Free Republic

The toughest guy in Sicily is a gay man. Nine months ago Rosario Crocetta was elected as Sicily's governor on an anti-Mafia platform, and his fearless campaign against the degenerate mobsters has so impressed an otherwise conservative electorate that his sexuality has become an irrelevancy as reported by Anthony Faiola for The Washington Post: "'Having Crocetta in Sicily is like having an openly gay man elected governor in Alabama,' said Ivan Scalfarotto, a member of the national parliament and a Milan-based gay rights advocate. 'But the most telling point is that his sexuality became a small detail for voters. This...

Star witness Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi has spent hours in lurid description of how he and his old partner, James "Whitey" Bulger, tortured victims, yanked out teeth with dental tools and buried bodies in secret graves. But Flemmi stammered and hesitated Monday. Bulger's lawyers were asking the questions on cross-examination and they opened with the January 1985 murder of 26-year old Deborah Hussey – a stepdaughter Flemmi is accused of having sexually abused.

The body of a key witness in James 'Whitey’ Bulger's racketeering trial was found dead on the side of a road Wednesday by a jogger in Lincoln, Mass., which is just west of Boston. The body belonged to Stephen "Stippo" Rakes, 59, who was allegedly extorted by Bulger and considered one of the most determined alleged victims who waited a decade to testify, The Boston Globe reported. The Globe reported that Rakes has been a fixture for six weeks at Bulger's trial and was told recently that he would not get the chance to testify. The Middlesex County district attorney's...

According to the European Union’s law enforcement agency handling criminal intelligence, Italy’s mafia has infiltrated the nebulous “Green Energy” industry, not only for traditional money laundering purposes, but also to capitalize on lucrative EU subsidies. On Thursday, Europol published a report suggesting that the mafia is making investments into the renewable energy industry, with a special focus on wind farms due to generous grants paid for by European Union member states. For an industry that is no stranger to scandals...

Watching a story of a mobster from NY who became one of the first informants. Story turned somewhat when this informant kidnapped a person with knowledge of the three deaths in Mississippi. The show had the mobster torturing the man with knowledge of the three murders to get info as to where the bodies were located, Is this common knowledge? Can info from torture be used in court? Bobby Kennedy involved, Bio.com, Season 4, episode 31 For over thirty years, Gregory Scarpa lived a charmed triple life: mafia hit man, loving father and husband, and secret FBI informant--until a fatal...

Apparently mob life is inconsistent with family values. Adele Sorella, the wife of reputed Rizzuto associate Giuseppe De Vito, has been convicted for the 2009 murders of their eight- and nine-year-old daughters in Montreal, QB Canada, and she was sentenced to life in prison as reported by Paul Cherry for The Gazette. At the time of the murders Sorella's dirtbag husband was on the lam from drug charges. De Vito finally was apprehended in October 2010, and last June was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his role in a cocaine smuggling operation through the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International...

OAKLAND TWP. (WWJ) - Federal agents searching for the body of former Teamsters chief Jimmy Hoffa believe they are about to crack one of America’s biggest unsolved mysteries. CBS News has confirmed a suspicious concrete slab was retrieved by investigators from the Oakland Township field where they have been digging for any sign of Hoffa. It’s too soon, however, to know whether the slab is anything more than part of an old foundation for a barn. The dig — the latest in what’s been nearly a 40-year search — is reportedly the result of extensive FBI interviews with former mobster...

The FBI saw enough merit in a reputed Mafia captain’s tip to once again break out the digging equipment in search of the elusive remains of former Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa, last seen alive when he left for lunch with two mobsters 38 years ago. Federal agents brought excavation equipment Monday to a field in suburban Detroit where Tony Zerilli said Hoffa’s remains were buried. Zerilli, 85, told Detroit television station WDIV in February that he knew the location of the remains. …

<p>Investigators plan to dig up an Oakland County field Monday in hopes of discovering the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, an FBI spokesperson confirms to FOX 2.</p> <p>Monday's dig comes after aging mobster Tony Zerilli said earlier this year that Hoffa's body was buried in the northern Oakland Township field, about 20 miles north of the restaurant where he was last seen in July 1975.</p>

Matteo Messina Denaro, the so-called "boss of bosses" from Cosa Nostra or the Sicilian Mafia, has been a wanted man since 1993, and his days on the run may be drawing to a close as authorities seize the wealth -- $3.8 billion since 2009 -- that props him up as reported by Tom Kington for the Los Angeles Times: "investigators will not say whether they believe an arrest is imminent, but police have ramped up seizures of businesses they believe are fronting for Messina Denaro," and are hoping that he "could yet be betrayed by otherwise loyal entrepreneurs exasperated by...

