PETER 'FAT PETE' CHIODO—In May, 1991, the Lucchese crime family made a mistake when they sent hit men to kill trusted soldier “Fat Pete” Chiodo and failed to finish the job. His 6’ 5” 435-pound body was riddled with 12 bullets and he sustained permanent internal damage, but Chiodo somehow survived, and with a changed attitude.

Turned informant, he exposed a lucrative mob scheme to skim profits from every window installed in New York City’s Housing Authority projects. After Chiodo flipped, the Lucchese family violated the so-called Mafia “rules” against harming mob kin by trying (but once again failing) to kill Chiodo’s sister.


SALVATORE 'SAMMY THE BULL' GRAVANO—Underboss of the Gambino crime family, Gravano agreed to cooperate with police in October, 1991, becoming a key to the conviction six months later of his boss, John “Dapper Don” Gotti. He admitted to involvement in 19 murders, but served only 5 years due to his assistance in catching his former boss.

After entering the witness protection program, Gravano moved to Phoenix, Arizona and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from this book, “Underboss.” He then started up an Ecstasy ring with his family, was caught, and will likely die in prison.


ANTHONY 'GASPIPE' CASSO—When Casso, underboss of the Lucchese crime family, became an informant in 1993, he was touted as a Rosetta stone of organized crime. He admitted involvement in 36 murders and revealed he’d had two NYPD detectives, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, on his payroll and leaking the names of informants and even committing murders for the mob.

The marriage did not work out as planned. Other informants contradicted Casso’s version of events, he became involved in altercations and smuggling inside various federal prisons, and, in the end, he was dropped from the program and sentenced to life.


MICHAEL 'MIKEY SCARS' DiLEONARDO--A longtime close friend of John A. “Junior” Gotti, DiLeonardo was godfather to one of Junior’s sons. In 2001, DiLeonardo was acquitted of racketeering and conspiracy charges in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two years later, he became an informant after deciding Gotti had reneged on his promise to take of his family while he was in prison. DiLeonardo then admitted he’d been guilty of all the criminal acts of which he had just been cleared by the Atlanta jury. He described Junior’s involvement in multiple mafia schemes, including an attempted hit on radio host Curtis Sliwa—an accusation that has yet to result in a conviction of the younger Gotti.


CARMINE SESSA—The one-time consigliere of the Colombo crime family surrendered to the FBI on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1993, giving law enforcement an insider’s look at a raging internal family war that was dropping bodies all over Brooklyn.

Freed from prison after only seven years, Sessa delivered an extraordinary apologia during his 2000 sentencing, deriding the Mafia life he’d led and watched in theaters. “The movie ‘Goodfellas’ explains it well—meaning everybody gets killed by a bunch of animals or so-called friends.” In the witness protection program, he was later arrested for beating up his wife.

GREG SCARPA SR.--The “Grim Reaper” stayed on the streets of Brooklyn for years, secretly providing information on his Mafia peers to the FBI. The relationship went back to the 1950s, and included a remarkable incident in which Scarpa—a homicidal maniac who’s believed to be involved in upwards of 50 murders—was sent to Philadelphia, Miss. to solve the disappearance of three civil rights workers.

Ultimately, one of his FBI handlers, R. Lindley DeVecchio, was charged but acquitted of providing info to Scarpa that was used to kill his rivals. Scarpa died in 1994 of AIDS he got from tainted blood donated by a fellow gangster.

JOSEPH MASSINO--Massino became the first sitting boss in Mafia history to turn informant. The longtime head of the Bonnano family, Massino was notoriously security conscious, instructing his subordinates to refer to him merely by tugging on their earlobe.

Things started to go bad for Joe when his brother-in-law and underboss, Salvatore “Good Looking Sal” Vitale, testified against him. Shortly after his 2004 conviction on racketeering charges that would have put him in prison for life, Massino decided to become an informant. He taped his underlings in prison threatening to kill a prosecutor

ALADENA 'JIMMY THE WEASEL' FRATIANNO--The first gangster to testify in a criminal trial against his former peers, Fratianno became an informant in 1978 after admitting a role in the murder of an Irish gangster named Danny Green. He confessed to committing five murders and participating in 6 others, and testified against Colombo crime family boss Carmine Persico, Genovese crime family boss Frank “Funzi” Tieri, and Chicago crime boss Joe Ayuppa.

He appeared in a famous photo of Frank Sinatra with Carlo Gambino and other gangsters at the Westchester Premier Theater in Tarrytown, testifying that he wasn’t very impressed by Sinatra. He later penned two books about his exploits. Fratianno died in 1993, at age 79, at an undisclosed location with an assumed name

JOE VALACHI--The first major Mafia turncoat, this drug-dealing soldier in the family of Vito Genovese introduced the term ‘la cosa nostra’ (meaning ‘this thing of ours’) to the English lexicon. He turned informant after learning that his boss had decided he had to go, and signaled his decision with an infamous “kiss of death” in the federal pen in Atlanta, Georgia.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy called his testimony “the biggest intelligence breakthrough yet in combating organized crime.” His evidence never directly convicted a single mobster, but his 1963 televised appearance at a Senate committee investigating organized crime lifted the veil on the Mafia in America.

He tried but failed to hang himself in his cell and ultimately died of a heart attack in 1971, at the age of 67.


ANTHONY ROTONDO--Anthony Rotondo’s father, Vincent, was a captain in the New Jersey-based DeCavalcante family, but he wanted his son to be a lawyer. Rotondo initially started down that path, picking up a degree in business administration from St. Francis College in Brooklyn. But the lure of the mob soon beckoned, and his father ultimately proposed his son for membership.

Then in 1988, his father was gunned down as he sat in his car outside his Bath Beach, Brooklyn home. The younger Rotondo assumed his father’s position, but turned informant in 1999 after nearly the entire hierarchy of the family was arrested,. He claimed he did so in part because of building resentment over his father’s murder.




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