On the Waterfront. The Making of a Great American Film: KAZAN AND SCHULBEG BEFORE THE HUAC: CHAPTER 19 KAZAN AND SCHULBEG BEFORE THE HUAC Winter, 1952 "...in the final tally we were all victims...None of us-right, l...
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On the Waterfront. The Making of a Great American Film: KAZAN AND SCHULBEG BEFORE THE HUAC
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Russian Mafia Gangster: American Mafia Gets a Makeover
Russian Mafia Gangster: American Mafia Gets a Makeover: By Meghan Walsh Last April, in a packed federal courtroom, all eyes were on one unremarkable-looking dark-haired man. More than 90...
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The New England Mafia: Frank Angiulo’s death marks end of North End Mob e...
The New England Mafia: Frank Angiulo’s death marks end of North End Mob e...: By Shelley Murphy Globe Staff June 01, 2015 The Angiulos were among Boston’s most infamous sons, a band of brothe...
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Prison release denied for paralyzed Gambino mobster, 77; feds say he’s too dangerous to send home
BY JOHN MARZULLI
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, June 2, 2015, 2:30 AM
A source said the Gambinos have not retired Edward (Cousin Eddie) Garafola, who could theoretically give orders to mob associates if he came home. Garafola, 77, is partially paralyzed and is unable to speak.
A convicted Gambino soldier, serving a 30-year sentence for conspiring to murder both his cousin and ex-underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano, has been denied a compassionate release from prison — even though he is partially paralyzed due to a stroke, cannot speak, and is an amputee who must use a wheelchair.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons determined that Edward (Cousin Eddie) Garafola, 77, remains a threat to the community and is too dangerous to send home to Staten Island, the mobster’s wife of 56 years, Frances Garafola, told the Daily News.
“I wanted us to end our lives together,” Frances, 75, said. “I’m devastated. It’s heartbreaking.”
Garafola, a made member of the Gambino crime family since the 1970s, pleaded guilty in 2007 to participating in the 1990 gangland killing of his cousin Edward (The Chink) Garofalo because he was suspected of cooperating with the feds.
He also pleaded guilty to conspiring with former Gambino boss Peter Gotti in a failed 1999 plot to whack Gravano for ratting out the late Gambino boss John Gotti.
Frances Garafola — whose side of the family spells their surname differently from the murdered cousin — also happens to be Gravano’s sister.
The Prison Bureau will consider a sentence reduction for elderly inmates who suffer from chronic or serious medical conditions that “diminish their ability to function” in jail.
He is due to be released in 2028, but since he’s been locked up, Garafola has suffered a heart attack, stroke, and had his leg partially amputated because of diabetes complications.
“He can’t speak, he can’t communicate, he has to be fed, and washed and dressed,” Frances said. “It must be costing the government a fortune to care for him.”
The Garafolas were so sure he would qualify for early release that they renovated their Staten Island home to make it accessible for him. But last month she received the bad news from his counselor at the federal prison hospital in Rochester, Minn. “He’s very sad and depressed,” Frances said.
Laura Garofalo, the daughter of the murder victim, said Cousin Eddie is where he belongs.
“I can’t get a compassionate visit with my father,” she said Monday.
“I believe people who murder their cousins and get life in prison are a blight to society and taxpayers as a whole. I think when he decided to be a murderer he knew the consequences.”
A law enforcement source said Edward Garafola has not been “put on the shelf,” or retired by the Gambinos, and he could theoretically give orders to mob associates if he came home. “He was a real bastard back in the day,” the source said.
Edmund Ross, a Prison Bureau spokesman, declined to comment on the rejection because the compassionate release process is not considered public information.
jmarzulli@nydailynews.com
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How Gambino mobster went from a Goodfella to a Dogfella when he rescued a sickly seven-pound Shih Tzu with maggots and a broken jaw tied to a parking meter
• Ex-con James Guiliani stole from drug dealers and sold cocaine and steroids to feed his own drug and alcohol addictions
• He details in new book how he was on the verge of suicide with a loaded semi-automatic in his pocket
• He future wife helped saved him by leading him to rescue the dog he would call Bruno
• Under all that matted hair, dirt and skin crawling with maggots and covered with tumors, was a kindred spirit
• ‘One night I went to bed a knock-around guy, and the next morning I woke up Mr. F*****' Rogers’
• He and his wife now run Keno's Animal Rescue in Brooklyn
By Caroline Howe For Dailymail.com
He went from being a Goodfella to a Dogfella when an abandoned, abused and sickly seven-pound Shih Tzu licked his face and lips after being untied from a parking meter.
Up until that time, drug-addicted ex-con, James Guiliani, who had been with the Gambino mob crew, stole from drug dealers and sold cocaine and steroids to feed his own drug and alcohol addictions.
