The first month of the trial seemed a surreal spectacle for the family of Joseph Massino. It followed a routine in which Josephine Massino would drive in from Howard Beach, sometimes accompanied by both of her daughters, and then run the gauntlet of news photographers outside the courthouse in Brooklyn. Once inside, she would take her seat in the front row of the public seating in an area the U.S. Marshals had reserved for the defendant’s family.

If Josephine got to court early enough before the session started, she would be able to converse with her husband about family finances, which because of restraints put on their bank accounts by the government, could not be easily accessed. Massino always thought a lot about food and he often asked his wife a central question: “What did you eat?” He knew that the stress of the trial was causing her to lose weight and that was bothering him. There had also been an unexpected complication. Josephine’s older sister, Anna, had suffered what appeared to be a stroke a few days after opening statements and this meant hospital visits at the end of the day.

It was always something. Massino learned of his sister-in-law’s medical trauma during a visit by his wife and daughters to the Brooklyn jail where he was being held. He immediately sensed a problem from the depressed look on the faces of his wife and daughters.

“Let Mommy tell you,” Joanne told her father as he pressed for details.

“What?” Massino asked again.

“Let Mommy tell you,” she insisted.

Finally, as Josephine Massino began to relate the story of her sister’s travails, the weeks of tension and stress became unbearable. She broke down as she told Massino the details. Her sister had been the center of gravity for the family. One of Josephine Massino’s problems, and she had many at this point, was that she kept her emotions pent up as the problems began to mount. With Anna out of action, Josephine had no one to seek solace from. She had no outlet. She told friends she didn’t want to go for walks, talk to a priest, or do things that might release the tension.

Even if the Massino women wanted to escape the reality of their lives, it would have been difficult to get away entirely. The newspapers and television stations were running daily coverage of the trial, with gory details of the three captains and other murders played out in bold headlines. Pictures of Josephine Massino and her two sisters were shown to the jury because they also captured Massino himself in the presence of other mobsters. Even a surveillance photo taken at the Sands beach club in Atlantic Beach when Adeline had her wedding was shown. When Frank Coppa testified, the jury saw his holiday snaps, which showed him and his wife with Massino and Josephine in Paris and Monte Carlo. Nothing seemed private anymore.

For the Massino women, the trial seemed unreal. Of course, they understood that events involving their very own family were being portrayed. But it all sounded like some movie.

On June 28, 2004, things got even more personal. Josephine Massino had been waiting for weeks for her brother to take the witness stand. There had been rumors that Salvatore Vitale would have been called early. Instead, the prosecution intended to use him as the capstone to a case that was getting increasingly stronger with each witness appearing to buttress what the preceding ones had told the jury.

It was 4:20 in the afternoon when Salvatore Vitale finally walked through the rear door of the courtroom, the one that confidential witnesses who were under federal protection always made their entrance. Vitale had reveled in the street name “Good Looking Sal.” But while he still had the fading features of an old nightclub lounge lizard, Vitale had not aged well. His face seemed puffy and his hair was no longer dark but mostly gray. It was little known, but Vitale had suffered a heart attack some years earlier. On this day, when he raised his right hand to swear to tell the truth on the Bible held by court clerk Joseph Reccoppa, Vitale was fifty-six years old. He looked ill at ease.

The courtroom was dead silent as Vitale shifted into his seat. His sister, Josephine, sat sphinx-like, her mouth pressed shut and her lips in a straight line that contained her deep-seated rage. Her daughter, Joanne, sat next to her, arms folded in defiance. Adeline clutched a notebook into which she had been writing notes about the testimony of each witness.

With prosecutor Greg Andres as his interlocutor, Vitale began what would be a momentous week of testimony. Things started slowly with Vitale recounting how he had met Massino at the age of eleven or twelve while growing up in Maspeth. Their relationship was what he described a “good relationship” that led to a close friendship. When Vitale returned from a stint in the military, he took a job on one of Massino’s catering trucks, using it as a base for numbers running until the early 1990s.

