New York:
Of all the life lessons that Salvatore Vitale took from a boyhood friend he idolized, two of them became practically second nature: as a child, he was taught how to swim; as an adult, he was instructed how to kill.
The latter skill, he would later admit, was one he practiced regularly on behalf of the friend, Joseph C. Massino, who would marry Mr. Vitale's sister, become the boss of the Bonanno crime family and eventually elevate Mr. Vitale to serve as the underboss.
Mr. Vitale's criminal life story is laid out in sharp relief in a remarkable document that federal prosecutors in Brooklyn filed under seal last month. An inch thick, it contains a story that spans more than three decades and touches on 23 murders, 11 of which Mr. Vitale directly participated in, and many other crimes that he and other mob figures committed.
But the document, which was unsealed this week, also tells another story: how the Bonannos were decimated, in some measure through Mr. Vitale's betrayal in 2003 of the crime family and his own extended family, as he became a star government witness. Using his testimony, federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have been able to imprison 51 mob figures, including Mr. Massino and the last four acting bosses of the Bonanno family.
Mr. Vitale, 62, is to be sentenced on Friday. Prosecutors have called his cooperation "groundbreaking by any measure," and filed the 122-page document to seek a more lenient sentence than the mandatory life term set forth in the advisory sentencing guidelines.
In a 10-year assault on the Bonanno family, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecutors have convicted a total of 135 members and associates, making Mr. Vitale perhaps the most prolific mob turncoat since Salvatore Gravano, who testified against the Gambino boss John J. Gotti.
Prosecutors say Mr. Vitale has identified more than 500 organized crime members and associates in the United States and abroad, and information he has provided has led to prosecutions of high-ranking members of the Colombo, Gambino and Genovese families, in addition to Bonanno family figures.
He has also provided information that led investigators to uncover murder victims buried decades earlier, including in a mob graveyard in a swamp on the Brooklyn-Queens border where two men killed in 1981 were interred. But some see his cooperation, and the government's effort to secure a more lenient prison sentence for him, possibly even one that would release him into the witness protection program, in a very different light.
David Breitbart, who defended Mr. Massino at his 2005 murder and racketeering trial, criticized the government's handling of Mr. Vitale and its use of cooperating witnesses in general, noting that a half dozen admitted killers who testified against his client have been released into "the population at large."
"I don't want them living next door to me, and I don't see how the government justifies that," Mr. Breitbart said. "They take someone on and they use him and they file a 120-page motion in order that the individual can go home."
Until 2002, the Bonanno family stood out among New York's five Mafia clans in that it had never had a "made" member cooperate with the government and testify in court. That distinction was due in part to the obsessive fear of informants and infiltrators, borne of an undercover F.B.I. agent's years-long penetration of the family in the 1980s, which cost two Bonanno figures their lives. (The case became the basis for the 1997 movie "Donnie Brasco.")
But Mr. Vitale's cooperation helped break the Bonanno family, leading to a historic event in organized crime in the United States: Mr. Massino's own betrayal, nearly two years later, of the crime family he headed. An unprecedented act, it made Mr. Massino, an Old World stalwart known as the Last Don, the first Mafia boss in this country to cooperate with the F.B.I. and prosecutors.
Mr. Vitale thus helped create such an embarrassment of riches for investigators that it prompted one F.B.I. official to complain jokingly at the time that there were more insiders providing information on the crime family than agents on the squad assigned to investigate it.
Slender, soft-spoken and polished, Mr. Vitale, who grew up in Brooklyn and Queens and attended City College for a year, made an effective witness. Often, when he answered questions, he said "True," rather than yes, giving his responses an air of authority.
He served in the Army as a paratrooper for two years, stationed in Mainz, Germany, and worked as a U.P.S. truck driver and a New York State correction officer before he began working for his childhood friend, Mr. Massino, driving a catering truck to sell coffee and pastries at factories and car dealerships on Long Island.
Mr. Vitale, whose silver hair always appeared carefully combed (he was known as Good Looking Sal), came to idolize Mr. Massino, who was nearly five years his senior.
During the course of his three decades with the crime family, his portfolio of crime was substantial and varied. He told agents and prosecutors of committing arson, burglary, hijacking, loan sharking, extortion, insurance fraud, illegal gambling, money laundering, obstruction of justice and securities fraud.
And then there were the murders. Mr. Vitale pleaded guilty in April 2003 to racketeering conspiracy and murder-in-aid of racketeering, admitting to 11 killings between 1976 and 1999.
