THE BLACK HAND FORUM

These are photos of the former Boston boss Gaspare Messina. Some of them unpublished, I believe.

A great post. The fruits of lots of research. There is a bit more about Carlo Constantino in the William J. Flynn book, "The Barrell Mystery." That connects him through letters seized from Morello to the society of which Steve LaSalle, Vito Di Giorgino and Lomonte were members. I also have...

Hi Anna. David Critchley here. I remember when you visited the John Jay College in Manhattan a few years ago. I have the huge luxury of being able to spend long years doing my own organized crime/Mafia research. I have copies of many of your pieces. I came across your discussion of the legal differe...

I believe he dies of natural causes in 1957 in Sicily. I don't have the reference now with me.

I think it boils down to how stupid the victim is. If they walk about the old neighbourhood as though nothing happened, they will be in danger. Or (like Bioff) they make waves out in Las Vegas and attract attention that way. In other words, they don't think. If they kept from areas where wiseguys op...

Even in the 1960's it wasnt always the case. Herbert Itkin, a lawyer, ended up getting Tony Corallo put in jail. When they once met, all Corallo said was that Iktin did a nice job on him (with sarcasm). Allan Glick, who helped put most of the midwest mob leadership in jail in the Las Vegas cases of ...

Read this eye-opening article. It describes Sicilian Mafia turncoats in the 1930s, including some rarely known about in the west. The guy who wrote this also wrote a book, sadly in Italian: Vittorio COCO, "The Pentiti of the Sicilian Mafia in the 1930s" Modern Italy journal, volume 18, 201...

I expect that my own estimate might be on the low side, since I tried to only include those where there was a harder connection between a murder and the War. But I don't believe it's far off the true total, whatever that was. I would ideally place the names in two groups - one of "proven" ...

He's a very good man and a few weeks ago, I needed to clear out some files and gave Lennert 18 very, very large boxes full of most of my research records. I know they're going to a good new home, of course, with Lennert. From memory, on this other Bonventre, it took me quite a time to find the follo...

Good to talk to you. There aren't many interested in these early years, so it's great to have the views of others who have gone into it. Unfortunately, I gave my research files to Lennert, my friend in Holland, a few weeks ago. Do you know Lennert? I can give you his email if you like. I was running...

I got some of those but what makes you believe that these other murders were part of the War? Anthony Bonventre [Maranzano] Marh 1930 (I did look into this killing and found a news clipping about arrests in the case, and the guys arrested were not apparently involved in the War) Pasquale D'Auria kil...

Can you supply this list? There were many other bootlegging related murders at the time, but we need to know which ones were part of the Cast. War or not. I tried to go through the ones we know were War related for my book.

If anyone is interested in the life of the top U.S. Mafia figure Nicolo Gentile and would like to buy a copy of his manuscript in English, please email me at: ukthesis@yahoo.com Gentile, in his time, knew all the top Mafia leaders in New York and other cities, including Joe the Boss Masseria, Gaspar...

"You might want to consider this in blog form and get paid for the traffic." An interesting idea, but my guess is that there will be few who want to pay for the material, especially if they can get it free somewhere else. The FBI files would also have to be exceptional, and not full of the...