Through the other witnesses, the prosecution had already established some of the practices and procedures of the Mafia—the passing of money from rackets up the chain of command and how the orders of the boss had to be obeyed at all costs—but Vitale had to flesh them out a bit. Moving in broad strokes, Andres had Vitale explain that once Massino went to prison in the late 1980s Massino used him to communicate with Bonanno family members. Vitale said that both he and Anthony Spero were used by Massino as a committee to run the family on a day-to-day basis. About once a month, said Vitale, he visited Massino during this period in prison.

Vitale eventually stopped seeing Massino in prison because the crime boss feared that officials might become suspicious of them and not let him out of prison. He would let his surrogates run things on their own.

“Whatever you and Anthony Spero want to do is fine with me,” Massino said, according to Vitale.

Before the prison visits stopped, Massino told Vitale that while Philip Rastelli was the boss, the old mobster was sick and would die soon. Massino liked Rastelli but didn’t respect his leadership ability. How smart could Rastelli be—he spent half of his life in jail, Vitale remembered Massino saying. When Rastelli died, Massino wanted Spero to call a meeting. At the meeting of the captains, Massino said someone, either his brother-in-law or James Tartaglione, should second the motion to make Massino boss. Vitale said that Massino had another directive: protect the family at all costs, even if it meant killing someone.

Rastelli died in 1991 and it was during a meeting at a house in Staten Island that Spero held the rigged election and the imprisoned Massino was officially anointed as boss, a job he really already held de facto for years.

He may have loved his sister, but it didn’t take long for Vitale to link Josephine to her husband’s dealings. He stated that while he was barred from visiting Massino, he communicated with him through his sister. He also testified that Massino continued to make money from criminal activity while in prison and that he passed along the boss’s share to Josephine. On the subject of money, Vitale said that it was the key goal of the Bonanno family and that he personally made two or three million dollars from the rackets, cash he split with Massino.

“I didn’t have any obligation to do that, he gave me the position I had, he made me what I am,” said Vitale. “He made me a Goodfellow, he made me the captain, he made me underboss, I felt any score came to me through the men, it only would be right to give him 50 percent.”

It was in the mid-1990s that Vitale said his relationship with Massino changed radically. Though Massino had made him underboss, Vitale said the position was an empty shell. Massino kept captains away from Vitale, forbidding them from even calling his brother-in-law. Christmas gifts were also banned. In Mafia-speak, Vitale was “on the shelf.” He had a title but it was just a job as a figurehead. The loss of status had gnawed at Vitale and he felt vulnerable, believing his wife and children would be left in the street if anything ever happened.

Even though he was shelved from 1995 to 2003 and felt degraded, Vitale said he continued to kick up money to Massino and commit crimes for him.

“I had killed for him,” said Vitale.

Before the bad blood developed between the two men, Vitale said that he took a strong personal interest in Massino’s family, particularly when the crime boss was in prison.

“I was taking care of my sister and her children…support her, take her out to dinner, keep her strong,” explained Vitale.

Josephine showed no reaction to that comment, but her daughter, Joanne, bolted from her seat in a huff, muttering, and walked out the courtroom door. The brief flurry caught Greg Andres’s attention and although he didn’t stop his questioning, the prosecutor brought it up to Garaufis outside the presence of the jury.

“There were a variety of people in the audience that told me they heard one of his [Massino] daughters saying that Mister Vitale was lying, it was audible and the jury reacted to that,” Andres said. He asked Garaufis to either move the family from its coveted front-row seats or bar Massino’s kin from the courtroom.

David Breitbart, who had been having numerous skirmishes with Andres over issues large and small, questioned whether what Andres said was true.

“I didn’t hear a word and I was sitting in the well of the court,” the lawyer said.

Massino’s family kept their seats in the front row, just in time for them to hear the beginning of the worst of what Vitale had to offer. Vitale admitted he committed eleven murders and that eight of them also involved Massino. He ticked off what was now a familiar list of victims for the jury: Joseph “Doo Doo” Pastore, Philip “Lucky” Giaccone, Dominick Trinchera, Alphonse “Sonny Red” Indelicato, Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano, Cesare Bonventre, Gabriel Infante, Anthony Tomasulo, Robert Perrino, Russell Mauro, and Gerlando Sciascia.

