Bill Bonanno - Bound by Honor: A Mafiosos Story

P eople in my world usually dont write autobiographies. Or if they do, they are usually in the witness protection program. Im not in anyones program but my own. Ive spent many years in prison, had federal, state, and local authorities down on me, had writs, judgments, verdicts, and offers of leniency directed at me. And, in my world, Ive been the target of assassins and have been at the storm center of one of the most turbulent periods in modern gangland historybut here I am, like Ishmael, come back to tell you about it.

As I write this, Im sixty-six years old. Im in Tucson, Arizona, sitting at a picture window that frames a view of distant desert mountains. The mountains and the desert change color from hour to hour and sometimes, in the morning and the evening, from minute to minute. There is a Native American legend for almost every shadow and shape in the landscape. The high saddle-backed mountain that I can see from my window is a young warrior, the son of a great chief. When his father died, the warrior rode naked into the mountains. He pursued his fathers spirit until his agonized heart was healed and his body was clothed in a great garment of many colors so that he could return to lead his people. These legends are like companions to me. You cannot live in this part of the country without feeling that kind of presence around you in the land.

Later in the day, my wife, Rosalie, and I will get in our car and drive to Phoenix to spend time with one of our three sons and several of our twelve grandchildren. Before we go, Ill drop by and look in on my father, Joseph Bonanno, who is ninety-four years old, still full of health and stories, a legendary survivor if ever there was one. It has been a matter of open speculation for years that he was the real-life model for Don Corleone in the book and the movie The Godfather. Yes, he was thatjust as I was the model for his son Michael. But a fiction is only a set of colors, however beautiful, passing over the landscape for a timethe spirit, perhaps, but not the substance. Hence the reason for this memoir.

My story is an attempt to walk through a real and dangerous worldwithout police protection or anyones prior approvalto say some things that need to be said, to dispel shadows and shapes that, over the years, have been turned into legendsand lies.

Anyone looking for confessions and self-incriminating chest-pounding will not find them here. Yes, there is blood in these pages, blood in my fathers history and in mine. Some of that blood ran in gutters and was washed away with a morning rain or with the passing of a city street sweeper. But much more of that blood is still in my veins and goes back centuries to traditions and values that can never be explained by the gaudy patter of movie mobsters and tabloid thugs.

I come from a long line of mafiosi. The Bonanno clan has been prominent in the area of Castellammare del Golfo in Sicily for centuries, and, most important, from the middle of the last century to the present. My paternal great-grandfather, Giuseppe Bonanno, was a supporter and combat ally of the great Garibaldi, who championed the movement for Italian unification. In Sicily, independence and honor have always gone hand in hand. That linkage ultimately was responsible for the formation of a secret society that later came to be misnamed the Mafia but, in reality, was only a gathering of men who were mafiosi.

Lest there be any confusion, there is a real distinction to be made between the terms Mafia and mafiosi. The former is a fictional term that conveniently has been used by law enforcement and the media as a catchall name for an organized central criminal conspiracy with worldwide, octopus-like tentacles. The latter term is rooted in reality, in the character and values of the men and women who were the everyday makers of Sicilian history. Some of those mafiosi became members of one secret society or another, emigrated to the United States, and formed themselves into Families.

Let me be as clear as possible. The word Mafia is both real and legendary in Sicilian history. For centuries, reality for Sicilians was living under the boot of foreign conquest. Sicily was the invasion route of conquerors. Whether they were Greeks before the time of Christ or the French in the time of the Bourbon monarchy, they tramped across Sicily with all the care and concern of barnyard animals. Sicilians, from time immemorial, had to adjust to these conquerors, to get along with them and, because they never had the strength to kick them out, to resist them by means of subterfuge, cooperation, and conciliation rather than by direct force. Traditionally, Sicilians buttered up their bosses during the day but broke the law at night. Great wealth in the form of landed estates was common on the island. These estates were established and belonged to absentee landlords who counted on the labor of natives and the force of conquering armies to safeguard them. Conquest, from the start, was a breeding ground for the peculiar formation of character in Sicilyone that led to the inevitable rise of the Mafia. It is impossible to understand anything about the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra, or whatever name law enforcement hangs on this group characteristic in this country, without first understanding this most essential aspect of its makeup: the character and personality of an individual mafioso.