Brooklyn 1986: A violent explosion rocks a Brooklyn neighbourhood. In the wreckage is the body of gangster Frank DeCicco. DeCicco is the right hand man of the most notorious mob boss in New York – John Gotti. Who would dare cross such a dangerous man? The Mob and the Feds are mystified … Suspicion settles on a wave of younger gangsters recently arrived from the old country … Was the bomb really meant for Gotti himself? And if so, who would dare murder a Mafia boss? Mafia Killers with Colin McLaren s1e1: John Gotti: The Teflon Don, History 2019
Gotti grew up poor and tough; he was always in trouble at school. ibid.
Gotti had been arrested a number of times for minor crimes but at 28 he is caught red-handed stealing a shipment of women’s clothing from the airport cargo area. Gotti gets three years in prison. ibid.
He always needs money to pay his gambling debts. ibid.
Gotti has got to the top. The problem now is how to save him. His love of the limelight makes him an easy target for the law. ibid.
‘Sammy’s philosophy was Betray or be Betrayed.’ Mafia Killers s1e2: Sammy the Bull Gravano, Selwyn Rabb
Gravano left a trail of blood on the streets of New York. ibid.
Sammy stays in the army for two years; unfortunately, it does nothing to improve his behaviour. ibid.
In 1987 Gotti promotes Sammy Gravano to Underboss. ibid.
He accepts Gotti’s orders without question. ibid.
He does less than a year. Gravano then enters the Witness Protection Programme. ibid.
Brooklyn 1961: Mobsters Carmine Persico and Larry Gallo meet in secret to plan a rebellion. Persico and Gallo refuse to pay the stiff kickbacks demanded by their boss Joe Prefaci. Rebelling against a Mafia boss is suicidal. Mafia Killers s1e3: Carmine The Snake Persico
The Snake’s ruthless ambition would then practically destroy one of New York’s most powerful Mafia families. ibid.
He’s been behind bars since 1987 serving a sentence of 139 years. ibid.
Persico and his leadership were indicted on multiple charges of racketeering. ibid.
Brooklyn 1992: This [Patrick Testa] is the latest in a wave of recent killings that remain unsolved: but this murder holds a vital clue that will lead investigators into the murky underworld of the New York Mafia. Mafia Killers s1e4: Anthony Gaspipe Casso
One of the Mob’s most vicious killers: Anthony Gaspipe Casso. ibid.
The drug business is now too risky so he gets out while he can. ibid.
Federal prosecutors serve up indictments to all the top mobsters involved in running the windows racket. ibid.
New York 1957: One of the strangest careers in Mob history. Mafia Killers s1e5: Vicent Gigante The Oddfather
‘He would mumble, look crazy, and look totally unaware of what was going on.’ ibid. Selwyn Rabb
Vincent Gigante was born in 1928 in Manhattan’s lower east side; he grew up in Greenwich Village in an almost exclusively American-Italian community. ibid.
He was mad, bad, but very clever and extremely dangerous. ibid.
He drifts into the crosshairs of the FBI … playing the Crazy Man with the Feds. ibid.
Lombardo retires due to ill health and anoints the Chin as his successor. ibid.
The FBI has arrested minor monster Henry Hill for drug trafficking … Drug dealing is against Mob rules … He refuses to talk so the Feds play him another tape … Henry has to go: Henry is shocked. Mafia Killers s1e6: Henry Hill the Godfather
‘Henry was an associate with the Lucchese family.’ ibid. historian
Henry Hill had a huge thirst for money. He could never be a real Mafioso so he helped others … Henry Hill was never a mobster, never a Goodfella, yet he was behind two of the biggest Mob heists pulled off in America at the time. ibid.
The Mafia had become his new family. ibid.
Henry had now crossed the line – he was an accessory to murder. ibid.
He smuggled the drugs into prison and the scam took off. ibid.
On Memorial Day weekend Henry, Karen and their children enter the witness protection program. ibid.
Henry’s Hill’s testimony leads to fifty convictions. ibid.
Henry keeps blowing his cover … Surprisingly, no-one came after him … He died a simple death of heart failure at the age of 69. ibid.
The Dominican Republic is a major transit point for heroin and cocaine. From here it is smuggled into the United States. Narco Wars: The Mob s2e1: The Heroin Don
In 2016 almost a million Americans used heroin. Double the number of users in the 1970s. They’re supplying a mass market created in the 1950s by one of the most powerful crime syndicates in the world: the American Mafia. ibid.
Carmine Galante was far and away the biggest heroin kingpin in the world. He developed a whole system of smuggling tons of heroin into the country. ibid.
Carmine Galante is a trusted member of one of the most brutal Mafia families in New York: the Bonanno Family. ibid.
Galante is on the brink of transforming the North American heroin trade. But in 1962 his plans are thwarted. He’s sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for drug offences. ibid.
In 1974 there are 460,000 heroin addicts in the US. Almost half are in New York. ibid.
‘They had to make an example of Galante. It was a daylight assassination to send a message that we are the ones who rule, the rules are not to be broken.’ ibid.