Heads of All Five Families Behind Bars

Television shows like "The Sopranos" and "Kingpin" tend to romanticize(???) the mob life, so it's perhaps valuable to be reminded that wiseguys are really poorly educated, ruthless, vindictive,...and an endangered species. Following excerpted from the Houston Chronicle:

And then there were none.

More than 70 years after a bloody mob war ended with a peace producing New York City's five Mafia families, the heads of these crime syndicates are simultaneously behind bars for the first time.

"There was a time when no mob boss was even convicted," said Ronald Goldstock, former head of the state Organized Crime Task Force. "Symbolically, this is one more milestone in the fight against the mob."

Most recently jailed was Joseph Massino, 60, reputed boss of the Bonanno crime family. Massino was indicted in January in connection with a 1981 murder tied to the FBI's infiltration of his family by undercover agent "Donnie Brasco."

U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf, noting that the "Commission" emerged after the 1931 Castellamarese War ended with a mob hit in a Coney Island restaurant, said it was appropriate that Massino wound up in a Brooklyn federal court. "The structure of traditional organized crime was formulated, in large measure, right here in Brooklyn," she said.

For decades after the mob war, the city's bosses operated with impunity, avoiding prison sentences and directing illegal multimillion-dollar operations. Their empire stretched from the Fulton Fish Market to the concrete industry to garbage carting.

Jail remained a petty annoyance.

When Vito Genovese went away in 1959, it was only after fellow bosses set him up on a bogus drug charge. Genovese died in prison -- an extraordinary departure for a mob boss of his generation. His contemporaries fared better: Joseph Bonanno -- aka "Joe Bananas" -- died last May at the ripe old age of 97. Septuagenarian Carlo Gambino died of a heart attack in 1976. Tommy "Three Fingers" Luchese died of natural causes in 1967.

Such happy retirements no longer await:

· Genovese's linear successor, 74-year-old Vincent "The Chin" Gigante, remains jailed on a racketering conviction while awaiting trial on charges that he was running the Genovese family from his cell.

· Gambino head Peter Gotti, 62, followed a family tradition by getting locked up -- just as his late brother John and his nephew John Jr. did. Peter Gotti recently went on trial, charged with racketeering and extortion on the city's waterfront.

· Colombo chief Alphonse "Allie Boy" Persico cut a deal with federal prosecutors 13 months ago in which he admitted he was the family boss. Joel "Joe Waverly" Cacace became acting boss -- only to be indicted himself last month on a charge of orchestrating a hit where the father of an ex-mob prosecutor was mistakenly murdered.

· Vittorio "Vic" Amuso, who reportedly runs the Lucheses, is doing life without parole on racketeering and murder charges.

Even worse for the mobs, the bosses are now working for the feds. Former acting Luchese chieftain Joseph "Joe D" DeFede was one of the key witnesses against Peter Gotti, saying they had met at eight "Commission" meetings between 1994 and 1998.