Title: Meet the Families – The Bonanno Family

Original Publication Date: 6/7/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/56fj9ZeNboz

Description: In this episode, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the intriguing history and notorious exploits of the Bonanno Crime Family, one of the most prominent Mafia families in American history. Join us as we peel back the layers of secrecy and explore the rise, power, and eventual downfall of this formidable criminal organization. From their roots in Sicily to their establishment in New York City and beyond, we examine the inner workings of the Bonanno Crime Family, highlighting key figures, pivotal events, and their impact on the underworld. Get ready for an immersive journey into the dark underbelly of organized crime.

#BonannoCrimeFamily #MafiaHistory #OrganizedCrime #TrueCrime #Mobsters #Gangsters #UnderworldChronicles #CriminalEmpires #MafiaWars #PowerStruggles #IllegalActivities #PodcastEpisode #CrimeFamilies #MobHistory #MafiaLegends #ProhibitionEra #TurfWars #FBIInfiltration #TrueCrimePodcast #MobPodcast

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache, Chris.

Thanks for joining Mustache, Chris and I again, as we talk about history, the mafia and crime, and we are still taking on our Five families in five episodes and these episodes, we're going to do a high flyover summary of each of the five major families. Of the New York City mafia. These episodes will be a great reference as we dive into the many fascinating stories of organized crime in the mafia, in the United States and beyond.

And I really suggest one as we go forward into our more deep dive episodes as you come back and listen [00:01:00] to these ones to get yourself, uh, reacquainted with the families we're talking about, and just for good old fashioned fun. But today we're going to look at the background of one of the most fascinating and colorful families in the history of organized crime, the Bonanno family, and I think at, probably in the course of this whole series, the Bonannos will probably be, they'll get.

Maybe not the most of tension, but they're gonna get a lot of attention now. Mustache. Overall, what would you say is the main theme of the Bono family, and maybe how would you describe them? We'll give you a trick question. How would you describe the Bono family in one or two words? Dirty and violent.

Those, it would be the two I would describe, uh, the Bono family, cuz it, a lot of it, a lot of the stuff they're involved in was like the dirtier side of the mob, the drug trafficking. And uh, I mean they had some of the most ruthless, uh, [00:02:00] killers in the history of the mob too. Dirty and violent. I mean, and that was, um, uh, we previously talked, we had talked about the movie Donny Brasco and, um, And th that's one thing that Donnie Brasco really kind of, kind of captured about the Bono family.

It was just the type of crimes and stuff they were doing was just very, just dirty work. Yeah. I think you, in this episode, when you, whenever we talk about the Bono family, wipe the slate clean of all this, the Godfather with the honor and the family and all that stuff, J, it all goes out the window with the Bonanos and we can really just, Start at the beginning, where'd the Bono family come from?

Oh yeah. So the origins of the Bono family, they're, they're one of the old, the oldest families actually in the New York mafia. They, their origins is in Castle Amari Delk. And, um, Which is a famous region in Sicily. It's where a lot of these, uh, mobsters that em ended up immigrating to the United [00:03:00] States, uh, came from.

And the head of this family was Giuseppe Pepe Bono, who's actually, you know, this is where Joe Bono famous Joe Bonano gets his, uh, Name from, uh, right off the bat, they're already getting their tendrils into places outside of New York. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it, this is like the origins, origins of the family.

So it all, it all starts in Sicily. And one of that's the one more interesting things about the Manto family is the fact that, uh, out of all the five families, they're definitely the most Sicilian out of all the five families. They, they're the ones with the closest ties. Throughout its entire history that, going back to Sicily, I mean, this is, we'll get into the drug trafficking and, um, the connections are right there from the very get-go.

Like, uh, s Stephan o Mandino, who was the boss of the, uh, and he was also, he was close to, uh, Joe Bono too. [00:04:00] And this is where he comes from too, right? He was the boss of the, uh, Buffalo family. Yeah, we're gonna just, uh, that's a theme that'll keep developing throughout this episode is that the, the bonanos are probably the most connected into Italy for better and for worse.

It's, uh, very interesting. Now we are, we'll talk more in detail in other episodes about the Casta Lamar war, but, uh, it's the, the Casta Lamar War is really the origin story for all of these five families. Where did the Bonanos stand in that? Oh, okay. Yeah. So the Castle Lamari War was just to give like a kind of a light overview.

It was, there was the Castle Lamari, uh, gangs in New York. Right. And this is like, quite literally, this is a lot of these gangs. They came from that region. That's why they were called that. Uh, and then there was Joe, the boss, who practically ran New York as like the cop. Who would they. Copy. [00:05:00] Basically, like before the title he, he ran New York.

Right. Uh, but there was like a brewing conflict between uh, these two factions. And you know, when we get into, we're gonna do like a series on this war just cuz it was so important. Uh, there was like an older, younger generation part to it too. And there was a guy named, uh, Cola, who, uh, I'm trying to, I can't seem to remember his last name right now, but he initially was the leader of the cast lamari faction that was fighting against, uh, Joe the boss.

But pretty quickly he. Wasn't cut out for the job. And, uh, one of the most famous mon uh, mobs, salvatory, uh, Marzano came directly from Sicily to lead this conflict against, uh, the Joe Deba and the Mare clan, I guess you could call them Maer faction. And, uh, very briefly, how does the bonanno faction, uh, crime family [00:06:00] come out of this war?

