As 'wise guys' loosen their lips, decades-old crimes come to light

The mob's conspiracy of silence doesn't get the same respect these days.

NEW YORK - For 23 years, it was an unsolvable crime: a mob hit on three Bonanno family captains, slaughtered by machine gun fire in a social club.

The details finally spilled forth this summer as the family's ex-underboss, now a government informer who remembered everything but the definition of omerta, implicated Bonanno chief Joseph "Big Joey" Massino.

Thanks to a seemingly endless parade of Mafia turncoats, prosecutors are indicting mobsters on crimes dating back decades.

The latest example was the indictment this past week of John A. "Junior" Gotti for an alleged 1992 botched attempt to kill talk radio host Curtis Sliwa over slurs directed at the mobster's father, the one-time head of the Gambino crime family.

The link to Gotti reportedly came from a former Gambino family capo, Michael "Mikey Scars" DiLeonardo.

"It's the critical difference," former federal prosecutor Jim Walden said. "Without the testimony from these insiders, many of these cases against the Mafia would never have happened."

Walden knows firsthand. In 2001, using 10 cooperating witnesses, he won a conviction against Bonanno family "consigliere" Anthony Spero for murder, gambling and loansharking. One of the murders had occurred a decade earlier, when Spero ordered the execution of a neighborhood junkie who broke into his daughter's home.

In the Massino case, where closing arguments were heard this past week, the alleged crimes date back even further. One of the eight turncoat witnesses against him was his underboss and brother-in-law, Salvatore "Good Lookin' Sal" Vitale. The two had a friendship that began when they were teens and Vitale, who has confessed to 11 murders, said Massino taught him everything he needed to know about organized crime.

"Thirty years ago, a case like this was not possible," said Ronald Goldstock, former head of the New York state Organized Crime Task Force. "The first cases with informants were in the early '80s."

By the '90s, the trend of ignoring omerta - the mob's oath of secrecy - was in full swing.

Sammy "the Bull" Gravano is perhaps the most infamous of the mob turncoats. By the time he turned government witness in 1991, Gravano had spent 23 years with the mob. His far-ranging testimony helped convict more than three dozen Mafiosi.

For prosecutors, the advantages of these longtime mobster witnesses are twofold.

First, by turning back the clock, they give prosecutors more leeway to find the crimes necessary for a racketeering indictment.

"It's much easier," said Court TV host Edward Hayes, a former Bronx prosecutor. "The wise guys might as well go get jobs driving taxis."

Secondly, the informers can testify about the years that predate a defendant's ascension in the family - a time when he likely lacked the insulation from activity on the streets that comes with the title of boss. That was the fate of the 61-year-old Massino.

"There's a parade of witnesses who have not only direct conversations with Massino, but who were present during murders," Walden said.

Even really old informers seem to have new life these days.

The Massino trial brought out rumors that Joe Pistone, the FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonannos by posing as mobster Donnie Brasco from 1976-81, might testify - although he never did.

And even informer Henry Hill, who joined the witness protection program in 1979 after a life that was immortalized in the film GoodFellas, has resurfaced. Although he's been out of the mob for a quarter-century, the former Luchese associate met last year with a pair of homicide detectives investigating cold cases.

"I can't believe I'm still useful to them," Hill said.

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