'Shelved' Wiseguy Assaulted At A Wake Allegedly On Orders From His Mafia Boss Turns The Tables On His Attackers And Leaves Several Bonanno Mobsters Battered And Bloodied

It was a Mafia-style, funereal smack down to wake the dead.

Standard mob protocol calls for mourners to park their grievances and rivalries at the funeral parlor door when attending a fellow mobster's wake. But that sensible old school rule was tossed aside last week when Bonanno boss Michael (Mikey Nose) Mancuso dispatched a trio of thugs to bust up the wake of the father-in-law of ex-acting boss Joseph (Joe C) Cammarano, Gang Land has learned.

The Bonanno tough guys triggered a major brouhaha at a Long Island funeral home when they attacked Cammarano as he approached the casket in full view of other family members of the deceased. The attack quickly went south for the Bonanno boys, however, when a swarm of bikers came to the aid of Cammarano, a longtime motorcycle enthusiast.

Sources say that Cammarano, 62, his brother Dino, 63, and the bikers who came to Joe C's aid, left at least a trio of Bronx-based mobsters, capos John (Johnny Mulberry) Sciremammano, 65, Ernest (Ernie) Aiello, 42, and soldier John Spirito, Jr. 40, bloodied and battered on the floor of the funeral parlor when they left.

Sources say the dispute goes back to 2019, when Mancuso got his nose out of joint about trial testimony disclosing that Cammarano had tried to get family capos to anoint him as "official" boss in 2017 while Mikey Nose was behind bars. The sources say Mancuso banned Joe C from showing up at the wake for his dad-in-law, Vito Grimaldi — and ordered a crew of loyalists to make him suffer the consequences if he didn't heed the boss's directive.

But when the dust settled at the Dodge-Thomas Funeral Home in Glen Cove, it was the Bonanno crime family that paid a heavy price for what was an unprecedented and hard to fathom move by an apparently insecure Mafia boss. Back in 2019, Cammarano was "shelved" by Mancuso — i.e. relieved of all his mob rights and privileges — for his efforts to take over the beleaguered bourghata in 2017. Mancuso, who took over as official boss in 2013, made Joe C his acting boss in 2015.

The late Vito Grimaldi, like his-son-in-law, was also shelved, essentially a defrocked mobster. But he was still a very valuable guy as far as Mancuso was concerned, sources say. That's because he opened Grimaldi's Home Of Bread, the legendary Ridgewood Queens bakery in 1959, and until he died at age 82, was paying a tribute to the Bonannos.

The bakery is operated today by Grimaldi's three children, Joseph, Margherita, and Angela Cammarano, their spouses, and his grandchildren, according to its website. Grimaldi' son Joseph is also an inducted soldier who was placed on a shelf in 2019 along with his dad, and Joe C, and former consigliere, John (Porky) Zancocchio, after Cammarano and Zancocchio were acquitted of racketeering charges. The Grimaldis did not return a Gang Land call, but the regular mob tribute is likely to continue.

Mancuso, who completed a 15-year sentence for a 2004 mob rubout a day before Cammarano and Zancocchio won a stunning acquittal on racketeering charges in March of 2019, "is still pissed that Joe C tried to take over the family when he was in prison," a law enforcement official told Gang Land. When Grimaldi died on July 15, the source said, "Cammarano was explicitly told, 'Do not come to the wake.'"

"I categorically deny the allegation" that Mikey Nose ordered a beating of Joe C, said attorney Stacey Richman, who represents Mancuso for violating his supervised release (VOSR) for meeting with two Colombo mobsters and Bonanno soldier John (Bazoo) Ragano several times between August 2020 and June 2021. That VOSR, which was lodged against him in March, is still pending.

Law enforcement and underworld sources each say the decision by Cammarano to openly defy the boss's order and retaliate the way he did, "cries out" for a violent response by Mancuso if he hopes to retain the loyalty of the mobsters who obeyed his orders, and if he wants to maintain any credibility with the rest of his bourghata as well as the other New York crime families.

That's especially true since Joe C "belligerently" disobeyed an order "by bringing outsiders, bikers, into the mix," said one underworld source. "That's like saying, 'Fuck you. I go where I want. And if you try to stop me, I'll kick you in the balls.' This is a very volatile and dangerous situation."

