Bonanno crime family

In 1930, Luciano decided to purge the Mafia of its old guard during an ongoing power struggle known as the Castamarese War.

This war resulted in the creation of the Italian Mafia, as we tend to think of it today, consisting of five New York families Luciano, Mangano, Prefassi, Bonanno and Gagliano, and several regional families scattered across the United States.

While Jews, Irish, and other ethnicities were still denied official membership in the Italian Mafia, the organization still maintained close business partnerships with these groups.

One of the main causes uniting the Italian and Jewish Mafias was their shared hatred of fascism.

From that point on, anyone involved in the investigation would have access to that information.

That summer, Heidel ran into Bert Kaplan, a drug trafficker and criminal strategist, and Tommy Pitera, a hitman working for the Bonanno family, one of the La Cosa Nostra, the Italian crime society more commonly known as the Mafia.

They were all at El Caribe, a beach club frequently used by the five families of the Mafia.

Heidel was walking around after a recreational racquetball match when Tommy confronted him.

So you've taken over the street level operation, right? You've got the guys that are kind of putting the package together, selling the product out on the street, selling it in your club.

But they've told you that you've got to talk to the guys above them or there's going to be trouble, right? There are people managing this operation and they are the Bonanno crime family.

And they... have a place that they operate out of.

They've given you that address.

Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, oh, oh, it's a fucking disorder.

I disordered that, I disordered that, I disordered, come on, you fucking, you fucking tiny Tim looking motherfucker, hey, oh, I love these guys, ZZ Cop, the fucking Cher over here, I'm having a great time, listen, I gotta let you guys know about what's going on, all right, uh, We're not the only ones you got to worry about over here.

The Bonanno family, you know, aren't the ones in charge, all right? Oh.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Gambino? Sure.

Actually, could he be in the Bonanno? Yes, the Bonanno.

Bonanno crime family? Is that okay? Sure.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

OK.

He's in the one I said, the Bonanno.

Yeah, you got a lot of guys in there too.

You got some Bonanno guys.

Did they try to recruit you?

That was, I think, part of the animosity that you're from my neighborhood.

You got a problem.

Let me get a squash.

Joey Messina, boss of the Bonanno family.

He knew me.

You know, his father, he owns a, he owns a laundromat, you know? And then so he, and so there was always like this implication that some people were connected.

Um, and, uh, But when I became, after I went to the strike force, it was absolutely amazing that the connections that some of these kids had, I mean, you know, connected to, you know, Capo's and the Genovese family, the Bonanno family, one of my friends who I didn't know it at the time, but, you know, I'd see him regularly.

uh once a year at a neighborhood reunion and he would regale me with stories about guys in the banano crime family that he was related to you know shellac head and tony mira and these were his first cousins and of course i had no idea at the time and when i was a prosecutor i realized that blackhead

he's he's still around he's been on some of these uh shows uh richard cantarelli he's still around actually so

We had probably 10 agents who actually worked out of our offices.

And all the other agencies, we had representatives for agencies even in different parts of the country.

And from elsewhere, we had the Mounties, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, were actually very helpful in a number of our investigations, where there was people who became fugitives or the Bonanno family had people who were working with them in Montreal.

So the idea was to coordinate the investigative work of the various investigative agencies who were out in the field.