E

A Mafia Boss Breaks a Code in Telling All

#117

The New York Times

4/14/11
William K. Rashbaum
Vocabulary to Know Before You Read
candor
confederate
lard (v.)

acumen
jowl
belie (v.)

rapt
deft
bureaucratic

thwart
faction
roving
racketeering

It was a straightforward question, but not one usually answered by the likes of Joseph C.
Massino. At least not with such candor.
The longtime boss of the Bonanno crime family was asked by a prosecutor, What
powers did you have?
Mr. Massino, seated at the witness stand, offered a quick, matter-of-fact reply.
Murders, responsibility for the family, made captains, break captains, he said.
And so it was that Mr. Massino, 68, the only official boss of a New York crime family
ever to cooperate with federal authorities, appeared in Federal District Court in
Brooklyn on Tuesday and became the first to testify against a former confederate.
For nearly five hours, Mr. Massino cataloged his misdeeds, recounting murders and
other acts of varying criminal scope.
Mr. Massino would tell the jury that the man on trial, Vincent Basciano, the familys
former acting boss, had spoken to him about ordering the 2004 killing of Randolph
Pizzolo, a Bonanno associate, a conversation Mr. Massino secretly recorded. Mr.
Basciano is charged with ordering Mr. Pizzolos murder.
But for much of the day, Mr. Massino established his credentials and gave the jury his
view from the top, his philosophy of mob management and his personal history all
larded with a steady stream of culinary metaphors and references.
If you need somebody to kill somebody, you need workers it takes all kinds of meat
to make a good sauce, said the onetime restaurateur, catering consultant and coffee
truck owner, referring to what he said were Mr. Bascianos skills both as a killer and as
an earner for the crime family.
He recounted turning to crime early as a 12-year-old, stealing some homing pigeons. By

the time he was 14, he had run away from home; he said he hitchhiked to Florida,
getting arrested twice for vagrancy on the way, and worked as a lifeguard in Miami. By
the 1960s, he said, he had progressed to murder, and he testified that he eventually was
involved in about a dozen killings, some that he ordered, some that he orchestrated and
some that he helped carry out.
Mr. Massinos testimony also highlighted his underworld executive acumen in addition
to his lifetime of crime, much of it in service of the Bonanno family, with which he said
he had been affiliated for 33 or 34 years.
His unassuming appearance, with heavy jowls, drooping eyelids and an expansive
midsection, was belied by his authoritative-sounding responses to the prosecutor,
Assistant United States Attorney Taryn A. Merkl, who took him through his personal
and professional history. (He will not undergo cross-examination until Wednesday or
Thursday.)
Mr. Massino began cooperating with the authorities after he was convicted of seven
murders in 2004, for which he faced life in prison, and was set to go to trial for an
eighth, for which he could have faced the death penalty. In 2005, he pleaded guilty to
the eighth killing, and Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Federal District Court, who is
presiding over Mr. Bascianos trial, sentenced him to two consecutive life terms.
By testifying for the government, he is seeking a sentence reduction, though he told the
jury that none had been promised. In his words: Im hoping to see a light at the end of
the tunnel.
Dressed in a black and gray jogging suit with a white T-shirt visible beneath, he
alternately rested his folded hands on the edge of the witness stand or on his belly as he
answered questions about his early crimes, his rise in the Bonanno family and his
management of hundreds of members and associates after he became boss in 1991.
The jurors at times appeared rapt, but at times seemed to fade as photograph after
photograph of Bonnano crime family figures were introduced into evidence.
He presented himself as a master of the deft bureaucratic maneuver, both in his
dealings with internal family rifts and with other crime clans, and in his efforts to
thwart law enforcement.
He described going to the bosses of the Gambino and Colombo families Paul
Castellano and Carmine Persico, respectively in 1981 before taking pre-emptive action
against three senior Bonanno figures who were moving against his faction in a brewing
power struggle. After securing approval to kill the men, Mr. Massino and several others
shot them to death in an ambush in the basement of a social club.
He also testified about codes that he and his confederates worked out to discuss

murder plots and in one instance to determine if a social club had been bugged
without alerting law enforcement. He described changes he put into effect after
becoming boss that were meant to reduce the risk that members of his family could
incriminate themselves or one another.
For example, Mr. Massino closed all the familys social clubs, saying that if crime family
members hung out in these storefront establishments, they made the Federal Bureau of
Investigations job easy, because one agent conducting surveillance outside could see
everyone come and go. If you close the club, he explained, it takes 50 F.B.I. agents to
watch 50 people.
He was, he said, extremely careful about where and when he talked about mob business.
You never talk in a club, you never talk in a car, you never talk on a cellphone, you
never talk on a phone, you never talk in your house, he testified, saying that so called
walk-talks, where two or more crime figures would carry on a roving conversation as
they strolled the streets, were safest.
Indeed, Mr. Massino said he discussed mob business in a walk-in refrigerator at a
catering business where he worked to avoid electronic eavesdropping.
His efforts to thwart investigators, he said, were aided by at least four unnamed law
officers: two New York Police Department detectives in the 1960s; an F.B.I. agent who
warned him of a pending arrest in the 1980s; and a Pennsylvania state trooper who
destroyed copies of his fingerprints sometime later.
While most of his testimony on the first day of the trial focused on Mr. Massinos
background and the familys history and leadership, Ms. Merkl did ask a number of
questions about the man on trial, Mr. Basciano.
Mr. Basciano has already been convicted in a separate case of murder and
racketeering, also before Judge Garaufis, and was sentenced to life in prison in 2008.
In this case, he is charged with ordering the murder of Mr. Pizzolo, who prosecutors said
had insulted Mr. Basciano when he was the acting boss; he faces the death penalty if
convicted.
Mr. Bascianos lead lawyer, George R. Goltzer, said in his opening statement that his
client had not ordered the killing, but falsely admitted doing so to Mr. Massino to
protect a friend who did order the killing, and his own business interests.
Questions:
1. Should criminals be offered less severe sentences if they agree to testify against
members of their criminal organizations (or cooperate in some other way with the
government)? Why or why not?

2. Explain Mr. Massinos strategy for conversing with mafia associates while evading
surveillance by law enforcement. Use details from the article to support your answer.
3. Why has Mr. Massino agreed to open up about the criminal underworld of which he is
a part? What does he hope to gain by testifying against Mr. Basciano? Explain your
answer using details from the article.
4. What biographical details about Mr. Massinos life can be obtained from the article?