...The pontiff exhorted Mafiosi to change their ways, issuing the call Sunday, a day after the beatification of an Italian priest in Palermo who was slain in 1993 by mobsters after he defiantly preached against the Mafia...

Two senior members of the Canadian mafia have been murdered in Sicily and their bodies incinerated, victims of what police suspect is a vicious turf war in Canada which has spilled over into the Cosa Nostra's Italian heartland. After an anonymous tip-off, the bodies of Juan Ramon Paz Fernandez and Fernando Pimentel were discovered near a rubbish dump in the countryside outside Palermo on Thursday. Police described the double killing as an "old-fashioned" gangland hit. Spanish-born Fernandez, 57, a notoriously tough enforcer for Montreal's Rizzuto clan, was expelled from Canada last year for the third time after serving a 10-year...

Nearly two dozen defendants were arraigned last Friday in a Manhattan federal court for their alleged roles in a gambling ring for the fabulous people but missing from the crowd was reputed Russian mobster Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov who remains a fugitive as reported by Richard Behar for Forbes: "The feds call him a 'major figure in international Eurasian Organized Crime' who has been involved in 'drug distribution, illegal arms sales and trafficking in stolen vehicles.' In the current gambling case, he's accused of using his status as a thief-in-law (or vory v zakone) -- a select group of the highest-level criminals...

International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) general president Jimmy Hoffa Jr. is suspected by his members of trying to squash a union comprised of some of his own Teamsters organizers.Hoffa’s battle with his own organizers’ union overlaps with a host of other problems for the prominent labor leader, including a pension crisis that is undercutting his support and a potential UPS strike that he might not be able to afford, according to insiders.Hoffa still has not granted a contract to the Federation of Agents and International Representatives (FAIR), a union that represents Teamsters organizers. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allowed...

The feds variously have charged nearly three dozen individuals on racketeering and other counts for their alleged roles in two separate but interconnected gambling and money laundering rings tied to the Russian Mafia which, among other things, took sports bets in the former Soviet Union for Russian oligarchs and operated poker games in New York for the rich and famous as reported by WNBC: "sources say the poker dens were often frequented by high-profile New Yorkers from the business, sports and entertainment fields." Among those charged in one racketeering conspiracy for his alleged ringleader role with the New York operations...

A suspected hitman from the Camorra or Neapolitan Mafia has been arrested after police obtained a security video which seemingly shows him gunning down a rival mobster last December in a cheese factory as reported by ANSA: "the 20-second security-camera footage allegedly shows Gianluca Troise pursuing a member of a rival Naples mafia clan, Luigi Felaco, bringing him down with a shot, racing after him after he gets up, and finishing him off with four shots to the head." [Video] A turf war for control over drug markets in Naples, Italy between the rival Scissionisti and Di Lauro clans has...

Italian authorities have seized a record $1.7 billion in assets from a Sicilian green energy entrepreneur with alleged ties to the Mafia.

G-men interviewed Chicago mobster Jimmy "the Monk" Allegretti only a week after the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in order to determine whether he had any connections to Jack Ruby who on November 24 had killed supposed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald according to the recently released FBI file on Allegretti. Allegretti was the Rush Street crew boss who ran the vice rackets -- gay bars, strip clubs, whore houses, gambling dens -- from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s on the Near North Side for Chicago Outfit underboss Ross Prio, and in the FBI interview he denied...

...Litvinenko "was giving Scaramella lots of information about Russian and criminal infiltrations in Italy, but most of it was very difficult to verify and crosscheck. It was a little bit out on a limb." In the old days, Litvinenko had been familiar with criminal clans in Russia, now he was making risky approaches to the Italian mafia. Scaramella believed if they could get inside this network, they would be able to leverage much more damaging intelligence about Italian politicians. They spread their net wider. The Litvinenko dossier lists a dizzying roll call of names investigated by the pair, among them...

Italian anti-Mafia prosecutor Vincenzo Macri says that the 'Ndrangheta or Calabrian Mafia "certainly" is behind the 1989 killing of Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner Colin Winchester as reported by Richard Guilliatt for The Australian: "he said he believed the Winchester murder was carried out by the same organisation that murdered Griffith anti-drug campaigner Donald Mackay in 1977 and federal police officer Geoffrey Bowen in 1994." In recent years Cosa Nostra or the Sicilian Mafia has been eclipsed by the Calabrian Mafia as Italy's most powerful crime group due to its obscene profits from the cocaine trade in Europe. The Calabrian...