Jul 13 2007
Hit inspired Pesci role in gangster flick Casino
MOBSTER Tony “The Ant” Spilotro met a grisly end because he broke the Mafia code – by having an affair with another gangster’s wife.
Spilotro, said to be the inspiration behind Joe Pesci’s chilling character in the gangland movie Casino, was buried in a cornfield along with his brother. Continue Reading »
Jul 06 2007
Producer Joseph Isgro nails the rights to a legendary mobster’s life story.
BEFORE Tony Soprano or Don Corleone or Tony Montana there was Lucky Luciano — the real-life patriarch of modern organized crime.
Luciano was the Sicilian immigrant who rose to power in the Mafia in the U.S. in the 1920s and transformed it into a flourishing enterprise based on legitimate economic models. He ordered gangland killings, consolidated warring crime factions and began laundering profits from narcotics and prostitution through lawful businesses. Continue Reading »
May 26 2007
Nigel Jones reviews The Mafia at War by Tim Newark – The two things that almost everyone once knew about Italy’s Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, were that he made Italian trains run on time, and that he, uniquely among Italian rulers, successfully, if temporarily, crushed the Sicilian Mafia. Never forgetting a slight, the Mob, so the legend goes, ate their revenge cold years later when they handed over their Sicilian heartland without a shot being fired, lock, stock, and non-smoking barrel to the invading Allies.
Not having investigated Italian railway timetables between 1922-43 I cannot report on the veracity of the first claim, but Tim Newark has exhaustively examined the second, and establishes beyond doubt that any notion that it was the Mob that won Sicily for the Allies is a myth. Continue Reading »
Feb 10 2007
As the world news focused on the death of former Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, following a heart attack, on Sunday December 10, 2006 at the venerable age of 91, Sicily lamented unexpectedly the death of Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo, Archbishop Emeritus of Palermo who passed away during the early hours of that same day at the age of 88. Continue Reading »
Feb 05 2007
You’ve seen the Arcadia Publishing books in your local bookstore. They are the photo-filled paperbacks that celebrate the uplifting local histories of Detroit, its suburbs, and assorted ethnic groups, generally taking a warts-free approach that plays up the bucolic and nostalgic side of yesteryear.
Then there is Arcadia’s “Motor City Mafia,” Scott Burnstein’s history of organized crime in Detroit. It is filled with images of bodies lying in their own blood, mug shots, FBI surveillance photos, Mafia weddings and wise guys with nicknames like Cockeyed Sam, Sammy B, Swinging Sammy, Jimmy Q., Pat the Pimp, Joe the Barber, Tony Pro, Tony Z, Joey Jack, Billy Jack, Frank the Irishman, Sally Buggs, Joe the Whip, Papa John and Black Jack. Continue Reading »
Jan 28 2007
He beat and stole as mob mole
Legendary FBI agent Joe Pistone is confessing for the first time that he broke the law during the years he spent undercover as mob wanna-be Donnie Brasco.
Warehouse burglaries. Beatings. Truck hijackings. And even a conspiracy to murder a Bonanno crime family capo. Continue Reading »
