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Home /News /Local /Mass. Kevin Cullen
The old school’s out
By Kevin Cullen
Globe Columnist / October 24, 2010

It wasn’t that long ago that if Mark Rossetti had been accused of selling heroin like he was the other day, he wouldn’t worry about the cops so much as his reputed associates in that fine fraternal organization known as La Cosa Nostra.

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Yahoo! Buzz ShareThis .Rossetti’s looking at a long stretch in prison, but that’s infinitely preferable to the two in the cap he would have received from other Mafiosi had he been accused of this just a few years back.

But then, that Mafia is dead and gone, in the grave with Jerry Angiulo and a generation of old-school wiseguys who would have choked on their cannoli if they heard the charges leveled against Rossetti, a reputed capo regime, or crew leader, in what’s left of the Boston Mafia.

The old-school wiseguys used to have wine presses. Rossetti’s crew is accused of having a freakin’ heroin press.

“It’s shocking,’’ State Police Detective Lieutenant Steve Johnson was saying. “Shocking that a person of Rossetti’s position in the LCN would be hands-on in the heroin business. But this is where these guys are now.’’

It was Johnson’s troopers in the Special Services Section who built the case against Rossetti and 30 others charged with everything from taking bets over the phone to pistol-whipping people who owed them money to ripping off drug dealers to, the piece de resistance, heroin trafficking.

These are just charges. Nothing is proven yet, except that the Mafia around here sleeps with the fishes. It’s over. Finito. Like that last scene from “The Sopranos.’’ Fade to black.

Stevie Johnson’s boys have had a lot to do with it. But this is a cultural change brought on by more than good police work.

Besides the Massachusetts State Police, there’s the Massachusetts State Lottery. Once The Number became a state-owned entity, the Mafia’s days were numbered. The FBI, having framed one generation of mobsters in the 1960s, had better luck in the 1980s. By then, omerta had become a joke and the rats in the North End, previously confined to those dug up during the Big Dig, started walking around on two feet, answering to names like Sonny.

Everybody was a stool pigeon, which may explain why so many of the old goodfellas got out of the can and said thanks, but no thanks, when the prospect of rejoining the family business was raised. You couldn’t trust anybody. The Staties kept making cases.

A lot of the smarter wiseguys saw where this was going. The Number was gone. Sports book had limited earning potential. That left drugs and drugs scared off a lot of the old-school guys.

The Mafia’s decline was operationally apparent. Carmen DiNunzio, who headed the Boston Mafia until he was put in prison last year, got caught personally delivering a $10,000 bribe to a stranger who — surprise! — turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. The idea that the underboss of the Patriarca crime family had to be his own bag man was ridiculous. That’s what you have soldiers for. Insulation is not just something you put in the ceiling.Continued...

