemme and Romano were both close to the crime family’s namesake Raymond Patriarca, who for years ruled the New England underworld from his Federal Hill stomping grounds. Patriarca died of a sudden heart attack in 1984 and turned over the reins of his mob empire to his less-than-able progeny, Raymond Patriarca, Jr.

By the end of the decade, the mafia in New England was engulfed in a shooting war that lasted well into the 1990s and pitted Patriarca, Jr. and Salemme against Boston capos Joe (J.R.) Russo and Vincent (Vinnie the Animal) Ferrara. Cadillac Frank survived a June 1989 assassination attempt, getting shot several times in a Saugus, Massachusetts’ International House of Pancakes parking lot but living to eventually become boss in the ensuing months upon Patriarca, Jr. retiring and Russo and Ferrara being imprisoned.

The charismatic, yet silently-sadistic Salemme’s ascent to the throne did little to halt the bloodshed as he went about settling debts on the street new and old at a furious pace. Those still loyal to Russo and Ferrara in the can and free fought back. This climate of distrust and instability were clearly contributing factors in the circumstances that led to Ronnie Coppola’s murder.

Coppola and an underling of his named Peter Scarpellino were killed by Nino Cucinotta, a made man in the Patriarca borgata and driver and bodyguard for Patriarca, Jr., in the early hours of April 1, 1994 at the Hockey Fans Social Club in Cranston, Rhode Island (formerly the St. Mary’s Social Club). Coppola ran a card game there and Cucinotta took offense when Coppola had Scarpellino toss him out of the club for Coppola’s belief that Cucinotta was cheating. Cucinotta left the club for an hour before returning and shooting Coppola and Scarpellino at point-blank range as they sat playing poker.

Just hours earlier, Salemme’s two bodyguards and top enforcers Richard (Richie the Hatchet) Devlin and Richard (Richie Nine Lives) Gillis came under gunfire in their car outside an East Boston mob hangout frequented by Russo’s crew. Gillis survived, Devlin, adorned in a bullet proof vest, wasn’t so lucky, getting shot in the middle of the forehead straight through the vehicle’s windshield.

Per FBI files, DeLuca and Romano handled the arrangements and finances for Coppola’s funeral. DeLuca would be convicted of extortion the following year for collecting outstanding gambling and loansharking debts owed to Rum-Shot Ronnie before he died.

Worried for his safety, the Sicilian-born Cucinotta took refuge with the government and entered the Witness Protection Program. He was inducted into the Patriarca clan at the same October 5, 1977 making ceremony as Patriarca, Jr. and other historically-significant Providence mobsters such as William (Billy Blackjack) Delsanto, Pasquale (Pat the Piece) Galea, Rudolph (Captain Rudy) Sciarra, Frank (Bobo) Marapese and Matthew (Good Looking Matty) Guglielmetti.

Cucinotta and Patriarca, Jr. allegedly “made their bones” a year prior by setting up local low-level Rhode Island hoodlum Johnny Carr to be killed by Delsanto and Marapese, according to court records. Guglielmetti is the New England mob’s reputed current underboss. Galea died of natural causes last January. Sciarra passed peacefully in 2012.

The post Sources: Slain New England Mafia Figure ‘Rum-Shot Ronnie’ Coppola, Maybe Unknowingly, Set Kevin Hanrahan Up To Be Killed appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former New England mafia captain and one-time underboss Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca pled guilty to murder conspiracy charges connected to the 1992 execution of fearsome mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan late this week in federal court in Boston. He also pled guilty to lying to federal investigators five years ago when he entered the Witness Protection Program about his role in the 1993 gangland slaying of Boston nightclub owner and mob associate Stevie DiSarro.

Hanrahan was shot to death on the evening of April 18, 1992 in Providence, Rhode Island’s Federal Hill neighborhood minutes after leaving a dinner with DeLuca’s best friend Ronnie Coppola. The 71-year old DeLuca got hauled out of the “program” back in the summer, arrested for perjury in the DiSarro probe. Bobby the Cigar has admitted to burying DiSarro’s body behind a converted mill in Providence. DiSarro’s remains were exhumed in March. WPRI’s Target12 TV News’ Tim White, the area’s ranking area mobologist, reported DeLuca would cop to a role in Hanrahan’s murder three days ago.

