April 8, 2021
This Week in Gang Land
'My Lawyer, Dad, & Wiseguy Uncle Bullied Me Into Pleading Guilty'
False
confessions are known to happen, usually when overbearing cops coerce
innocent people into admitting guilt to something they didn't do. But a mob
associate is making a compelling claim in a pro se motion to win a
release from prison for a 2010 conviction for a robbery-murder that forges
new ground: He says he was forced into making a false confession by his
lawyer, his Gambino soldier uncle, and even his dad, all of whom "bullied"
him into pleading guilty.
Stating that he "never carried out the crime" in which jeweler Louis Antonelli was killed during an April 29, 2008 robbery, John (Wizzie) Delutro argues that the record of the controversial case shows that he "walked away" from the fatal Staten Island robbery long before it happened. He is asking Brooklyn Federal Judge Carol Amon to reconsider her ruling to keep him behind bars, he says, because "I'm actually innocent."
Delutro told Amon that a few months after his arrest in October of 2009, prosecutors arranged a "special visit" to the Metropolitan Detention Center. Even though the day was technically "a non-visit day," his father and uncle, John (Baby John) Delutro, were allowed to accompany his attorney, Arnold Kriss to the jail. Delutro says the trio told him that he "had 48 hours to decide to accept 20 years or go to trial and get life . . . for something I said no to."
The Plumber Gets 42 Months; The Lion Got 24
It got a little crowded in a courtroom in Brooklyn this week as Colombo wiseguy Thomas (The Plumber) Scorcia appeared for sentencing. Or at least that is how federal judge Brian Cogan saw things, even though the proceeding took place remotely via computer hookup. As the defense and government debated how long The Plumber should be locked up for his conviction for loansharking and racketeering, Cogan said they had all missed "the elephant in the room." He then went on to name said elephant.
The Two Mikes Have Beaten COVID; The Fight For Compassion
Goes On
Michael Palmaccio and Michael Padavona, the Howard Beach mobsters who were convicted and sent to prison for racketeering along with their Bonanno family skipper Ronald (Ronnie G) Giallanzo, are still hoping to get some compassion from their sentencing judge.
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.