Home /News /Local /Mass. Kevin Cullen
The old school’s out
By Kevin Cullen
Globe Columnist / October 24, 2010
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E-mail|Print|Reprints|Comments (15)Text size – + It wasn’t that long ago that if Mark Rossetti had been accused of selling heroin like he was the other day, he wouldn’t worry about the cops so much as his reputed associates in that fine fraternal organization known as La Cosa Nostra.
Rossetti’s looking at a long stretch in prison, but that’s infinitely preferable to the two in the cap he would have received from other Mafiosi had he been accused of this just a few years back.
But then, that Mafia is dead and gone, in the grave with Jerry Angiulo and a generation of old-school wiseguys who would have choked on their cannoli if they heard the charges leveled against Rossetti, a reputed capo regime, or crew leader, in what’s left of the Boston Mafia.
The old-school wiseguys used to have wine presses. Rossetti’s crew is accused of having a freakin’ heroin press.
“It’s shocking,’’ State Police Detective Lieutenant Steve Johnson was saying. “Shocking that a person of Rossetti’s position in the LCN would be hands-on in the heroin business. But this is where these guys are now.’’
It was Johnson’s troopers in the Special Services Section who built the case against Rossetti and 30 others charged with everything from taking bets over the phone to pistol-whipping people who owed them money to ripping off drug dealers to, the piece de resistance, heroin trafficking.
These are just charges. Nothing is proven yet, except that the Mafia around here sleeps with the fishes. It’s over. Finito. Like that last scene from “The Sopranos.’’ Fade to black.
Stevie Johnson’s boys have had a lot to do with it. But this is a cultural change brought on by more than good police work.
Besides the Massachusetts State Police, there’s the Massachusetts State Lottery. Once The Number became a state-owned entity, the Mafia’s days were numbered. The FBI, having framed one generation of mobsters in the 1960s, had better luck in the 1980s. By then, omerta had become a joke and the rats in the North End, previously confined to those dug up during the Big Dig, started walking around on two feet, answering to names like Sonny.
Everybody was a stool pigeon, which may explain why so many of the old goodfellas got out of the can and said thanks, but no thanks, when the prospect of rejoining the family business was raised. You couldn’t trust anybody. The Staties kept making cases.
A lot of the smarter wiseguys saw where this was going. The Number was gone. Sports book had limited earning potential. That left drugs and drugs scared off a lot of the old-school guys.
The Mafia’s decline was operationally apparent. Carmen DiNunzio, who headed the Boston Mafia until he was put in prison last year, got caught personally delivering a $10,000 bribe to a stranger who — surprise! — turned out to be an undercover FBI agent. The idea that the underboss of the Patriarca crime family had to be his own bag man was ridiculous. That’s what you have soldiers for. Insulation is not just something you put in the ceiling.

Page 2 of 2 --Say what you want about Carmen. I can’t see him selling heroin. Some overpriced cheese on Endicott Street? Yes. Smack? No way.

.But after Carmen got jammed up, whatever was left of the leadership got desperate enough to decide to make a lot of money real fast, and that always means drugs.

The Mafia was never reluctant to take the proceeds of drug dealing, usually in the form of tribute, the cost of doing business for dealers. But unsanctioned, hands-on drug dealing carried a death sentence. Dealers were invariably users and users were invariably informants. Besides, it’s hard to sell that “men of honor’’ schtick when you’re selling junk.

You would think the consigliere would have stepped in and stopped the drug stuff before it got started. Problem is, Mark Rossetti is not just a reputed capo regime but the reputed “acting’’ consigliere.

That the Boston Mafia has a capo regime doubling as “acting’’ consigliere is an indication of how thin the wiseguy bench is in this town.

Last year, Rossetti allegedly sponsored the Mafia induction of Darin Bufalino, who, like Rossetti, used to work as muscle for the former boss, Cadillac Frank Salemme. Bufalino’s previous drug use, documented by court-ordered testing, would have made him ineligible for Mafia membership not that long ago.

“Apparently,’’ says Johnson, “those rules don’t apply anymore.’’

There’s no respect anymore, either. Gerry Sarro, who got pinched the other day, lives in Revere but was charged with storing 80 pounds of marijuana in his mother’s house in East Boston. When the cops came in, Sarro’s mother gave them a hard time. But when they kept pulling bale after bale out of her basement, she looked genuinely shocked.

At one level, the Mafia has evolved. In the 1980s, bugs planted in the Prince Street headquarters of the Mafia captured Jerry Angiulo and Larry Baione dropping the “N’’ word left and right. The old Mafia was peopled by insular bigots, who didn’t like the Irish, much less people of color.

Fast forward to today, and the flow chart for Rossetti’s organization looks like the United Nations. Blacks and Hispanics are listed in key positions. They can’t be made guys, of course, but the fact that they are considered associates suggests that even some elements of the Mafia have become color-blind.

Wendell Bradford, an African-American who is one of the alleged legbreakers, smiled broadly for his mug shot. He’s apparently new to this.

But things, even This Thing of Ours, change.

As for the Mafia leaders who sanctioned the slide to full-blown drug dealing, I have only one question: why do you think they call it dope?

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com