Like I said, and Chris has said, we're gonna get into this war big time, but, uh, just to move the story forward a little bit with the Bonannos, how does, how do they work out of this? Okay, so Joe, the, uh, Joe Bonano was like, he was very close to the Salvatory, uh, Marzano. Um, if you read in his book, the Man of Honor, he talks very glowingly about Marzano, um, at the, you know, so to skip to the end, Marzano wins the war, but it's like a pure victory and he's only in charge for a little bit, uh, quite quickly.

Lucky Luciano and, uh, Uh, others turn on Marzano, they kill him and. This is where it gets a little iffy with Joe Bono or Joe claims. He didn't know anything about what was gonna happen to Marino, but it's interesting because he ends up becoming the youngest boss to rule a family. He was [00:07:00] 26 at the time when he became the Bon boss of the the Bono family, which is basically just a continuation of the Marzano family.

It just, he just, Changed the name or, or just became the Bono family. I personally think Joe knew what was gonna happen. He just didn't say anything. And cuz he saw, well, you know, I'm gonna benefit from this. Right? I mean, and in his defense, I don't know, what was he gonna do, like fight another war? Right. I think there was a general agreement amongst pretty much everybody that the, uh, trying to avoid a, another one of these big mafia wars that spanned across the entire United States and.

A lot of ways was not a good, was, uh, was probably a good thing to avoid. He seemed to have had his foot. He was one of the young Turks, like, uh, lucky Luciano. But he also had a lot of characteristics of these old mustache Petes, or the quote unquote old timers, even though they weren't that old Joe the [00:08:00] boss, mere and, uh, Marzano, they weren't that old, but compare an attitude.

They were a lot different than the young. Up in comers. Yeah. We'll, like, we'll get into it a little because we're gonna talk about Joe a bit. Um. Yeah, Joe, he's a, I don't know, he is an interesting guy. Like there's some ways like he is, I don't know, like if you read his book, he, he believes he is like a very traditionalist, like conservative, like if you read Joe's book, and this is kind of like what you would think, like, I don't know, Al Pacino from The Godfather would write about his life or something like that.

Like it's not really reality. I mean, he was like a part of the conservative faction of the, the commission, but. In a lot of ways he wasn't really conservative. We'll get into that in a little bit. So let's talk about the Joe Bonano era. Joe Bonano, like regardless of what my personal opinions about him is, was a very successful mafia boss.

Right. And, uh, like I pointed out [00:09:00] early, it came to the conclusion like, it probably best that we avoid one of these big wars. And, uh, bono kind of, he ran the family, uh, Like a little bit more, a little differently than like the kind of the other families. Like there was a strong emphasis on family ties and he did try to run it where he was seen as like the father figure and, you know, he made his money with the mafia mate, stays playing the numbers, uh, loan sharking, ex, you know, extortion.

Um, and you also like had a big part in expanding the Bono family. This is, or. Like Joe Bono was the, was the guy that expanded the. The Bono family into Canada and, and, and in particular Montreal. And in a lot of ways he tried to bring like, kind of, uh, how the, uh, Sicilians would run the, their mafia and Sicily.

He tried to bring that over into the, uh, bono family over here in the United States. And I, I, [00:10:00] I believe it in some ways it had, uh, lasting effects, obviously for the rest of the history of the Bonno family. What were some of their, uh, what did the, the sort of, uh, scams and crimes that Joe Bono, Joe Bananas got in, got the family into.

Oh, like this is like, you know, like the typical kind of mafia fair or whatever. Right. Um, I mean, this is the relatively early in his rain, but like later on he, he's gonna get the, the Bono family's really hardcore into, um, Drug trafficking. Right. He'll deny it up and down. His son will say, oh, I didn't know anything about it and I, they're all lying.

Right? But, uh, because that was one of the unique things about the Bono family is they dealt drugs and. They didn't bother trying to cover it up as opposed to a lot of these other families where they tried to, I don't know, at least keep kind of a distance to it. Um, yeah. And then Joe also had like a very strong [00:11:00] alliance with uh, Joe Profaci.

And I was saying to you earlier this week, I don't think I'm like, they're not allowed to use the name Joe anymore. I was just writing notes for this. And it's literally Joe, Joe, Joe and Joe. And Joe and Joe. And another Joe. Um, and yeah, they kind of made off like the, um, the conservative wing of the, uh, commission system, but it was a little bit like more important than that.

Like with those two, like kind of tied to de together, it kept like a balance of power within the commission where. It's just if like the Genovese Lucchese and the Gambino families decided like, oh, we're just gonna move in on Bono, or we're just gonna move in on Perfa, they couldn't do it right, because with the two of them connected, uh, so closely, it uh, pretty much assured that the, uh, that the commission system worked the way it was supposed to.

It's pretty amazing, um, that this idea, the commission, it really did keep the mafia [00:12:00] stable for a long time. That these wars, they never were able to get two families together to knock out a third or, you know, it kept a, a situation of five families from totally cannibalizing each other, which is pretty amazing.

The other thing I find amazing is that, um, How could the, how could the bonos ever say that they weren't into drugs? When the whole thing of that time period, the drugs were coming from Sicily and they were the most closely associated with Sicily. I mean, it's, it's absurd to say otherwise. Because Joe Bonano is, I, I, I don't know.

