Joseph Massino led the Bonanno crime family of New York from the early 1990s until his arrest on January 9, 2003. In July 2004 a federal jury in Brooklyn found him guilty on every count of an indictment that charged racketeering, with seven murders among the racketeering acts, together with arson, extortion, loansharking, gambling and money laundering. The killings began with the deaths of three family captains in May 1981. In June 2005 he pleaded guilty to ordering a further murder, that of Gerlando Sciascia in 1999, a charge on which the government could have sought the death penalty. Judge Nicholas Garaufis sentenced him to two life terms.
Massino began talking to investigators after his 2004 conviction and became the first head of a New York crime family to cooperate with the government. He recorded conversations with his successor as acting boss, Vincent Basciano, and in 2011 he took the witness stand against him. On July 10, 2013, after prosecutors asked the court to credit that cooperation, Judge Garaufis reduced his two life sentences to time served, a little over ten and a half years.
Massino was born in 1943 and raised in Brooklyn. In the 1960s he worked around Maspeth, Queens, supplying catering trucks and selling coffee and cakes at a truck yard in Long Island City. He later told a jury that he took an oath at an induction ceremony in 1977, when he became a member of the Bonanno family.
The Bonanno family in those years was led by Philip Rastelli. In 1981 the family was divided by an internal dispute, and Massino backed Rastelli. Rastelli later named him as his successor. In 1982, when word reached him of an impending indictment, Massino went into hiding in Pennsylvania's Poconos region, and he stayed away from the authorities for more than two years. A federal wiretap case from 1984 charged him and a co-defendant with racketeering conspiracy and participation in a racketeering enterprise under 18 U.S.C. section 1962; the Second Circuit later reversed an order that had suppressed recordings in that case. By 1986 he and Rastelli had been convicted of labor racketeering, and Massino served five years.
Rastelli died in 1991, and Massino was promoted to boss. After his release in 1992, with Gotti's approval, he rebuilt the family. He ran much of his activity from CasaBlanca, an Italian restaurant in Maspeth, which prosecutors later described as the center of his operation, and he also owned Cafe Via Veneto and properties in Queens and in Florida. Investigators alleged that in 2000 he convened a meeting of four of the five New York families at the restaurant. By 2004 he was described as the only New York boss who was neither in custody nor awaiting sentence.
On May 5, 1981, three Bonanno captains, Alphonse Indelicato, Philip Giaccone and Dominick Trinchera, were killed in Brooklyn. They belonged to a faction that was at odds with Rastelli, and the jury at Massino's 2004 trial found that he had engineered their deaths.
Massino had faced a charge over this episode before. In 1987 he was acquitted of conspiracy in the case, and the killings themselves were prosecuted in 2004.
Dominick Napolitano, a Bonanno crew captain, was killed in August 1981. Prosecutors said he was killed after family members learned that he had helped an FBI agent, Joseph Pistone, infiltrate the family. Pistone had spent five years undercover among the Bonannos under an assumed name, and his work was later credited with about 200 convictions of organized crime members. Massino's former underboss, who became a government witness, told the 2004 jury that Massino ordered Napolitano's death.
The same witness told the jury that he carried out eight murders on Massino's orders and said he would not do anything without Massino's knowledge, adding that Massino was "calling the shots." He also testified about the 1984 death of Caesar Bonventre, whom Massino regarded as a threat.
The government's case grew out of a four-year investigation by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn. The FBI said it was built on financial records and on cooperation that moved up the chain: two special agents who were former accountants used a step-by-step approach to link lower-level associates to crimes, and members of the family agreed to cooperate one after another. Before the Massino prosecution the Bonanno family was the only New York crime family in which no inducted member had ever cooperated, a record of more than seventy years. A trusted captain of Massino's turned against him, the FBI said, and that led to the 2003 arrest.
Indictments were returned against Bonanno members in March, June and October 2002. On January 9, 2003, the day before his sixtieth birthday, Massino was arrested on a 19-count superseding indictment that named him with three co-defendants. The indictment charged racketeering conspiracy, murder, loansharking and illegal gambling, and the murder charge related to the death of Napolitano. Massino was held without bail and pleaded not guilty. U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said the indictment charged "the sole boss of a major New York organized crime family who was still at liberty," and the FBI's assistant director in charge in New York, Kevin Donovan, said that "justice delayed is not always justice denied."
By March 2004 the case had grown to 35 defendants facing 23 murder or attempted murder charges. Massino faced racketeering charges that included seven murders spread over eighteen years, with an eighth killing to be tried separately.
Jury selection in United States v. Joseph Massino et al. began on April 19, 2004, in federal court in Brooklyn, before Judge Nicholas Garaufis. The government's lawyers described Massino as a "one-man army" who had taken control of the family over twenty-five years. Eight cooperating witnesses testified against him, six of them members of the Bonanno family. The most prominent was his former underboss, a friend since boyhood, who testified on June 28 and 29, 2004; it was the biggest Mafia defection since Salvatore Gravano testified against John Gotti.
The defense lawyer, David Breitbart, conceded during the trial that Massino was a member of organized crime and might have been its boss, but argued that the witnesses had lied to win favorable treatment from prosecutors and that Massino was not the boss when some of the killings took place. The jury, ten women and two men, deliberated for five days after about nine weeks of testimony.
The verdict came on Friday, July 30, 2004. The forewoman took ten minutes to read the guilty findings, and Massino showed no emotion. He was convicted of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, murder and attempted murder as racketeering acts, extortionate credit and collection conspiracies, illegal gambling, a money laundering conspiracy, and arson and arson conspiracy. Mauskopf said the conviction marked "an important step in our fight against organized crime in New York." In a further phase the same jury ordered the forfeiture of $10.4 million and of Massino's interests in two Queens restaurants, CasaBlanca and Cafe Veneto. Sentencing was set for October 12, 2004, with life imprisonment mandatory.
