By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com How unsophisticated was the FBI when dealing with the mob in the early 1960s? So unsophisticated that the bureau referred to the La Cosa Nostra as the La Causa Nostra, according to Jerry Capeci, the mob expert who runs the site Gang Land News. Capeci writes that for near two years,…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com There doesn’t seem to be any doubt these days that the Mafia exists. In fact, that goes without saying. But in the 1950s, not everyone subscribed to that assumption. Jerry Capeci of Gang Land News, the premiere website on the Mafia, has unearthed documents which show that J. Edgar Hoover’s agents…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com The nicknames have become legendary: The Chin, The Dapper Don, Bugsy. Now, there’s a place for them, all under one roof. The New York Times reported on Monday of a $42 million museum in Las Vegas dedicated to the Mob, three stories of a 41,000-square-foot landmark building with 17,000 square feet of…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Was the late Godfather John Gotti a draft dodger? Well, kinda, sorta. His status with the military is included in 1,580 pages of FBI files on Gotti from 1964 to 1995, archived on a CD-ROM by the website paperlessarchives.com. Gotti was the boss of the Gambino crime family, nicknamed the “Dapper…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com FBI agents found more than a good cut of veal and pork chops at the Graham Ave. Meats and Deli in Brooklyn, N.Y. neighborhood of Williamsburg this summer. In their arrest of Michael “Mike The Butcher” Virtuoso on extortion charges this past July, agents found a rolodex of Virtuoso’s with the contact…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The Gambino Crime Family has a new boss — Domenico (Italian Dom) Cefalu, marking a clear end to the Gotti era, Gang Land News reported. Mob expert Jerry Capeci of Gang Land News writes: “In a surprise move, the Gambinos have gone back to the old-fashioned way of running a crime…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Some fed mobster file lost in a New York cab nearly 20 years ago– with an estimated pre-sale worth of $10,000 to $15,000 — are going up for auction at Bonhams New York, the Associated Press reports. The U.S. government file in a three-ring binder — stamped “Mafia” and “United States…
