Word: underboss
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Anthony Salvatore Casso, 52, one of the nation's most feared Mafia leaders, surrendered -- hands up high, dripping wet -- to an FBI SWAT team. Cracked one agent: "He didn't have his gun in the shower like in the spaghetti westerns." Federal agents say that Casso, a Lucchese family underboss street-named "Gaspipe" (possibly because of his blowtorch safecracking skills), was hated within the crime family because of his penchant for ordering hits simply because a fellow mobster annoyed him. "We felt that some of the tips were coming from the Luccheses," says FBI agent Donald North, who supervises organized...
...credit, Carey has made some big strides since taking office. When turncoat Gambino underboss Sammy Gravano testified recently about his ties to a concrete-hauling Teamsters local, Carey slapped a trusteeship on the unit to shape it up. Last week, he says, he launched a probe of Teamsters links to the Mob in the movie industry. Carey also instituted budgets for the union, a previously unheard-of practice. He personally negotiated a contract for car haulers, one of the union's biggest accords, and he stopped a revolt by Northwest Airlines flight attendants who nearly quit the union to join...
...Each time the elusive leader of the nation's most powerful crime family persuaded the jury he was nothing more than a misunderstood plumbing salesman. But this time the government's case looked perfect. The witnesses did not lose their memories on the stand. The tapes were clear. The underboss spilled the grim details. The jury was protected. "The Don is covered with Velcro," said the assistant director of the FBI's New York office, James Fox, "and every charge stuck...
...whatever the outcome, John Gotti is now an unmade man. Many lower-rung mobsters did not like his high-profile strutting for the media; they were especially outraged that it was his right-hand man, Salvatore "Sammy Bull" Gravano, who delivered up his old mentor, as well as underboss Frank Locascio. "The safest place for John Gotti is in jail," observes Michael Cherkasky, head of investigations for the Manhattan district attorney. Gotti may hope to run the Gambino operation from prison, as Colombo boss Carmine Persico, serving 100 years, is trying to do with his family, but dissension...
Gravano is just one of a number of high-ranking mobsters who have turned state's evidence recently, including Philadelphia underboss Philip Leonetti and Lucchese family boss Alphonse D'Arco. One reason for the rash of defections may be that prison conditions are getting less congenial these days for the Mafia. "There was a time when Mafia guys ran the jails," says Joseph Coffey, a top investigator with the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. "They were like country clubs. Now the blacks run the jails, and mobsters are second-class citizens...