Epilogue

Over the years, the death of the American Mafia has been solemnly pronounced many times. In the 1970s, one local New York prosecutor predicted the mob would be dead in a couple of years. When the ruling Cosa Nostra Commission members were convicted in 1986, federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani announced that the governing body had been dismantled.

History turned out to be different. The Mafia gained strength through the 1990s. The Commission simply gained replacement members and continued meeting well into the time when Giuliani became mayor of New York City. The simple fact that law enforcement agencies continue to spend time, energy, and money on Cosa Nostra investigations is an indication that the mob is still with us.

But the world of the Mafia in the United States is much different from what it was in the 1930s, when Joseph Bonanno took over the clan that bears his name. No longer is the family composed of leaders who hailed from the same ancestral land around Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily. Those leaders had died off and took with them the ideals of loyalty and solidarity that had been a part of Sicilian culture that allowed the Mafia to flourish. That is not to say that loyalty and solidarity were gone from the mob. Joseph Massino took pride in those ideals when he was rising up in the mob. He remained fiercely loyal to Philip Rastelli and the old notion that the boss was to be followed no matter what.

But for every mafioso like Massino there was another who didn’t value loyalty. The modern Mafia had become, as organized crime expert Ronald Goldstock observed, a group of individual criminals with individual goals of making money. With money as the quest of mob life, group loyalty is actually a very tenuous thing. With the right pressure from law enforcement, individual mafioso can be made to turn on each other, says Goldstock.

Some prosecutors are repelled by the amoral nature of men like Massino and those who were in the Bonanno family. The mafiosi are just plan scary to them. Sure, they play by rules. They are just not playing by the rules the rest of society plays by. Motivated by the goal of making money, the Mafia is just another nakedly capitalist venture impelled by greed, policing itself with murder when necessary. Joseph Massino then did what many in La Cosa Nostra have always done. He was ruthless when he had to be.

Not an educated man, Massino had an innate intelligence and realized that being a terrorizing, headstrong thug was not the way to survive in the criminal life. He liked being low key and treated law enforcement with respect. Still, if Massino honored old values like loyalty and group cohesion, he was painfully aware that such things weren’t enough to guarantee the crime family could weather heat from investigators. Omerta might have worked to guarantee that mobsters in Sicily wouldn’t betray each other. But in the United States, where law enforcement techniques and laws had evolved to a degree never seen in Sicily, omerta became ineffective in ensuring that there would be no betrayal to police. Draconian prison sentences weakened many mafioso, particularly the elderly who hoped they could still live long enough to enjoy something of a life outside of a cell with their sons and grandchildren.

Massino recognized the old adage that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer. He allowed the sons and relatives of older mafiosi to become made members and by doing so gained another form of control over members. Relatives who were Bonanno members could act as a form of checks and balances on each other since they each had something to gain and lose through the crime family. Relatives could also become informants on each other since it was Massino who ultimately controlled punishments and rewards.

But it was family that actually caused the biggest problem for Massino. He elevated his wife’s brother to a high position of underboss in the Bonanno group. Salvatore Vitale had been a loyal underling to Massino as the latter rose through the mob. But while he was loyal, Vitale had problems as an administrator. Court testimony showed that a lot of the other mobsters didn’t like him. He didn’t garner the respect that an underboss should have been accorded. Some believed Vitale was an informant for about five years—although government records indicate that he wasn’t—and thought he should be killed. Witnesses testified that Massino even considered doing away with Vitale. Yet, some in the Bonanno family remembered that when questions were raised about Vitale’s loyalty and the suspicion that he might be an informant, it had been Massino who went around chastising people and telling them to stop spreading rumors.

Massino allowed Vitale to live. Massino would later be tape recorded in jail saying to Vincent Basciano that “to me, life is precious” and that he wouldn’t kill someone unless transgressions were proved “in black and white.” However, Massino didn’t really work that way. Massino didn’t hold courts of inquiry before a murder was allowed. He didn’t give the accused the right to file an appeal. His reasons for ordering murders seem to have been as much motivated by fear of informants than any real malfeasance. That being the case, he could have had Vitale done away with as well. It seems Vitale lived and brought about Massino’s demise because the crime boss was unable to take the step of murdering the man who had been so close to his own wife, Josephine. Family counted for something. It also cost him.

Though Massino had provided for Josephine and their daughters, he was not above using his own family to advance his stature with law enforcement. Court records show that when Massino was secretly tape recording Basciano in a federal jail, he claimed that Josephine had sent him messages about Bonanno family business and members. Massino obviously said that because he wanted to trick Basciano into revealing how he might be passing messages. What kinds of messages the crime boss actually received from his wife was something only he and she know for sure. But when Massino’s remarks about his wife became public, there were tough headlines about it. MOBSTER TAPE TIES WIFE TO BONANNO BIZ, said one headline in the Daily News. Those kinds of stories made it seem like Josephine had been running the crime family.

As much as Massino tried to be an astute judge of human nature and frailty, he was brought down by those qualities in others. Elderly mafioso Frank Coppa didn’t want to die in prison away from his grandchildren and decided to make a deal. Practical mafioso Frank Lino saw that when other Bonanno members decided to cooperate he had no way of beating the rap and also turned. Embittered mafioso Salvatore Vitale, marginalized by Massino, decided to lash out by cooperating. Even old cronies who were not in the mob like Duane Leisenheimer wanted to get on with their lives, raise their families while they were still young enough, and enjoy life.

Massino could instill fear and a grudging respect in his followers, but in the end that would never be enough to engender undying loyalty. Joseph Bonanno was right when he said that the old notion of the Mafia was gone. Cosa Nostra, “This Thing of Ours,” had become for each mafioso “My Thing.”

In the end, even Joseph Massino had to agree.