This Week In Gang Land
Genovese Hitman Was Ready to Whack Sinatra If Fat Tony Didn't Forgive His Transgressions
Genovese
mobster George Barone once put a gun to the head of a then mid-level union
official named Harold Daggett. But he was just looking to scare the current
president of the International Longshoremen's Association who recently won a
62% raise for dockworkers following a brief strike — not to kill him. A few
years earlier, however, according to a new-tell-all book about the mob,
Barone was ready to pull the trigger on someone much higher on the social
scales: Frank Sinatra.
Barone, who testified at two trials that he killed so many people for acting boss Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno that he couldn't recall how many, was poised to whack Old Blue Eyes at a meeting in East Harlem if Fat Tony had given him the word, according to a sensational new book by former FBI agent Mike Campi who debriefed Barone about his life of crime.
"According to Barone," Campi wrote in Mafia Takedown, The Incredible True Story of The FBI Agent Who Took Down The New York Mob, "Sinatra was becoming too friendly with other crime families." Campi writes that "Salerno summoned Sinatra to a meeting in Harlem" and instructed Barone "to be there before Sinatra’s arrival."
Tales Of Wiseguys & Fourth Warders In The NY Post's Old Neighborhood
The
New York Post was located for many years in what The Paper of
Wreckage — a rollicking oral history about the tabloid — dubs the "Armpit of
The World." Yours truly toiled for the newspaper for 20 years, most of them while it
was at that same lower Manhattan location. And while we don't recall the
odor as offensive, there's no question that the neighborhood was filled with
more than a few intriguing characters, and many of their stories are told in
this often fascinating book.
Mob Turncoat: I Flipped Because I Didn't Want To Go To Jail, Or To Hell
They probably didn't need him, but prosecutors unveiled Andrew Koslosky,
a former church singer they used to nail six Colombo family mobsters for racketeering,
as their leadoff witness at the Brooklyn Federal Court loansharking trial of
John (Bazoo) Ragano, the hot-headed Bonanno soldier.