Bruno, the new name Guiliani gave the ailing little dog, proved to be the final cure for the gangster’s demons.
Under all that matted hair, dirt and skin crawling with maggots and covered with tumors, was a kindred spirit that stole Guiliani’s heart.
‘His eyes looked dead, and his jaw seemed crooked. He was spotting blood from his a**, and his coat was a putrid greenish-yellow, which I would later learn was the result of being confined in a tight space where he was forced to sleep in his own p*** and s***’.
‘What the f***’, Guiliani said. Someone had left the dog to die.
His jaw had been broken and never set so he looked disfigured.
Until Bruno licked his face, ‘I was disgusted by dogs for licking their own balls. I couldn’t imagine letting a dog lick my hand, never mind my grille’.
The big tough mob guy had instantly fallen in love with his new best friend. ‘I was kissing him back.’
Now a far cry from life in the street as a mobster, Guiliani and his second wife, Lena, run a dog boutique and a rescue shelter in Brooklyn, New York.
Guiliani reveals how the first dog he rescued in 2006 stole his heart and changed his life forever in Dogfella: How An Abandoned Dog Named Bruno Turned This Mobster’s Life Around, published by Da Capo Press.
Three years earlier in 2003, Guiliani was alone and on the verge of suicide, sitting on a rock at Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York, with a loaded semi-automatic 25 Raven pistol in his pocket waiting for the sun to go down before he pointed the gun against his head and pulled the trigger.
‘What I was was a bum,' he writes in his book.
‘At 35 nothing to show for my time on this planet except heartache for those who love me, prison tattoos, and a conviction record’.
‘I was a grown man with no money, no self-esteem, no girlfriend and no future.
‘When I wanted sex I paid for it – with unattractive street hookers, the kind that would scare a normal man into celibacy.'
He was sure his luck had run out when three underage girls walked by and struck up a conversation because they needed someone to buy beer for them.
One of the girls sensed he was in trouble seeing the outline of the gun in his pants. She talked him into not returning to the beach after buying the beer and giving her his phone number. She had a warm, compassionate friend she thought could help talk him through his troubles.
That first six-hour conversation with Lena, the younger girl’s friend, was the first stage of curing his demons, Guiliani confesses.
They met, they clicked and have been together ever since.
Guiliani’s plan to make an honest living was to open a gay bar in Manhattan – while they were in the midst of construction of Lena’s dream – a pet boutique, The Diamond Collar, in Brooklyn.
‘Not just a bar’. A gay bar. Those people spend. They like to party.
“You’re delusional’, Lena told him. ‘You’re an alcoholic, James. And a coke fiend. And you were taking steroids, what, six months ago? You can’t own a bar. You can’t go near a bar, never mind own one’.
James had never been an animal person but Lena was.
‘I could not care less about dogs and cats. To me they were more trouble than they were worth. They took time and money, neither of which I was willing to give away. I had my own needs, addictions that left me too selfish to worry about anything else.’
He wasn’t too cozy with Lena’s brood of a dozen plus cats or her pug named Brock. He had warmed up to one cat, Sniffles, but that was it – until that morning they were having an espresso at Café Sorrento on Eighteenth Avenue in Brooklyn. Lena saw what she saw what looked like an animal next to the parking meter across the street. She sent James over to investigate.
As he got closer, James saw it was a sick dog with a very thick rope wrapped around its neck, like the ropes used to tie a boat to a dock.
‘Holy s***’, James said. He had found himself in similar situations as a junkie and alcoholic when he’d used cocaine for days and drink himself into a stupor only to wake up on the sidewalk outside of a strange bar, having p***** in his pants and his face beaten to a pulp.
James picked up the little guy and carried him into the vet’s office where he was abruptly told not to bring that dog in unless he was going to pay for his care. The vet had no interest in the dog’s welfare.
‘At that point it took all of my restraint not to hop over the reception desk and put his head through a wall. This guy was a doctor? A veterinary? How the f*** could he ignore the dog’?
‘I’m not gonna go tie him back to the parking meter. He’s sick and you’re a f****** vet. Help the dog’.
Guiliani pulled out a roll of cash. ‘This enough, you p****’?
He didn’t want cash. He wanted a credit card. So Lena offered hers.
‘All I could think of was how I wanted to handle the doctor after the dog was treated. I saw myself breaking his greedy fingers with a hammer or punching his teeth down his throat with a fistful of quarters’.
What stopped him was the dog needed treatment.
Guiliani was never a 'mad' guy so technically he wasn’t a goodfella, a term used to describe a member of a Mafia family. But he ran with Gotti’s crew.
He was in a gang in high school in Queens, NY and segued right into the Gotti fold.
