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Initiation Ritual (mafia)
To become a member of the Mafia or Cosa Nostra (both the original Sicilian Mafia or the Italian-American offshoot often known as the "American Mafia")—to become a "man of honor" or a "made man"—an aspiring member must take part in an initiation ritual or initiation ceremony. The ceremony involves significant ritual, oaths, blood, and an agreement to follow the rules of the Mafia. The first known account of the ceremony dates back to 1877 in Sicily.Gambetta, ''The Sicilian Mafia'', pp. 146-53 The typical sequence of the ceremony, according to several distinct descriptions, has common features. First, the new recruit is led into the presence of other members and presented by a member. The association is explained, including its basic rules, then the recruit's finger is pricked with a needle by the officiating member. A few drops of blood are spilled on a card bearing the likeness of a saint, the card is set on fire, and finally, while the card is passed rapidly from hand to hand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sicilian Mafia
The Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra (, ; "our thing"), also referred to as simply Mafia, is a secret society, criminal society and criminal organization originating on the island of Sicily and dates back to the mid-19th century. Emerging as a form of local protection and control over land and agriculture, the Mafia gradually evolved into a powerful criminal network. By the mid-20th century, it had infiltrated politics, construction, and finance, later expanding into drug trafficking, money laundering, and other crimes. At its core, the Mafia engages in protection racketeering, arbitrating disputes between criminals, and organizing and overseeing illegal agreements and transactions. The basic group is known as a "Crime family, family", "clan", or ''cosca''. Each family claims sovereignty over a territory, usually a town, village or neighborhood (''borgata'') of a larger city, in which it operates its Racketeering, rackets. Its members call themselves "Made man, men of honour", although ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McClellan Hearings
The Valachi hearings, also known as the McClellan hearings, investigated organized crime activities across the United States. The hearings were initiated by Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan in 1963. Named after the major government witness against the American Mafia, foot soldier and made man Joseph Valachi, the trial exposed American organized crime to the world through Valachi's televised testimony. At the trial, Valachi was the first member of the Italian-American Mafia to acknowledge its existence publicly, and is credited with popularization of the term ''cosa nostra''. The trial also exposed the hierarchy of the American Mafia, including the Five Families and The Commission. Overview In October 1963, Valachi testified before Senator John L. McClellan's congressional committee on organized crime, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the U.S. Senate Committee on Government Operations. He gave the American public a firsthand account of Mafia activities in the Uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Cressey
Donald Ray Cressey (April 27, 1919 – July 21, 1987) was an American penologist, sociologist, and criminologist who made innovative contributions to the study of organized crime, prisons, criminology, the sociology of criminal law, white-collar crime.Akers, Ronald L. and Matsueda, Ross L. "Donald R. Cressey: An Intellectual Portrait of a Criminologist." ''Sociological Inquiry.'' 59:4 (October 1989).Salinger, Lawrence M. '' Encyclopedia of White-Collar & Corporate Crime.'' Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE, 2004. Life and work Born in 1919 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, he obtained his bachelor's degree from Iowa State College in 1943 and earned his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 1950. He taught sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Along with Edwin Sutherland, he co-authored '' Principles of Criminology,'' for 30 years the standard text in criminology. He also wrote ''Other People's Money,'' a study of embezzlement, and co-authored the popular textbook ''Social ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York Post
The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates three online sites: NYPost.com; PageSix.com, a gossip site; and Decider.com, an entertainment site. The newspaper was founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, a Federalist Party, Federalist and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who was appointed the nation's first United States Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of the Treasury by George Washington. The newspaper became a respected broadsheet in the 19th century, under the name ''New York Evening Post'' (originally ''New-York Evening Post''). Its most notable 19th-century editor was William Cullen Bryant. In the mid-20th century, the newspaper was owned by Dorothy Schiff, who developed the tabloid format that has been used since by the newspaper. In 1976, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp bought the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gotti
John Joseph Gotti Jr.Capeci, Mustain (1996), pp. 25–26 ( , ; October 27, 1940 – June 10, 2002) was an American '' mafioso'' and boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City. He ordered and helped to orchestrate the murder of Gambino boss Paul Castellano in December 1985 and took over the family shortly thereafter, leading what was described as the most powerful crime syndicate in the United States. Gotti and his brothers grew up in poverty and turned to a life of crime at an early age. Gotti quickly became one of the Gambino family's biggest earners and a protégé of Aniello Dellacroce, the family's underboss, operating out of Ozone Park, Queens. Following the FBI's indictment of members of Gotti's crew for selling narcotics, Gotti began to fear that Castellano would kill him and his brother Gene for dealing drugs. As this fear continued to grow, and amidst growing dissent over the leadership of the family, Gotti arranged the murder of Castellano. At his peak, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gambino Crime Family