I suggest to the audience just read his book, A Man of Honor. It's interesting, but it'll make you like kind of understand people like crazy Joe Gallo and some of these other guys that were really just sick and tired of these bosses cuz they were just. He's so full of crap. Sorry, for lack of a better word.

Right? Like kind of [00:13:00] delusional about like what they, what they actually were. Yeah. But like, I guess kind of get back to the narrative was like, so Joe Provac dies. We're gonna do an episode on the Colombos. We're gonna talk a lot about Profaci. He's probably gonna get his own series too, cuz he is such an important mob boss.

Uh, Joe Profaci dies and it kind of throws the balance of power outta whack and the, uh, In the commission there, Joe Bono kind of fearing that the other families were gonna gang up on him cuz a lot of 'em, they didn't like him really personally. They didn't like him personally, and they didn't like him and Joe and the way they were running things.

He decides that he's gonna strike out first. So he comes out with the scheme with, uh, uh, Joe Profacis. Underboss, Manco. They're gonna strike out first and um, they get caught basically. And the, one of the reasons they get caught is, Joe, uh, uh, his underboss, who was Joe Colombo, rats them out saying like, oh, they're gonna come and get kill you, uh, Carlo Gambino and [00:14:00] Joe Flees, uh, to Montreal, cuz that's just the type of person Joe is.

And leaves, uh, uh, uh, Maggliocco to. Deal with the commission by himself. Surprisingly, the commission shows a, a fair amount of restraint. They're like, they don't kill him. They tell him he has to put a, I think it was a couple grand, 50 grand fine, and that was it. He was just, wasn't allowed to be any, had anything to do with organized crime anymore.

I think part of it was that he was kind of old and they both knew that. Joe was the one that actually came up with this idea and he was the real brains behind the operation. So Joe flees to Montreal. He actually goes to prison in Canada for a little bit. Um, and then when he comes back to New York, he claims that he got kid, he was kidnapped.

Uh, I don't know, there's a little debate about what actually happened there, but to kind of speed things along, [00:15:00] Joe ends up having a heart attack. And offers to, uh, step down basically. And we should probably mention, and we'll review this along the way, is that the commission is this group of the leaders of the five families.

And it's supposedly, at least if there's any sort of inter-family problems that they take it to, uh, this meeting or standing body of mob leaders that will. In some way iron out the problem. And so theoretically one mafia boss couldn't whack another person in another family or the boss or anything like that without going through the commission.

And that's another thing that just shockingly worked pretty well for a long time. Yeah, I like shock, especially when you're, you start getting into like the type of personalities that you're dealing with. You're not dealing with like the most well-adjusted individuals, you know what I mean? Like, we're dealing with, [00:16:00] you know, sometimes borderline serial killers and psychopaths and narcissistic personalities.

And so it ran really well for a really long time. I actually, sorry, I, we gotta back up just a little bit. Um. Yeah. So when Joe got kidnapped, a lot of the people in the Bono family, they kind of felt abandoned by Joe. He wasn't really around. He had like fled to Montreal, like before getting kidnapped. And there the, there's a war that breaks out called the, uh, the first they called the Banana War because that was Joe's nickname that nobody ever said it to his face, but they used to call him Joe Bananas.

And, uh, it's uh, between, People who were loyal to uh, uh, bill Bono and um, The people who were, uh, supporting the new upstart, Casper Corio. And this goes on for quite some time actually. It's a, a fairly big war, like from, it's one of the first like internal family wars that I am I, that I'm [00:17:00] aware of. The war ends.

Like I pointed out, Joe has a, has a heart attack and he basically offers to step down and the commission agrees and they say, okay, well you gotta move to Arizona and you're not allowed to come to New York anymore. And. That's that Steve, here again, we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's, eyewitness History, and many other great shows.

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What's the power situation in the Bono family at this point? Oh, so, okay. They go through like a series of bosses after Joe. This is where the kind of the chaotic factor of the Bono family starts coming in. Like once Joe's out of the picture and it's like a series of bosses. Na [00:18:00] uh. Was another guy he took over.

He died pretty quickly of natural causes, cuz they were, these were like old men I guess in the sense they were thinking like we put like an old guy in charge who'll bring some kind of stability to the family cuz they're, I don't know, they, you know, they've seen a lot of things. They're wise, it makes sense, right?

But then there's a point where it's like maybe they're too old. You know what I mean? It doesn't help like if they're just dying after two or three years, cuz that's not stable at all either. Right. But like, kind of put this in perspective though, for the Bono family, just how crazy, like a couple years were like, you know, he went from having Joe trying to like basically overthrow the commission that led to a civil war.

That led to Joe like fleeing the country to like stepping down to going through three bosses with all in the span of a couple years. Now, if you're like a, a coppo or like a street guy who, like, who are you supposed to be loyal to and um, Like exactly [00:19:00] what are you supposed to do? Well, then you also have to remember in the the mafia hierarchy you have these, the, the next level of management, so to speak, the capos, they're all hungry to become bosses themselves, so you're kind of like, you're trying to wrangle sharks basically.

