The Rogues' Hall of Fame

Johnny Roselli was the mob's ambassador-without-portfolio, corrupting the film industry's unions in Hollywood and becoming the go-to guy in Las Vegas and Miami. After testifying before a Senate committee and emerging as a player in the mob's long-rumored involvement in JFK's assassination, his body washed up off Miami.

Meyer Lansky was the mob's gambling czar and set up casinos in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Hot Springs, Ark., New Orleans, Las Vegas, Florida and Cuba. Refused citizenship in Israel, he retired to Miami. Immortalized by actor Lee Strasberg as Hyman Roth in "The Godfather II."

Vito Genovese sought to dethrone Lucky Luciano as capo di tutti capi; conspired to assassinate mob rival Frank Costello, leading to the ill-fated mob conference in Apalachin, N.Y., that put the Mafia under the eye of investigators. Died in federal prison after mob cohorts reportedly set him up on a heroin rap.

Paul Castellano, Gambino's heir, ran meat and poultry businesses and lived sumptuously in a Todt Hill, S.I., mansion known as "The White House." Dapper Don John Gotti supposedly orchestrated his Dec. 16, 1985, assassination outside a Manhattan steakhouse.

Frank Costello was a Tammany Hall fixer and diplomat whose gravel-voiced persona supposedly was the inspiration for Marlon Brando's Don Corleone in "The Godfather." Lived on Park Avenue and in Sands Point, L.I.; retired after Vito Genovese's failed assassination bid in May 1957.

Carmine Galante, a feared hit man and dope dealer, assumed the reins of the Bonanno crime family in the '70s; was gunned down at an Italian restaurant in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where his bullet-riddled body lay crumpled on the ground, a cigar still hanging from his mouth.

Mickey Cohen, head of Los Angeles gambling rackets, maintained a host of powerful friends, including Frank Sinatra - who once appealed to him to get mobster Johnny Stompanato to stop dating Ava Gardner. Depicted by Harvey Keitel in the 1991 film "Bugsy" and by Paul Guilfoyle in 1997's "L.A. Confidential."

Carlo Gambino infiltrated the garment industry while heading the country's largest and most powerful mob family, yet managed to avoid the limelight - and the scrutiny of cops - by living quietly at 2230 Ocean Parkway in Gravesend, Brooklyn. Died of a heart attack in 1976.

James Ralph "Bottles" Capone was the lesser-known and benignly named brother of the Windy City's uber-gangster, Al "Scarface" Capone. Lived with a sister at Martha Lake, near Mercer, Wis., and was said to have had numerous arrests - but no felony convictions. He reputedly owned a vending machine business in western Chicago.

Charles "Lucky" Luciano, considered a visionary in mob history, helped engineer the five-family crime structure in New York City. Given 30 years for running brothels, he served only a decade behind bars, with the proviso that he be deported to Italy.

Thanks to Phillip Messing

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A Story for Martin Scorsese to Bring to the Big Screen

Are you familiar, as the lawyers say, with a man named Alphonse Persico, known as Allie Boy? How about Nicky Black, Wild Bill, Joe Waverly, Joey Brains and Joe Brewster? Or Lawrence Mazza, James Delmasto, John Pate and Carmine Sessa?

If not, good luck following the blockbuster murder case on trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court before a spellbound audience of journalists, promoters, authors, conspiracy theorists, gadflies and some who answer to three or more of those designations. You need a scorecard just to track the players.

Fortunately, their nicknames give them away: All are figures associated with the Mafia, that fetishistically documented secret society responsible for long-ago crime waves, more recent cinematic masterpieces and, above all, an enduring modern marketing bonanza. Some are dead and some are living; in their lives the press loved them all.

These latter days find the waning wiseguys reduced to walk-on roles in an ensemble gathered for the trial of Roy Lindley DeVecchio, a retired Federal Bureau of Investigation supervisor. Mr. DeVecchio, 67, has been charged with helping his prized Mafia informer kill four people in the 1980s and early 1990s. Prosecutors say he disclosed confidential information to set up assassinations.

This contemporary Mafia trial’s more prominent players include a 1960s campus radical turned dapper judge whose taste in courtroom décor runs to the eccentric, an aspiring author planning a book with a self-styled love, dating, sex and relationship coach and an amateur private investigator who was choked (not fatally) in a strange, unexplained attack last year.

