Richard Mazzeo

Richard Mazzeo was a member of the Manhattan City Council and Director of Real Estate for New York City's Marine and Aviation Department in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He was also a Bonanno crime family associate and close and personal friend of Bonanno crime family caporegime Richard Cantarella and mob lawyer Roy Cohn.

Biography

Richard's relationship with Cantarella began when he informed Mazzeo of a news stand operator who was selling football tickets. Mazzeo broke the news stand operator's lease and Cantarella took over. Cantarella later testified in court at the trial of the Bonnano crime family boss Joseph Massino that he bribed Mazzeo with a couple thousand on a monthly basis from the mid 1970's to the 1980's.

By the late 1980s Mazzeo and Cantarella became millionaires dispensing lucrative leases for newsstands and parking lots for Staten Island ferry terminals on both sides of the harbor. Mazzeo and Cantarella shared an apartment together in Upper Manhattan. Mazzeo was a car enthusiast who drove a Mercedes Benz with the personalized vanity license plate "Gatzby", in reference to the novel The Great Gatsby. Mazzeo associated himself with lawyers, judges, and elected officials when attending Cohn's garish birthday parties at The Famous Studio 54 club.

By 1983, Mazzeo had been fired from his city council job due to his [...] dependency. Cantarella was convicted of tax charges and served six months in prison. During this period, Cantarella and his uncle, Albert Embarrato, became concerned that Mazzeo might be become an informant.

Gangland Execution

Mazzeo went looking for employment under Bonanno mob associate Michael DiBenedetto, who owned a private sanitation garage in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Cantarella met with Mazzeo in DiBenedetto's office to discuss a job offering. Cantarella asked him what kind of car he was driving. Mazzeo got his car from the parking lot and brought it inside. He then fetched Cantrarella from DiBenedetto's office. As Mazzeo was walking down the steps from the office, Cantarella shot him in the back of the head. Then Joseph D'Amico shot him when he was on the ground, which afterwards D'Amico and a Bonanno sidewalk soldier Patrick Romanello put him in a black plastic garbage bag. Mazzeo was then stabbed in the back by D'Amico who then drove the Mercedes Benz off to an unknown location.

References

• Crittle, SimonThe Last Godfather: The Rise and Fall of Joey Massino, Berkley (March 7, 2006) ISBN 0425209393

• "Unusual Mob Hit Solved Twenty Years Later" June 17, 2004 GangLand News The Online Column by Jerry Capeci