It's kind of like the, like the, the, the barracks emperors, I guess during Roman Empire, right? Where the emperors had to be afraid of their own generals. Cause I mean, a lot of the times they'd be the ones like doing them in and then eventually they, they switched up how that system worked later on. But it's, it is very, Very similar.

You know, like this week I'd been think I'd been reading a bit about Roman and, and researching Mafia too, and a lot of similarities in kind of how their societies ran. So if we look at it in this way that Joe Bono, bono gets us, he's basically the boss through. The formative years of the mafia all the [00:20:00] way into the golden era of the sixties and into the seventies.

He's out of the picture. And then we have this next, uh, group that you think we're getting stability and we're not with the Philip Relli, rusty Roselli and Carmine Galante era, rusty Elli, who's, uh, In some ways they were kind of like joint rulers, not by choice. It just kind of happened that way. Yeah.

Rusty was named, uh, head of the Bono family in the 1974. He set up a pretty brilliant racket, actually was lu with lunch wagon. So kind of what you think like, uh, You know, like lunch trucks showing up to like factories and stuff like that. And I dunno, he'd be selling sandwiches and stuff like that over there, but he'd be also doing the gambling and drugs and, you know, numbers and, um, so he had like a whole rocket set up of these lunch trucks.

And it's a, it's pretty brilliant cuz most of this type of business is, it [00:21:00] doesn't require, there's not like contracts at, at least at this time, it's probably different now, but at the time, you know, You're not getting involved in like government contracts. It's all cash. It's, you know what I mean? It's probably a lot of guys that you maybe grew up personally.

Right. That's another thing with these, with the mafia family, like a lot of these guys don't leave very far from where they're born. So a lot of these people that they're doing business with, they probably grew up with, went to high school with, know their parents, their brothers or sisters. It really sounds like typical classical mafia stuff.

Out of the lunch trucks you run. Numbers you run, you know, just a, you have a facade of a legitimate business and then you have all these side scams that just basically they get away with. Yeah. The lunch truck scam was like a Bono maizee. When we get to Joe Massino, that's. Kind of how he made a big chunk of his money.

He was running these lunch trucks. Uh, but Rusty Relli is all he was plagued with. [00:22:00] He was just very un unlikely, unlucky in comparison to other mobs, like mob guys like cuz. Within a year of being named boss, he was thrown to jail. So that there's another thing like, well, finally we have this new boss and he seems to be smart and he knows what he's doing.

Within a year. He is, he's in jail. And this is probably a good time to bring in the zips thereof, almost a parallel organization inside of the bons. Yeah. So the, the whole zip, uh, situation, actually just kind of back it up a little bit, um, Joe Bonano was close to another gangster, uh, Carmine Galante. Right.

And he actually was with Joe Bonano when they intended this famous meeting that happened in, uh, that actually happened in Sicily, where a lot of the, the drug trafficking, uh, details and the contracts and, uh, was gonna go down and. Carmine Galle is a, is a pretty, he was a pretty [00:23:00] interesting character. Uh, absolutely psychotic in my opinion.

Like probably the most psychotic, uh, person I've uh, ever read about in the mob. Uh, you know, this guy like shot and killed police officers. You know, uh, just to give you an example, um, Yeah. So when Joe talk, like Joe Bono talks about like not knowing about the drug trafficking, well, he talks about this trip in Sicily and says, oh, you know, I went to go see where my grandparents were from and you know, like, I went to go see sightseeing when in actuality it's like, no, he was just setting up the drug trafficking, uh, connections.

Lucky Luciano was at this meeting also, and, and this is really where they make these really. Deep connections with bringing over straight up Sicilian Coza Nostra guys to become members of the, to fill in the ranks, so to speak, of the bons. But they don't even, they don't really integrate with the, uh, [00:24:00] Italian American mafia really form their own body.

You might call it. Yeah, really. Uh, so Carmine Galante, uh, well, he wasn't the only one. The zips were, there was an agreement that at this meeting that the, the Sicilians would come to the United States and they'd help with driving trafficking drugs. Uh, Enforcing and Carmine Galante was all for it, right?

Because he saw an opportunity of like being able to create his own personal army that was separate from the American mafia. Carmine Galante too, also spent time in Montreal, where this is what, where the. The system kind of worked. It was like the drugs would get manufactured in Sicily and then they would get shipped to Montreal and, you know, different parts of Canada.

Like some of it would just get shipped right to the States. But a big hub was in Montreal, and then from Montreal the drugs would go into New York. Right. And there was a, you know, there was good reasons for it. And Canada doesn't have a strict [00:25:00] drug drug laws as, uh, the United States. Um, And a lot of these zips would be the ones kind of at least helping facilitate this process.

Uh, to put it in perspective, like when Carmine Glan was in Montreal and we're talking like, you know, pretty like 1960s at this time, like late 19, he made like 50 million from trafficking drugs and like gambling and, you know, kind of lone sharking. But a big, big chunk of it was just, um, Trafficking drugs, 50 million at that time.

It's just insane. And you can't discount Montreal either. How it's such a key transit point. So much stuff comes into the port of Montreal. And yeah, a lot of stuff came into the port of New York, but Montreal, uh, Montreal was sort of a, a, a choke point that if the mafia got control of that, they could control a lot of distribution from there.

