August 16, 2018
This Week in Gang Land
Lawyer Argues Murder Plot Was Personal — Not Business
The
feds say Salvatore (Fat Sal) Delligatti was the "main organizer and
leader" of a failed Genovese family plot to whack a rival gangster and
deserves up to 34 years behind bars. But his attorney has mustered a
slew of arguments why his client deserves leniency. Among them is a flip
on the classic mob rationale for deadly crime, famously invoked by
Michael Corleone in The Godfather. Delligatti deserves a
break, his lawyer is asserting, because his crime was strictly personal — not business.
In another unusual twist, an assistant warden at the Metropolitan Correctional Center where Fat Sal has been held for the past three years, has submitted a letter to the court containing strong words of praise for the veteran gangster.
Still, Delligatti has a steep road to climb. His sentence will be meted out today by a judge who is known for doling out lengthy prison terms and for whom the sentencing will be a kind of swan song as she prepares to step down from the bench.
Feds
Teaming Up Their Best And Worst Turncoats For Luchese Racketeering Trial
The biggest Mafia trial of the year — in White Plains Federal Court, that is — will feature one of the best mob turncoats that the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office has had in years, along with another snitch who was a total dud, Gang Land has learned.
All
American Bookie Gets A Very Sweet Sentence In Sexual Assault Case
The federal court sentencing of Bonanno crime family associate Robert (Rob) Pisani ended last week without a final decision. But the All American bookmaker got a sweet conditional discharge sentence this week for his misdemeanor sexual assault conviction for forcible touching involving a former worker at a bagel store he owned last year.
Gang Land spent a few minutes chatting about the mob the other day with award-winning New York TV newsman Rafael Pi Roman.
Read this week's column
Unless you get really lucky, and find a copy squirreled away in the
wrong section of your local bookstore, you won't be able to get a
first printing of Mob Boss: The Life Of Little Al
D'Arco, The Man Who Brought Down The Mafia. But there
are still some second print versions of the hardcover available
as gifts or for your own reading pleasure.
Because of the heavy demand, Thomas Dunne Books went to the well again for a second printing of Mob Boss, the book that The New York Times called a "gripping, novelistic biography – a bulls-eye."
The mass market, paperback version was published in 2015. It is available online and at your favorite bookstores for about eight bucks. You still should be able to pick up a copy of the hard cover at your favorite bookstore, or, as Claude Raines might say to Humphrey Bogart, from any number of the usual online suspects: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and BooksAMillion, as well as an independent book seller near you.
See why Mob Boss has been praised by Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, Nicholas Pileggi, Mister District Attorney Robert Morgenthau – as well as readers everywhere.
Mob Boss is also available in a special BIG PRINT edition. And for those who would rather hear every word of the 406 page book read to them, Mob Boss is also available on an MP3 CD from Tantor Audio.
