Mafia Men - Hoodwinkers, suckers and scams (True Crime) by Kerr Gordon

Author:Kerr, Gordon [Kerr, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Canary Press
Published: 2011-10-10T23:00:00+00:00

Joey ‘Big Joey’ Massino

When Joey Massino was convicted in New York, in 2004, his charge sheet was a roll-call of Mafia crimes of the past 100 years – murder, racketeering, arson, extortion, loan-sharking, illegal gambling, conspiracy and money laundering. This head of the Bonanno Crime Family had certainly come a long way.

Although Joey later became a restaurateur, his catering career had humble beginnings – a mobile food-wagon in the Queens area of New York, selling coffee and pastries to workers in the docks. He began his Mafia career as a protégé of Philip ‘Rusty’ Rastelli and his brothers, in the 1960s. Rastelli was a nasty, violent individual who, a few years later, would rise to the top of the heap in the Bonanno Family. With the Rastellis, he got into running numbers, hijacking trucks and fencing stolen goods.

In 1975, Paul Castellano, who would in the future become head of the Family, ordered Massino to carry out a hit on Vito Borelli. Borelli was dating Castellano’s daughter and had made the fatal mistake of insulting Castellano in front of her by comparing him to a man called Frank Perdue, a businessman with a cooked chicken brand who used to advertise it personally on television. The fact that Perdue, himself, resembled a plucked chicken, did not endear Borelli to Big Paul. So, Massino, accompanied by John Gotti, another future Family head – the Gambinos in his case – killed the unfortunate Borelli at a Manhattan cookie business owned by Bonanno soldier, Anthony Rabito. Other men involved were Dominick ‘Sonny Black’ Napolitano, Rabito and Angelo Ruggiero, Roy DeMeo and Frank DeCicco. Massino’s brother-in-law, Salvatore Vitale, was asked to drive the body to a garage where they were waiting. Borelli had been shot in the face and body and he was wearing only his underpants. Vitale noticed that one of the men was holding a knife and has speculated that the man with the knife was Roy DeMeo whose speciality was cutting up bodies like a Perdue chicken.

Borelli’s murder provided a boost to Massino’s career and in 1976 he became a made man of the Bonanno Family, reporting to Philip ‘Lucky Phil’ Giaccone. Best of all, he was still a complete unknown to the Federal authorities.

In June of that year, the body of Joseph ‘Doo Doo’ Pastore was discovered in a dumpster, round the corner from Massino’s restaurant in Maspeth. He had been killed with two shots to the head. There was a connection to Massino because Pastore was a truck hijacker who supplied Joey with stolen goods that Massino fenced for him. It did not take police long to make the connection and he and Richard Dormer, Pastore’s half-brother were taken to the morgue to make an identification of the body. It was no coincidence that, just before the murder, Massino had asked his brother-in-law, Salvatore Vitale, to borrow $9,000 from Pastore for him. It looked like he would never have to re-pay that particular debt.

Massino was in court in 1977 on a

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.