The Godfather of the New England mafia in the early-to-mid 1990s, Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, 83, was also arrested residing in the Witness Protection Program this past summer and has been charged with DiSarro’s murder – he’s pled not guilty. Salemme is considered a suspect in the Hanrahan hit, one of a slew of brazen homicides that he allegedly ordered his tenure on top of the mob. When Salemme, who lived in Beantown, became boss of the Patriarca crime family in 1990, he tapped DeLuca as his second-in-command and voice on the streets in Providence.

Hanrahan, an imposing collector and reputed hit man in the Patriarca brood dating back to the 1970s, was said to be feuding with Salemme and Providence wing capo Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent in the weeks leading up to his slaying. According to FBI informants, Hanrahan, 39, tried shaking down a bookmaker in Taunton, Massachusetts already under St. Laurent’s protection for $100,000. The bookie is said to have informed St. Laurent who in turn had Salemme informed via his Southeastern Massachusetts liaison Gordon O’Brien.

St. Laurent, 75 years old and infirmed, was released last week from a 10-year prison term for extortion and attempted murder linked to his trying to hire two separate FBI informants to kill Bobby DeLuca. O’Brien died of cancer in 2008.

The night he was killed, Hanrahan dined with DeLuca’s right-hand man and boyhood buddy Ronnie Coppola at the Arch, an upscale restaurant in the heart of Federal Hill. Hanrahan told Coppola and others at the meal he had a “big score” in the works and when he left for a meeting (per sources arranged by Coppola) he promised to reunite with the Coppola dinner party later on  at Jimmy Burchfield’s Classic Restaurant nearby for an after-hours drink.

Only steps out of the Arch’s doorway en route to what he presumed was his big score, Hanrahan heard a big bang: he was shot in the face and head with three bullets from close range. The boastful, tough-as-nails Irishman died an hour later at the hospital.

Instead of reconnecting with Hanrahan at Jimmy Burchfield’s, Ronnie Coppola was witnessed talking to DeLuca and Patriarca clan capo, Edward (Little Eddie) Lato in a corner booth less than a half hour after Hanrahan’s shooting. Coppola was killed in 1994 at a card game he ran in Cranston, Rhode Island by a fellow New England mobster he had booted from the game an hour earlier. Lato’s currently behind bars for another two and a half years on an extortion conviction

At the time of Hanrahan’s death, Hanrahan himself was the prime suspect in a number of high-profile underworld homicides, including the 1982 Federal Hill slaying of wiseguy Raymond (Slick) Vecchio and the 1984 strangling of Joan Carroll in Massachusetts. Carroll and Hanrahan sold drugs together.

Although DeLuca was No. 2 on the totem pole under Salemme’s reign in the 1990s, he was just a capo in the 2000s. Salemme went to prison in 1995 and flipped in 1999. DeLuca joined Team America in 2011 immediately after his arrest for extortion.

The post Ex-N.E. Mob Capo Bobby DeLuca Cops To Part In Another Murder, Hanrahan Hit One Step Closer To Being Cracked appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Fresh out of federal prison following a ten-year bid, lightning-rod New England mob captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent died this week of natural causes. The ailing 75-year old capo had been behind bars for the past decade on an extortion conviction and a bust in an ill-fated murder-for-hire plot. He hailed from the Patriarca crime family’s Providence, Rhode Island faction and was rushed to the hospital Sunday night where he passed away, less than two weeks after getting sprung from the clink. The FBI has been eying St. Laurent for the last several years for having possibly played a role in the unsolved September 1992 gangland slaying of Patriarca clan ace collector and rogue strong arm Kevin Hanrahan.

In his younger days on his way up the local mob ladder, the rough-around-the-edges St. Laurent served as a driver and bodyguard for Rhode Island mafia chief Nicky Bianco and was the point man for the crime family’s legendary namesake Raymond Patriarca in controlling all the bookmakers in the Providence area, according to FBI records. Patriarca died of a heart attack in 1984, around the same time the Saint was reportedly promoted to capo status. In the late 1990s, rumors started to float that he secretly provided intelligence to the feds.