But the party ended in December 1990 when John Gotti Sr. was arrested along with mobsters Sammy Gravano and Frank Locascio.
The powerful boss was convicted and the high times of drugs, booze and partying at the mob’s social club with the crew were over.
James was on his own, robbing drug dealers to pay for his own drugs when he decided to hijack a truckload of Gameboys, a popular video game console, out on Long Island with some pals.
He was so coked up, he never saw there was no traffic and no truck on the Long Island Expressway. He didn’t see the lights from the helicopter flying low in front of his car doing 110 mph. But he saw the two cop cars that pulled him over.
Their hijack plan had been ratted out by their inside guy who had been busted several weeks earlier.
A ‘kidnapping kit’ in the car with gloves, tape, ski masks, plastic cuffs and handcuffs, burglary tools along with the guns they were carrying earned him two years in Suffolk County Correctional Institute, called Riverhead because of its location in upstate Riverhead, NY. It is also one of the most feared prisons because of the rough conditions behind those walls.
James couldn’t afford to do time again by beating up the vet who wasn’t going to care for Bruno without cash up front.
And he couldn’t afford to lose Lena who wasn’t going to put up with drug binges anymore or out-of-control behavior.
He had one last chance to get himself clean and out of the downhill slide he had been on all of his life as a full-blown junkie and a drunk.
The Diamond Collar opened and became Guiliani’s refuge.
When James learned that Bruno’s tumors were cancerous, he stopped drinking and doing drugs so he could spend all of his time with Bruno.
‘One night I went to bed a street-savvy knock-around guy, and the next morning I woke up Mr. F*****’ Rogers’.
He looked forward to seeing Bruno every morning and the new store now came before drugs and booze. ‘I was becoming an animal lover without knowing it,' he writes.
Bruno died breaking both of their hearts . Lena couldn’t get out of her depression and James was on the verge of a big bender to get over his own grief - so he thought.
But he first went to a pet store and bought a purebred Shih Tzu for more than $1000 and presented the little dog to Lena who named him Gizmo.
Returning home after a night grieving with friends on cocaine and booze, Lena had had it. He had to get clean – for the dogs.
‘Just like Bruno, Gizmo depends on you’, she told him.
Her lifelong love of animals finally won him over.
‘I finally understood how much love, all of it unconditional, animals give. I also realized how much they desire our love in return. It’s really all they ask for, to be loved’.
‘The animal boutique that was Lena’s idea would provide me with a venue to treat and care for animals’.
‘The Diamond Collar would become my refuge, while Lena, Bruno, and Gizmo became my saviors. My life would finally have a purpose other than selfishness and self-destruction’.
‘My sobriety began that very day in our backyard. Holding Gizmo up to my face, crying while he licked my face, I swore off my demons and have remained sober ever since’.
James and Lena cut the ribbon on the opening of Keno’s Animal Rescue in Brooklyn in 2013, a shelter for caring for rescues, no cages, but living the good life while waiting to be adopted, ‘in dignity and in comfort’.
Keno’s was Lena’s dream but James is running it.
‘Instead of afternoon card games at Café Amici in Queens, I was picking up dog s*** and emptying litter boxes. Instead of hanging out with the guys, I was hanging out with twenty to thirty cats and two to ten dogs’.
‘Working, really working for a living, isn’t easy. It takes real guts to earn a legitimate income. The day-to-day grind of a five-day work-week is a lot tougher than sticking someone up’.
Working closely with Guiliani on the many rescue calls he’s received is Dr. Salvatore Pernice, at Brooklyn Veterinarian Group who unselfishly examines and treats every rescue Guiliani brings in before they can be housed with other dogs and cats. James calls him a savior for him and his animals.
‘I owe him more than I can every repay.
Lena, aka Madelena Perelli, remains ‘my love, my best friend, my rock’. He confesses he owes her for every good that has come into his life.
‘Like they say, fuhgeddaboutdit. My cup runneth over’.
James and Lena pay for the care of every rescue. They rescued animals on Staten Island after Hurricane Sandy devastated the area as well as responding to every call asking for help an abandoned or abused animal.
Readers can visit the Diamond Collar website at: thediamondcollar.com. Contributions can be made to Keno’s Animal Rescue.
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N.J. mobster pleads to cocaine-distribution charges
SAM WOOD, PHILLY.COM
An associate of the notorious organized crime family that inspired “The Sopranos” pleaded guilty today to distributing cocaine, federal officials said.
Nicholas DeGidio, 37, of Union Township, admitted that he sold more than a half-kilo of cocaine over the course of several months to an undercover FBI agent for about $78,000. He faces up to 40 years in prison and a $5 million fine when he is sentenced Sept. 29 in Newark.
