BRANDON RIOS VS MIKE ALVARADO 2

WILDFIRE: RIOS ALVARADO REMATCH SETS UP BOXING'S HOTTEST RIVALRY

Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas and Rios vs Alvarado 2 quickly resumed where the previous fight had left off, with Rios rolling his shoulders like a raging bull and whaling on Alvarado with relentless precision and tenacity. By the end of the second Alvarado was looking like he was destined to emerge second best once again. The third round however showed this match-up to be everything hoped for and more as Alvarado finally showed that he was not going to let Brandon walk through him. Alvarado suddenly unleashed with repeated long loping rights, cross shots and left hooks. Rios was hurt, stunned, but had he taken Alvarado's best shots when he walked back to his corner at the end of the round. By the middle rounds it is clear to anyone watching that this fight is a classic. The`two boxers trade at a furious pace, Rios relentless and prowling, Alvarado returning everything with interest, his wily change ups finally start to give him the edge over the more predictable, but still stronger looking Rios. Now it is the ninth and Alvarado had fought his way to a possible two point lead on the scorecards. Does he really have what it takes to win this fight or will Rios find that winning combination.  This was an electric re-match, so close fought that round three was all but a done deal when the fight was over. If you saw the fight you know what went down. If not watch it all here. This could well be a FOTY contender. Watch the first fight here

THE LAST TRAIN

RONNIE BIGGS SEES OFF HIS OLD MATE BRUCE

How many times did ya cosh the driver Ron?

Nothing like a face's funeral, and on March 20 Train Robber and man of respect Bruce Reynolds got one that a crim of his caliber deserved. Ronnie Biggs was the star turn and didn't disappoint, flicking V signs for all and sundry. The BBC was at the City of London service. So was The Guardian which did an 11 picture slide show. The Daily Mirror did a big spread.
The funeral was caught on video by various news agencies

RAT IN A TRAP

Mark Rossetti: New England Mob boss who played from both sides of the deck

Mob Capo Mark Rossetti gets 12 years and is further revealed as an upper eschelon player in New England Cosa Nostra whose "controversial relationship with the FBI" one suspects may see him either freed or dead inside twelve.  The case also saw Rossetti associate Joseph Giallanella recieve two years for loan sharking and related charges. No doubt these guys are serious players who we will one day read about.
Ever vigilant Friends of Ours blog compiles a pretty good dossier on Rossetti and the FBI

More from the Boston Herald

Here's a Fox 25 podcast on Rossetti the rat


From Hollywood Goodfella


Here's some conversation on the topic from the ever colourful Gangster BB forum


ama

KILLING BULGER

WHY PHILLY WANTED TO ICE WHITEY

Great article in the Huffington Post by ex-Philadelphia underboss Phil Leonetti on why he wanted to kill Whitey Bulger 30 years ago. Op-eds don't get much better than this.

Killing the myth of Whitey Bulger and why I suggested killing him 30 years ago

When my uncle Nicodemo Scarfo was in La Tuna federal prison in 1983, he placed me in charge of running the day-to-day operations of our crime family in New Jersey from our headquarters just two and a half blocks from the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. Two other men from our family, Salvatore "Chuckie" Merlino and Salvie Testa, were running our street operation in South Philadelphia and even though we were in the throws of a bloody mob war with a 4'10 old-school gangster known as "The Hunchback," things were going pretty good for us, especially in Atlantic City.

On most days I would meet with gangsters from North Jersey and New York, many of whom came to Atlantic City with an envelope that usually contained several thousand dollars in cash as a tribute payment to my uncle and our family resulting from business they were involved in either Atlantic City or Philadelphia.

On more than one occassion I met with gangsters from the Patriarca crime family, an organization based primarily out of the Boston area, but with a heavy presence in and around Providence, Rhode Island.

During one of these meetings, a guy I knew as a mob associate who was affiliated with the Genovese crime family in New York introduced me to another mob associate from Providence. The two of them wanted to buy an old hotel in Atlantic City and re-develop it into a caberet style nightclub and restaurant and wanted the blessing of our family. After several meetings and after getting the green light to proceed from my uncle who was in jail, I arranged to meet with caporegimes from both the Genovese and Patriarca crime families to ensure that everything was done in accordance with the rules of La Cosa Nostra, i.e., that everyone knew where the money was to be sent.