Nailed on extortion charges in 1999, St. Laurent did the next six years in prison. Released in early 2005 he resumed his racketeering ways, lasting only a year back on the streets until he was indicted again in another extortion case in April 2006 resulting from his longtime taxing of bookies operating in the southeastern part of Massachusetts.

During his 13 months of freedom in the mid-2000s, St. Laurent tried unsuccessfully to solicit the murder of hated mob rival Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca. On multiple occasions, St. Laurent approached two separate wired-for-sound FBI informants requesting that they kill DeLuca on his behalf, shooting him in the head and telling him “this is from the Saint” before they pulled the trigger. Once he was locked up, he tried to hire someone else to bump off Bobby the Cigar.

St. Laurent was feuding with DeLuca over the fact that Bobby the Cigar was telling people that St. Laurent was a rat and St. Laurent’s further belief that DeLuca had tried muscling in on his rackets while he was incarcerated in the early 2000s. Per sources, some time around 2001, DeLuca got his hands on an affidavit signed by notorious South Boston gangster and FBI informant Stephen (Stevie the Rifleman) Flemmi explaining how he was told by a corrupt FBI agent in 1988 that St. Laurent was a confidential informant for the government.

Ironically, DeLuca entered the Witness Protection Program five years ago. He was arrested in connection to a murder conspiracy this past summer and is once again cooperating with federal authorities. DeLuca, 71, has admitted to burying the body of mafia associate, Stevie DiSarro behind a converted mill in Providence in May 1993 and helping arrange the Kevin Hanrahan hit less than a year earlier.

Per sources, the bad feelings between St. Laurent and DeLuca go back more than 25 years to St. Laurent thinking he was passed over for a promotion in favor of DeLuca. The two were busted together in 1993 for running a bookmaking operation out of the Foxy Lady strip club in Providence. More recently, they hurled threats and accusations back and forth regarding each of their beliefs that the other was a snitch.

According to court records filed in 2010, Hanrahan had attempted shaking down a bookie in Taunton, Massachusetts belonging to St. Laurent for $100,000 in the week after Labor Day 1992 causing the bookie to go to the Saint for cover, who in turn sent him to an underling of his who immediately contacted then-Patriarca don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme in Boston to tell him of the issue. The extorted bookie brought a grocery bag with $25,000 in it to St. Laurent on September 16 at an area shopping mall, per the court records, and Hanrahan was subsequently killed in Providence the evening of September 18, shot in the face and head at point-blank range by a tandem of assassins leaving a dinner with DeLuca’s No. 2 in command, well-known Rhode Island hoodlum Ronnie Coppola.

Salemme, 83, was arrested living in the Witness Protection Program back in the summer and charged in the DiSarro slaying and is considered a suspect in the Hanrahan homicide. He and DiSarro were partners in a South Boston nightclub and investigators believe Salemme thought DiSarro was stealing from him and cooperating with authorities in grand jury proceedings probing Cadillac Frank’s mob empire. DeLuca served as Salemme’s right-hand man during his half-decade reign atop the New England underworld (1990-1995). Coppola was killed in 1994, shot to death in a fight at a card game.

St. Laurent’s rap sheet dates back to 1959. Besides his gambling and shakedown rackets, the Saint was said to oversee the Patriarca’s interest in the narcotics business in the Providence area for many years. On the heels of spending a great deal of time in Las Vegas in the late 1980s, he was placed in the city’s infamous Black Book, banning him from all casino establishments for his ties to organized crime. While in Vegas, the Saint got into a beef with a mobster from another crime family and ended up with a murder contract put on his head for allegedly threatening to hurt the teenage daughter of a bookie under the opposing wiseguy’s protection.

“The rumors (of being an informant) hurt him, the Saint went away (to prison) this last time with a lot of people asking a lot of questions,” remarked one Providence Goodfella to Gangster Report. “The guy had a ton of respect on the streets up until then. I mean, nobody loved him, but they knew he was for real. After that, Bobby (DeLuca) went after his book, people started to keep their distance, which in turn got him in trouble for turning the screws to the guys that he had protected for all those years when they began backing off. That’s why he went down in 2006.”

Also nabbed in the 2006 indictment against the Saint was his son and wife for helping him conduct his extortion and racketeering activities. Anthony St. Laurent, Jr. was collared with his pops in his 1999 indictment too. The younger St. Laurent was released from prison back in March.