The Gambino crime family (pronounced ) is an Italian American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the American Mafia. The group, which went through five bosses between 1910 and 1957, is named after Carlo Gambino, boss of the family at the time of the McClellan hearings in 1963, when the structure of organized crime first gained public attention. The group's operations extend from New York and the eastern seaboard to California. Its illicit activities include labor and construction racketeering, gambling, loansharking, extortion, money laundering, prostitution, fraud, hijacking, and fencing. The family was one of the five families that were founded in New York after the Castellammarese War of 1931. For most of the next quarter-century, it was a minor player in organized crime. Its most prominent member during this time was its underboss Albert Anasta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Rotondo
Anthony Rotondo (born July 21, 1957–March 8, 2025) was a former capo in the DeCavalcante family of New Jersey and police informant. He entered the witness protection program under the name Anthony Russo and died on March 8, 2025. Early life Anthony Rotondo lived with his father Vincent "Jimmy the Gent" Rotondo, and his father expressed wishes for his son to become a criminal defense lawyer. His father was a union organizer for the Brooklyn chapter of the International Longshoremen's Association and underboss. Vincent was gunned down in front of his Brooklyn home because mob associates thought he might make an attempt to become boss of the family in 1988. In 1973, Rotondo graduated from Nazareth Regional High School in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Life in the Mafia Rotondo became a made man in DeCavalcante crime family in 1982 and was promoted to Capo over his father's crew when the elder Rotondo was found in his car shot dead with a bottle of fish in his lap in 1988. Rotondo adm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston as ''The Atlantic Monthly'', a literary and cultural magazine that published leading writers' commentary on education, the abolition of slavery, and other major political issues of that time. Its founders included Francis H. Underwood and prominent writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Greenleaf Whittier. James Russell Lowell was its first editor. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the magazine also published the annual ''The Atlantic Monthly Almanac''. The magazine was purchased in 1999 by businessman David G. Bradley, who fashioned it into a general editorial magazine primarily aimed at serious national readers and " thought leaders"; in 201 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincent Palermo
Vincent "Vinny Ocean" Palermo (born June 4, 1944) is an Italian-American former mobster who was the '' de facto'' boss of the DeCavalcante crime family of North Jersey before becoming a government witness in 1999. Fictional mob boss Tony Soprano, the protagonist of the HBO series ''The Sopranos'', is said to be based upon Palermo. Similar to how Soprano worked from the fictional Bada Bing! strip club owned by Silvio Dante on the show, Palermo owned a strip club called Wiggles. Background Vincent Palermo was born in New York City on June 4, 1944, and raised in a traditional Italian-American family in Brooklyn. He was an in-law by marriage to Nicholas Delmore, the former head of the New Jersey crime family, whose nephew was Simone DeCavalcante, also a New Jersey mob boss whose daughter he married. Palermo has five sisters, including Claire and Nancy, and two brothers. His father was an Italian immigrant who moved to New York when he was a teenager. Palermo came from a close-knit fam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam DeCavalcante
Simone Paul Rizzo DeCavalcante (April 30, 1913 – February 7, 1997), known as "Sam the Plumber", was an Italian-American mobster who was boss of the DeCavalcante crime family of New Jersey. Claiming descent from the Italian royal family, DeCavalcante was nicknamed "The Count". The McClellan hearings later named the New Jersey Mafia the DeCavalcante crime family since he was the boss of the family at the time of those hearings. Early life The son of Italian immigrants Maria Antoinette (Occhipinti) and Frank Rizzo Di Cavalcante,Simone Paul Rizzo (Sam) DeCavalcante Ancestry.com Simone Paul Rizzo DeCavalcante was born in the |
DeCavalcante Crime Family
The DeCavalcante crime family, also known as the North Jersey crime family or the North Jersey Mafia, is an Italian American Mafia crime family that operates mainly in northern New Jersey, particularly in Elizabeth, Newark, West New York and the surrounding areas. The family is part of the nationwide criminal network known as the American Mafia. The DeCavalcante family operates on the opposite side of the Hudson River from the Five Families of New York City, and maintains strong relations with each of the New York families, especially the Gambino family, as well as with the Philadelphia crime family and the Patriarca crime family of New England. Wiretaps, prison, death take toll on mob family that inspired 'The Sopranos,' ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Fratianno
Aladena James Fratianno (born Aladena Fratianno; November 14, 1913 – June 29, 1993), also known as "Jimmy the Weasel", was an Italian-born American mobster who was acting boss of the Los Angeles crime family. After his arrest in 1977, Fratianno became an informant and entered the Witness Protection Program in 1980. He admitted to having killed five people. Later in life, he became a writer. Early life Fratianno was born in Naples, Italy, in 1913, later immigrating with his family to the United States, settling near Cleveland, Ohio. He was first arrested at the age of 19, on suspicion of rape, but was not charged. Two years later, he was acquitted of robbery charges, but in 1937, was convicted of robbery and spent more than seven years in an Ohio state prison. Fratianno earned his nickname "Weasel" as a boy when running from the police in the Little Italy section of Cleveland. A chase witness shouted "Look at that weasel run!" and the police quickly attached the nickname to h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
