February 21, 2019
This Week in Gang Land
This
week's guest columnist is Larry McShane, an award-winning reporter for
the New York Daily News. McShane is the author of two organized crime
biographies, Chin: The Life and Crimes of Mafia Boss Vincent
Gigante and Last Don Standing: The Secret Life of Mob Boss
Ralph Natale. He's covered organized crime in New York City and
beyond since rushing to Sparks Steak House after the spectacular
Christmastime assassination of Gambino family boss Paul Castellano on
Dec. 16, 1985.
Porky And Ex-Wife Rail On About Mob Wives and Mob Snitches
Lawyers for Bonanno crime family
consigliere John (Porky) Zancocchio
are fighting to keep their client on the right side of the line between
reality – and so-called reality TV.
The attorneys, in recently filed court papers, argued that a rambling wiretapped Aug. 10, 2013, conversation between Zancocchio and his ex-wife Lana Graziano is more suited for an episode of Mob Wives than a federal courtroom.
"It appears that salacious gossip is the government's true purpose for admitting this conversation," wrote defense attorney John Meringolo in arguing that no part of the recording, that runs more than an hour, be played at the racketeering conspiracy trial of Porky and acting boss Joseph (Joe C) Cammarano that gets underway with opening statements on Monday.
From
The Jailhouse To The Penthouse
When Tom Petty wrote that the waiting is the hardest part, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer failed to factor in where all that sitting around took place. Consider the cases of Genovese family scion Vincent Esposito, awaiting trial in his mother's multi-million dollar Upper East Side penthouse, and Luchese family senior citizen mobsters Steven (Stevie Wonder) Crea and Matthew (Matty) Madonna – both locked up in Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center.
Buon
Compleanno, Sonny
A happy belated birthday from Gang Land to John (Sonny) Franzese, enjoying his second year of freedom after multiple prison stints across the decades.
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.
