Bill Bonanno - The Last Testament of Bill Bonanno: The Final Secrets of a Life in the Mafia

The Last Testament
of Bill Bonanno

The Final Secrets of a Life in the Mafia

Bill Bonanno with

Gary B. Abromovitz

This book is dedicated to Bill Bonanno,

who could have been anything he wanted to be in life,

if he had been free to choose a different path.

Qui aliquid statuerit,

parte inaudita allera, aequum licet dixerit,

haud aequum facerit.

He who determines any matter, without hearing both sides,

though he may decide correctly,

has not done justice.

Contents

My name is Salvatore Bill Bonanno. My father, Joseph Bonanno Sr., was rappresentante of the Bonanno Family of New York during some of the most turbulent and exciting years in the history of our world, from the 1930s through the early 1960s. I became a made member of the Family in 1954, a capodecina (group captain) in 1959, and consigliere in 1964. My wife, Rosalie, is the niece of Joseph Profaci, the leader of the Profaci Familylike the Bonanno Family, one of the original five New York Mafia Families whose leaders formed what became known as The Commission in 1931. My firsthand involvement in the life of Mafia Families affords me the unique position of being able to share with you the secrets within this volume. What I am about to share with you has never been told by anyone who actually attended the Commission meetings. It is a story that I authorized to be published only after my death.

The material presented here is organized into three Books, each covering a part of the epic story of the Mafia from its secret sects in Sicily to its establishment of a powerful organized crime base in the United States through the 1960s. Much of what is included here has never been revealed before. It was shared with me by my father, Joseph Bonanno Sr., or by others familiar with the history and practices of our world. We have included a glossary translating Italian, Sicilian, and Yiddish words and other words not commonly used; it can be found on p. 327 for easy reference.

Book I, The Birth of the Mafia, offers a survey of the historical background of the Mafiaa survey that is necessary for anyone who wishes to understand the nature of our world . It explains how and why the Mafia evolved, the beliefs and orientations of the Sicilian people who founded it, and why we did certain things the way we did.

Book II, The Commission, offers an accurate, and formerly untold, story of the highly confidential, and highly misunderstood, body of selected men in our world who were responsible for decisions at the highest level to ensure peace among the Familiesa group that lasted from its inception in 1931 into the 1960s. The Commission has been portrayed in all manner of novels, works of dubious nonfiction, equally dubious documentaries, and fictionalized feature filmsand the result has been to leave the American public with the belief that the Commission was the supreme bureaucracy that controlled organized crime, an organization patterned after the hierarchical structure of most modern-day corporations. The sources of these stories are inevitably outsiders; no one who ever actually attended a meeting of the Commission would have described the group in any such terms. Yet this perception persistsa tribute to the power of the imagination of the novelists, screenwriters, and others who have promulgated it.

In this second Book, I will take you into each of the formal Commission meetings attended by my father, beginning in 1931, including the meetings after 1954 that I attended myself. You will learn where these meetings were held, who attended, what security was required, how business was conducted, and what issues were discussedfrom the decision to eliminate Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, to the near assassination of special prosecutor and New York governor Thomas E. Dewey, to aiding the United States and its Allies in the invasion of Sicily during World War II.

Book III, The Family, offers a more intimate history of the Mafia as I knew it in my time, drawing on personal anecdotes and true experiences that I witnessed, or that were recounted to me by those in the highest positions of power in our world. I will give you insight into specific topics of this elusive and mysterious world. I will dispel myths and reveal a lifestyle, based on centuries of tradition, that faded during the 1960s and has never been the same since.

My fathers book A Man of Honor , published in 1983, and my book Bound by Honor , published in 1999, described some of the events told here. But many important details were purposely left out of our accounts in those books, or were described ambiguously. This was because, in both instances, there were men in our world still alive who might be a danger to our Family or to others, if the full story were told. This book is intended to fill in the blanks, eliminate those ambiguities, and relate incidents that occurred but have long been untold, because I want history to record the truth. There are many well-written books about what most people think of as organized crime. But most of them sensationalize our world, making the text more like a circus sideshow designed to appeal to prurient interests looking for violence without purpose. Even the more purely historical books and articles about our world were largely penned by authors who were outsiders. Such books tend to rely on secondary researchwhich means that they simply repurpose stories and incorrect facts found in other accounts. Every new entry in this category only supports the theory that, if you tell enough untruths over and over again, people will believe you.

I should also add that books written or cowritten after 1968 by Americanized leaders or enforcers in our world have little or nothing to do with the world I lived in prior to that timeas youll understand after reading this book.

And one final word of clarification: I have no desire to sugarcoat the Bonanno Family. I make no claims that my father, Joe Bonanno, was an innocent, noncombative, even-tempered man. He wasnt. He did consider himself a fair man in running his Family, and those of us who observed his behavior tended to agree. However, if you crossed him, it was Goodbye, Jack .

Thats the way it was.

Bill Bonanno

You must be willing to put your whole life at our disposal.

John Tartamella (18921966),
consigliere of the Bonanno Family

People have asked me how I can defend the lifestyle of this thing of ours. Ive been confronted, though gingerly, by news reporters asking questions such as, How do you justify that most of your life you made your living from criminal activities? Its funny, but when I look in the mirror every morning while shaving, I dont see the bad person Im supposed to be. I see someone who lived in a world where ethics and loyalty meant something.

I do not intend to defend or justify the actions of the Bonanno Family during the 1930s through the 1960s. But I will explain the lifestyle so you can try to understand why I have no regrets about the way I lived and would not change most of what occurredif the circumstances were the same today as they were back then.

To begin, lets address a question that is beyond logical comprehension in your world: How was I able to put the interests of a group of men ahead of the interests of my wife and my children? The answer isnt easybecause I did and I didnt. The idea that a member of our world, if summoned, would leave the bedside of a dying relative instantly if called to do so by his Family, defies natural instinctunless you live in our world.

This bond of brotherhood has been with me my entire life. As a result, the rules of conduct I lived by superseded the rules, or laws, that society placed upon me. The strengths of this pact, among men whose beliefs and actions were woven from the same cloth, protected this small world of ours. This is the world we knew and had to survive within on a daily basis. The laws that society imposed upon those of us who chose to live in America were secondary to our way of thinking. Our people lived in a much smaller world, where we spoke a more familiar language and lived according to centuries-old traditions that our people brought to this country.