Three of the murders, Vitale said, were ordered by both himself and Anthony Spero. Those victims were Perrino, the New York Post supervisor, Tomasulo, who was threatening Bonanno members and cheating on gambling earnings, and Mauro, a Bonanno member who was abusing drugs and suspected of talking to law enforcement.

The significance of Vitale’s grim list of victims was not lost on anyone in the courtroom. While other witnesses like Frank Coppa, Frank Lino, and Joseph D’Amico talked knowledgeably about one, two, three, or four of the murders, Vitale had a wider field of vision. He could implicate Massino in all six charged murders, plus a few more as a bonus for the prosecution. The list of victims set up hours of testimony from Vitale about the murders he and Massino took part in during their decades in the Bonanno family. It was “This Is Your Life Joseph Massino” through the story of gangland hits.

Vitale didn’t play a role in actually killing Pastore, Massino’s old cigarette smuggling partner. But he agreed to clean up the small apartment on Fifty-eighth Avenue in Maspeth after the murder when Massino asked him to do so. Vitale also related how Massino, just before Pastore was killed, asked his brother-in-law to borrow nearly ten thousand dollars from the victim, money that would never be repaid.

“I went upstairs with a bucket and brush and cleaned up the area,” said Vitale. He didn’t find a body but he did see a mess. “All blood, all over the place, even inside the refrigerator.”

The murder of the three captains occurred at a time when Vitale was not yet a member of the crime family. But he played a key role nonetheless. What he had to tell the jury put Massino squarely in the planning and execution of the slaughter. As he had told the FBI in his many hours of debriefings, Vitale said that Massino had solicited the advice of Gambino boss Paul Castellano and Junior Persico of the Colombo family when he learned that the three captains were supposedly arming themselves.

“Joe Massino said they said you have to defend youself, do what you have to do,” Vitale stated.

Pressed by Andres for what that statement meant, Vitale answered, “Kill the three captains.”

Dominick Napolitano, who was aligned with Massino in the power struggle, wanted his new friend Donnie Brasco, who was actually undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone, to play a significant role in the slaughter of the three captains, Vitale remembered. But he said that a wary Massino said no.

Vitale, who had earlier obtained drop cloths and rope with which to tie up the bodies, said he was hiding in a closet with Vito Rizzuto of Canada, another Canadian named “Emmanuel,” and another man who carried a shotgun. Rizzuto and Emmanuel had pistols and Vitale said he had a tommy gun, which he accidentally discharged before the real shooting started. Everyone wore ski masks.

On the prearranged signal, Gerlando Sciascia running his hand through his hair, everyone in the closet ran out and Rizzuto declared it was a stick up, said Vitale. While Vitale and the shotgun-toting gangster were told to guard the exit door so no one escaped, Lino made his escape before anyone could stop him, Vitale remembered.

Vitale saw all the men in the room when the shooting started and he remembered seeing Massino hit Giaccone, although he didn’t tell the FBI that in his debriefings.

“It was all hell broke lose,” Vitale said when cross-examined by Breitbart. “It was a matter of seconds, five seconds, ten seconds.”

In the eerie moments after the killing, Vitale remembered coming back into the room where the shootings occurred and noticing that almost everyone had left.

“The only one standing in the room with the three dead bodies was Joe Massino,” said Vitale. “We just looked at each other to say ‘where did everybody go?’”

Vitale stayed around with the others to pack up the bodies in the drop cloths and lift them into a van that was driven to Howard Beach by James Tartaglione. At the intersection of 161st Avenue and Flushing Boulevard, two Gambino crime family members, Gene Gotti and John Carneglia, were waiting to take the corpses away for disposal, said Vitale.

The bloodshed of 1981 continued, Vitale said, with the murder of Napolitano, whose death was arranged by Massino. Vitale said he learned of the plot after Massino summoned him to Howard Beach and took him on a walk-and-talk stroll. Massino was angry, said Vitale, over the Donnie Brasco penetration of the crime family by the FBI and was going to give Napolitano “a receipt” for the fiasco. That term meant that Massino wanted Napolitano dead, Vitale told the jury. He added that his brother-in-law believed that even if he was convicted of the murder of the three captains, he would have the satisfaction of killing Napolitano.