Easy [00:26:00] distribution too. Things could go down the St. Lawrence and get into the central part of the US and Canada really easily, or through road traffic when customs and, uh, immigration wasn't so strict. You know, trucks could flow from Canada into the US and back and forth and it wasn't a, a big deal at all.

You know, not that nowhere near the security that there is now. Oh yeah, for sure. Right. Uh, yeah, just this, like the Americans called these people zips that they were not very, uh, happy, uh, like we wouldn't say it to their face, right? Cuz a lot of these guys were just stone called killers. It was a derogatory term.

Like I, I, I don't know, I don't speak Sicilian. I don't personally really know anybody that speaks to Simian, but apparently these guys spoke. I guess the Sicilian that they spoke was like very fast, and that's why they called it zip. Um, I don't even know at this time how many, I'm sure a lot of American mob guys [00:27:00] spoke.

Italian spoke like Sy, like the is Simian dialect, but there's probably a lot of them where it was not, it was like definitely their second language used to call. Yeah, they used to call 'em like grease balls and like all types of drugs. A lot of them, the, a lot of the American guys even within the BANO fam were not very happy having these zips over here and for like justified reasons too.

Like in Sicily, the way things are done is just different than the way they had been doing for. Things in America, right? Like the Sicilians don't care. Like they'll just use car bombs. They don't like, they'll kill cops. They'll have violence support like, like spill out on the streets, where a lot of these American mafia guys, they just saw them as like lunatics and like not.

Not understanding what, like, no, this is, this is not how we do it in New York, but we don't shoot cops. We don't use car bombs. We don't, we try to keep the violence in house as much as possible. We'll talk about this a lot more the, [00:28:00] I feel like a lot of the points in this episode of, we could probably, if this was in writing, we'd have a hyperlink to the next episode where we talk about these things.

But we're gonna talk a lot about this, and we've talked about the. Death of Carmine Gale, and we will be hearing about him again and again. But what's the short story to get people's mindset on? How did, what were the circumstances around Carmine Gale's death? Yeah, so when Rusty was in jail, Carmine Gale kind of made himself boss of the Bon Bernardo family.

Uh, even though he really wasn't, I mean, he had an incredible amount of wealth that we. Had just talked about. Right. So I mean, it makes sense, right? And he was extremely ruthless. But the thing with Carmine Glancy is he just, he didn't make any friends without, with anybody else in the commission or even within his own family.

He just wasn't well liked. He was greedy. He was, uh, Petty was ruthless. Um, he basically just tried to [00:29:00] do his own thing and as we'll learn quickly as we start talking about a lot of these characters, the, the type of guys that try to go outside of the commission or try to play by their own rules, there's a self-correcting mechanism and the commission, that's why it lasted as long as it did.

Effectively, right, because to take care of these types of people. Yeah. So Carman, galante wa gets killed with the approval of the commission. Uh, you can actually look at a photo of, uh, the, the death. He actually has a cigar in his mouth. It's, it's pretty gruesome. So if you're, you know, squeamish about that type of stuff, I wouldn't suggest looking at it, but it's, it's a cool part of, uh, history.

Now that Carmen Galante is out of the way, now we move into our next phase where, uh, uh, rusty Elli is in charge, and things get very bleak in this period. What happens next when Carmine is killed? The, uh, Rusty's back in charge, right? He's in jail like. Believe at this. I think he was outta jail [00:30:00] for a couple years and he got thrown back in jail.

Uh, he effectively spent his entire tenure as boss in jail. I know that sounds crazy, but I mean, it would, it lends to just the craziness of the Bono family and how disorganized it was in comparison to the other, in comparison to some of the other families. Yeah. But the Bono family kind of splits into two factions after Carmine Galante is dead, there's like a Sicilian faction read, but let.

By, uh, Alfonso in Delicato. His, his name is Sunny Red, and there's a faction that's loyal to Rusty Elli, which is led by the likes of Joe Massino and Sonny Black, who are, uh, Sonny Black's famous for, and lefty lefty ruggiero's in this group too, they're famous for the, in the movie Johnny Nebraska. Uh, so.

Joe Massino gets information that the Sicilian faction is going to [00:31:00] try to take out the Rusty Elli faction and take the family away from Rusty Elli. Joe Massino, uh, brings this information to the commission and you know, Paul Castellano tells him, you know, take care of it right away, right? So he gets approval to take out these three capos, which is probably one of the most famous, uh, Murders in the history of the mafia.

It feels like we've talked about this so many times, but we're gonna do an episode just on these three murders cuz it, it's a big subject and we, we'd probably talk an hour about just these three murders alone. Probably do a series on it just cuz of all the different characters. Be honest with you. Uh.

But, you know, short story, uh, short the, uh, the Sicilian fashion's taken out, and Philip Elli is in charge, and Joe Massino is kind of like the acting boss. You have this, this murder of the three capos. It has [00:32:00] so many different threads of the mafia all get woven into this one story. It's really, uh, I, I, I think it's one of those things in history when you read history and it's like, wow, this is really exciting stuff.

Like when you can see that. Everything that you've been reading and you read a little bit here and you read a little bit there and it's like, holy smokes. They all tie back into this one event. And I think in the mafia, that one event is the murder of the three capos. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely right up there.