In this case, monthly envelopes would be sent to Vincent "Chin" Gigante, boss of the Genovese, through his underboss Venero "Benny Eggs" Mangano, Raymond Patriarca, boss of the Patriarca's, through his underboss Gennaro "Jerry" Angiulo, and my uncle, Nicky Scarfo, boss of the Philadelphia/Atlantic City mob, through me.

As things progressed with our proposed joint venture, I first heard the name "Jimmy Bulger" from one of the Boston guys during a dinner meeting. Bulger I would learn, was an Irish drug-dealer and low-life punk from South Boston who was paying the Patriarca's tribute money to stay in business. The problem with Bulger was that he wasn't paying enough and was balking at efforts to pay more.

What's worse I would learn, was that Bulger had reportedly murdered a woman, had once been charged with rape, and may have worked as a male prostitute when he was younger.

The kicker was, he was also suspected of being an informant.

"You gotta kill em," I told the Boston guy, "Immediately. You can't do business with someone like him. I'm disgusted just hearing you talk about him."

A few weeks later I sent word to New York that my uncle and our family wanted nothing to do with the proposed venture and that the Patriarca's were forbidden from conducting any business in Atlantic City.

"They are not our kind of people," I told the Genovese guys from New York and that was the end of it.

Fast forward 30 years to 2013 and I am back in New York promoting my book, Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family & The Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra, and I overhear a conversation between my co-author Christopher Graziano and another gentlemen we were dining with near our hotel in downtown Brooklyn and I hear Chris say, "I can't believe Johnny Depp's gonna play Whitey Bulger, I thought it was going to be Mark Wahlberg."

I entered the conversation late and when I was asked by one of the reporters that we were eating with if I ever came across Whitey Bulger when I was in the mob, I said, "I never met him and never heard of him until a couple years ago when I saw he had gotten arrested. But there was another Bulger from Boston I had heard about, a guy named Jimmy Bulger. He was a low-life Irish drug dealer I had heard about from one of the mob guys in Boston."

I then went on to tell the story repeated above and ended it with, "I can't believe they kept this guy around. I told them they should kill him immediately. Maybe he was a cousin of Whitey's, who knows."

Everyone at the table looked at me in stunned silence and Chris said, "Philip, Whitey Bulger and Jimmy Bulger are the same guy. The guy you just described is Whitey Bulger. Whitey's real name is James Bulger."

I told them, "No way. The guy I'm talking about, Jimmy Bulger, he wasn't a gangster, he was a drug-dealer paying tribute to the Italian's in Boston's North End. It's definitely not the same guy."

After arguing my point for most of the evening, I went back to the hotel and did some research and realized that Chris was right.

The low-life Irish drug dealer that I said should be killed in 1983 was in fact the infamous Whitey Bulger.

Thirty years later I stand by that.

Bulger should have been killed by the Patriarca's, plain and simple.

How they could do business with someone like him is unfathomable. To call him a gangster is a joke.

He was a psychopathic, drug-dealing serial killer, not a gangster.

I'm glad its Johnny Depp playing Bulger in the movie about his life and not Mark Wahlberg. No disrespect to Johnny Depp, but I like Wahlberg and how he carries himself. Seeing him portray a lowlife like Bulger would have been disappointing.

Philip Leonetti is the former underboss of the Philadelphia/Atlantic City mob and the nephew of imprisoned mob boss Nicodemo "Little Nicky Scarfo. He was the youngest underboss in the history of the modern day La Cosa Nostra and in 1989 was the highest ranking mafioso to break omerta and cooperate with the federal government. In 2012 he wrote the book Mafia Prince: Inside America's Most Violent Crime Family and The Bloody Fall of La Cosa Nostra. He lives in seclusion under an assumed name with a $500,000.00 bounty placed on his head from his jailed uncle Nicky Scarfo.

SURPRISE, ITS THE MOB WIVES

Mummy what has Daddy got in his violin case?

Mob families are grabbing hot air time like nobody's business these days. I guess everyone likes to hear what it was like when the FBI came through the windows to grab daddy (or more likely when he broke the news that he was a rat and was putting his family into witness protection). Earlier this month Ricki Lake wheeled out the kids of famed mobsters for a strikingly original take on mob family values. "He may have been a cold-blooded psycho killer but  I was always Daddy's little princess" or "We ate pizza and chopped up the bodies together". On this episode she digs deep to find the little known quartet of Karen Gravano (Sammy "the Bull" Gravano, Ramona Rizzo (Benjamin "Lefty" "Two Guns" Rizzo), Linda Scarpo (Gregory "the Killing Machine" Scarpo), and Michael Franzese (John "Sonny" Franzese).

