happened in the courtroom. Joe Massino was convicted and faced sentences of more years than he had to give for his country.
Right away, in Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft directed prosecutors in Brooklyn to start a capital punishment case against Massino for another murder.They find you guilty in federal court on any charge, from stealing a postage stamp to murder. If the federals said they wanted an execution case, Massino was going to die.
No, he wasn't. He called for a prosecutor and said he wanted to cooperate. He knows everybody and everything about the waning days of the Mafia. He is a traditional mobster. He eats until he can't fit at the table. He had a restaurant with the best pork braciola for miles. He flicks a thumb down and somebody dies. He has a wife and daughters and several girlfriends. He lives in Howard Beach, Queens, which had an overcrowding of big gangsters. His house was a few blocks from that of John Gotti and also Vic Amuso, another boss. The first sounds of anger about Massino's turning came from Vito from Metropolitan Avenue. He had put up fifteen hundred dollars for Massino's Christmas present.
"Joe is a rat. I don't give my money to rats," he said. "I want my money back."
"How are you going to get it from him? He's in jail," he was told.
"From his wife," he said. "You go ask his wife."
When mobsters are reduced to fighting under the mistletoe, there is no reason for them to exist.
And now, in this court building at the same time, you saw the reason the Mafia must die. Four members of Local 15 of the
Operating Engineers Union were in court to plead guilty to selling out workingmen. They work cranes, backhoes, bulldozers, and hoists.They are proud and physical and, along with Local 40 of the Iron Workers, were about the first to walk up to the fiery mountains of the old World Trade Center, fierce, powerful, unafraid, and did all the gruesome heavy lifting for the next year. They were Irish, and their union heads admitted to being controlled by Mafia gangsters.Tom Robbins of the Village Voice, who seems to be the only reporter in the city who thinks labor is important, called the union the Mob's Engineers.
The government indicted twenty-four Mob guys in Brooklyn, including one Jackie DeRoss, who was listed as a union member but was recognized on the street as an underboss in the shrinking Colombo family. His sons, John and Jamie, had union books and were placed on jobs where attendance might have been taken. In Manhattan another eighteen mobsters in the union were indicted; one was Ernie Muscarella, a reputed boss in the Mob.
The one that bothered the most was Tom McGuire Jr., the business agent for the local. Everybody in labor knew his father, who had been business agent before him. Junior, out of Manhattan College, was unable to wail that he had to steal in order to make it in life. He was in the son game, as in "son of…" If America is weaker at this time, blame the son game, the nepotism, as much as, in this case, the Mafia.
As Massino told agents stories that would end the Mafia, McGuire was in the same court building pleading guilty to a charge of selling union books. There were many other charges, including extorting fifty thousand dollars a year from a paving company and then giving an eighty-thousand-dollar bribe to the president of the International Union of Operating Engineers in order to become a vice president of the international. But selling the union books was the hideous crime. People beg, plead, and implore for a union book. If your son can get a book, you can sleep all through the night; union jobs pay up to forty-five dollars an hour, and your son has a fine living for life.Tom McGuire Jr., now sixty, pudgy, and arrogant, sold union books for twelve thousand dollars. He had a man running things for him, purportedly a Local 15 member, Anthony Polito. He took care of anything to do with organized crime.There were no-show jobs to be given to wiseguys or
Right away, in Washington, Attorney General John Ashcroft directed prosecutors in Brooklyn to start a capital punishment case against Massino for another murder.They find you guilty in federal court on any charge, from stealing a postage stamp to murder. If the federals said they wanted an execution case, Massino was going to die.
No, he wasn't. He called for a prosecutor and said he wanted to cooperate. He knows everybody and everything about the waning days of the Mafia. He is a traditional mobster. He eats until he can't fit at the table. He had a restaurant with the best pork braciola for miles. He flicks a thumb down and somebody dies. He has a wife and daughters and several girlfriends. He lives in Howard Beach, Queens, which had an overcrowding of big gangsters. His house was a few blocks from that of John Gotti and also Vic Amuso, another boss. The first sounds of anger about Massino's turning came from Vito from Metropolitan Avenue. He had put up fifteen hundred dollars for Massino's Christmas present.
"Joe is a rat. I don't give my money to rats," he said. "I want my money back."
"How are you going to get it from him? He's in jail," he was told.
"From his wife," he said. "You go ask his wife."
When mobsters are reduced to fighting under the mistletoe, there is no reason for them to exist.
And now, in this court building at the same time, you saw the reason the Mafia must die. Four members of Local 15 of the
Operating Engineers Union were in court to plead guilty to selling out workingmen. They work cranes, backhoes, bulldozers, and hoists.They are proud and physical and, along with Local 40 of the Iron Workers, were about the first to walk up to the fiery mountains of the old World Trade Center, fierce, powerful, unafraid, and did all the gruesome heavy lifting for the next year. They were Irish, and their union heads admitted to being controlled by Mafia gangsters.Tom Robbins of the Village Voice, who seems to be the only reporter in the city who thinks labor is important, called the union the Mob's Engineers.
The government indicted twenty-four Mob guys in Brooklyn, including one Jackie DeRoss, who was listed as a union member but was recognized on the street as an underboss in the shrinking Colombo family. His sons, John and Jamie, had union books and were placed on jobs where attendance might have been taken. In Manhattan another eighteen mobsters in the union were indicted; one was Ernie Muscarella, a reputed boss in the Mob.
The one that bothered the most was Tom McGuire Jr., the business agent for the local. Everybody in labor knew his father, who had been business agent before him. Junior, out of Manhattan College, was unable to wail that he had to steal in order to make it in life. He was in the son game, as in "son of…" If America is weaker at this time, blame the son game, the nepotism, as much as, in this case, the Mafia.
As Massino told agents stories that would end the Mafia, McGuire was in the same court building pleading guilty to a charge of selling union books. There were many other charges, including extorting fifty thousand dollars a year from a paving company and then giving an eighty-thousand-dollar bribe to the president of the International Union of Operating Engineers in order to become a vice president of the international. But selling the union books was the hideous crime. People beg, plead, and implore for a union book. If your son can get a book, you can sleep all through the night; union jobs pay up to forty-five dollars an hour, and your son has a fine living for life.Tom McGuire Jr., now sixty, pudgy, and arrogant, sold union books for twelve thousand dollars. He had a man running things for him, purportedly a Local 15 member, Anthony Polito. He took care of anything to do with organized crime.There were no-show jobs to be given to wiseguys or
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