In this blistering street-level account, “Mafia survivor” Frank DiMatteo teams up with true-crime master Michael Benson to take down one of the most notorious figures in the American La Cosa Nostra. This is the real inside story of Carmine “the Snake” Persico, from his crime-filled childhood on the streets of Brooklyn to the long-term jail sentences that didn’t stop him from controlling his criminal empire, with the help of his brother–the equally kill-crazy Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico.

This is the story of his deadly teen years as leader of the fearsome Garfield Boys; his recruitment into the Profaci–later the Colombo–crime family; his bloody betrayal of the Gallo brothers; his role in the hair-raising ambush and slaying of Albert Anastasia–the Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc.–as he sat in a barbershop chair getting a shave; the terror he struck into the hearts of the New York Mafia’s other families, and even his own crews; and the many courtroom trials where Persico walked after witnesses came down with sudden cases of “amnesia.

Today, Persico schmoozes with Ponzi king Bernard Madoff behind bars. There, at age eighty-four, his legend–packed as it is with coldblooded brutality–continues to inspire goodfellas everywhere.

Umberto “Albert” Anastasia was born in Italy at the turn of the century. Five decades later, he would be gunned down in a barber shop in New York City. What happened in the years in between-and why every crime family had reason to want him dead-is one of the most brutal and fascinating stories in the history of American organized crime. This in-depth account of the man who became one of the most powerful and homicidal crime bosses of the twentieth century from Mafia insider Frank Dimatteo is the first full-length book to chronicle Anastasia’s bloody rise from immigrant to founder of the notorious killer’s club Murder, Inc.
They called him “The One Man Army.” “Mad Hatter.” “Lord High Executioner.” But Albert Anastasia was a man who defied description. He was Albert the gentleman thief: a polished stick-up artist who would apologize to his victims-and kiss their ladies’ hands-as he robbed them at gunpoint. He was Albert the killer: whose merciless assassination of Mafia godfather Vincent Mangano is recounted here in chilling firsthand detail. He was Albert the record breaker: the first man in the history of American justice to be charged with four separate murders-and walk free after each one. But in the end, he was last obstacle in rival Mafia hoodlum Vito Genovese’s dream of becoming the boss of bosses-and paid the ultimate price.

Who really killed “Crazy Joe” Gallo? It wasn’t Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran as he claimed.
“Sober, he was nothing, but drunk he would blow your head off.” That’s how Pete the Greek described Carmine “Sonny” DiBiase, the Colombo crime family hitman who’d been terrorizing Manhattan’s Little Italy since he was a kid. After beating and robbing a local tailor and doing time in reformatory, Sonny set up operations at the Mayfair Boys Civic and Social Club, an illegal poolroom where he shot and killed his best friend on Christmas day . . .
A prime suspect of this and other crimes, Sonny went on the lam and off the grid for seven years. He then surrendered himself to police, was tried for murder and sentenced to death. But after a second trial, he walked away a free man-free to kill again.
Joey “Crazy Joe” Gallo and his President Street mob waged a deadly Mafia civil war with the Colombo crime family, and in particular, Carmine “the Snake” Persico. And on that fateful night of April 7, 1972, in a Little Italy restaurant, Gallo was assassinated . . . by Carmine “Sonny” DiBiasi . . .
This is the true story of who really whacked Crazy Joey Gallo on that fateful night of April 7, 1972.

The son of Sicilian immigrants, Camillo Carmine Galante was raised in Manhattan’s Little Italy and by all accounts born bad. By fifteen he was terrorizing the streets of New York’s Lower East Side, scoring high marks for the “errands” he was running for his La Cosa Nostra elders. When he turned twenty, Galante was already one of the mob’s top enforcers­-a sadistic thrill killer and clinically diagnosed psychopath with big dreams: whack his way into controlling organized crime the world over, vowing to kill Mafia chieftans Tommy Lucchese and Carlo Gambino and take control of their mob families.
Carmine “Lilo” Galante’s rise to Mafia star was infamous: hit man for the Luciano and Genovese crime families; named consigliere by Joseph Bonnano; he wiped out eight members of the Gambinos; on behalf of Mussolini he assassinated the publisher of an anti-Fascist newspaper. Galante helped orchestrate one of the largest heroin trafficking operations on record-a power move too dangerous for his rivals in the narcotics trade. The heads of the five New York families decided that the psychotic Galante had to be stopped. On July 12, 1979, finishing his lunch in a Brooklyn restaurant, Galante got what he’d dished out his whole life: a shotgun blast to the face, his trademark cigar still clenched in his teeth . . .

Frank DiMatteo was born into a family of mob hitmen. His father and godfather were shooters and bodyguards for infamous Mafia legends, the Gallo brothers. His uncle was a capo in the Genovese crime family and bodyguard to Frank Costello. Needless to say, DiMatteo saw and heard things that a boy shouldn’t see or hear.
From the old-school Mafia dons and infamous “five families” who called all the shots, to the new-breed “independents” of the ballsy Gallo gang who didn’t answer to nobody, DiMatteo pulls no punches in telling what it’s really like growing up in the mob. He describes getting his cheeks pinched by Crazy Joe Gallo until tears came down his face, dropping out of school and hanging gangster-style with the boys on President Street, and watching the Gallos wage an all-out war against wise guys with more power, more money, and more guns. And finally, DiMatteo reveals the shocking deathbed confessions that will blow the lid off the sordid deeds, stunning betrayals, and all-too-secret history of the American Mafia.