The publicity circus surrounding big mob trials was already in full churn last week. Satellite trucks idled on Jay Street. Photographers ascended stepladders to gain some purchase over their rivals. A high school class visited the courtroom on a field trip. Mr. DeVecchio, free on $1 million bond, mingled with his supporters. And tabloid newspapers reflexively chronicled every twist under headlines such as “Weird Mafia Love Triangle” and “G-Man and G-Strings; Plied With Bimbos: DA.”

The basic accusations against Mr. DeVecchio date to the Bensonhurst war for control of the Colombo crime family in the early ’90s, when Mr. DeVecchio led an F.B.I. squad charged with crippling the Colombos. His informer was Gregory Scarpa Sr., proprietor of the Wimpy Boys Social Club and a capo in the family.

After the war ended, federal prosecutors admitted that Mr. DeVecchio had passed confidential information to Mr. Scarpa. Investigators for the Department of Justice failed to turn up evidence to support criminal charges or even disciplinary action, and Mr. DeVecchio soon retired.

In a way, his new trial can be considered the triumph of the hangers-on, the true believers and the Mafia aficionados.

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has credited Angela Clemente, a single mother from New Jersey, amateur private eye (and victim of that unexplained choking) with research that helped revive the case. The office has also acknowledged the work of Peter Lance, a writer who attends the trial in pinstripe suits, telling anyone who will listen his theories linking the case to global terrorism. But at center stage is the main prosecution witness, Linda Schiro, aspiring author of a book tentatively titled “Marriage, Mafia Style.” Supporting testimony is expected from her son, Gregory Scarpa Jr., who is in prison for racketeering. Mr. Scarpa is a prolific informer who has at times claimed to have the goods on his own father and on Ramzi Yousef, orchestrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Mr. DeVecchio’s defense lawyers speak of a darker side to all this Mafia obsession. Over the years, they argue, Ms. Schiro has tried time and again to sell the story of her life as the common-law wife of the senior Mr. Scarpa, who died in prison in 1994.

With each new telling and each new potential co-author (including the love and dating coach, Sandra Harmon), she has sharpened her portrayal of Mr. DeVecchio. In her evolving accounts, defense lawyers argue, Mr. DeVecchio has gone from a man who met privately with her husband to a man she heard giving orders to kill.

“That’s pure fantasy,” said a defense lawyer, Douglas Grover, in his opening statement. “She’s making it up.”

Prosecutors built the groundwork for her credibility last week with testimony from a Mafia expert and from F.B.I. agents who had worked with Mr. DeVecchio.

The Mafia expert, Sgt. Fred Santoro of the Police Department, seemed well at ease. A product of Bensonhurst himself, he lent the trial an old-time touch by cracking wise on Mafia policies for drug-dealing (frowned upon) and murder (get permission first). The federal agents recounted their suspicions about Mr. DeVecchio’s relationship with his informer.

By the end of the week, a real live Mafia associate cried on the witness stand, to the evident delight of the gallery. The witness, Lawrence Mazza, told of hunting Colombo rivals, armed to the teeth in a frequently repainted station wagon.

The judge overseeing the case, Gustin L. Reichbach, interjected with his own questions. He knew a thing or two about the F.B.I.; its agents had once counted him among the most dangerous protest organizers at Columbia University. When the witness mentioned a newspaper account of one killing, Justice Reichbach offered a qualification.

“Just because it appears in the newspapers,” he said, “doesn’t make it so.”

The writers packed into the gallery laughed and laughed. The judge leaned back in his big leather chair. The scales of justice glowed over his shoulder, in neon, bright red and blue.

Thanks to Michael Brick

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RICO Laws Heading to Australia

Tough anti-racketeering laws used in America to defeat the Mafia are likely to be introduced in Australia to smash lawless Queensland bikie gangs.

This follows a warning from the Australian Crime Commission of increasing motorcycle gang involvement in the manufacture and trafficking of drugs, extortion, theft, identity fraud, illegal gambling, money laundering, prostitution, car rebirthing, arson and murder.

"Most Australians would be absolutely horrified if they knew what a deep hold the bikies have on all kinds of criminal activity in Australia," said Queensland senator Ian Macdonald. Senator Macdonald is chairman of a federal parliamentary committee investigating organised crime.