Federal authorities previously have called the DeCavalcante organization one of La Cosa Nostra’s most ruthless families. It operates in North Jersey under the Gambino family, one of the five major crime families based in New York.
On March 12, the FBI delivered a blow to the DeCavalcante organization when it arrested DeGidio along with nine other members and associates of the crime family. Authorities charged the men with a diverse set of counts, including conspiracy to commit murder, distribute drugs, smuggle untaxed cigarettes, and running a prostitution business.
David Chase, creator of “The Sopranos,” has said he drew inspiration for the show partly from the DeCavalcante organization.
Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/NJ_mobster_pleads_to_cocaine_distribution_charges.html#4Xm6B8GSxyI8Sakw.99
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The Prohibition Gangsters in Pictures: Stash of Prohibition-era whiskey found in N. Muske...
The Prohibition Gangsters in Pictures: Stash of Prohibition-era whiskey found in N. Muske...: Sarah Sell, WZZM NORTH MUSKEGON, Mich. (WZZM) - A Muskegon County couple got a big surprise recently while they were doing some r...
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Here is a sample chapter from my new books “No Time to Say Goodbye: Memoirs of a Life in Foster Care.” Now on Amazon.Com
http://amemoirofalifeinfostercare.blogspot.com/
Mywritersite.blogspot.com
I used to be Irish Catholic.
I used to be Irish Catholic. Now I’m an American—you grow. George Carlin
The single greatest influence in our lives was the church. The Catholic Church in the 1960s differs from what it is today, especially in the Naugatuck Valley, in those days an overwhelmingly conservative Catholic place.
I was part of what might have been the last generation of American Catholic children who completely and unquestioningly accepted the supernatural as real. Miracles happened. Virgin birth and transubstantiation made perfect sense. Mere humans did in fact, become saints. There was a Holy Ghost. Guardian angels walked beside us and our patron saints really did put in a good word for us every now and then.
Church was at the center of our lives. Being a Roman Catholic back then was no small chore. In fact, it was a lot of work. The Mass was in Latin, conducted with the priest’s back to the flock. (We were a flock. Protestant were the more democratically named “congregation.”)
Aside from Sunday Mass there were also eleven Holy Days of Obligation that we had to attend, and then there were the all-important sacraments of First Confession, First Communion, and Confirmation, all ornate and dramatic affairs that happened within a few years of each other.
We dressed properly in a suit coat and tie for Sunday mass. Fridays were meatless as a means of penance. At school, there was prayer in the morning before classes began, prayer before lunch, prayer after lunch and prayer before we went home. There was also a half-hour of religion class every day. And there was fasting. In those days, Catholics fasted eight hours before receiving communion.
Then there was confession on Saturday, mandatory because Sunday Mass was also mandatory and so was taking Holy Communion, which could not be accepted without first going to confession. We had to go to confession twice in a week: once on Fridays, since the nuns were convinced none of us would go on our own over the weekend, and then once again on Saturday afternoons when Helen made us go.
When I made my first confession at age seven, we were taught that there were two types of sin: mortal sins, which were serious sins, and venial sins, which were lesser sins, lying and disobedience. The nuns said that we would have to narrow our selection to venial sins since we were far too young to have any mortal sins against our soul.
One of little girls in the group raised her hand and asked, “What’s adultery?”
“Nothing to worry yourself over, dear,” the nun answered, “It’s for adults, and it is a most grievous offense against God.” I liked the sound of that, “most grievous offense against God.” Sounded serious.
Confession was a big deal and involved a lot of formality—kneeling in darkness, foreign languages, and solemnity—and I didn’t waste all that somberness with unworthy sins, so when the priest slid open the little wooden door that separated us in the dark I began my prayer.
“Deus meus, ex toto corde paenitet me omnium meorum peccatorum—” In full, the words meant “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because I fear the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.”
Then the sins were confessed. I told the priest I had committed adultery.
“Adultery, huh?” the priest said.
“Yes, Father,” I answered as solemnly as I could. “Adultery.”
“So, how’d that work out for you?” he asked.
“Ah,” I answered, “you know.”
“No,” he said, “actually I don’t. So how many times did you do this, this adultery?”
“Like, I think, three times, Father.”
“I see,” he said. “And during those times, were you alone or with others?”
“No, Father, I was alone.”
“And do you think you’ll be committing this sin again in the near future?”
“Naw, Father,” I answered. “I’m pretty much over it.”
As the years went and I became more confessional-savvy, I learned that the dumber the sin, the lighter the penance, the prayer for forgiveness that one was required to say up at the altar after the confession had ended.
So in the name of efficiency, I developed a pre-packaged list of dumb sins, like “I disobeyed my mother,” or “I fought with my brother,” or “I failed to say my nightly prayer.”
