Paul M. Holstein, a spokesman for the Albany office of the F.B.I., declined to comment on questions regarding Mr. Bruno last night. “We have no comment on any pending investigations or even about whether there is an investigation ongoing on Senator Bruno,” said Mr. Holstein, who is a supervisory special agent of and chief division counsel for the F.B.I. “We’re not going to confirm that there is an investigation.”
He referred questions about the matter to the United States attorney’s office in Syracuse. Officials there did not return calls for comment last night.
Mr. Bruno’s lawyer, William J. Dreyer, also did not return telephone calls or respond to e-mail messages last night.
A report in The New York Times on Saturday highlighted some of the ties
between Mr. Bruno’s private and public interests. It found that in recent
years, Mr. Bruno has steered state money to a business linked to Jared E.
Abbruzzese, a wealthy investor in the Albany area, while also investing in
a different company affiliated with Mr. Abbruzzese.
Abbruzzese, a horse owner, is involved in numerous ventures, including
at least one that has received $500,000 in discretionary grants, called member
items, directed by Bruno. The two have several ties, including land development,
plane rides and thoroughbred horses.
Abbruzzese is part of a group called Empire Racing Associates, which bid
on the state's racing franchise that officials, including Bruno, plan to award
within the next year. Abbruzzese led the effort to raise $3 million to fund
the organization this spring.
Bruno was a principal of First Grafton until 1992, when his investment in the development group was placed in a trust. First Grafton dissolved last year when another group purchased the lots. Bruno's son, Kenneth Bruno, a former lobbyist who represented racing interests, also was a First Grafton homeowner. Bruno didn't appear to be visibly distressed during Tuesday's brief news conference, although he said he was angered by what he termed "illegal" leaks to the media about the FBI probe.
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Today marks the anniversary of another Mafia murder. Beppe Alfano, an investigative reporter and school teacher, was slaughtered in Barcellona in the province of Messina on January 8th, 1993. The executioner has been condemned in two out of three trials to 21 years in prison. A final decision in the case is fixed before the Supreme Court on February 2nd. The local mafia boss, Giuseppe Gullotti, was condemned initially to 30 years in prison, but has yet to go through the complex process of appeals. In the meantime he's free as a bird. The actual commissioner of the crime has yet to be identified.
As in most mafia assassinations, the investigation was constellated by false leads and dead ends. Press smear campaigns against Alfano alleged that he had gambling debts and was involved in a paedophile ring, all deliberate and unsubstantiated charges.
It now appears that Alfano had discovered the hide out of the Catania mafia boss, Nitto Santopaola, one of the most sanguinary killers in mafia history along with Totò "Shorty" Riina.
Santopaola was eventually condemned for the murder of Giuseppe Fava.
Nearly a dozen reporters have been murdered in Sicily by the mafia since the Sixties.
Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, the notorious Gambino consigliere and hitman, pricked DiLeonardo’s trigger finger and squeezed the blood on to a crumpled image of a saint, which he then set alight in DiLeonardo’s cupped palms. As the icon burnt, DiLeonardo recited the mafia pledge: “If I betray the oath of omertà, may my soul burn in Hell like this saint.”
"This is not a club — this is a secret society,” Gravano warned him. “There is one way into this society: the way you come in today. And one way out: on a slab."
The oath has been administered to generations of mafiosi. But a spate of high-profile mob cases in New York, involving four of the city’s five mafia clans, is dramatising just how ineffective that promise has become.
The 1961 black-and-white photograph of the crime scene showed the naked body of a woman sprawled across a bloody tile floor. The killer had cut her from throat to navel, ripped out her intestines and piled them alongside her exposed breast. She had been an FBI informant, gathering evidence to bring down a drug operation of a La Cosa Nostra crime syndicate.
During World War I, "Big Jim" Colosimo ran a group of nightclubs and prostitution houses with a loosely organized group of Italian and Sicilian thugs. Up until the time of Prohibition, "Big Jim" had been the boss. His right-hand man was Johnny Torrio (right), from New York. Torrio joined up with Colosimo in 1910 and helped organize the gang along the lines of the Sicilian Mafia. Along with the development of prohibition, however, a problem developed in the Chicago Gang.
Five months after the onset of Prohibition, on May 11, 1920, Caponi and Yale shot down Big Jim in his own restaurant. Torrio took over as boss, Caponi became his right-hand man, and Yale went back home to New York. Caponi (right) changed his name to Al Capone, and he and Torrio began to revamp the Chicago Outfit, recruiting many more mobsters from the Chicago area as well as disciplining and organizing the gang.
Around this time, Weiss tried to kill Torrio, but only wounded him. Torrio decided to get out and told Capone that he was going back to New York. Capone was offered a deal in which he could have the Chicago Outfit if he sent Torrio 10% of his income every month. Seeing the vast potential in this deal, Capone graciously accepted Torrio's offer. With this, Capone (left) became boss of the Family. Tony Accardo became Capone's bodyguard.