HIT MAN

Former Philly Torpedo and Government witness talks God, bullets, and boy scouts with CBS 60 Minutes

John Veasey, a former hitman for the Philly Mafia who turned rat on his boss John Stanfa was put under the spotlight on 60 Minutes on March 17. Like many before him he claimed that finding God had put him on a new path. He even claims that he was leading a boy scout troop while still acting as a mob assassin. Whether you believe him or not its a fascinating interview and has seen the international press run with the story. Here is the UK's Daily Mail coverage which is quite comprehensive with a bunch of pics.

Read a transcript and watch excerpts including web extras on the CBS website here or watch the whole episode of 60 Minutes here

Veasey was the subject of an e-book The Hit Man a True Story of the Mob, Redemption and the Melrose Diner by Ralph Cipriano and Dave Schratwieser. Buy it here
Here is a review by Philly crime expert George Anastasia

Veasey has been interviewed on TV before:
"Mobster Confessions" on the Discovery Channel

CRIME EXPOSED

KIWI COPS VS CRIMS

Reality cop show from TV3 in New Zealand. Same old formula but decent one as they go. Plenty of gangs, drugs and random badness. Not a sheep in sight ...well er, maybe one or two.

Viewing links  and more links or if you are lucky on demand from TV3

INSIDE THE GANGSTER CODE

Ex-Gambino hood fronts TV prison gang doc

A must watch new TV series on Discovery. Lou Ferrante is inside the gangster code. Former Gambino crime family member Lou Ferrante served his time, read some books, became a born again Jew, and has now wised-up that the real money is in being a media mobster, writing books, advising on movie scripts etc. If he's making less that he was on the streets at least the only people trying to take it away from him are the IRS. He stars in a new documentary series investigating prison gangs around the world. This, of course, is the bollocks. First episode and he's hanging with some heavily inked bad muthafuckers who run their own jail in El Salvador where life comes cheap. Ever the stand up guy at one point Lou gets really outraged when they film a snitch who is getting let off 23 murders. Ultimately he seems to get their respect (everyone likes a Gambino) and comes across as a real dude and not some fake-ass actor like Danny Dyer. Watch it now, watch it here and here.

Or on You Tube

MOB BOSS SHOT IN DARING COPTER CAPER

Greek crime boss shot in failed helicopter prison escape attempt

This sounds more like a movie than the movie itself. Over 500 rounds were fired as associates tried to spring crime boss Panagiotis Vlastos from Trikala jail using a helicopter and a rope-ladder. It was the fourth escape attempt for Vlastos who was shot in the legs and is recovering in prison hospital. No-one was heard to shout "cut!" or complain about the lighting. 

Inevitably the escape attempt got a lot of press coverage. Read reports here (with a picture of the copter closing in) and here and for a profile of Vlastos from the useful Greek Criminal Profiles blog here

Daily Mail and Independent were among others that covered the story.

ALEKSEI BALABANOV

The new king of the Russian crime flick

Over the past 15 years Aleksei Balabanov has turned out a mightily impressive series of Russian mob movies. In fact he has done for the post Soviet Russian mob what Scorsese has done for the Italian American mafia. Most have an element of black comedy not unlike the Sopranos, where the killers can't wait for a good feed after a massacre. All of Balabanov's movies capture something of the violent and anarchic side of post-Soviet Russian society filled with ex-soldiers and villains to whom life is cheap. The best known of his films is probably Brat (Brother) 1997, and its equally cracking sequel Brat 2. The women are all bleached blondes and the men are in shell suits packing serious weaponry straight from front line Chechnya. In fact all his characters have that devil may care impulsiveness that comes from having survived the hard core conditions of Russian army life. If you haven't seen any of his movies, now is the time. Blind Man's Bluff (2005) is brilliant, so is Cargo 200 (2007) is his period drama Morphine (2008). All are great. This guy should be considered up there with Tarantino and Scorsese. Highly recommended!

Wikipedia   Imdb

Watch BRAT on You Tube! With English subs.

