Most overrated mob hitman?

Who do you all feel is an individual that often gets included on people's list when discussing mob hitman with high body counts that doesnt really belong?

richard kuklinski

If you're reading and writing about them, that means they're overrated .

pb, could very well be. but, of those that are written about. most are exaggerating the numbers. kuklinski is an example.

I hear you. I just can't stand the word "hitman." It's like the fucking boogeyman or something like that. If you're a made guy and you get an order to kill someone, you do it, or you get killed yourself. But the other 364 days a year these so-called "hitmen" are just a bunch of neighborhood mopes who were born without a conscience, so they have no compunction about pulling the trigger when they're told to do so.

John Gotti. After the Mcbratney hit, everyone paid 'homage to him' as Sal Polisi put it. Truth was, he wasn't even the trigger man

Second has to be Chin Gigante. His failed hit on Frank turned him into a mob superstar. Especially the trial and media coverage

pizza , well said..every made guy is "tough" they have the power to get you killed, closer to the boss that a guy is, can get someone killed faster..in every family there is a crew that does work for the boss..these guys get the call more often then others.. graven the devil was charged with 19, but pulled the trigger once..was he tough ? did he have the most bodies ?or just in the right spot to get people killed..when does a person become a serial killer? i.e. demeo.pitera . tough topic for a true answer..guys can go there whole lives in the mafia , maybe on one murder and be feared forever..

very true tony

Meh. You and I are usually in agreement because we're both old men who've seen some of this shit in real life .

But thanks .

Bronx, Well that is one of the biggest misconception of the Mob. People think that everybody in it has to have killed someone in order to be starightened out. Such a false belief. Yeah, we all know they have shooters but the Mob is all about making money. Period

your correct, and everything hurts more everyday

the 80"s was a time when the mafia went off track..in sicily riina was killing everyone..philly you had nicky, ducks guys you had vic and gas, you had gotti,graven, colombos always at war and had scarpa another devil killing anyone.. bonanos ,messina killing 3 well respected captains.then sonny black. they all killed guys in their own crews..it was like these guys are showing the other families they can kill better..huge waste of lives. that decade was a disaster for cosa nostra.must have been something in the water from here to sicily..chin kept his group in check..

Bronx, in your opinion why was Sonny Black killed? And why did they cut off his hands?

Yeah, it sucks.

pure power play by fat joe..would not to surprised if gotti pushed him into hitting him..the hands is a mystery to me.shame.. he was a tough guy, well liked

Thats what Massino said in his testimony. I too believe thats why it happened and not how Pistone paints it. The hands supposedly was to make it hard to identify the body. Thank you

Wouldn't make a difference today with DNA and all.

As far as why? Who the fuck knows. But it's not like they pulled his teeth, so I doubt it was for identification purposes. Then again, these guys aren't rocket scientists. Maybe they never heard of dental records .

LOL That makes sense PB thanks

I want you to know that I realize it took a lot of self control on your part to refrain from using an exclamation point there .

Thank you!!!!

Lol - PB you sound just like my Pops when I would ask him questions answering my question with another question
Bronx same thing, everything is a mystery
Beanshooter, his hands were chopped off for a reason.

HK was there a message behind his hit?

speak louder i can't hear you in the dark LOL

What'd you say?

Bronx and PB "Don't make me go over there and teach you boys a lesson" I gotta lot of JetBlue free miles

you need a permit to come up to the bronx..no points accepted here..jetblue is running some good specials now..

Lol permit yea I gotta permit... a permit to go over there and teach you a lesson

i'm movin.. nuevo laredo..safer there.

Yea much safer there. Orelay vato!

What makes you think gravano only pulled the trigger once? His book painted him out to be an angel

Nobody claimed those two were notorious hitmen. Plus you assume those were the only times they resorted to violence

If they wanted to get rid of the body there are other ways than dumping it out in the open.

I don't believe Massino's story at all. Sonny Black wasn't that stupid to think he could make a play for boss a few months after letting a fed infiltrate his crew

The body was badly decomposed when found. I know nothing about decomposed bodies but one would think that in this case, the decomposition may be the reason why the hands were missing. I don´t know. Was the dead body definitely identified as being the body of Sonny Black?

Thats Joesph Massino Bullshit.

'Powerplay?'

Bullshit.


Sonny Black, just let into his crew an FBI agent, Mirra got hit, Lefty a contract, but people want to believe Sonny was making a power play and thats why he got hit?
Beyond a joke.

And here's the reason. Because Dominick took his fucking watch and rings off, and went to a 'sit down' fully aware he was going to get hit. And when he was, and they missed? He said 'hit me again, this time make it right."

Anyone want to argue thats the actions and words of a guy making a 'POWER PLAY'?