Through trial and error, I learned that every now and then I would have to toss a more serious sin into the mix or the priests might get testy and tax me with a big penance. So I tossed in the fail-safe sex sin, “I had evil thoughts about _____” and would fill in the name of the girl who struck me at the moment. I rotated the sins and the priests, and, overall, the system worked.
One Saturday, Denny and his gang of desperadoes showed up for confession and slid into the pew with me and waited for our turn at the confessional.
Denny turned to me and said, “Johnny, you got any good sins?”
Feeling magnanimous, I shared my formula for a hassle-free confession, and in closing said, “And then you say ‘I had evil thoughts about Mary Puravich,’ or whatever,’” using the name of a pretty girl from my class.
Denny shared my sin system with his friends, who were always in a hurry to cut their way to the front of the line, have their confessions heard, and leave without saying their penance. I went in to the confessional and said my piece, ending with, “and I had evil thoughts about Mary Puravich.”
“You know,” said the priest, “I gotta meet this Mary Puravich. She must be some kind of knockout, because the last four guys in here said the same thing about her.”
For all purposes, school was an extension of church, and unlike the way we lived in Waterbury, school was no longer optional. We were to be at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic School, in uniform, Monday through Friday from eight a.m. until three p.m. No excuses.
Because I lacked almost any formal education at that point, I couldn’t read or write, so it was decided that I should start school from the beginning—first grade—making me roughly two years older than my classmates.
Assumption was already over fifty years old. Walter and his sisters had been schooled there in the 1930s and the building , basically unchanged, had nothing sleek or new. It had sixteen classrooms for two hundred and fifty students, no gymnasium or cafeteria, highly polished wooden floors, and enormously large windows that each had to be opened and closed with a long pole with a hook on the end of it.
Our teachers were members of the Sisters of Mercy, an order formed in Ireland in 1831 to aid the poor, arriving in America in 1843 to minister to the famished Irish flocking to the states. Several of the nuns who had taught Walter were still living at the convent and filling in as substitute teachers, and one or two of them were still teaching full-time.
Classes began with the ringing of an enormous brass handbell by a nun who was strong enough to pick it up and move it around. Boys and girls played apart from each other on different sides of the school yard. The boys were clad in white shirts and green ties with the letter A sewn into the middle of them, black slacks, black socks, and black lace-up shoes. Loafers and pointed-toe shoes, then all the rage because of the Beatles, were forbidden. The girls were required to wear black Mary Janes, white or green knee socks, and a green dress uniform with an under slip, and a white, button-down shirt. They were also issued green beanies to wear in church, although I can’t recall that any of the girls ever wore one.
Just beneath the schoolyard was Farrell’s Foundry. At different times of the day, the mill released its afterburn from the enormous smokestacks that dotted the skyline. Tens of thousands of black specks shot into the air, making it look like a black-snow blizzard had hit our little town. The specks rained down on our white shirts, ruining them forever with ink-black spots of burned iron.
Every school day started with a prayer, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and then religion class. Sometimes one of the priests stopped by during religion class and opened the floor to discussions, wrongly assuming the questions would be deep and theological. What he got was, “Father, all right, look, if the Russians fired an atomic bomb at us and Jesus flies out of heaven and swallows it and it explodes in his stomach—will he be dead?”
The best one came from Peggy Sullivan, who asked, “If Jesus shaves off his beard, will he lose all his magical powers?” and then, pausing to catch her breath, “and if so, how screwed are we?”
One kid in the class, Patsy Sheehan, resented having to learn certain things about our religion the difference between venial sins and mortal sins, the Act of Contrition and so on. When the priest told us we that we had to choose a middle name for our confirmation, Patsy complained, “I got enough on my plate already.”
The priest insisted she pick a new middle name. Patsy asked, “What’s Jesus’s middle name?”
“He’s Jesus. He doesn’t have one,” the priest answered.
“So, what’s he, special?” Patsy asked.
Then there was Martin O’Toole, a wonderful, magnificent liar. He lied in such awesome, Herculean fashion that his tales were artful, Homeric. Our nun once asked, “Mr. O’Toole, why have you not turned in your homework?”
Martin waited until he had everyone’s attention and then stood slowly and dramatically from his desk, put his hands on his tiny waist and said, “Sister, last night I was in my back yard playing when I picked up a rock from the ground.” He then recounted the scene of him picking up what must have been a boulder the size of Rhode Island, “and as soon as I picked it up, oil! Bubbling crude came bursting out of the ground, millions of gallons of it! I was soaked in oil.” He paused and looked around the room and added, in hushed tones, “It took me hours to put that rock back on that oil and save this entire city.”
