JD notes that Tony Raimondi married Dennis Lytwyn's mother, Nellie, in Brooklyn in 1964. By 1950, Dennis Lytwyn was living in Fall River, MA, with an aunt and working there as a bartender. On his WW2 draft card, however, Dennis was living in the East Village at 276 Ave A (at E 14th St) and listed Tony Raimondi as his contact, living at the same address. In 1942, Dennis Lytwyn was recorded by the census as "Daniel L Raimondi", living at this address with his mother Nellie, two brothers, and stepfather Anthony Raimondi, with the whole family using the Raimondi surname (Tony Raimondi was operating a pool hall at E 16th St and 1st Ave, across from Beth Isreal Hospital, at this time). Thus, Dennis Lytwyn's relationship with Raimondi long-preceded the latter's formal marriage to Nellie in 1964.
Given that we know of other mafiosi who had entire second families concurrent with their legal wife and kids (Nicola Gentile and Joe Imburgio Bulger come readily to mind), and Tony Raimondi had lived in the East Village before moving to Brooklyn in the 1910s, I had wondered if Nellie Lytwyn had been Raimondi's "comare" during his marriage to his first wife, Josephine DiMarco, and if Raimondi was actually Dennis Lytwyn's father. As we'll see below, this is an important question, but after looking into them further, it is clear to me that it is not the case that Raimondi was Lytwyn's father.
Dennis Lytwyn was born in 1923 in NYC to Stefan Lytwyn and Anastasia "Nellie" Kalecka, both Polish-Ukrainian immigrants from Polish Galicja, then under the dominion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (they were both from the area around the town of Bóbrka, today given in Ukrainian as Bibrka, in Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. After invasions by the Germans and Soviets in WW2, Eastern Galicja was severed from Poland to form the Western part of modern Ukraine, although the historic population was ethnically mixed, Polish and Ukrainian). That they were likely ethnic Ukrainians rather than Poles is indicated by their nationality as given on shipping manifests documenting their arrival in the US in the early 1910s (though Stefan often spelled his last name as "Litwin", in the Polish convention, and Nellie's surname is also predominately Polish, so they may have been Polonized Ukrainians). Stefan and Nellie married in Fall River, MA, in 1915, and subsequently relocated to the East Village in Manhattan (which had a significant concentration of Ukrainians and Poles until relatively recently). Stefan died in 1927, at which point Nellie and their sons went back to Poland in 1929 and then returned to NYC. It would seem that after this point, Nellie began her relationship with Tony Raimondi, who also seems to have been maintaining an address with his wife Josephine and their kids in Brooklyn through 1950. I'm not sure if Josephine died or they were divorced, but clearly, Tony Raimondi was not able to legally marry Nellie until 1964.
In 1952, Brooklyn pants store owner Arnold Schuster was shot to death, with the suspect according to Brooklyn investigators being Brooklyn/New England Syrian-American gangster Harvey "The Butcher" Bistany ( both men also had ties to Boston). When authorities arrested Bistany at a Providence, RI, diner, he was in the company of Dennis Lytwyn and a Manuel Orfao, stated by the NY Daily News to have been a "onetime member of Detroit's Purple Gang"; both men were armed with pistols and also taken in. I don't know much about Bistany and any LCN ties that he may have had at this time, but the Daily News reported that he was said to have been a close associate of gangsters on the Brooklyn waterfront.
Dennis Lytwyn, as JD noted and some may already know, was an informant for the FBI who had briefly agreed to cooperate with the Feds against Ray Patriarca Sr while incarcerated for interstate truck hijacking charges in 1971, before apparently deciding against it. Lytwyn, as "Dennis Raimondi", later co-wrote a book, "I Was A Victim of the F.B.I." with author Charles J. Rogers Jr, which was published January 1st, 1977. Lytwyn was subsequently shot to death in his home in Somerset, MA, on April 3rd of that year, with his murder allegedly stemming from his decision to put the book out.
While Lytwyn sought to downplay his importance in the NE mob, as JD notes, the account of himself that Lytwyn gave in the book contradicts what he told the FBI in 1971, as reported by The Boston Globe (which described Lytwyn as a major figure in the "Rhode island outfit"). According to the Globe, Lytwyn told the FBI that while he was associated with the Patriarca Family for about 15 years, he was "made" in a "ceremony" at a Boston area home in 1970 and that upon questioning by agents, Lytwyn "reluctantly described [his] induction ceremony", giving specific details about the ceremony itself, other members made with him, and the selection of his sponsor. While the article is large and I won't reproduce it here in its entirety, I'm posting some some relevant excerpts below (from the 1971/11/11 issue of The Boston Globe https://www.newspapers.com/image/435829196/):
Now, was Dennis Lytwyn actually inducted into the mafia by Ray Patriarca, presumably having convinced the New England leadership that he was at least paternally half-Italian? Or did he simply know enough about the ceremony and protocol due to his association with his stepfather and leading NE figures like Patriarca and Tameleo that he was able to persuasively fake it to the FBI? Perhaps others with a more detailed understanding of the history of the NE mob will have some further info about Lytwyn and his claims.
Has anyone else come across any FBI reports with Lytwyn's intel in them? Was his membership ever corroborated by another source?
