Donnie Brasco (32 page)
Authors: Joseph D. Pistone
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #True Crime, #Organized Crime
Tony Mirra (back to camera) and Joey D‘Amico (left) meet with two of the most important “zips,” Caesar Bonventre and Sal Catalano (right). “Zips” were Sicilians imported to set up a huge heroin-smuggling ring operating through pizza parlors-an operation that became famous as the “Pizza Connection” case.
From left, Al Walker, big Joey Massino, an unidentified companion, and Tony Mirra. Massino eventually was put in charge of the zips, and became the heir apparent to ailing Bonanno boss Philip
“Rusty” Rastelli.
Agent Pistone as “Donnie Brasco” relaxes at poolside at the Tahitian Motor Lodge in Holiday, Florida, in July 1980 with Dominick “Sonny Black” Napolitano, the top-ranking Bonanno captain.
Lefty Ruggiero emerges from a Florida motel on his way to case a potential bank job in St. Petersburg.
Bonanno boss Carmine Galante lies in a pool of blood, his cigar still clenched in his teeth, after being shotgunned to death in an ambush at a Brooklyn restaurant on July 12, 1979. As a result of the execution, Rusty Rastelli became the new Bonanno family boss, and Sonny Black was elevated to top captain.
Sonny Black emerges from a motel coffee shop with Florida boss Santo Trafficante. The two forged a new alliance between the Bonanno and Trafficante families to share gambling and other illegal activities.
Frank Balistrieri, boss of the Milwaukee family. Agent Pistone set up an alliance between the Balistrieri and Bonanno families in 1978 to share a Milwaukee vending-machine operation.
Philip “Rusty” Rastelli ran the Bonanno family for several years from a cell at the federal penitentiary in Lewisberg, Pa.
This early-morning surveillance photo shows the Motion Lounge in Brooklyn, Sonny Black’s headquarters. His apartment was on the third floor, his pigeon coops on the roof.
Outside the Motion Lounge on May 14, 1981, the day Sonny Black gave “Donnie Brasco” the contract to “hit” a rival Mafia member. From left, Nicky Santora, Boobie Cerasani, Sonny Black, and Agent Pistone.
On July 28, 1981, two days after Agent Pistone ended his undercover role, FBI agents (left to right) Jerry Loar, James Kinne, and Doug Fencl emerge from Sonny Black’s apartment after informing him that “Donnie Brasco” was an FBI agent.
After the agents’ visit, Sonny Black went up to the roof, to his pigeon coops, where he often retreated to think in private. The revelation that the Bonanno family had been infiltrated by an FBI agent meant death sentences for those responsible for the unprecedented breach in Mafia security.
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