Right? It's like up, up there at the Castle Artery War, the three Coppos. Um, Those are the, like the two two kind of like right off the top of my head is the like really, really, really important moments in the New York Mafia history. Yeah. During this entire time, we're not gonna kind of get into this cuz that's such a big subject, but like during the three Kapo murders and Rusty's in jail, and this is silly faction and the loyalist, uh, to Relli, like, this [00:33:00] is when, uh, operation Don Nebraska was going on.

This entire time. Right. Uh, which is made famous in Joe Pistone's book, but also the movie and. You know, you can, Joe, he does, uh, uh, interviews and stuff like that once in a while so he can check out, uh, some of the interesting stories he has about his, uh, time as an undercover agent. Once Joe does, uh, come out, this leads to kind of like the, the darkest period, at least the.

The, the lowest, the low for the, uh, Bonanno family. Like the Bono family just gets kicked outta the commission cuz the way the rest of the commission looks at it. Like, we can't trust these people. They had like an undercover F B I agent that they were pushing to get made into the family and they just kicked them out.

I mean, it was kind of a blessing in disguise as we'll. Get into it a little, well, I guess I can say right now, like, you know, later in the eighties, you know, uh, Rudy Giuliani, which is, it'd be interesting and maybe one day, [00:34:00] you know, down the road we'd do a series on him cuz he's such an important character, especially in later mob history.

He leads the commission trial and, but the Bono families actually kind of spared the worst of it because te they weren't technically part of the commission. They were kind of like a wild card, really. Yeah, you could really say they weren't in the mafia anymore or they weren't in the American Mafia because the American Mafia is this highly regulated entity run by the commission.

Yeah, and I mean even like, even like before Joe, the rest of the families must have looked at like just kind of the craziness that was going on the Bonanno family in terms of like the, the zips and the drug trafficking, like the multiple changes of bosses and just the, the complete nutter chaos after Joe Bono and even Joe, even during Joe's tenure, he tried to take out the commission.

I could even before Joe Pito and I can kind of see the commission going like, yeah. You know what, guys? I don't, [00:35:00] I don't really want to talk about like the, the inner sanctum, the holies or the holies or whatever, you know, like the inner inner workings with you guys, cuz like this is nuts. Like, you guys gotta figure this out.

Maybe we can talk later. And then, uh, we're put, putting aside totally the whole, the sixth family, the Montreal Mafia under Vito Zuto, which was very closely tied in with the Bonanos. And we really won't talk about them very much today. But that's another thing to keep in your mind, is that there's this whole other organization in Montreal.

Very closely aligned in all of the happenings of the bons, but really their own separate thing. Get us into the, uh, as we're wrapping up today, that basically what you might call the post Donny Brasco era of the Bonanno family. Yeah. The po Yeah. Post Donny, Nebraska kind of post-mission trial, sort of like, uh, so Rusty Elli dies in, uh, 1991 [00:36:00] and Joe Massino ends up becoming boss.

Right. Uh, I, Joe, I, Joe Massino played his courage, right? In this entire situation. I'm sure there was a lot of people in his ear telling him like, why don't you become boss? So just do it like Rusty's. He's never getting outta jail. He is an old, old man. But Joe, I think he did the right thing, like he. Was practically the acting boss, but you know, he showed enough reference to the traditional rules knowing that if he just, you know, kind of took over the boss position.

I think in the back of his mind he was trying to set up some kind of stability within the Bono family by following the rules. Cuz he could have very easily have just said, I'm the boss. Like, what are you gonna do about it? You're in jail. Yeah. You know what I mean? There's nothing he could've done about it.

Right. Uh, so Joe Massino becomes, uh, Yeah, becomes boss and immediately he kind of changes how things are done because during the [00:37:00] commission trial they, they, they used a statute called the rico, uh, the RICO Laws. And it, the F B I and law enforcement in general was just hyper focused on organized crimes, especially in America, but in general, but especially in New York.

Uh, you know, like the cold, the Cold War was still going up. Well, Was still kind of like, it was winding down, so there was less emphasis on that, like the civil rights movement had came and passed so they could focus almost all their resources on the mafia. So Joe kind of changes things, how things had always been done with the mafia.

Like he, he starts closing down all the social clubs where, uh, These guys used to hang out. Uh, probably like a famous example of one of these social clubs is the one in Donny, Nebraska or the Veterans Club, or, uh, Michael Matson. That's where they all hang out, you know, and he thought, and rightfully so, like these places are just too easy to bug, right?

Uh, he kind of [00:38:00] changes how the whole. Structure work. He ended all kind of joint jobs with other families. Just thinking like, I can't, like I can't really trust these guys cause I'm not overseeing them. Right. So it was just bono's doing bono work. Uh, And then like each crew would be responsible for one particular task and that was it.

Right? And none of them would actually really have like direct contact with Joe himself. So they would go through Salvatory Vitality, who was his brother-in-law. And it was kind of like creating like layers and layers and layers of defense against like, uh, Ricoh laws. Basically trying to ensure that they.

Couldn't tie anything to him and then thus like tried to take down the entire family. And it worked. It was highly effective. Uh, cuz Joe was boss for like a really long time. Like he even took it so far that like if people talked to him, even if they were in the same room, they weren't allowed to say his [00:39:00] name, they had to pull on his ear, pull on their ear.