Please.

Anyone who can kill, and can't do anything else is over rated.

It doesn't matter what anyone claims, or whether U agree or disagree they were notorious hitmen. Truth was both Gotti and chin took on mob contracts thus they are "mob hit men". They weren't no Big Paulie.

And i think you've confused yourself, I NEVER implied they only did one hit each, you assumed I did.

I was merely pointing out that these were the hits or rather attempted hits that gained them
Immense notoriety early on and even later on in their criminal careers.

Sonny, we know this how?


"And here's the reason. Because Dominick took his fucking watch and rings off, and went to a 'sit down' fully aware he was going to get hit. And when he was, and they missed? He said 'hit me again, this time make it right."

The Iceman and probably Roy DeMeo plenty of people got chopped up Roy and his older queer cousin were the ambitiously gay duo from SNL

hello sonny b, did sonny bring him around or did lefty? if that was the case why not kill lefty also? sonny was a threat to fat boys rise…only my opinion and what i heard about sonny way back.

Completely agree SB, and Sonny's reputation was pure old school..not one of a cowboy out for a power play.

Frank Lino who was present at the murder testified that's what happened when they hit Sonny Black.

if you reread what i posted, i said fat boy was making a power play..not sonny.

Correct...was reading SB's..apologies.

Yeah there really is no such thing as a "hitman." LCN is all about money. Making money. That's the number one thing. People have been paid to do hits yeah, but I doubt there was ever a person who made all (or even a good portion) of year's pay from murders.

I think Mad Dog Sullivan may have...at least according to him.

Apol on the misread Bronx but again, the whole power play notion is bullshit IMO. SonnyB or JM.

SB was hit, Mirra and a contract on Lefty. Either a huge coincidence or as a result of introducing a fed into the family.

How the Feds ate what JM said on the stand is beyond me.

The question asks about overrated. Nowhere are Gotti or Gigante rated as top hitmen, so how can they be overrated? That's like saying a third string benchwarmer on a football team is the most overrated player. Try some reading comprehension

If Massino was making a power play them why kill Sonny Black? Massino was already closer to Rusty and Sonny Black would never be chosen as underboss after letting Pistone into his crew

FBI wiretaps picked up a hit on Lefty and that's why they arrested him on the way to a meeting.

was anyone pinched for the conspiracy?

I think I should clarify my use of the word "hitman" I intended for it to be synonymous to mob killer,hitter,gunner,thug, physco ect. I did not mean literally someone you pay 10k to who wears a black suit with a sniper rifle in a briefcase. I should have been more specific as I do know the difference. Another way to put it I wanted this thread to kind of be a response to the thread asking which mobster had the highest body count. I was curious basically of which individuals commonly on those type of lists may not really belong.

As an aside I find it interesting that some of the most violent mobsters were also some of the best earners....example Roy deep and Sam destafano

Do those people even exist? I really don't know: I only know them from movies like The day of the Jackal end The American for instance. (if so, contact me)

They said it was because he shook hands with brasco , truth is that's bullshit , massino feared he him and had him whacked

I never heard, but that was the FBI's story and they said they had to get him off the streets. They then tried to get him to flip telling him that he was on the hit list but he refused.

I think the Jewish hitters of Murder Inc likely got paid. Why else would they do those hits for the Italian families? Then there was the sniper who killed the elder Rizzuto. Most mobsters are that good of shots.

Why would Massino fear Sonny Black? Napolitano had zero clout at the time of the murder, just after the Joe Pistone fiasco. If he wasn't whacked, he would have been demoted or shelved for his carelessness.

he was going to make piston, that alone calls for the death sentence. wanting to make an fbi agent? no capo could survive knowing a fbi agent.

No where are gotti and chin rated as too hitman?

Well according to crazy sal Polishi everyone "paid homage" to gotti after his hit on Jimmy mcbratney. He was sent by non other than don Carlo himself.

sammy the bull said gotti was known for doing many hits personally

So I think it's safe to safe Gotti was a top hitman back in his days that Paul or Neil went to when a piece of work needed doing

Just because he doesn't appear on any magical "greatest hitman of all time list' u seem to think exists on the internet, doesn't mean he wasn't a heavy hitter, he was!

I'll take crazy sal and Sammy's word over yours any day

And in regards to this thread, Gotti was overrated for the Irish hit simply because he wasn't the trigger man but people nonetheless feared him because of it seeing that was a very public hit and in the papers.

