Mafia

Focuses on Italian-Americans who made major contributions to the development of Las Vegas from its earliest days to the present. Investors, builders, developers, musicians, contractors, lounge performers, writers and editors are all here. Balboni interviewed more than 200 people to capture the facts, the flavor, the struggles and the achievements they proudly remember. Includes 20 pgs. of footnotes, references and a bibliography, making it a vital tool for researchers. 168 Pgs.1996 ...

In the 1980's, the broad legal mandate of the RICO act succeeded in crushing much of the backbone of the traditional American Mafia. Across the ocean however, in the ancestral Sicilian homeland of La Cosa Nostra, the Mafia was anything but finished. Possessed of a power thought to rival that of the Italian state itself, for the past decades, the Sicilian Mafia has waged a war on the forces of law and order that has not only left thousands dead, but has created a ripple effect of crime and...

Subtitled "The War Against The American Mafia". The riveting, often bloody account of how the fifty-year attack by the federal government virtually extinguished the nation's most powerful crime syndicate. In the critically acclaimed American Mafia, Thomas Reppetto narrated the ferocious ascendancy of organized crime in America. In this fascinating sequel, he follows the mob from its peak into a shadowy period of decline as the government, no longer able to deny its existence, made subduing the...

From burglary to armed robbery and murder, infamous bad guy Frank Cullotta not only did it all, he admits to it in graphic detail in this book. This no-holds-barred biography chronicles the life of a career criminal who started out as a thug on the streets of Chicago and became a trusted lieutenant in Tony Spilotro's gang of organized lawbreakers in Las Vegas. Cullotta's was a world of high profile heists, street muscle, and information about many of the FBI's most wanted, info that became his...

Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso was the boss of New York’s Lucchese Mafia family. He worked himself to the top as a cold-blooded killer, responsible for more than 50 murders. He was also, for a while, the next-door neighbor of the author. Carlo’s sister babysat for Casso; his mother was best friends with Casso’s wife. That long and trusting relationship garnered Carlo, journalist and best-selling author (The Ice Man, 2006), unprecedented access to one of the most ruthless crime bosses in the history...

The electrifying true story of the rise and fall of New York's notorious Bonanno crime family. On New York's Park Avenue on a rainy Tuesday night in October 1964, the famous Mafia chieftain Joseph Bonanno was kidnapped by two mobsters and reported by the police as dead on the following morning. More than a year later, Bonanno mysteriously reappeared, setting off a bloody mob feud that came to be known as the “Banana War.” In this monumental work—packed with intimate details and brilliant...

The chilling story of six generations of bloodshed, deals, deception, and uncontrolled greed and lust for power of men like Luciano, Costello, Lansky, Genovese, Anastasia, Gambino and Gottti, men for whom murder and betrayal were a way of life. This is the story of the Mafia's stranglehold on New York. Photographs Indexed 527 Pgs. 1994

Subtitled "The Mafia, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, and Me!". From Karen Gravano, a star of the hit VH1 reality show Mob Wives, comes a revealing memoir of a mafia childhood, where love and family come hand-in-hand with murder and betrayal. Karen Gravano is the daughter of Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, once one of the mafia's most feared hit men. With nineteen confessed murders, the former Gambino Crime Family underboss and John Gotti's right-hand man, is the highest ranking gangster ever to turn...

This book takes you through the gangland history of the Detroit underworld and shows you the bloodshed, exploits, and leadership of the southeast Michigan crime syndicate. Included are rare archival pictures and images. From the 20th century and the iconic Purple Gang during prohibition through the Italian Mafia in the 1930s to the downfall of the area's mob reign in the 1980s and 1990s and everything in between. 128 Pgs. 2006

Morris "Moe" Dalitz was America's most secretive and most successful mobster. As a major architect of the United States' national crime syndicate, Dalitz was active in various fields of organized crime from 1918 until his death in 1989, all while spinning a web of myth and mock-respectability around himself so dense that decades after his demise, most mistake the legend for reality. From Prohibition-era bootlegging to the Reagan years, no other individual was present at so many pivotal events...

Susan Berman grew up in Las Vegas luxury as the daughter of Davie Berman, casino mogul and notorious mafia leader. After her father died she learned about his mob connections. Susan then dedicated her life to learning about Vegas and its underworld chiefs. Her life took a bizarre turn in l982 when Kathie Durst��_��_��_the wife of her good friend, Robert Durst, mysteriously disappeared. Durst was a prime suspect but the case was never solved. After the Kathie Durst case was re-opened, the DA...

This book provides a comprehensive sociological explanation for the emergence and continuation of organized crime in Chicago. Tracing the roots of political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in Chicago and other large American cities, Lombardo challenges the dominant belief that organized crime in America descended directly from the Sicilian Mafia. According to this widespread "alien conspiracy" theory, organized crime evolved in a linear...

From the 1970s through the mid-1980s, the Chicago Outfit dominated organized crime in Las Vegas. Unreported revenue, known as the "skim," from Outfit-Controlled casinos made its way out of Vegas by the bagful, ending up in the coffers of the Windy City crime bosses and their confederates around the Midwest. To ensure the smooth flow of cash, the gangsters installed a front man with no criminal background, Allen R. Glick, as the casino owner of record, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal as the real boss...

Whereas the Purple Gang was a predominantly Jewish group, the crime organizations covered in this volume all come from different ethnic backgrounds. Each gang covered provides insight not only into their crime organization, but also into the ethnic origins of the region. For instance, the chapter on the Giannola/Vitale Mafia covers the origins of the war between the two gangs, which lasted from 1918 to 1921. It also covers the origins of the Italian Mafia-including the history of the dreaded...