And then that's how they know. Okay. Yeah, I'm talk like we're talking to Joe. It just, uh, I think that the mafia, it was changing with the times too that these, these ideas of these social clubs were such sinning ducks because in the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, there was a lot of social clubs that were completely legitimate around of where men would go and play cards and drink.

And drink coffee in the morning, drink beer in the afternoon and hang around all day. And you start getting into the eighties and the nineties and people just weren't doing that anymore. So if you had a bunch of guys sitting around in a social club, there's all day just kind of puttering around playing cards.

That was just a, like a shining a laser beam flashlight on yourself to the police. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, and the, like, a lot of the things that Joe did, and [00:40:00] then I was thinking about this when I was, at least the Bonanno film became like a, kind of like how terrorist cells run in like Afghanistan and like the Middle East really, where they're like, they're all working towards the same thing, but they're so, like they're completely caught off from one another.

Uh, that seems to be the type of system where Joe. Was trying to set up where I could think eventually his idea would be like nobody in the Gambino family talked to anybody in the Bono family. Nobody in the Bono family talked to anybody in the Genovese family. And yes, they were all working towards the same goal, but.

Completely separate from another one. Right? Because that was a big part of the commission trial was in the sense is, yeah, these are all different families, but they're all working in tandem together, right? So in a, in a sense it's like one large criminal organization as opposed to like just charging, say the Bono family for something.

You know, like cuz they were tied in with the Genovese. But if you could try to keep the whole thing separate [00:41:00] from one another. If it did go to court, they would have a harder time trying to make like a gigantic case. Like it makes sense to me. He's a, he's Joe's a remarkably, I always get, of all the guys that I've read about so far, he strikes me as being one of the more intelligent guys out of all the, uh, mob guys.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. How does this family eventually just completely go over the cliff? They, they have just, it seems of this family. They just go from one disaster to the next, to the next, to the next W. Let's wrap up today with pretty much their last. Uh, bang up until the two thousands, really, like the Bono family was the most powerful family in, in New York.

I mean, and quite remarkable when you think about like, the job that Joe was able to do, like he took a, took over a [00:42:00] family that was like strife with Civil War Boss in jail, kicked it with the commission and witness fan of a couple years, took him up to the, the, uh, to the very top. But the thing that ends up taking like.

Sends the whole thing crashing to the ground is forensic accountants. Uh, that's an actual job than the F B I has. And I guess they'd been monitoring like the Bono and his associates for a really long time, and I guess they. They saw like there was a bunch of taxes that weren't getting paid and kind of like just, you know, shady deals, uh, in relation to, uh, basically I guess it was running parking lots in New York.

Right. Which I assume is big time money. Just, I know from living in Toronto, it's, it's huge cuz you can't find parking. Barry Weinberg, who was. Doing business with Canella, who was one of one of the coppos in the Bono family. The F B I brings Barry in and basically tells him like we know, like we have forensic evidence, accounting [00:43:00] evidence.

I know that that's never gonna make me not laugh. Show me like these shady deals and you're gonna go to jail. Jail for a really long time unless you do this for us. Like, Who knows. I mean, the f b I could have just been bluffing, right? Like maybe they didn't have like a enough information to send him to jail.

But like Barry's just the type of guy that, at least from what I've read, he was just way in over his head dealing with these types of people. He seemed, he's kind of reminds me of, I dunno if you guys ever seen the movie Carlito's Way, he's, uh, Sean Penn. He's like the. Like the lawyer or whatever is like pretending to be like a gangster, but he, you know, as soon as stuff gets serious, he just can't do it.

So he agrees to wear a wire and he gets, uh, this cop on, uh, charges and he was already at, previously on charges from, I believe it was extortion or something of the sword. So he, he potentially was looking at 25. Years in jail and he starts talking. I mean, once he starts talking the whole [00:44:00] system, the whole family just starts talking.

Cuz Joe was actually quite proud that no, as crazy as it sounds with all the craziness in the banal family, they had never had a guy turned in informant, which is none of the other families could say that. It's remarkable that they, they're one of the oldest families, and it wasn't up until the two thousands before somebody actually became an informant.

Yeah, that's a, it's fascinating. And then the informant winds up being the boss. So his, his, uh, test his, uh, inf information, Lisa indictment of another guy named Frank Cop, and then Salvator Vitali, his brother-in-law, ends up getting caught into all of this. And then Joe ends up getting caught into all of this and.

Because they all start just ratting on each other, right? Because they're, cuz they're looking at like, multiple offense. So it's not like they just got caught with one thing. A lot of these guys were, you know, up, up on charges or probably going to jail for one thing and it's, you know, you add the charge on top of the charge and [00:45:00] all of a sudden you're looking at, you know, 35, 40, 50 years in jail.

Right. Um, I mean this is, I mean, you could say whether it was effective or not, I would personally say it was effective, like, kind of going hard on. These mob guys, uh, I mean, I mean the results speak for themselves, right? The, I think the, uh, the law enforcement and the legal system, it worked, right? Uh, it, it got these guys to start ratting each other out and start talking.

Um, But Joe himself, you know, he, he was laco, he was Costa Nostra to, I wouldn't say the very end, well, before we, you know, like we'll get to the end. But he was, he was a gangster his whole life, right? He, he did truly believe, like, you know, you don't talk, you don't, uh, you do your time and you know, here it is.