Whereas hits he did behind closed doors, not many people knew about it seeing they weren't there and nobody's writing about it

As for chin, same story. Everyone feared him for daring to take on a big job as Costello. Again not saying he didn't do other hits, he did

But this hit was also all over the news media. Therefore as a hitman he was very overrated for this bungled hit but people got the message

If he dared kill Costello, he'd kill anyone so all I'm saying is for a botched hit he was extremely overrated by the general public and other wise guys plus connected guys etc

If you read the book called Hoffa Found, Donald (Tony the Greek) Frankos certainly thinks a lot of himself.

how could chin be rated as a hit man. he proved he was terribly incompetent, hes lucky there wasn't a major war between families after he mishandled the hit on Costello. god help it. if he would have got the contract on albert Anastasia and missed. he was the most overated of them all. how could you trust that guy to hit a mouse.

I read his book contract killer. His claims are similar to those of kuklinski.

I want to add that Frank Lino, who testified about Sonny Black´s murder in court, never mentioned his hands being chopped off. Neither did Frank Coppa (if memory serves) who also was on the murder scene. This is kinda strange since if his hands were chopped off that would have made a big splash, at least with the media. OR, they did mention it, but was never reported by the media and therefore not (to us) available in any of the partial transcripts that can be found in books etc.

I have always been wondering how exactly did the Sonny Black murder actually take place. The informants who testified got the gun caliber and the number of shots wrong, so they either made everything up because they weren't present during the murder, or the body found wasn't Sonny Black at all. Massino was the main defendant in that case. When he flipped, did he in any way explain the discrepancies?

I don´t think he did.

Another strange thing is that apparently the dead body´s shoe size didn´t match with Sonny Black´s but I can´t recall where I read that.

HK so are we going to just say that the hands being chopped off is a MYTH? I can accept that.

^^^ I really don´t know. But for sure, there are discrepancies surrounding the Sonny Black murder/testimonies given by witnesses.

Here is something I found that gives a pretty good description of the body found that is ALLEGEDLY Sonny Black:

Body of an unidentified victim of a homicide, discovered 8-12-82 in a remote area within the confines of the 122 PCT. The deceased was found wrapped in a Bellevue Hospital Mortuary Bag.
Adult Male, White, about 5'7", Slim build.
Death by gunshot wound to the head.

When the police pulled the soggy corpe out of the mud and laid it on a bed of leaves, it was unrecognizable. An autopsy conducted the next day found the body was so decomposed and filthy, the skin color was difficult to determine. The entire body is blackish in color, with tan-white greasy areas. The medical examiner had trouble telling if the dead person was a man or a woman. The external genitalia are consistent with those of a male. They are very friable and are falling apart on examination. The body's fingers were also missing
The eyeballs were sunken, the nose decomposed; the tongue was protruding from the mouth. A full body X-ray revealed "metallic fragments" inside the man's skull, which was then cut away for further inspection. A deformed bullet was found in the right frontal area of the brain. Eventually, the medical examiner was forced to resort to dental records to identify the body. Five days before Pistone would take the stand, the medical examiner made his determination: the dead man was Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano.

The dirt-covered man's clothing included a dark pair of trousers, a dark V-neck T-shirt, a pair of slip-on leather shoes and a leather belt. ALSO, a metal bracelet with chunky, flat links worn on the right wrist.

(The Last Godfather book)

Thanks for posting this. I find it interesting. Sometimes when victims gets hit in the head, they cover the head with their hands. It´s a pure reflex action. It´s possible I guess that when Sonny was shot he was also shot through his hands or fingers causing parts of them to be blown away. But how this later turned into "Sonny Black´s hands were chopped off" ( ) is beyond me.

HK, I my wrong or didn't Pistone also claim that Sonny supposedly took off all his jewelry before he went to his last meeting? What about this "Metal bracelet with chunky, flat links" that he had on his wrist?

Excellent observation! I missed it myself. Yep, that´s another thing that may not be true.

well, ive always heard that sonny blacks hands were cut off. but that post by the Brooklyn dame, proves otherwise, his hands were intact on his body.

Binnie and from whom did we hear this from? Is the same person that we heard he arrested over 250 mobsters and did the Pizza Connection case and the Commission case?

If there was still any question about the identity of that body, I'm sure they would have done a DNA test all these years later just to be sure.

As far as the hands being on or off, who knows? But if they were off, take it from a guy who spent 25 years in funeral service. Extremities have been known to fall off a floater here and there, then get carried away by wildlife.

PB doing the DNA test makes sense. The family would have wanted the test done if there were any doubts. So are we all in agreement that it was the body of SB and that the hands were not cut off only his fingers were falling off. He took off his jewelry, his ring and his watch but the bracelet probably didn't have much value either sentimentally or dollar wise so that's why it was still on his right wrist? There was only ONE bullet found which I am sure someone can explain, not me, I am no ballistics expert.

PB--have you ever watched "Six Feet Under"? It was a drama series on running a funeral home. If you haven't watched it rent it on Netflix.