Mafia

"Gangbusters: The Destruction of America's Last Mafia Dynasty," by Ernest Volkman. Faber and Faber. 256 pages. $24.95.Former Gambino family crime boss John Gotti, a.k.a. the "TefloDon," is doing life without possibility of parole at hard-time Marion Federal Penitentiary, which sums up how far the godfathers have fallen. But justice was a long time coming. For decades, the FBI's war on organized crime ("OC") consisted of rounding up the usual suspects (mainly gamblers and numbers writers) and chalking up stats.

Christopher Gaul, former managing editor of the Catholic Review and reporter for The Sun and The Evening Sun and area television stations, died of lung cancer Thursday at his home in Essex. He was 72. He joined the Catholic Review as a writer in 1995 and worked there until he retired in 2005. George P. Matysek Jr., the Review's assistant managing editor, remembered Mr. Gaul as a mentor to the junior writers at the paper, taking time to carefully edit their work. "He really showed us what went into a good story," Mr. Matysek said, "He was very nurturing in how he dealt with younger writers.

Now we are being told that the Mafia, as we know it -- and most of us know it only by movies and myth -- is not expected to survive. The New York City trial of John Gotti, a mob boss of People magazine dimensions, is said to mark the last chapter of organized crime in the United States. For those who are inclined to buy into this line, I say caveat emptor.That the demise of any single man could finish modern organized crime is a theory of law enforcement and media that has been proven wrong again and again.

A ctor Chazz Palminteri (“The Usual Suspects,” “A Bronx Tale”) has partnered with Aldo’s owners Sergio and Alessandro Vitale to open a new restaurant in Harbor East called Chazz: A Bronx Original. With its soft opening Friday, Palminteri’s restaurant is styled after the eateries on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx and will feature classic Italian-American dishes. Palminteri sat down with b to discuss his restaurant, movies, the mafia and the proper way to eat a slice of pizza.

ROME -- Giulio Andreotti, a former prime minister and a symbol of the now-collapsed Italian political establishment, has been indicted and ordered to stand trial in September on charges that he acted as a protector for the Mafia during his many years in power.Prosecutors will seek to prove that Mr. Andreotti did favors for the Mafia in return for political support in Sicily for the Christian Democratic Party, which dominated the Italian government for decades after World War II.Mr. Andreotti, 76, could face a 20-year prison sentence if convicted.

"Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic," by Alexander Stille. 467 pages. New York: Pantheon. $27.50Alexander Stille's history does what history should: it tells a story that makes sense of what occurred in a specific place during a period of time. The subject is Italy during the years between the end of World War II and the dissolution of the Cold War. These two events, like bookends in time, embrace a period of unprecedented prosperity as Italy grew into the fifth industrial power in the world.

ATTY. GEN. Richard Thornburgh and the Federal Bureau of Investigation both say they have no evidence of any large-scale involvement of organized crime in the savings and loan disaster. But how would they know? From what the FBI told me, it never took the first logical step to find out.The same goes for evidence now coming from the Houston Post of looting by at least some people with CIA affiliations. The government says there's no big problem, but apparently nobody with subpoena power has bothered looking.

"I Don't Want To Go To Jail," by Jimmy Breslin. Little, Brown. 306 pages. $24.95. Connoisseurs of a specific kind of nonfiction -- fine reporting or commentary written on deadline -- should find a well-stocked used-book store and dig for "The World of Jimmy Breslin," a paperback with a black-and-white cover photograph of the New York columnist on a telephone in what appears to be a bar. It's a collection of the early, good Breslin, perhaps the best Breslin,...

TAURIANOVA, Italy -- There were no police around the day the Mafia came calling.The date was May 3, the time 5:30 in the afternoon, the place a small neighborhood grocery store on the Via Solferino.Owner Giuseppe Grimaldi, 54, was standing behind the deli counter when he saw the hit men coming. He grabbed a long, sharp knife made for slicing bread and cheese.Before he could use it, he was shot dead. So was his brother, Giovanni.The killers took the bread knife and cut off Giuseppe's head.

Imagine trying to defend a client accused of killing someone who comes to court with the word "murder" tattooed across his neck. Or trying to convince a jury that the suspect is really a good guy even though his best friend knows him only as "Bloody Batman." With gangs gaining strength in Baltimore, nicknames are gaining popularity on the street, and more often than not it's a nickname rather than a real name by which many are known. And law enforcement authorities, especially the feds, don't hesitate to use the monikers.

