Histoires de Gangsters Joseph Big Joey Massino
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TVTranscription
00:00 Joe Massino is a killer.
00:03 No question about it.
00:05 People who were not following the rules were punished for breaking those rules.
00:09 He was a fear-maker.
00:11 He was a intimidator.
00:13 If he suspected you were an informant, you were already dead.
00:16 At the end of the 20th century, he was the most powerful mafia boss in America.
00:22 Joe Massino killed to save his life.
00:26 He was the untouchable boss.
00:29 The one that the police can't catch.
00:32 You could say Massino was the last traitor of all time.
00:35 May 5th, 1981.
00:56 The night is calm in the streets of South Brooklyn.
00:59 In a disaffected place, Joe Massino, one of the captains of the Bonanno family, waits patiently.
01:06 He has given an appointment to three other capos for a small meeting.
01:11 Rumor has it that these three are preparing a mutiny.
01:15 They want to overthrow the new head of the family, Phil Rastelli.
01:19 By not accepting the new boss, they have signed their death warrant.
01:23 Joe told them to go to the premises to make peace.
01:27 But as soon as they arrived, Massino's plan was put into action.
01:32 One of the associates passed his hand through his hair.
01:38 That was a signal to indicate that all the targets were in the room.
01:41 A few seconds later, four men emerge from a closet and make the powder speak.
01:50 The three capos are crumpled with bullets, blood spilling through the room.
01:54 They were overwhelmed. They were killed on the spot. It was a real bloodbath.
01:59 Joe Massino has cleaned up, because family protection comes first.
02:04 He learned this loyalty in the streets of the popular neighborhood where he grew up.
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02:18 Joseph Charles Massino grew up in Maspeth, a very communal neighborhood in Queens,
02:24 separated from Manhattan by the East River.
02:27 Born on January 10, 1943 in an Italian-American family,
02:32 he is the cadet of a three-boy brotherhood.
02:35 His mother, Adeline, is a housewife,
02:39 and his father, Tony, owns a fruit and vegetable stand in the neighborhood's grocery store.
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02:46 With its factories and warehouses, Maspeth is an exclusively working class neighborhood,
02:50 but a neighborhood that hides a darker side.
02:53 As you peel away the history of the Mafia,
02:56 you find a lot of characters that came from Maspeth.
02:59 He saw who were the prospectors, who were the successful people.
03:04 They weren't the hard-working people like his father.
03:07 It was the Mafia that broke them.
03:09 During his childhood, Joe stayed away from the hoodlums of the neighborhood.
03:15 He avoided the trouble.
03:17 He was a robust and well-built teenager,
03:20 good at sports, but not at school.
03:23 In 1959, at the age of 16, Joe left school to work.
03:32 A contact from his parents offered him a job as a food vendor.
03:37 His mother's friends equipped a truck
03:39 that allowed him to offer meals to workers and dockers at their workplaces.
03:43 On the lunch truck, he would have sandwiches,
03:46 he would have small meals, he would have drinks, chips.
03:50 He was nicknamed "Joe the Truck".
03:54 He worked hard for a decent salary,
03:56 but he was ambitious and wanted to earn more.
04:01 He would work selling Christmas trees.
04:04 He was one of those people who we used to gift one of those people.
04:09 As he sold his trees, Joe saw a pretty girl from the neighborhood,
04:14 Josephine Vitale.
04:16 From the first meeting, Joe was shocked.
04:20 He almost instantly decided she would become his wife.
04:23 It was a real blow.
04:25 He started to hang out with her,
04:28 and Joe became friends with Josie's younger brother, Salvatore.
04:32 Sal did not hide his admiration for his sister's new boyfriend.
04:36 Joe was a mentor for Sal when he was younger.
04:40 He became a bit like his big brother.
04:43 In 1960, Joe and Josie agreed.
04:49 They were not yet 20.
04:52 A year later, Josie gave birth to a little girl, Adeline.
04:57 The other two would follow, Linda and John.
05:00 As his family grew, Joe doubled his efforts to meet his needs,
05:07 and continued to develop his business.
05:10 One of his contacts was a food grocer named Carmine Rastelli.
05:14 Carmine guaranteed Joe the best products at the best price.
05:18 But more importantly for Joe, Carmine had powerful connections.
05:26 His big brother was none other than Philip Rastelli,
05:29 also known as Rusty, a very respected capo of the Bonanno family.
05:33 Rusty Rastelli ran that part of Maspeth.
05:36 He was the boss of the area. It was his territory.
05:40 At the time, Philip Rastelli had his influence in the Bonanno family.
