To Gary H. - This is a great post haha. I read "Murder Machine" and it was pretty good. Agreed, Nino was crazy mad when he heard about a "civilian" getting offed in broad daylight. That goes against the codes of the street. All gangsters accept the risks, but regular people are not fair play.

To Vlad - your English is not all there but I came here 8 years ago from Odessa so I can understand. I actually found this post looking for info on Gravano but saw your info on the Russian schoolmaster. Here is what I have heard. He is one crazy Mofo and I thought he was just a myth like Soze till one day at Passage on the Bay restaraunt in Sheepshead Bay someone said something about him in passing and the table got sooooo quiet. Someone said parusski (in russian)- Ne Zdes - (not here). So, I surmise it is probably real.

Anyway, on the car ride home I pushed my uncle Alex to tell me what he knew because he seemed to know something from his look of abject horror at the table lol. So he said, from what he heard, that the Russian schoolmaster and the moldovan schoolmaster are the same guy. He was/is a jew from Moldova and he also mentioned the story about his killings in Moldova , but he said 2 people were killed not three - whatever. What he he was pretty sure about was that he was pretty connected in Brooklyn and ran a crew (jews with some really crazy contracted ukrainians mixed in haha)that did everything from gambling to car theft. The part I found interesting was that he said he was one of the only Jews in Soviet russia to be in something called Alpha group, where he instructed troops on counter-insugency and interrogation. According to Wikipedia, ""Alfa Group" or Group A, a special forces (spetsnaz) and special operations unit attached to the KGB was created on 28 July 1974 within the First Chief Directorate of the KGB on the orders of Yuri Andropov, then Chairman of the KGB. It was intended for counter-terrorism operations to give the KGB the capacity to respond to such incidents as the 1972 Munich massacre on its own territory. However, from the beginning, its assigned missions far exceeded its formal scope."

Anyway, interestingly he supposedly (Though uncle Alex was unsure of this part)runs a legit Security consulting service that advises diplomats and vips on personal and compound security. I dont know about him living on LI though - he thought more likely Mill Basin. Thanks for reminding me of this - it happened like 6-7 years ago and my uncle has since passed and this reminds me of him and that day.