I became good friends with Vince mid nineties until around 2000 when I changed occupations and moved. I did not stay in touch with him after that which Ive typically done all my life [bad about staying in touch with people]. I did not know who he "really" was and we were drawn to each other due to our love for our Italian heritage, food, etc. This was an area where there weren't a lot of Italian people so we hung out 5 or 6 days a week either where I worked, as did he, or we'd go out after and eat, drink, etc. We hung out, just the 2 of us many nights talking about NY, the good ol' days, etc. He lived alone in a small modest apartment. He was fun, liked by the people that came through our work place, but seemed weird he had no one in his life. When he drank a lot, he started to confide in me that he was involved in some stuff and was on the lam. He spoke of his son and his concerns for him as well. He said it involved the mob and threw some hefty names around at times. I thought he was blowin' hot air, tipsy from the booze at times, and never really took it very serious. Last night I thought of Vince and decided to google his name to find out if he'd passed being he had a heart attack around '98 or '99 and saw he'd died in 2004. Under that same search I came across a lot of interesting info including the above post content. Google images turned up only 2, a courtroom sketch and what looked like a surveilence photo with him in it. It was definitely him. I spent hours trying to dig up more info and read that after this hearing, he'd testified against Gotti and disappeared in the federal witness protection in 1990. What doesn't make sense is why he was using his real name when I knew him? I also found nothing publicly on line about where he'd gone after disappearing. Am I the only person who knows both where he was and who he really was? Im finding this to be almost unreal and interesting at the same time. Is this something I should even be posting?