Salvatore Vitale rose to be underboss of the Bonanno crime family, one of the five Mafia families of New York. Between 1976 and 1999 he took part in eleven killings, which he admitted after his arrest. In April 2003 he pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn to racketeering conspiracy and murder in aid of racketeering. He then became a government witness. His testimony helped convict dozens of members and associates of organized crime, among them the family's boss, Joseph Massino, whom he had known since their teenage years.
On Friday, October 29, 2010, Vitale was sentenced to time served, with five years of supervised release. He was 62.
Vitale told the Massino jury that he had been friends with Massino since they were teenagers and that Massino brought him into the Bonanno family in the early 1970s and advanced him through its ranks. He described Massino as the man who taught him what he needed to know about organized crime. By the time of his arrest he held the position of underboss.
The family at that period was fought over from within. Vitale testified that in 1981 he and Massino plotted and carried out killings of three rival Bonanno captains during a contest for control of the family. The decade also left the family under pressure from the authorities after an undercover federal agent had been introduced into its ranks, a matter that figured in several of the killings Vitale described.
Vitale admitted eleven killings carried out between 1976 and 1999. He was convicted on a plea, not after a trial on each death.
At the Massino trial in June 2004 he testified to two of the eight killings he attributed to Massino's orders. He said Massino directed him to kill Dominick Napolitano, a Bonanno captain, in August 1981, after the undercover agent's presence in the family came to light. In his account he understood the instruction to mean that Napolitano had to die for the family's embarrassment, and he took part in the killing in the Staten Island area. He also described a 1984 killing of Caesar Bonventre, a rival captain, in Maspeth, carried out with another member of the family.
The death that figured most in the sentencing coverage was that of Robert Perrino, killed in 1992 after members of the family feared he might cooperate with the police.
His arrest strained his relationship with Massino. Vitale told the jury that after his arrest no one in Massino's circle offered his household any help. He agreed to become a government witness in 2003, the year before the Massino trial, and he pleaded guilty in April of that year.
Vitale was one of eight cooperating witnesses called against Massino at the federal trial in Brooklyn in 2004. He was the sixth to testify, over two days in late June, questioned by a federal prosecutor before the same judge who would later sentence him. His testimony was described at the time as the most significant defection from a New York family since the testimony of Salvatore Gravano against John Gotti.
Massino's defense argued that the cooperators, Vitale included, lied under oath to win favorable treatment, and that Massino was not responsible for the 1981 killings because he was not yet boss. Prosecutors answered that Massino had planned the killings and that his title did not matter. Massino was convicted at the 2004 trial of racketeering offenses that included several murders, among them the killings of three rival captains and of a man connected to the undercover agent. Vitale went on to testify at four mob trials in all.
Vitale had been in custody for about seven to eight years when he came before the federal court in Brooklyn on October 29, 2010. Prosecutors recommended a sentence of less than life. The court imposed time served and five years of supervised release. He apologized in court, saying, "I pray for forgiveness." By then his testimony had helped convict more than 50 former members of the Mafia.
His life after the sentence is not on record.
The Bonanno family's leadership was largely taken apart in the 2000s by the testimony of its own men. By the time of the 2004 trial the government had eight cooperating witnesses against its boss. Massino himself was arrested again in 2005 and also began cooperating. In 2013 the same judge reduced Massino's life sentence to time served, of about ten and a half years, noting that his information had been used in ten prosecutions. Vitale and Massino had become bitter enemies in the intervening years, though both were assisting the government.
The eleven killings rest on Vitale's plea and testimony, not on separate verdicts. The count-by-count terms of the plea are not on record. Massino's defense said Vitale was lying to avoid the death penalty and to use federal prosecutors against Massino. The year of his arrest is uncertain: his own trial testimony placed it in 2001, while the court's sentencing hearing in 2010 was described as coming after his 2002 arrest.
1976 to 1999: period of the eleven killings Vitale admitted.
1981: Killing of Dominick Napolitano and three rival Bonanno captains, as described in Vitale's testimony.
1984: Killing of Caesar Bonventre, as described in his testimony.
1992: Killing of Robert Perrino.
2001 or 2002: Vitale is arrested.
April 2003: Pleads guilty to racketeering conspiracy and murder in aid of racketeering.
June 2004: Testifies against Joseph Massino at the federal trial in Brooklyn.
2004: Massino is convicted.
October 29, 2010: Sentenced to time served and five years of supervised release.