He returned to his seat and said, “And that’s why I didn’t time to do my homework, Sister.”
The nun’s jaw had dropped, and the silence of the moment was broken only when Micky Sullivan, a dense and gullible child, asked, “What kind of oil was it, Martin?”
“Esso,” he replied. “It was Esso oil.”
Many years later, Johnny became mayor of a small town in the Valley. An investigation of the town’s finances showed fifty thousand dollars missing from the treasury and all the evidence pointed to Martin. When asked to produce the town’s books, Martin said, that “The books are gone. Mice ate them.” He served two years in federal prison.
Then there was Ilene Flynn, a little red-haired, freckled-faced, fair-skinned girl who was more pious than the Pope. I knew a lot about her because the nuns thought we looked alike and paired me with her for all religious functions.
At our First Holy Communion, Ilene was so nervous her mouth went dry. Unable to swallow the host and forbidden to touch it—only a priest could do that—she ran around in circles crying hysterically, “Jesus is stuck in my mouth! Jesus is stuck in my mouth!” while the nuns flocked around her shouting instructions about swallowing, “Go like this, Ilene, go like this!” and then they did a swallowing demonstration that made them look a lot like penguins eating long fish.
Ilene’s Friday afternoon confessions were epic. She confessed to everything, I mean absolutely everything, and she actually said all of her penance, unlike the rest of us who negotiated a lighter-sentence deal with God before we got to the rail. My policy on penance was one for five. If I were given thirty Hail Marys as penance, in the deal God and I worked out, I said six.
Once, Ilene came out of the confessional in tears, wailing loud enough to wake the dead.
“What is it, Ilene?” Sister asked. “What happened?”
“Father O’Leary told me I’m going to hell on a lying rap,” she wailed, “and I don’t know what a rap is!”
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Canadian joint police force infiltrates Mafia, arresting mob bosses
David Love
A joint police forces probe penetrated unusually deep into the highly secretive Mafia organization, “mapping its hierarchy and structure, which could signal trouble ahead for the wider organization burrowed into the Toronto area since the 1950s” reported the National Post today. “Police say two of the men at the heart of their probe were the bosses of two separate clans of the ’Ndrangheta, the proper name of the Mafia formed in the Calabria region of Italy.”
The police force hit Montreal several months ago, and now take the mob ring down in Toronto with 25 search warrants that involved many different police forces - 260 officers from eight different police forces and agencies including the Hamilton Police Services andRCMP. In total, nineteen high ranking gangsters were arrested, smashing their mafia drug trafficking ring.
The three men are charged with drug and firearms offences with a total of 8.5 kilograms of cocaine, seven kilograms of marijuana, cash and five vehicles. “The list of those arrested includes Antonio Agresta, 43, Adam D'Andrea, 58, and Carlo Fazzari, 41, all from Hamilton,” reported CBC News.
“Organized crime brings an element of criminality to our communities that is unacceptable and undermines the safety of our citizens,” said Insp. Mike Slack of York Regional Police. “Criminals involved in conspiracies, drug and gun trafficking and extortion brings to our communities unwanted violence.”
The ’Ndrangheta is the brand of the Mafia that was born in Italy’s southern region of Calabria. It is similar but separate from the better-known Mafia of Sicily, called the Cosa Nostra that has featured in most of the Hollywood representations of Italian mobsters.
Police say two of the big mob bosses in their investigation were the bosses of two separate clans of the ’Ndrangheta, the proper name of the Mafia formed in the Calabria region of Italy. Pino Ursino, 62 was arrested at his home in an early morning raid by Ontario police. He has direct connection to the leadership in Calabria of the ’Ndrangheta clan of the same name.
This ’Ndrangheta brand of the Mafia is similar but separate from the better-known Mafia of Sicily, called the Cosa Nostra, that we see so often featured in Hollywood’s Italian mobsters. A US diplomat estimated that the organization's drug trafficking, extortion and money-laundering activities accounted for at least 3 percent of Italy's GDP. Since the 1950s, the organization has spread towards the north of Italy and worldwide. The 'Ndrangheta is currently the most powerful criminal organization in the world with a revenue that stands at around 53 billion Euros annually (72 billion U.S. dollars - 44 billion British pounds).
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One-Eyed Italian Mob Boss' Alleged Cohorts Arrested in Rome
By VICE News
On Thursday, Italian authorities netted more than 40 alleged cohorts of a one-eyed Italian mob boss known for running a Rome-based gang that profited from corrupt public contracts, which were awarded for services like garbage collection and running migrant reception centers.
Among the 44 arrested were local politicians and businessmen, who have been accused of involvement in the criminal operation allegedly run by Massimo Carminati, the one-time far-right militant group leader who was detained at the end of 2014 on charges related to his suspected mafia activity.