The committee has recommended the introduction of so-called RICO laws, based on the American Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act. The powerful Act gives US crime investigators wider powers to investigate and coerce associates of criminals and to treat gangs as single criminal enterprises.

"Because of the bikie gang stranglehold on organised crime, we need legislation similar to RICO, but updated to suit the times," Senator Macdonald said. He said legal advisers had also suggested a toughening of old laws to outlaw consorting over the internet or on mobile phones.

Senator Macdonald's joint parliamentary committee recently took evidence into organised crime and the Australian Crime Commission at hearings around Australia. He said some of the evidence, much of it given in secret, was "stunning".

Police told the inquiry that bikie gangs were now conducting joint ventures with ethnic gangs and had links to international crime syndicates. They had also established companies to launder drug money and they were recruiting children to fence stolen property.

Queensland police and the Crime and Misconduct Commission backed the introduction of RICO laws and again appealed to the State Government to pass phone-tapping laws.

Veteran investigative crime journalist Bob Bottom - who also gave evidence at the Brisbane hearings - also backed the introduction of RICO laws and telephone taps.

He said the Gold Coast was a crime centre in Australia in much the same way that US gangsters flocked to Florida from where they ran vast criminal networks.

Thanks to Des Houghton

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Curse of Al Capone's Gold

In North Dakota rogue cop Andy Larson supplements his income by stealing from criminals especially bootleggers. He and four of his friends plan to hijack a truckload filled with illegal booze, but to his dismay everything turns ugly as bullets fly. The four bootleggers and one of Larson’s allies are dead. When the dust settles, the four survivors look inside the truck to find a cache of gold coins.

Andy knows he needs to cover up the disaster from his work peers and elude the owner of the coins, mobster Al Capone. As he struggles with both, Andy tries to figure out how to dispose of bodies, alcohol, and coins without the cops or the Chicago mob knowing it was him.

Except for the illegal booze and names like Capone, this prohibition crime caper could take place in any twentieth century era as the action-packed story line lacks a distinct 1920s flavor to it. The story line is fast-paced and filled with gunfights that make the Valentine’s Day massacre look like a cozy. With the blood flowing and the audience wanting Andy to get his comeuppance as a bad cop, readers will be reminded of marihuana busts in the south and southwest in the 1960s as Mike Thompson provides a graphic shoot out.

Thanks to Harriet Klausner

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Mob Killer Crys on Witness Stand

A stone killer for the Mob, who testified casually about his homicidal jaunts through Brooklyn looking for people to shoot, started crying in court yesterday over his youthful wrong turn into a life of crime.

Tough guy Lawrence Mazza, 46, who was to testify about his gangster boss' ties to rogue FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio collapsed in tears in Brooklyn Supreme Court when he recounted that he spent a year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice studying police science.

"I was planning to follow my father" in civil service, Mazza said, choking up at the thought of his dad, a lieutenant in the Fire Department. "I'm sorry," Mazza told the judge, growing increasingly emotional.

A court officer handed him a tissue. The prosecutor got him a glass of water. But the handsome mobster continued to weep. Finally the judge called a break.

Seasoned court watchers said they'd never seen anything like it.

After recovering his composure, Mazza laid out his remarkable story: how he unwittingly romanced a Mafioso's girlfriend, was befriended by the gangster, shared the woman with him and gradually transformed into a feared killer.

Mazza called his mobster patron, Colombo capo Gregory (The Grim Reaper) Scarpa Sr., "vicious, violent" and a man who "told me he stopped counting at 50" when listing his murders. "He was unscrupulous and treacherous. He was a horrible human being," Mazza testified. "I was his right hand man, very, very close."

He described how, during the bloody Colombo family civil war of the early 1990s, they would cruise the streets of Brooklyn in a station wagon tricked out as a death car, loaded with shotguns, rifles and pistols, with special hidden compartments for the guns.

They wore bulletproof vests, carried rudimentary portable phones and looked for members of the rival Orena faction to blow away.

They rarely missed, he said. "Pretty much, we killed who we shot," Mazza testified.

Mazza, who pled guilty years ago to loansharking, racketeering, four murders and conspiracy to kill four other people, now lives in Florida after spending a decade in jail. He began cooperating soon after his 1993 arrest and has helped the feds with three trials so far.

Thanks to Scott Shifrel and Helen Kennedy

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