Vitale admitted driving Massino to Staten Island in a van the day Napolitano was killed, and he remembered Frank Lino coming over to the vehicle and saying, “It is over, it’s done, he is dead.” There was some joking, Vitale remembered, with Massino telling Lino to hurry up in wrapping things up.

Concerning the Anthony Mirra homicide, Vitale wasn’t present, but he recalled for the jury two incriminating conversations Massino had about the killing. Once, Vitale overheard Massino tell Al Embarrato that “it’s unfortunate but Tony Mirra has got to go.” Another time Vitale said Massino told him that “Richie Cantarella and Joe D’Amico killed Tony Mirra in the car.”

Vitale also confirmed Tartaglione’s account of events leading up to the murder of Cesare Bonventre in 1984, including the private conversation Massino had with Louis Attannasio that seemed to precipitate the planning. It was after that private talk, which took place at Massino’s secret refuge while he was on the lam in Pennsylvania, that Attanasio told Vitale of the plan.

“We are going to kill Cesare and I need your help to set it up,” Attanasio told him, according to Vitale.

Vitale then told the jurors how Bonventre was driven after he left his car near Flushing Avenue and Metropolitan Avenue in Maspeth to a nearby garage. As the car he was driving approached the garage, Vitale said he blurted out the prearranged signal “It looks good to me” at which point Attanasio, who was in the backseat, shot Bonventre. A struggling Bonventre tried to crash the vehicle, and after he tumbled out of the car in the garage Attanasio shot him again for the coup de grâce, said Vitale.

According to Vitale, Massino passed instructions to Gabe Infanti to dispose of Bonventre’s body by dismembering it. It was a job that failed utterly since the body was found a few weeks later in two steel drums in New Jersey.

The parade of hits kept coming from Vitale as he related to the jury how it was Massino who wanted the hapless Infanti, who had screwed up disposing of Bonventre’s corpse and bungled the shooting of Teamster official Anthony Giliberti, killed for his incompetence.

“I want it done and I want it done now,” was how Vitale characterized Massino’s order to execute Infante.

Louis Restivo, Frank Lino, and Tommy Pitera were involved in the killing of Infanti at a warehouse, said Vitale.

Some murders, such as those of New York Post supervisor Robert Perrino and gangsters Russell Mauro and Anthony Tomasullo, didn’t involve Massino, who was in jail at the time, said Vitale. But the 1999 murder of Gerlando Sciascia (whose death had come to the notice of Louis Freeh and Charles Rooney at the FBI) was ordered by Massino with the command “George has got to go…call Tony Green [Anthony Urso] and take care of it.” According to Vitale, Massino then said he was leaving the following day for a trip to Cancun, Mexico, and asked that the murder be done by the time he got back.

To make it look like Sciascia was killed as part of a drug deal gone bad, his body was dumped on the street in the Bronx. To bolster the impression that the mob had nothing to do with Sciascia’s death, Massino ordered his captains to not only attend the wake but also to ask around about who would want to kill the Canadian gangster, said Vitale. But all of that mock concern, he added, was simply a smoke screen to divert suspicion from the Bonanno family. Even so, Vitale said that Vito Rizzuto, the crime family’s key member in Canada, never did believe Sciascia died over drugs.

Evidence about the murders was bad enough. However, Vitale had plenty of insight into the financial dealings of his brother-in-law, matters that were at the core of the government’s allegation that Massino had amassed a fortune through a life of crime. According to Vitale, he and and Massino ran a loan-sharking operation from about 1975 to 1999. Vitale’s role, at least in the beginning, was to make collections on the loans while Massino served as the business builder by finding new customers. Over time, Vitale said that he and Massino each earned a million dollars from the lending. Other Bonanno family members took part in the loan-sharking, including Anthony Urso, he said.

Prosecutors also had charged Massino with extorting hundreds of thousands of dollars from a business known as King Caterers and Vitale was well aware of what had happened. The company was located in Farmingdale, New York, which is on Long Island. One of the company principles, said Vitale, needed protection from an encroachment by Carmine Avellino of the Lucchese family. Sometime between 1984 and 1985, the official at King Caterers approached Vitale through an old friend of Massino’s in Maspeth and asked for help.