In statement pertaining to the arrests, police explained that the network, "by means of corrupt practices and collusion, assured itself numerous contracts and financing from the Lazio Region, the Rome municipality and associated businesses."
Authorities said another 21 people were under investigation in conjunction with the same anti-mafia police operation, which kicked off in 2014. Police previously arrested 36 suspects at the time of Carminati's arrest in December.
The migrant business scheme was uncovered in a 2014 inquiry titled Mafia Capital, which was ordered by Rome's mayor, Ignazio Marino, and encompassed a review of all city contracts. The investigation exposed a system of corruption in which public contracts are granted to a select group of corporations — allegedly connected with Carminati's gang — to run a network of receiving centers for migrants landing in Italy after crossing the treacherous Mediterranean waters by boat. According to the BBC, with thousands of migrants arriving on Italian shores each year, these operations have become quite profitable.
While Marino applauded the operation, the country's anti-immigrant Northern League's party leader Matteo Salvini used the arrests as an opportunity to highlight problems with Italy's handling of migrants.
"Another 44 people arrested for the immigration business. Stop the departures and the boats immediately, stop the contracts right now!" he wrote on Facebook, according to the AFP. "It's nothing to do with being good-hearted, welcoming and supporting... they are thieves! Renzi and Alfano scatter illegal immigrants in the hotels of half of Italy, guess who gains?"
One of the politicians wrapped up in Thursday's arrests is regional councilor Luca Gramiza, a member of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia. Gramiza is believed to have been a middleman between the mob and businessmen.
The mobsters are also alleged to have rigged other public tender bids, specifically local municipal contracts for work like garbage disposal, maintaining public parks, and weather response.
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'Execution' of lawyer kills hope that residents can defeat Mafia
Mario Piccolino was an irrepressible blogger, with mobsters and corrupt officials in his sights. Campaigners fear lawyer’s murder marks mob fightback
Michael Day
No one dared say it out loud. But many people hoped – or prayed – it was true. That there were, after all, signs that ordinary people could stand up to the Mafia without fearing for their lives.
In Sicily, the Addiopizzo movement has brought together citizens and businessmen who refuse to pay protection money. Reports have said some mobsters are moving into other areas as extortion rackets dry up.
But the brutal killing on 29 May of Mario Piccolino, in his office in Formia, south of Rome, has dashed such hopes. Piccolino, 71, was a lawyer, but he was also an irrepressible blogger, with mobsters and corrupt officials in his sights.
At 5pm, the engineer with whom Piccolino shared offices opened the main door to a stranger. The thick-set man in a T-shirt entered the lawyer’s rooms. Then a gunshot. Piccolino was shot in the head at point-blank range.
A week later, outside the modest office-cum-home, the flowers attached to the gate are wilted. The green shutters are closed and a crumpled paper notice says that the property has been sequestered by judicial investigators.
No suspect has been named and police say they are considering all possibilities. But no one here appears in much doubt about who or what killed Piccolino. “We don’t yet know whether it was a Mafia killing, but lots of signs point to a mob execution,” said Corrado de Rosa, a leading writer on the Mafia, and an expert witness in mob trials. “The perpetrator had to be professional, without emotion, who’s not afraid of being recognised.” The pistol used in the killing is the preferred weapon of the Camorra, the Naples Mafia.
Apart from lingering signs around the victim’s home, it appears to be business as usual in this pleasant, but nondescript town about an hour south of Rome on Lazio’s coast.
Locals decline to comment on the killing. In bars, proprietors and customers are loath even to respond, which is not surprising because members of the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta Mafia and particularly the Camorra are seemingly everywhere.
Camorristi, including those from the Casalesi clan of Gomorrah infamy, have moved north across from border with Campania from their Caserta heartland, cashing in on the construction trade – through unregulated building – and the gambling trade.
In the little honey-coloured Sant’Erasmo church on the hill above the bay, Don Alfredo Micaulus notes with a bitter smile that the state apparently has inadvertently helped Camorra gangsters by transferring them here in the hope of isolating them from their Caserta centre of operation. “They just said thank you very much, and set up shop here,” said the priest, who works with national anti-Mafia group Libera.
Rome’s DNA (National Anti-Mafia Directorate) police headquarters declined to comment on speculation that it would assign a permanent division to the Formia area to deal with what the local Il Punto a Mezzogiorno newspaper calls a “period of particular tension”. Only a few days before the murder of Piccolino, a journalist from a local paper was attacked.
Campaigners such as Don Alfredo say, however, the tension has been building for years – or even decades – in this part of Lazio.