BRAT 2

VOYNA (WAR) 2003 with English subs

FAMILY BUSINESS

12-year-old daughter of Bulgarian Mob boss grabbed off street

The Bulgarians prove again that when it comes to crime, they're the daddies. In the latest mob war gambit all rules are torn up as the twelve year old daughter of recently imprisoned mob boss Evelin "Brendo" Banev (above) was kidnapped in Sofia on her way to school. Banev was just sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by a Sofia court and is now awaiting trial in Italy on charges of major cocaine importation. 

BBC news report

Wikipedia

Who is Banev?

Top Bulgarian criminal Evelin Banev aka Brendo, whose daughter was abducted by masked gunmen early on Tuesday, was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison last month.

He was charged with heading an organized crime gang and money laundering.

His accomplices, Monika Dobrinova, Desislava Dishlieva and Simo Karaychev, received a 3-year suspended sentence with a five-year probation period.

Banev and the others are charged with launding over EUR 2 M using a personal account belonging to Konstantin Dishliev, owner of a firm called Private Finance Union, who was killed in 2005.

Dobrinova is Brendo's ex wife, while Dishlieva is Dishliev's widow.

Banev has been known as Bulgaria's "cocaine king." He was born on October 9 1964 in the Black Sea city of Burgas.

Banev was arrested on May 16 2012 in the Black Sea town of Sozopol in an international special police operation codenamed Cocaine Kings, along with 15 other Bulgarians, 12 Italians, one Slovenian, one Romanian, and one Georgian.

In the aftermath of Banev's 2012 arrest, Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, stated that Banev had an Interpol arrest warrant in Switzerland on charges of trafficking 10 tons of cocaine from South America to Europe and of money laundering.

SAUDI STRINGS 'EM UP

Saudis favour crucifixion and firing squad while Nepal rounds up long-hairs

The Guardian throws its arms up in horror. More on the story here here and here. Somehow it seems difficult for us to be calling anyone barbarians. Meanwhile in Nepal there have been reports of some hippie purges. Surely twenty years too late.

THE UNDERGROUND OF THE EAST by James S. Lee

Narcotic adventures in the outposts of the Empire

This is a legendary book in the entire genre of drug literature

This is a review by Michael William from Goodreads.com

Pretty astonishing account of a working-class Englishman's voyages through Asia at the height of the British Empire. James S. Lee also voyaged into drug realms by perfecting a balanced intake of cocaine, hashish and morphine as an engagement with the spirit world, and his escape from a reality that bored him, particularly the reality of day to day life in Great Britain. It's clear that the Britain he came from has not changed enormously - even though the opportunities for a skilled working class man with a huge appetite for life may be relatively restricted now - but it seems likely that the China, India and Malaysia of 1895 are no longer in existence. The harmony that Lee finds there, despite the exhilaration of escapes from man-eating tigers (at that time responsible for the deaths of 80,000 Indians a year), rhinoceroses, Dacoit bandits and various diseases while leading engineering projects designed to modernise the societies he visits, is a mixture of his expert understanding of drugs and his friendships with the locals, including a tender love affair with his wife Mulki, an Indian girl who would move to England and meet Queen Victoria. His open-minded attitude seems startlingly modern, but perhaps it was typical of the benevolent side of the Empire, away from war, aggression and politics, the mutual respect between the outsider and the native. His feelings on the Mutiny at Lucknow even seem mixed, and he presents neither side as moral victors, choosing to highlight the interracial alliances. He presents his thoughts on the universe with clarity, affirming his position as a spiritualist and non-atheist, but simultaneously reserving vociferous criticism of Christianity and the concept of monotheism more akin to something from a Christopher Hitchens interview. He proposes a simplified society, a harmonious existence of all, respectful and working under a kind of socialist system which would save those who then still starved to death in spite of their hard work from the harshest realities of Victorian/Edwardian existence. Lee comes across as a great thing - a learned, spiritually enlightened, existential, hugely courageous pragmatist of the old English type, a rare figure indeed, and the only hints of pride seep through the narrative when he talks of his ability to consume alcohol without effect, and the occasions where other Europeans referred to him as the 'only Englishman they had ever liked'. I can attest to the peculiar sense of warmth that comes from hearing this odd compliment, even nowadays where nations and cultures have refined themselves down into the superpower that is the 'I', the individual, sometimes it's easy to forget that when travelling a lot, thousands of others have marked the same card as you, and the inherent prejudices that come with it. James Lee overcame them by warmth, intelligence and generosity of spirit, it seems, as well as the enlightenment that is possible through manipulation of the projection capacity of the body, rather than just stimulation of the physical. A pity his 'Type B' Elixir of Life, a discovery from the jungles of Sumatra, reputed to restore the human body to its natural state, heartbeat, temperature and health after consumption of other drugs, has been lost. A work of rare transcendental beauty presented with none of the pretence of solving anything, or reassuring anything, a certain sadness and a definite acceptance of the abyss, albeit to Lee a divinely created abyss, related as a pragmatic travelogue - if only Michael Palin had filled his veins with morphine and cocaine like this.