As is common in organized crime when there is a dispute about a business, mobsters will hold a meeting, a sitdown, and hash things out. The negotiations over King Caterers took place on Prince Street in Manhattan and Vitale testified that he, Massino, Avellino, and Bonanno captain Steven Cannone attended. Massino used a bluff to increase his negotiating position by falsely saying that one of the principles of the catering firm was a distant cousin of his. In the end, King Caterers was given to Massino and the Bonanno family, said Vitale.

In return for the protection of the Bonanno crime family, King Caterers worked out employment agreements for Massino and Vitale to act as food consultants over a three-year period, Vitale said. He and Massino were to each be paid a fee of $25,000 with the expectation that both men would become partners in the business after three years.

Eventually, because the principles of King Caterers were not paying all their taxes, Vitale said that he and Massino decided to set up their own company—Queen Caterers—as a buffer through which they would receive payment for any bogus services they rendered to the King firm. The arrangement was to insulate them from any tax problems King Caterers might have. Vitale figured that at some point the King firm might get subpoenaed and told the company owners to say if the government asked that Massino made the sauce, which he did maybe one time. Vitale further explained that at some point he and Massino sold their share in King Caterers back to its principles for $650,000 in cash, split equally.

As Vitale testified, he dragged his sister, Josephine, into things. Vitale had already told the FBI agents that when Massino was in prison he allegedly paid his brother-in-law’s share of money from various illegal ventures to Josephine. On the witness stand, Vitale repeated that and aside from embarrassing his sister he was potentially implicating her in wrongdoing through her acceptance of the funds. He also had said that he kept in contact with Massino while he was in jail through his wife, though he didn’t indicate what the substance of those conversations where.

At the same time, Vitale also showed that he was trying to buffer Josephine from the possibility that she could be charged for handling alleged proceeds of crimes. He stated that as part of his agreement to cooperate with the government it was expressly stated that nothing he said could be used against his sister. Vitale also said he had agreed not to testify against his sister. It seems family still counted for something to him.

With her family affairs laid out for the world to see, including some pictures that were meant to be happy family snaps, Josephine Massino became more exasperated. Despite the fact that Vitale wouldn’t ever testify against her, Josephine made clear her feelings about her sibling. “I hate that man,” she was overheard saying under her breath.

It was on David Breitbart’s cross-examination that Vitale revealed the depth of his anger and loathing for Massino. Asked when he decided to become a turncoat, Vitale said it was actually on January 9, 2003, the day both he and Massino were arrested together. Resentment had been festering for a long time.

“He separated me from the [crime] family, he tried to separate me from my personal family,” said Vitale. “When I got indicted no one called my wife and children to see if I needed anything.”

The latter was an increasingly common complaint among other mafiosi, who resented the lack of attention and concern shown for them once they got arrested. Such cavalier inattention would have been unheard of in Joseph Bonanno’s time among the Castellammarese who made up the Mafia. But this was a changed Cosa Nostra, one with a flawed sense of loyalty among thieves. It was a major reason why Vitale decided to flip sides.

“That is when I thought my thoughts and said he don’t deserve the respect and honor with me sitting next to him,” said Vitale contemptuously, shooting a glance at his brother-in-law. Massino stared back at him.

Aside from some inconsistencies between what he said earlier to the FBI agents and what he said in court about events surrounding some of the homicides, Vitale seemed to hold up well on cross-examination. Andres had some questions on redirect that gave Vitale a chance to reiterate how Massino had taught him everything he knew about organized crime. In a stroke of irony, Vitale recalled that during his induction ceremony in 1984 it had been Massino who had lorded over the proceedings and had made the boastful remark, “We never had a rat in the family.”

Vitale’s testimony was completed at 4:05 P.M. on July 6. Excused by Judge Nicholas Garaufis, Vitale got up from his chair on the witness stand. He turned without looking at either Josephine, her husband, and her two daughters, and walked out the rear courtroom door. An expressionless Josephine followed him out the door with her eyes. The back of his head, the one she used to stroke when he was a little boy, would be the last thing she would ever again see of the brother.