Imagine trying to defend a client accused of killing someone who comes to court with the word "murder" tattooed across his neck. Or trying to convince a jury that the suspect is really a good guy even though his best friend knows him only as "Bloody Batman." With gangs gaining strength in Baltimore, nicknames are gaining popularity on the street, and more often than not it's a nickname rather than a real name by which many are known. And law enforcement authorities, especially the feds, don't hesitate to use the monikers.

For Americans, Gomorrah will play like every other Mafia epic - and no other Mafia epic. The movie is named for Sodom's sister city and for the crime syndicate Camorra, which has made a Gomorrah out of Naples, Italy. The director, Matteo Garrone, working in the charged, realistic style of his predecessor Francesco Rosi (Salvatore Giuliano), achieves a journalistic drive on a scale so broad that it takes your breath away. Like Rosi, Garrone puts together a machine-gun mosaic as he depicts the Camorra's domination of everything from public housing to toxic-waste disposal and high fashion.

TNA's latest attempt to attract mainstream publicity is to offer the position of chairman of The Main Event Mafia to ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. TNA made the announcement in a news release yesterday. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ringposts)

The feud between The Main Event Mafia and The Front Line is becoming a little less one-sided, but the original premise has gotten convoluted in the process. It wasn't working, because the heels were booked to be cool and calculating, while the babyfaces were booked to be incompetent. ( For more, go to baltimoresun.com/ringposts)

Three 6 Mafia Last 2 Walk Grade: D+ For a decade, Three 6 Mafia was relatively unknown outside the gritty, grimy confines of underground Southern rap. But then the Memphis collective flew up the pop charts in 2005 with the catchy, sinister "Stay Fly." And the next year, Three 6 Mafia became the first rap act to pick up an Oscar for best original song for "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from the movie Hustle & Flow. Immediately after that baffling win, the group (now a duo made up of core members Juicy J and DJ Paul)

This may not be such a good time for the rich and powerful. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was punished for her drive, money and influence with a third-place finish in Iowa. Even Republicans turned up their noses at the wealthy, well-groomed Mitt Romney and chose a populist from Arkansas. Last week a former Goldman Sachs banker was sentenced to prison for several years for insider trading. On TV Cashmere Mafia's pilot repeats at 10:01 p.m. tomorrow on WMAR, Channel 2

Battered by aggressive investigators and weakened by incompetent leadership, most of America's traditional Mafia families appear to be fading out of existence, law-enforcement officials and independent experts say.The Mafia remains potent in the New York City area, where officials say it is hard to uproot because it has five separate and large crime families, and in the suburbs of Chicago.But in most other areas, where prosecutors have to contend with only a single family, the legendary mob that once controlled whole labor unions, city governments and criminal enterprises has clearly lost its grip.

I wrote my first news article about the Mafia in 1959 as a green Federal Courts reporter for the late, lamented City News Bureau of Chicago. That smudged-purple Mimeograph copy, shuttled to the city's four daily newspapers by underground pneumatic tubes, has long since been lost, but I believe it was related to a grand jury Fifth-Amendment plea by Jimmy ("The Monk") Allegretti, a top lieutenant of Tony Accardo. It has been followed by thousands of news stories, columns and editorials of mine on the mob, all written with fascination.

SALVATORE BONANNO, 75 Grew up in Mafia family Salvatore "Bill" Bonanno, the oldest son of the late New York City crime chieftain Joe Bonanno and author of a book about growing up in a Mafia family, has died. He was 75. Los Angeles literary agent Mickey Freiberg said Mr. Bonanno died Tuesday in Tucson, Ariz. The cause of death was a heart attack, said Anthony Tarantola, Mr. Bonanno's nephew. Mr. Bonanno wrote Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story in 2000. His Web site describes him as an author, movie producer and lecturer.

An Offer We Can't Refuse - The Mafia in the Mind of America George De Stefano Farrar, Straus and Giroux / 438 pages / $26 Years ago, writing about the legacy of Mario Puzo, I said, "If there is a God and he is indeed Catholic, then Puzo is burning in hell." Before The Godfather was published in 1969, historians of organized crime in the 20th century told us that some major stars of the modern mob had names like Arnold Rothstein, Owney Madden, and Logan and Fred Billingsley. After The Godfather, the only major crime figures who got any attention were the ones whose names ended in vowels.