June 13, 2019
This Week in Gang Land
FBI Goes To Prison Looking For Info About The Luchese Family Bloodless Coup
In
a bid to learn how imprisoned-for-life Luchese boss Vittorio (Vic) Amuso
engineered his bloodless coup from behind bars against acting boss
Matthew (Matty) Madonna, federal agents have raided Amuso's prison cell,
seizing scores of papers, cards, letters, and personal belongings, Gang
Land has learned.
Prison sources say that three agents descended on Amuso's federal prison cell in Cumberland, Maryland last month armed with a search warrant. The raid, sources said, came just as turncoat mobster John Pennisi was testifying how Amuso loyalists had used threats of a bloody mob war to oust Madonna, a veteran Luchese mobster from the Bronx.
Without any shots fired or blood spilled, Madonna, 83, quickly stepped aside, making way for longtime Amuso crony Michael (Big Mike) DeSantis to seize the reins of the crime family. Also toppled was Madonna's close ally, Steven (Stevie Wonder) Crea, the powerful Bronx-based longtime underboss.
BOP: Bonanno
Wiseguy Vinny Asaro A 'Sex Offender'
In 2015, Bonanno wiseguy Vincent Asaro was riding high after he was famously acquitted of the $6 million Lufthansa Airlines robbery and a 50-year-old murder. But that was then. Indicted two years later for torching a car in 2012, Asaro copped what seemed like a sweet deal, only to get slammed with twice as much prison time as he bargained for. Now, Gang Land has learned, the Bureau of Prisons has branded him a "sex offender" for a 52-year-old misdemeanor assault conviction for which he had to pay a $250 fine.
Ask
Andy: Fake News
In the early days of the FBI's push against Cosa Nostra, agents were hard pressed to get any information they could. As a result, they often amassed confusing and misleading details about major events. Take for example the FBI's efforts to learn what happened to Armand (Tommy) Rava, who disappeared sometime after he attended the conclave of Mafia leaders from around the country in Apalachin, New York on November 14, 1957.
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.