Available at Amazon and on Google Books (read a lot of it for free) Mike Jay wrote the introduction and has also published Emperors Of Dreams: Drugs in the Nineteenth Century

Colonial opium dens at Meeky Meeky  The junkie in literature a PhD dissertation by Christian Volker Kurt W e i g e l t

TOP TEN RICHEST DRUGLORDS

Workin' for the Narco dollar

Here they are, sitting on a mountain of coke, the world's richest druglords. Thank god for educational television.
Watch it here or Sockshare or Putlocker

BRUCE REYNOLDS RIP

Napoleon of Bridego Bridge takes his final train

"We hated going straight" Bruce Reynolds was one of the most respected criminals of the post-war era, considered the mastermind of the robbery that is remembered as one the iconic events of its time, the ultimate blow at the establishment carried out by men with short hair. His autobiography did much to seal his reputation. I met his son once who liked to compare his father to William Burroughs. At one time they were both fastidiously dressed gringos on the streets of Mexico City but I think it ends there. He was pretty cool though. He had a bearing of authority about him and so he might, this was the Napoleon of Bridego Bridge. Here are some obituaries: The Guardian , the Telegraph, and the The Independent, The Daily Mail

The internet is full of tributes but throws forth some interesting media coverage. Here for example by Jack Harvey, an "expert in electronic surveillance" published by the Algarve Daily News or this feature from The Daily Mirror, 10 things you need to know about the Great Train Robbery. Criminal aristocracy unlikely to be replaced by any shell suited drug dealers.

WHO KILLED PETER TOSH?

Badman dem!

Another in the series of murders in the music industry. The 1987 murder of Peter Tosh is straight out of a JA gangster B-movie. Reggae superstar gunned down in his luxury mansion by professional hitman in a crime that has never properly been solved. Tosh was the real deal and his death was a big loss. Here is an article from the Jamaica Observer from last year re-examining the case. Here convicted gunman Dennis Lobban gives his side of the story in 2003. Some discussions from Roots Archives Forums

This article came from High Times in 1993

STEPPING RAZOR RED X 1993 documentary

download

Or on torrent 

EL CHAPO DEATH RUMOURS

Did Public Enemy Number 1 eat hot lead in jungle shootout?

Just after being named as Public Enemy Number One by the city of Chicago, Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman was reported to have been gunned down in a shoot-out with police in Guatamala. It sounded all too likely. Two days later, however, and doubts started to emerge. Was it really Guzman who ate hot lead? Was Public Enemy Number 1 still at large and on the lam?

Here is the story as it unfolded. Initial reports said El Chapo was el meurto

The Daily Mail reports the doubts. The Inquisitr pitches in here and the Washington Post here

All in all the whole thing made great copy and kept the psychotic drug kingpin in the news

LE DEUXIEME SOUFFLE

Jean-Pierre Melville's 1966 masterpiece

A French crime classic by the director who knew just how long to cook the egg. Tough and gritty and tender, brilliant cinematography,  this reminds me just how much French crime cinema of the 1960s is way up there. Those who have never seen it should watch instantly.

There are many reviews of this movie compiled on Shooting Down Pictures

Here are two torrent versions to consider or just try direct A and B  Here on Hotfile

HEIST OF THE CENTURY

Millions of dollars in diamonds take off at Brussels Airport

Hollywood drools over surefire blockbuster.

The diamond heist at Brussels airport was superb. One of those things that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy when you read about it in the morning paper. Here is the report from the BBC and another one from the Guardian. It took the robbers 11 minutes to make off with 50 million dollars worth of diamonds and to make it worse (or better) the stones  can be recut so they are almost impossible to trace. Of course later the Guardian ran an op-ed piece on how such crimes should not be regarded as glamorous ... but hey, too late! Hands up who doesn't think its the coolest thing? Its nothing to do with bad George Clooney movies either, a well planned heist with no violence to boot will always be something to inspire awe.