05:47 Through Carmine, Joe introduced him.
05:51 And for whatever reason, Rusty was immediately enticed by Joe Massino.
05:56 Philip Rastelli almost immediately took Joe Massino under his wing.
06:00 In the Maspeth working class neighborhood,
06:05 Rastelli ran several business of rackets, wear and tear.
06:09 He offered Joe to work for him as a debt collector.
06:14 Joe jumped on the occasion.
06:18 It was through Carmine that Massino met his godfather,
06:23 in the sense of the term mob.
06:25 He saw all this easy money and he said to himself,
06:29 "Why should I work so hard?
06:32 Money is a powerful corruptor."
06:35 With Rastelli's help, Joe launched his first criminal operation,
06:40 an illegal lottery for the mafia.
06:42 His sandwich truck was the perfect cover.
06:46 Someone who came to buy him a coffee said to him,
06:49 "Joe, note the three numbers I'm going to tell you."
06:52 And at the end of the day, the winning numbers were designated
06:56 from different sources.
06:58 One day, it could be the stock market figures.
07:02 The next day, it could be the numbers of the lottery.
07:05 And the losers offered Joe a new chance to make ends meet.
07:13 Since his truck, he's been lending money to the losers at a loss.
07:17 In 1967, Joe was 24.
07:21 The money he brought home earned him a good reputation
07:25 with Phil Rastelli and the Bonanno family.
07:27 While his lottery and press operations flourished,
07:31 he set out for a new sector, the merchandise detour.
07:34 In the 1960s, the merchandise detour was booming in New York.
07:42 They knew when the trucks would leave JFK or LaGuardia airports
07:46 because a lot of the teams were working there
07:49 or were dreaming of being caught.
07:51 So they knew when those were coming in.
07:54 Bencino's right arm is none other than his brother-in-law,
07:59 Sal Vitale, nicknamed "Sal the handsome boy."
08:02 He tried to ambush the truck driver
08:06 and forced them to drop their load.
08:10 But Joe Massino quickly found a much simpler method.
08:14 A lot of the drivers were players.
08:18 They had debts, so they had no choice.
08:20 They were offered easy hard-earned money
08:22 if they just gave up the truck.
08:24 They would hijack trucks that transported cigarettes,
08:28 clothes, or electronic devices,
08:30 and then they would sell those, I guess,
08:32 through their connections.
08:34 And Joe has connections all over the city.
08:37 One of Joe's greatest assets is that he grew up in Maspeth.
08:40 He knew all these warehouses and all these places
08:43 where he could get rid of his sold merchandise
08:45 before the police or the FBI would ever run him over.
08:48 His detour operation was a big hit.
08:51 But Massino, even bigger,
08:54 accepted a new job, a robber.
08:56 If you're going to be ambitious in the Mafia,
09:00 you really have to win your money by killing somebody.
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11:09 - Much to my surprise, when I got to the Mass Pet Diner,
11:29 there was this stolen truck
11:31 that had been broadcast over our frequencies.
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11:38 He literally cut it off,
11:54 at which time the driver got out of the truck
11:57 and started to walk away.
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12:07 - I informed Joey I was FBI and that the cars were parked.
12:11 I told him to park his car and to join us.
12:13 At that particular time,
12:15 he made a sign to say goodbye and left.
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12:22 - He was driving along the street
12:30 and he had seen a person he knew,
12:33 so he had to stop to see what was going on.
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13:00 - Borelli, while being Castellano,
13:12 would often make disappointing remarks about Castellano,
13:16 comparing him to Frank Perdue,
13:18 the owner of a chicken thing.
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14:08 - Joe was a part of the ambush,
14:22 and he was involved in the setup
14:24 and the transport of the body.
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14:41 - Here was the beginning of a new career for Massino.
14:58 He was no longer just a small charity guy.
15:01 He was a man of the house.
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15:31 - He was a very cruel character.
15:50 He was known to be very violent,
15:52 and he was causing problems.
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18:46 - There was a continual instability in the family,
19:00 and there were various factions in power.
19:02 Now, some aligned with Rastelli,
19:05 and others challenged his authority.
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26:34 - He was unbelievable in terms of surveillance.
26:39 Constantly going down along the security line
26:43 just to determine if he was being physically surveilled.
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28:06 - Well, the FBI wasn't happy.
28:18 The value of such a device,
28:20 I don't know how much it is,
28:22 but it's worth many thousands of dollars.
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43:46 - The legacy of Joe Massino,
44:01 the mob is a giant mob.
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44:46 Fait divers le mag.