Like as soon as things get a little bit tough, like everyone starts riding on each other and they start riding on him, and. Joe adds, actually he's a little bit unlucky [00:46:00] cuz like one of the charges that he was up, uh, For, I believe it was a, I think it was extortion, but it, I think it up to a certain amount, like, uh, depending on how big the extortion or the rocket was or, no, it was racketeering, uh, um, violence in the aid of racketeering.

It was, uh, actually carried the death penalty at this time. So Joe Massino was looking at the death penalty and he's just looking at the situation. He goes like, I spent my whole life, like these guys were like my family. And they're all turning on me. They're all turning on me, and he decides, you know what?

I'm just gonna do it myself. And Joe turns in informants and he actually, at one point, you know, he wears a wire and gets his own underboss. Uh, Vinny gorgeous, which is such a great bob. Maybe he actually ran like beauty polls or something like that, and like, was very insidious about how he looked. And he gets him on tape admitting to a murder and, uh, Yeah, Joe becomes [00:47:00] the first mob boss to ever become an informant.

You know, it's, it's crazy how quickly it all fell apart considering how well ran it was, uh, under Joe. But, you know, with the severity of the crimes and, and new laws and the new technology, the government has it at its disposal. It's harder to do, it's just harder to commit crimes now. Um, that's why a lot of.

I would argue like a lot of the new crop of the Mafia guys coming up, they're just not, I just don't think you're gonna get people like a Joe Macino anymore, or you're, you know, like a Carlo Gambino or even like a Paul Castellano. I just don't think you were gonna get these type of guys anymore, cuz they, they look at the situation, it's just, It's just so difficult to make money in it now and then, like the, the laws are so severe.

Uh, I just think a lot of these guys end up just doing other stuff. I was just reading this, uh, book by a federal prosecutor and it wasn't in, uh, about the mafia at all, but he was explaining a lot of the process [00:48:00] of how they. Break these cases, and I think the system that the federal government has set up has done as much as even the laws like the Ricoh, they have such strict sentencing guidelines and so such tough sentencing.

A a, a small drug charge could bring somebody 5, 10, 15 years in the hardcore. Prison with almost no possibility for early release or a little bit of early release. Like if you get a 15 year sentence, you're gonna spend pretty darn close to 15 years in jail. And they just use that. Oh, well it. They have the, the prosecutor can make a plea of clemency if the person helps the, with the judge and they can get half of their sentence, three quarters of their sentence knocked off.

So now they have every incentive in the world to go after the next guy and the next guy and the next guy. [00:49:00] And it, it is a system where, It really is designed to knock down one peg after another, after another. Whether it works as far as rehabilitating people or if it really is a punitive measure, that's something we can discuss.

Uh, you know, it's send in your emails or thoughts. We'd love to hear them, but that it is a very effective method of taking one. Down, uh, criminal organizations, it definitely worked with the mob, right? I don't think there's, there's really any denying that, in my opinion. It definitely worked for the American mob.

Now, is it gonna work on some of the, these newer organizations like the Cartels and stuff like that? You know, we'll have to wait and see, right? But, For the, it completely destroyed the American mob, the, the harsher sentencing. And then because of the harsher sentencing, a lot of these guys would talk. And then once that's broke, right, [00:50:00] the, the erta, uh, the trust that, you know, your fellow mobsters aren't gonna rat on you.

The whole system comes crumbling down, right? Because there ha if, if you don't have that, then, I mean, really, what are you doing? Like, why are you even in this organization? Uh, if the second somebody goes to jail, they're just gonna start ratting. Um, you know, everyone's not like Sunny Franes who like quite literally spent his entire 50 years in jail and in rat.

You know, most people aren't like that. They're gonna look at a 50 year sentence and go, yeah, I'm gonna talk. Um, Joe's actually, from my understanding, he is alive now actually because of his, uh, cooperation, uh, with, uh, you know, finding, uh, bodies and, uh, hoping that other mobster, uh, mob guys, uh, caught up on charges themselves.

Uh, yeah, he got compassionate release and I believe he's under police supervision and. Is alive and well. He's [00:51:00] quite old now. I believe he's like in his late seventies. But yeah, he's alive and I think that's where we can leave it today. This is just one of our five episodes on the Five Families Look for episodes that do really deep dives into many of the topics we talked about today.

And we, I know, uh, Speaking for Chris and I, mustache, Chris and I, we wanna, we would love to hear what you want to hear more about. So get in contact with us on all the, the usual ways and, uh, we will definitely talk to you soon. We're gonna do the, the five families and then, you know, this is, we came up, came up with this idea to just, I think just give a general overview of the entire.

History of the five family. So when we start doing the deep dives, you guys can, you know, revisit these episodes and you'll kind of have like a narrative history to keep all these names in perspective and, uh, you know, kind of put a [00:52:00] timeline on all the different things that we're gonna be talking about.

So look for us on social media. You can email, website, Facebook. It will all be in the show notes, and we will talk to you next time. Yeah, forget about it.

You've been listening to Organized Crime and Punishment, a History and Crime podcast. To learn more about what you heard today, find links to social media. And how to support the show. Go to our website, A to Z history page.com. Become a friend of ours by sending us an email to crime A to zhi history page.com.

All of this and more can be found in the show notes. We'll see you next time on Organized Crime and Punishment. Forget about it.[00:53:00]