The post ‘Saint’ Of New England Mafia Dies At 75, Rhode Island Mobster Passes Mired In Rumors & Murder Probe appeared first on The Gangster Report.

In the late 1970s, the Cleveland and Pittsburgh mafia families went to war with each other for the second time in two decades. The war lasted three years, took place on battleground in Youngstown, Ohio and pitted Cleveland mob boss James (Jack White) Licavoli against the Pittsburgh mob’s capo in the Mahoning Valley, Vincent (Two-Gun Jimmy) Prato and his protégé Joseph (Little Joey) Naples, who lost two of his brothers to previous gangland strife in the region in the early 1960s. Hardscrabble Youngstown had traditionally been racket terrain shared by Cleveland and Pittsburgh syndicate factions. Between the years 1978 and 1981, 10 bodies dropped chalked up to the violence ignited by Prato and Naples okaying their men to go after Licavoli gambling and extortion territory. Unlike in the 1960s, when the war featured car bombs as the weapon of choice, the late-70s-early-80s version changed to good ole’ fashioned shot guns and high-performance firearms.

Cleveland-Pittsburgh Mob War II Murder Timeline

December 3, 1978 – Prato and Naples’ lieutenant Charles (Spider) Gresham is shot to death outside his apartment building getting out of his car after a late-night shift bartending at the My Place Lounge by a sniper’s rifle. Gresham and his partner-in-crime James (Peeps) Cononico were empowered by Little Joey Naples to take over mob rackets in working-class Warren, Ohio in the wake of the sudden death of Cleveland mafia consigliere Anthony (Tony Dope) Delsanter, the crime family’s rep in the Mahoning Valley, via a heart attack.

January 11, 1979 – Prato and Naples’ lieutenant James (Peeps) Cononico, Little Joey’s bodyguard and Gresham’s running buddy, is shot and killed in parking lot of his halfway house as he returned to check back in for the evening.

April 12, 1979 – Little Joey Naples’ sometimes-driver Bobby Furey is shot while changing a tire in his driveway. Furey was employed by Naples’ Youngstown United Music, a local jukebox and vending machine business

July 25, 1979 – Prato and Naples’ lieutenant, John (Black Jack) Tobin is shot-gunned to death walking to his car in the parking lot of his apartment building. Tobin was one of the area’s largest bookies and a local nightclub owner.

January 6, 1980 – Prato and Naples’ lieutenant, John (Johnny M) Magda, who acted as Tobin’s main collector, was found garroted to death in a trash dump in Struthers, Ohio.

February 13, 1980 – Licavoli lieutenant Bobby De Cerbo, a foot soldier working under the notorious Carabbia brothers (“Ronnie the Crab”, “Charlie the Crab” & “Orlie the Crab”), Youngstown mobsters connected to Licavoli in Cleveland, is shot-gunned to death through his living room window while watching television.

October 2, 1980 – Licavoli lieutenant and Carabbia cousin, Dominic (Junior) Senzarino, is shot-gunned to death as he walked to his house. Pittsburgh mob faction strong arm Bobby Dorler was eventually convicted in the hit.

December 13, 1980 – Legendary Youngstown mob figure Charles (Charlie the Crab) Carabbia disappears on his way to meeting with Pittsburgh mob faction member Lenny Strollo at the Stardust Motel.

February 25, 1981 – Labor-union leader Joseph (Big Joe D) De Rose is shot-gunned to death behind the wheel of his car as he backed out of his driveway, mistaken for his son “Little Joey D,” allegedly the Cleveland mob faction’s go-to hit man in the war.

April 18, 1981 – Licavoli enforcer Joseph (Little Joey D) De Rose, Jr. vanishes on his way to his girlfriend’s house. Pittsburgh mob faction hit man Samuel (Skinny Sam) Fosseseca was eventually convicted of the slaying despite no body ever being found. De Rose, Jr. is alleged to have been the triggerman in the Spider Gresham and Peeps Cononico murders.

The post The Flames Of Discontent In Youngstown: Cleveland-Pittsburgh Mob War II Murder Timeline appeared first on The Gangster Report.