One day the Weiss-Moran Gang came into the middle of Capone's turf and shot up the Hawthorne Inn, where Capone had one of his private offices, while Capone was inside. Accardo and Capezio were assigned the inevitable hit on Weiss. The hit was done with the weapon that was the trademark of the Capone Mob, the Thompson submachine gun -- also called the Chicago Chopper or the Chicago Tie-breaker(right). The hit was done in front of Holy Name Cathedral, where Weiss had been an altar boy, Accardo had been baptized, and both Accardo and Capezio had gone to school. Now Bugs Moran became enemy #1.
It was around this time that Accardo (left) was given the name "Joe Batters". He was given the name by Capone himself after Accardo beat to death one of Capone's enemies with a baseball bat.
To ensure that the entire Moran Gang would be there, Genna said that it would be an extra large load, requiring a lot of help and a large payment from Moran.
Moran had overslept that day and rushed to the garage. As he turned the corner, he saw the police paddy wagon and decided to wait for the raid to end. When he heard the gunshots, Bugs drove away. Questioned later about the killings, Moran said, "Nobody but Capone kills like that!" Capone, to facilitate an alibi, was very visible at his home in Palm Island, Florida.
Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti (left) took over after Capone, and Accardo was promoted to capo. When Nitti took over, the Outfit went low profile as it had been before Capone. The Outfit went into labor racketeering under Guzik and Hump. Nitti and others (including Ricca) were indicted in New York in 1943 for extortion of Hollywood movie studios. Nitti eventually lost favor with a number of his men due to this and committed suicide on March 19, 1943.
Paul "The Waiter" Ricca (right) took over as boss but went to prison the same year, naming Accardo as acting boss. Ricca and his accomplices were sentenced to 10 years in prison. In one of the major scandals of the Truman administration, they were released immediately when eligible for parole -- 3 years later -- even though there was another indictment against them. The presence of another indictment supposedly meant that they could not be paroled. It seems that Hump had promised Tom Clark, who was Attorney General, that he would be rewarded by an appointment to the Supreme Court. Shortly after Ricca's release, a new member was appointed to the Supreme Court by Harry Truman -- Tom Clark. When Ricca came out of prison in 1947, he decided that he didn't want to be boss and appointed Accardo as official boss. Ricca became his consigliere. Accardo was easily accepted as boss by the rest of the Outfit.
Giancana kept a high profile like Capone. Some years later, Giancana served almost a year in prison when he was found in contempt for refusing to answer questions. Upon his release in 1966, Accardo (still the man with the power despite his official title) met with him. It was decided that Giancana would no longer be boss. He went to Mexico for eight years before being thrown out. A year after leaving Mexico, in 1975, he was killed in Chicago by his own people.
In 1971 Accardo was re-elected as boss, but he was part of a three man ruling board which consisted of himself, Joey "O'Brien" Aiuppa, and Gus Alex(the first non-Italian to hold such a position). This was mostly a means of getting Aiuppa ready for the responsibility of boss. In the mid-1970s, Jackie Cerone (left) was released from prison. At this time Accardo retired again, Alex stepped down and resumed his former position, and Cerone and Aiuppa shared the title of boss. Accardo was once again consigliere, but retained a considerable amount of power.
Accardo instructed his two bosses to concentrate on Las Vegas and brought up a new capo, Joey "The Clown" Lombardo, to oversee Chicago's business in Vegas. Tony "The Ant" Spilotro had been sent there in 1971 by Accardo, and Lombardo was to be his new capo.
In 1986, with the "Strawman" cases, Aiuppa (right) and Cerone were each sentenced to 25 years in prison for the skimming of Las Vegas hotel-casinos (probably for the rest of their lives). Also indicted in the "Strawman" cases were: Kansas City boss Nick Civella, Kansas City underboss Carl "Tuffy" DeLuna, Milwaukee boss Frank Peter Balistrieri, and Tony "The Ant" Spilotro. So in 1986, Accardo called a sit-down to appoint Joe "Joe Negall" Ferriola as boss and Rocky Infelice as underboss. Accardo died in 1992 at the age of 82. He never spent a night in jail, and his one conviction (tax evasion in 1960) was overturned after some calls were made to some appeals court judges.
Ferriola (right) became quite sick with cancer, so Accardo handed the reins of leadership over to Sam "Wings" Carlisi(left) and John "No Nose" DiFronzo. Ferriola died in 1991. In 1993, both Carlisi and DiFronzo were indicted for conspiracy to skim an Indian Reservation Casino in southern California. DiFronzo went away to prison, but Carlisi was acquitted. In late 1993, however, Carlisi was convicted of running a gambling operation in Chicago and is in Federal Prison. DiFronzo was paroled in August 1994 and took over the Outfit again. Lombardo is now out of prison, and as of 1999, off parole restrictions. It is thought that Lombardo (released in 1992, below) is the current leader of the Chicago Outfit.