Two law enforcement sources told Gang Land that even though the Commission has essentially banned mob rubouts since the mid-1990s, they say a violent response against Joseph and Dino Cammarano by the Bonanno family "is a real concern." Mancuso has stated, said one law enforcement source, that but for the Commission edict, Joe C would have been whacked for what he did in 2017.

"If there is a Bonanno family," the underworld source cracked, "the administration is in a pickle."

But this source, as well as others on both sides of the law, voiced surprise that Mancuso ordered Cammarano to be beaten since he was paying his respects to his father-in-law, and they have both been on the "shelf" since 2019.

"This kind of conduct by a boss is unheard of — telling a guy he can't come to his father-in-law's wake. They should have worked it out diplomatically to avoid this kind of a fiasco," the source continued.

This source opined that Mikey Nose has to shoulder much of the blame for the beating his guys took for ordering the "unheard of" assault against a wiseguy at a wake, and he may be pressured to forget about it by his Cosa Nostra peers.

"Since Joe C was told not to come and still came, this is a direct challenge though, and it's a big problem for the Administration," he said. "The way it stands now," he said, "their guys were beaten up for enforcing an order from the boss against a shelved guy, so something has to be done. If nothing is done, it's a disgrace. And if something is done, it's a federal case."
"It's hard to predict whether there will be retaliation," said one law enforcement source. "A violent reaction would have been a knee-jerk response a few decades ago, but the mob has stopped whacking people these days," the source said. "But that is still a fear," he added.

The last so-called "sanctioned" mob hit, of former Purple Gang leader Michael Meldish, took place nine years ago, in 2013. Just last week, former FBI supervisor Bruce Mouw stated in a New Yorker piece that mobsters are "still doing the beatings and the strong-arm stuff. But, as far as mob hits, they're not happening.”

A veteran mob lawyer who has represented mobsters from all five families said a "sensible" solution would be for the Commission to "put the whole Bonanno crime family on the shelf," similar to what the Commission did in 1981 when it took away the family's Commission vote when FBI agent Joe Pistone posed as a jewel thief and ran with them for five years.

But "sensible" doesn't always come into play when Cosa Nostra is concerned.

Like their late wiseguy father, the Cammarano brothers are both motorcycle aficionados, and longtime riders. But sources say that most of the bikers who came to Joe C's aid were buddies of Dino Cammarano, a longtime member of the Crazy Pistons Bikers Club of Brooklyn, which is not alleged to be one of the scores of so-called "outlaw" motorcycle clubs across the country.

Sources say that when Joe C approached the casket where Grimaldi was laid out on Tuesday July 19, Spirito Jr., backed up by a handful of mobsters, "punched him in the mouth and knocked him down," and began to pummel him when bikers wearing suits who accompanied Joe C into the wake immediately came to his aid when the fisticuffs began and pulled Spirito off him.

"In a flash, another dozen bikers who were outside in a truck rushed in and started beating the crap out of all the Bonannos who were in the funeral home," said one longtime mob associate who told Gang Land he got the details from "someone who was there."

"I don't know if they (the bikers outside the Dodge-Thomas facility) saw or heard or were called in by Joe C or Dino but they charged in and wiped the floor with the Bonannos, and then they walked out," said the source.

Guy Minutoli, the funeral director who owns the Dodge-Thomas funeral home told Gang Land that he "heard about" the fisticuffs but was "in an out" of the funeral parlor during the one-day, 4 PM to 8 PM wake for Grimaldi and "wasn't there for that."

"It wasn't my funeral. I didn't handle it," said Minutoli, explaining that the Grimaldi family "called this other director who they were friends with" and "they just rented my building. I'm out of it."

He declined to identify the director, he said, "because he told me to keep it confidential." Minutoli also declined to describe the damage to the place, before he stated, "I heard about it, it was squelched right away. How did you find out about it," and hung up the phone.

Grimaldi was laid to rest on July 20 at St. Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale following a funeral mass as St. Rocco's Church in Glen Cove, where he lived for years, and where his son-in-law still resides.