It wasn't long however before experts started to point out some uncanny parallels between this heist and one carried out in Antwerp ten years ago (described in the excellent book Flawless by Greg Campbell and Scott Andrew Selby). Here is Scott Andrew Selby's reflection on the two robberies from CNN. More on the strange co-incidences from the Daily Beast.

The seven biggest diamond heists in recent history are outlined in this piece from US News

THE MURDER OF BOBBY FULLER

The Annals of Rock 'n' Roll Crime 

HE FOUGHT THE LAW

The murder of  22-year-old Bobby Fuller was above all else a tragedy for cutting short the life of one of America's most talented musicians. Bobby Fuller had bridged the gap between Buddy Holly and Creedence Clearwater Revival. A natural songwriter and steeped to the eyeballs in Texas rythmn and blues he would almost certainly have carved out a career as a rock heavyweight had he not fallen victim to some bad intentions. Like Eddie Cochran or Buddy Holly he was so young yet had already done so much.

An essay about Bobby's untimely end The Srange Case of Bobby Fuller with some additional replies here. Another account with the same title can be found here on a PDF.
Retrokimmer took some interest in the story and so did the El Paso Times. The reminiscences of Bobby's road manager are an interesting read. Here is the inside word from Findadeath
"I was supposed to marry Bobby Fuller" is a great story but also includes some useful links to more audio video and interview material concerning the BFF

Here is The Bobby Fuller Four with I Fought the Law

And from a live TV show playing Let Her Dance

From Ghost in the Invisible Bikini - Bobby and the Four backing up Nancy Sinatra. One can only wonder if this was the cause of all the trouble. 

more from the movie. Bobby and the band in glorious technicolor

HER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE

HMP Aylesbury

ITV go behind the walls of some of our favourite nicks. Screws, lags, shanks, nonces, what more can you ask for? Find your streaming links here

"EL CHAPO" ES NUMERO UNO

JOAQUIN "EL CHAPO" GUZMAN IS CHICAGO'S PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER 1

Vicious drug kingpin Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera lives somewhere in the mountains of western Mexico surrounded by a private army funded by a fortune estimated at over a billion dollars. In Mexico he is already a mythic figure. Now he has rocketed to the top of the criminal elite after being named as Chicago's Public Enemy Number 1, a title that has remained empty since Al Capone in 1930. The decision of the Chicago Crime Commission to make El Chapo numero uno has ensured that his is a trending name on the internet. In reality Guzman has rarely been far from the news since his escape from Federal Prison ten years ago. Since then he has become one of the world's most powerful drug traffickers, an elusive figure based in the remote Sinaloa mountains where he has a robin hood reputation for giving aid to the peasant farmers. Last year Forbes Magazine named him as one of the world's most powerful people. An anti-hero who is fast becoming an icon in popular culture. Only last year rapper Gucci Manne paid tribute to El Chapo. 

 El Chapo remains elusive however. Even photographs believed to be of him are now questioned.

Don't call him Chapo to his face though. It means 'dwarf'. You know what they say "little man big temper". Lets see how long it is before the DEA take him out in a hail of bullets. They have been trying for long enough, and hey, he's undoubtedly working for them anyway. We all know who the real kingpins are. Read more here: Wikipedia  Huffington Post

Some video reportage about Guzman

Here is a BBC documentary about the Mexico drug wars. Crazy place!

GOTTI TRIGGER TAKES A DIVE

Gambino associate John Burke gets life for 1991 gundown 

Is there something in the roids that makes your head grow fat like a watermelon. I think we can rule out size of brain matter. 

John Marzulli in the New York Daily News tells us about the latest Gambino trigger man to pull life after his co-conspirator turns canary. Have you heard this somewhere before? Umerta is as old fashioned as a handle-bar mustache.

Here is his good pal John Alite who turned state's evidence against John Gotti Jnr three years ago. Better hide that neck tat under a good wig in Witness Protection buddy. More from the News here

THE SCUTTLERS

Before the Gooch there were the Bengal Tigers

Historian Andrew Davies reveals that its always been grim up north ... only grimmer. In the 19th century the Scuttlers were just as formidable bangers as the Hudson Dusters, the Whyos or the Dead Rabbits. Surely there's a movie in this? Gangs of New York didn't quite hit the spot.

Read here some history of scuttlers from the BBC including an interview with Andrew Davies who is clearly the man in the know as far as scuttling is concerned since he pops up in the Guardian here