Cesare Bonventre

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cesare "The Tall Guy" Bonventre (* 1. January 1951 in Castellammare del Golfo , Sicily ; † 16th April 1984 in Bushwick , Brooklyn , New York City ) was an origination Sicilian Mafioso which the rank of Caporegime the New York Bonanno- Family in Brooklyn.

biography

Early years

He was born in Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily and became a member of the Cosa Nostra at an early age . Bonventre's uncle was Giovanni "John" Bonventre, former underboss of the Bonanno family and cousin of Baldassare "Baldo" Amato.

Boss Carmine Galante summoned some Mafia soldiers from Sicily to New York for his purposes, because he was of the opinion that they would be distinguished by particular severity, brutality, discipline and loyalty in comparison. They were not popular among members of the families who were typically born in the United States. They called Bonventre - and the emigrants born in Sicily under him - disparagingly as "Zips" ; with which they described their original, fast and therefore difficult to understand pronunciation of Sicilian onomatopoeic .

Bonventre's nickname was "The Tall Guy" because he was six feet tall, and Galante used him as a bodyguard. He dressed fashionably and spent - together with other "Zips" - a lot of time in The Toyland Social Club and the area around Knickerbocker Avenue .

Assassination of Galante

On July 12, 1979, Galante got out in front of Joe & Mary's restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn and was murdered. Three men, masked with ski masks, had opened fire. The bodyguards Bonventre and Baldo Amato are said to have been involved in the attack; in any case, they disappeared from the scene with the masked shooters.

Bonventre was arrested a few weeks later but released. Later rumors arose that the "Commission" - as the highest body of the US Mafia - had approved the murder of Galante because he did not want to share his profits from the drug business. Other voices see his murder as preventing the expansion of power by Galante, who possibly wanted to become a capo di tutti i capi with his "zips" and the huge profits in order to rule all other families as head.

Philip "Rusty" Rastelli followed Galante as the boss of the family. However, since he was imprisoned, Joseph Massino was underboss and acting boss of the family. Bonventre was promoted from Soldato to Capo regime and became part of the crew around Salvatore Catalano in Brooklyn. At the age of 28, he was the youngest capo the Bonanno family had until then, and his new area of ​​responsibility was drug smuggling from Sicily to New York, the overall context of which later became known as the Pizza Connection .

Bonventre participated in a conspiracy by three capos, Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato , Phillip Giaccone and Dominick Trinchera , who wanted to take over the leadership of the Bonanno family. Bonventre switched sides, however, and the three renegade capos were murdered by Rastelli supporters in 1981.

death

Rastelli's rise as boss was followed by a period of unrest. Rastelli and Massino began to eliminate their internal opponents. In 1984, Massino decided that Bonventre was a threat to his leadership and should be removed.

In April 1984 the Bonanno mafiosi took Salvatore Vitale and Louis Attanasio Bonventre to a meeting with Rastelli. While Vitale was at the wheel, Attanasio shot Bonventre twice in the head. Bonventre is said to have still been alive and struggling; in the garage, Attanasio shot him twice more in the head. The body was chopped into pieces and placed in barrels of glue in a shop in Garfield. This form of corpse disposal (am: Barrel Murder ) was already used in the early days of Mafia activities in New York. After the barrels with the body parts were discovered, it took forensic scientists three months to assign them to Bonventre.

Bonventre was buried in the Roman Catholic Saint Charles Cemetery in Brooklyn. After his death, his wife gave birth to his son.

Consequences of the murder

One month after the assassination, the "Pizza Connection" was exposed and one year after the assassination, trials began in what was the largest case of organized drug trafficking to date .

A police spy stated that Cosimo Aiello was Bonventre's killer. This could not be resolved at first, as Aiello himself was shot dead six months later in a restaurant in Clifton , New Jersey. In January 2004, nearly 20 years after the murder, Louis Attanasio, Peter Calabrese, and Louis' brother Robert Attanasio were arrested by federal authorities.

Vitale cooperated with the authorities and testified. In 2006 Louis Attanasio and Calabrese were sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder. Robert Attanasio, who cleaned the vehicle after the murder, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Anthony M. Destefano: King of the Godfathers . Murder on the Lam, p. 139 .
  2. ↑ a b A Cautionary Tale . In: Time , October 15, 1984. 

literature

  • Raab, Selwyn. Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires. New York: St. Martin's Press 2005. ISBN 0-312-30094-8
  • Sifakis, Carl. The Mafia Encyclopedia . New York: Da Capo Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8160-5694-3
  • Crittle, Simon. The Last Godfather: The Rise and Fall of Joey Massino . Berkley 2007. ISBN 0-425-20939-3
  • Pistone, Joseph D .; & Brandt, Charles (2007). Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business , Running Press. ISBN 0-7624-2707-8 .
  • Pistone, Joseph D .; & Woodley, Richard (1999) Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia , Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN 0-340-66637-4 .
  • DeStefano, Anthony. The Last Godfather: Joey Massino & the Fall of the Bonanno Crime Family . California: Citadel, 2006.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bonventre, Cesare
ALTERNATIVE NAMES The Tall Guy (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian-American mafioso
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Castellammare del Golfo , Sicily
DATE OF DEATH April 16, 1984
Place of death Bushwick , Brooklyn