After the verdict Massino offered to cooperate. A second prosecution, over the 1999 death of Sciascia, was pending, and it carried the possibility of a death sentence. His lawyer said that he had faced that penalty and chose to cooperate. In January 2005 he began recording conversations with Basciano, who had succeeded him as acting boss; prosecutors called him the highest-ranking Mafia informant in history.
In June 2005 Massino pleaded guilty to murder in aid of racketeering in the death of Sciascia, a Bonanno captain. He also waived his right to appeal the 2004 conviction. In all, he admitted involvement in eight killings across about twenty-five years as leader of the family. On June 23, 2005, Judge Garaufis sentenced him in Brooklyn to two life sentences. Asked in court about the Sciascia case, Massino said: "As the boss of the Bonanno crime family, I gave the order." The judge said that the trial had exposed the real nature of organized crime, which he said popular media had romanticized over the previous thirty years.
The court had ordered him to forfeit $10.3 million and several Queens properties; under the plea agreement he was to hand over $9 million, including CasaBlanca and two cafes on Fresh Pond Road in Maspeth. The government's Bonanno investigation had by then produced 51 convictions over three years. By 2008 more than one hundred members and associates of the family had been prosecuted in the Eastern District of New York, among them Massino and each of his successors: Anthony Urso, Vincent Basciano and Michael Mancuso.
Basciano was charged with the December 1, 2004, murder of Randolph Pizzolo. Massino was the government's key witness at the 2011 trial. He began testifying on April 12, 2011, and spent three days on the stand. He told the jury that cooperating broke the oath he took at his 1977 induction, and he described the boss's duties as including murder and the promoting and demoting of captains. He was the highest-ranking member of the New York families ever to testify against one of his own. He said he hoped that cooperating would earn him a break on his two life sentences for eight murders.
Basciano's lawyer argued that his client had claimed credit on the recordings to protect someone else and that the cooperating witnesses were deceitful opportunists. On May 16, 2011, after four days of deliberation, the Brooklyn jury convicted Basciano of murder, racketeering, conspiracy and other charges. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
On June 10, 2013, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn filed a motion asking for Massino's sentence to be reduced. A hearing took place on June 20, before Judge Garaufis. Court filings described Massino's "encyclopedic knowledge of the Mafia in New York City" and said his testimony had made him "a credible and effective witness" who "helped to dismantle the very organization" he had once served. Prosecutors credited his information with supporting ten prosecutions of organized crime figures. His agreement had also included the forfeiture of $7,672,581 in cash, 257 gold bars, CasaBlanca in Maspeth, Cafe Via Veneto in Ridgewood and other property.
On July 10, 2013, Judge Garaufis reduced the life sentences to time served, about ten and a half years, roughly twelve with good-time credit, and ordered that he be released after about two more months under lifetime supervision. He said the court had no illusions about Massino's motives, that the cooperation had helped Massino himself, and that it "in no way justifies his life of crime." Massino's lawyer said his client's decision to cooperate showed that "omerta is dead and the Mafia is on the run." Massino apologized in court, saying he prayed nightly for those he had hurt, especially the victims' families. The prosecutors asked for a 60-day interval to arrange security against former associates.
Massino's cases were brought under the federal racketeering statute. The 1984 indictment cited 18 U.S.C. section 1962, and in 2004 the murders formed part of the racketeering count on which the jury returned its verdict. Because the Sciascia killing came after 1994, when federal law was amended to allow the death penalty for such offenses, that charge carried a possible death sentence; the other charges carried life imprisonment.
The prosecutions that followed his arrest were large. U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said the indictments "represent the broadest and deepest prosecution ever of a New York City-based organized crime family." In 2006 the U.S. Attorney's Office counted more than seventy prosecutions of Bonanno members and associates since March 2004, a figure that had passed one hundred by 2008. The FBI case agent on the Massino investigation received the Attorney General's Director's Award in 2005.
Massino's defense at the 2004 trial was that the cooperating witnesses had lied to win favorable treatment and that he was not the boss when some of the killings took place. His lawyer conceded that he was a member of organized crime and might have been its boss. The jury rejected the defense and found him guilty on every count.
His 2005 admission that he gave the order for Sciascia's death was a guilty plea entered while a capital prosecution was pending, and no jury ruled on that death. Judge Garaufis said in 2013 that the court had no illusions about Massino's motives in cooperating.
1943: Joseph Massino is born in Brooklyn.
1977: Induction into the Bonanno family, as he later testified.
May 5, 1981: Indelicato, Giaccone and Trinchera are killed in Brooklyn.
August 1981: Dominick Napolitano is killed.
1984: Caesar Bonventre is killed; a federal racketeering indictment names Massino and a co-defendant.
1986: Massino is convicted of labor racketeering and serves five years.
1987: Massino is acquitted of conspiracy in the case of the three captains.
1991 to 1992: Rastelli dies; Massino becomes boss and is released from custody.
March 1999: Gerlando Sciascia is killed.
January 9, 2003: Massino is arrested and charged on a superseding indictment.
April 19, 2004: Jury selection begins in Brooklyn.
July 30, 2004: Jury convicts Massino on every count.
January 2005: Massino begins recording conversations with Basciano.
June 2005: Massino pleads guilty to murder in aid of racketeering (Sciascia).
June 23, 2005: Sentenced to two life sentences.
April 12 to 14, 2011: Massino testifies at Basciano's trial.
May 16, 2011: Basciano convicted.
June 10, 2013: Prosecutors move to reduce his sentence.
July 10, 2013: Judge Garaufis resentences him to time served.