All Blog Posts Tagged 'TLJ' (35)

By Thom L. Jones

I imagine a scene, long ago, in the town of Corleone, in the heartland of Western Sicily.

I see Doctor Michele Navarra (right). A classic valetudinarian; a sensitive and haunted expression playing across his features. The face of a man who had sold his soul to the Mafia and the devil for an excellent price, as English author Norman Lewis…

By Thom L. Jones

Top end of Cypress Avenue, Ridgewood, right on the Brooklyn-Queens boundary line. Friday evening, November 10th 1967.

It’s a quiet Jewish, Italian community. Like every neighborhood or district in the biggest city in America, it has stories to tell if you listen hard enough. Tongue-numbing Dutch names like Onderdonk jostle for space with simple…

By Thom L. Jones

Early morning Thursday, Christmas Eve, 1992.

A maroon, four door, Mercury Topaz slows to a halt at traffic lights in Ozone Park, a suburb in Queens, New York.

The driver is a slim, dark-haired, dark skinned Italian-American. The passenger, his wife, is a diminutive, chubby, doe-eyed woman. She is thirty-one, three years older than her husband. They…

By Thom L. Jones

In 1960, Joe and Jack Taliercio opened a restaurant in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. They had worked as chefs in some of the finest restaurants in Europe and in Manhattan, and working as a family, determined to create a historic food locale. They leased premises at 102-11 Queens Boulevard, and began serving food a la Neapolitan style to a rapidly growing and…

By Thom L. Jones

In his government photograph, Antonino Burrafato (photo, below right) has something of the look of actor Jon Cryer, wearing a uniform and a funny hat. His lips are pursed as though he is about to ask the man behind the camera to get on with it. The eyes are steely and piercing, someone who does not suffer fools gladly. He looks more like a Jefe than simply a…

By Thom L. Jones

Carmine DiBiase went out on Christmas Day and got drunk. Very drunk. Very, very drunk. And then he shot and killed someone.

Not just any old someone, but a best friend someone. A guy who had stood by Carmine at his wedding, as his chief attendant. Been godfather to one of his children. Was his business partner.

A man who was…

By Thom L. Jones

The alliteration is perhaps inexcusable. The description however, is almost as perfect as you will get.

A man who allegedly bit off part of another man’s ear in a bar brawl. Who terrified a family as he tried to destroy their car- with them in it. Someone who apparently actually frightened some members of the Boston police department to the point that…

By Thom L. Jones



It was bloodletting out of all proportion, even for the men who ran the Mafia in Sicily.



Eight men killed for eighteen horses.



The worst day of mass killing in its history since May 1947, when 11 people were shot dead and 33 wounded by Salvatore Giuliano’s bandit gang at Portella della Ginestra, near San Giuseppe Jato; an…

By Thom L. Jones



‘It is the theory that decides what can be observed.

If the facts don’t fit the theory change the facts.’

Albert Einstein



New York Times April 16th 1931:



It took ten years and a lot of shooting to kill Giuseppe Masseria. He was Joe the Boss to the…

By Thom L. Jones



The man who appeared to be always photographed with a perpetual sneer on his face, seemingly had a temperament to match. Like many short men, he made up for lost inches with a bombastic, in-your-face approach to life. He is best remembered by the media for the way he treated women, rather than for his prowess as a gangster, although he was skilled in…

By Thom L. Jones



‘A sweetheart of a guy. He wasn’t a drinker and didn’t cheat on his wife the way most of these guys do. His one big fault is that once in a while, he would import 50-100 kilos of pure heroin.’

James Drucker

Assistant U.S. Attorney, Eastern District Strike Force, 1973.



On March 6th,…

Part One - Part Two - Part Three



By Thom L. Jones



Following Leggio’s acquittal in the second trial, although he was subject to…

By Thom L. Jones



Part One - Part Two



Through 1958 tensions rose and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Doctor Navarra and Luciano Leggio were heading for a showdown. Navarra, despite being well educated and a man of the…

By Thom L. Jones



The man in the leather coat walks down the quayside towards the bridges, the traffic movers. There are four of them that carry vehicles across the river: the Tyne, the biggest and most imposing by far (they cloned the Sydney Harbour Bridge from this one,) the Swing, the High…

By Thom L. Jones



This story is a work of fiction. All the characters and events (except Carlo Gambino) are the product of the author's imagination.



They'd been sitting in the car for thirty minutes and…