Feds to seek death penalty
for mobster Joseph Massino

NEW YORK - Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Mafia kingpin Joseph Massino, making the man known as "The Last Don" the first mob chief in decades to face death at the hands of the government.

Federal prosecutors told Massino's lawyers yesterday that they will seek the death penalty in the 1999 killing of Gerlando Sciascia, a captain in Massino's crime family who spoke ill of one of Massino's friends, among other infractions.

Sciascia was found shot three times in the head on a Bronx street in a slaying meant to look like a drug-related hit.

Massino attorney David Breitbart said the prosecutors' decision was a "parting gift" from U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who announced his resignation Tuesday.

Ashcroft directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty more aggressively.

Massino posed as a humble Queens restaurateur, but he was convicted in July of orchestrating a quarter-century of murder, racketeering, arson, extortion, loan sharking and gambling.

He is awaiting sentencing for that conviction and a separate trial in the slaying of Sciascia, a Sicilian-born Mafioso known as "George from Canada." The Sciascia slaying occurred after the reintroduction of the federal death penalty, prompting prosecutors to seek a separate trial that would make Massino eligible for death if convicted.

Federal prosecutors have been reluctant to seek the ultimate sanction for Mafiosi, even as they sought death for one black or Hispanic gang leader after another. Massino is the first to face the possibility of death since the 1988 return of the federal death penalty and perhaps since the 1940s, when Murder Inc.'s Louis "Lepke" Buchalter was electrocuted.

Massino, 61, had been the only accused head of one of New York's five Mafia families not in prison or awaiting sentencing, leading some to call him "the last don."

Since his 1992 release on a racketeering rap, Massino dodged prosecution while bringing the Bonannos back from the brink of extinction. The family nearly collapsed after FBI agent Joe Pistone, posing as jewel thief Donnie Brasco, was embraced by the Bonanno hierarchy from 1976 to 1981.

The Brasco saga later became the subject of a movie starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino.

Massino oversaw the Bonanno comeback from his Queens restaurant, CasaBlanca, where mobsters mingled beneath pictures of Bogart and Bergman.

Expected to figure prominently in Massino's upcoming trial is his former underboss, best friend and brother-in-law, Salvatore "Good Lookin' Sal" Vitale, who recounted his own involvement in 11 homicides during Massino's trial earlier this year.

Massino's attorney said he thought it was "absurd to predicate a death penalty case on the word of somebody who's committed between 15 and 30 murders. He's a mass murderer."

MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN / Associated Press / Nov. 12, 2004