Back in 2009, Piccolino was hit over the head with a tyre iron. The trial of the suspect in that case has yet to begin. The closure of the court in nearby Gaeta, and the brake that has put on thousands of other trials, isn’t a good omen for those who want more, not less, legality.
At the funeral for Piccolino, Formia’s mayor Sandro Bartolomeo called on everyone to take a stand so that the “collective pain caused by the killing could be transformed into a grand determination to defend the entire city”.
Piccolino never stopped his mission. His blog was the most popular of its type in the province. Even police investigators were thought to regard it as essential reading.
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But the threats continued, too. A few years after the incident with the tyre iron, unidentified individuals started to leave fish heads outside his front door.
His killing has underlined how vulnerable he and dozens of other bloggers – or citizen journalists as many like to call themselves – really are, said Mr de Rosa. “From the time of these incidents he had no protection and no help from anyone,” he said.
Ago Alla, a friend of Piccolino’s and a fellow citizen journalist, admitted he and fellow activists were in shock. “I’m not afraid, but we feel alone. The police can’t look after everyone,” he said. “We’ll go on in a spirit of civic duty, because we believe in what we’re doing, or at least we try to believe in something.”
Piccolino’s brother Marco, said: “He wasn’t very level-headed or cautious. But if level-headed and cautious means staying quiet, then the rashness and imprudence of Mario are virtues.”
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Academic researchers will map nexus between organized crime and terrorism with DoD funding
| By Dibya Sarkar
Researchers at two universities have been awarded more than $950,000 from the Defense Department to examine the connections between organized crime and terrorism in Central Asia, South Caucasus and Russia.
Under the three-year project, the University of Kansas and Rowan University will also look at how such connections are formed and transformed as well as how governments and international organizations can track, prevent and eradicate such activities, according to a May 28 press release from KU.
The strength of terrorist groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Islamic Jihad Union and al-Qaeda have been linked to drug trafficking in Eurasia. Illicit sales of weapons and human trafficking, whether labor or sexual exploitation, are also common.
"Central Asia is a hotspot for human trafficking and drug trafficking. A lot of the trafficking that is happening is for Russian and European consumption, while the Central Asian states are where most of the traffickers and trafficking victims originate," said the study's principal investigator, Mariya Omelicheva, who added that terrorist groups have either engaged in criminal activities or formed partnerships with criminal organizations.
Omelicheva, who is director of the KU Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies and an associate political science professor, leads the research team that also includes Stephen Egbert, a KU geography professor, and Lawrence Markowitz, a political science associate professor at Rowan.
The project will use geographic information system tools to "map and model the nexus between trafficking and terrorism in nine Eurasian countries," the release added. It will use geographical coordinates of major terrorist incidents, geo-reference drug seizures and assemble human trafficking data from various reputable databases.
The release said that figuring out whether acts of violence are terrorism or organized crime is important because solutions need to match the nature of the problem in certain areas. Some bombings have been attributed to terrorism when they were part of a drug war, the release added.
By better understanding the connection between terrorism and trafficking, Omelicheva said the U.S. military can target areas so it can disrupt activity.
"Trafficking and terrorism adversely impact governance, security, stability and development in this region and beyond," she said in the release. "They create conditions precipitous for the rise of crime, violence and extremism in states that are U.S. partners and allies."
Research funding is being provided by DoD's Minerva Research Initiative, which seeks to build a deeper understanding of the social, cultural and political dynamics that shape regions of strategic interest, according to the initiative's website.
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Fearing Mafia Retribution, Lawyer Drops Lawsuit Against Fortunato Brothers
by Marguerite Preston
A woman suing under the Americans With Disabilities Act was told the case had been dropped for her "safety."
A week ago Valerie Williams, who suffers from cerebral palsy and is bound to a wheelchair, filed a discrimination suit against East Williamsburg Italian pastry old-timer Fortunato Brothers, for failing to comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. The shop has steps leading up to its entrance but no wheelchair ram, and as she tells the Daily News, she was tired of waiting for her friends to go inside and get chocolate mousse for her. Unfortunately for Ms. Williams, however, that lawsuit has now been dropped by her lawyer, apparently because he's afraid of retribution from the mob.
Williams tells the Daily News that the lawsuit was dropped without her knowledge, and when she found out and called her lawyer, she was told that it had been dropped for her "safety."
It seems that the day after filing the suit, the lawyer was informed (possibly by the Daily News itself) that the co-owner of the bakery, Mario Fortunato, was possibly affiliated with the Genovese crime family. He had been convicted in of murdering a loanshark and injuring his cousin at a local social club in 1994, and though that conviction was later overturned, the whole situation was still enough to scare off the lawyer.
Williams says she is now reconsidering whether she will continue to use this lawyer, who is also representing her in another discrimination suit against a Spanish restaurant.
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