The document methodically maps out the various aspects of Mr. Vitale's work with the government. It is known as a 5K motion, for section 5K1.1 of the sentencing guidelines, under which prosecutors can argue for a term shorter than that set out under the advisory guidelines if a defendant has provided "extraordinary cooperation."
In some ways, the lengthy document adds little new information to what the government has already said in court papers and what Mr. Vitale has said from the witness stand at six trials in United States District Court in Brooklyn, where he will appear before Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis in his own case on Friday afternoon. But it weaves together the various narrative strands, trials and cases that were brought, in part, on information Mr. Vitale provided.
Two of the prosecutors who led the assault against the Bonannos, Greg D. Andres and John Buretta, prepared the 5K motion, and, with other submissions, argue for a sentence far shorter than the mandatory life term he faces.
Judge Garaufis, who has presided over cases against scores of Bonanno figures, including four of the trials at which Mr. Vitale testified, will consider the motion, along with a companion document that remains sealed.
The latter skill, he would later admit, was one he practiced regularly on behalf of the friend, Joseph C. Massino, who would marry Mr. Vitale's sister, become the boss of the Bonanno crime family and eventually elevate Mr. Vitale to serve as the underboss.
Mr. Vitale's criminal life story is laid out in sharp relief in a remarkable document that federal prosecutors in Brooklyn filed under seal last month. An inch thick, it contains a story that spans more than three decades and touches on 23 murders, 11 of which Mr. Vitale directly participated in, and many other crimes that he and other mob figures committed.
But the document, which was unsealed this week, also tells another story: how the Bonannos were decimated, in some measure through Mr. Vitale's betrayal in 2003 of the crime family and his own extended family, as he became a star government witness. Using his testimony, federal prosecutors and F.B.I. agents have been able to imprison 51 mob figures, including Mr. Massino and the last four acting bosses of the Bonanno family.
Mr. Vitale, 62, is to be sentenced on Friday. Prosecutors have called his cooperation "groundbreaking by any measure," and filed the 122-page document to seek a more lenient sentence than the mandatory life term set forth in the advisory sentencing guidelines.
In a 10-year assault on the Bonanno family, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecutors have convicted a total of 135 members and associates, making Mr. Vitale perhaps the most prolific mob turncoat since Salvatore Gravano, who testified against the Gambino boss John J. Gotti.
Prosecutors say Mr. Vitale has identified more than 500 organized crime members and associates in the United States and abroad, and information he has provided has led to prosecutions of high-ranking members of the Colombo, Gambino and Genovese families, in addition to Bonanno family figures.
He has also provided information that led investigators to uncover murder victims buried decades earlier, including in a mob graveyard in a swamp on the Brooklyn-Queens border where two men killed in 1981 were interred. But some see his cooperation, and the government's effort to secure a more lenient prison sentence for him, possibly even one that would release him into the witness protection program, in a very different light.
David Breitbart, who defended Mr. Massino at his 2005 murder and racketeering trial, criticized the government's handling of Mr. Vitale and its use of cooperating witnesses in general, noting that a half dozen admitted killers who testified against his client have been released into "the population at large."
"I don't want them living next door to me, and I don't see how the government justifies that," Mr. Breitbart said. "They take someone on and they use him and they file a 120-page motion in order that the individual can go home."
Until 2002, the Bonanno family stood out among New York's five Mafia clans in that it had never had a "made" member cooperate with the government and testify in court. That distinction was due in part to the obsessive fear of informants and infiltrators, borne of an undercover F.B.I. agent's years-long penetration of the family in the 1980s, which cost two Bonanno figures their lives. (The case became the basis for the 1997 movie "Donnie Brasco.")
But Mr. Vitale's cooperation helped break the Bonanno family, leading to a historic event in organized crime in the United States: Mr. Massino's own betrayal, nearly two years later, of the crime family he headed. An unprecedented act, it made Mr. Massino, an Old World stalwart known as the Last Don, the first Mafia boss in this country to cooperate with the F.B.I. and prosecutors.
Mr. Vitale thus helped create such an embarrassment of riches for investigators that it prompted one F.B.I. official to complain jokingly at the time that there were more insiders providing information on the crime family than agents on the squad assigned to investigate it.
Slender, soft-spoken and polished, Mr. Vitale, who grew up in Brooklyn and Queens and attended City College for a year, made an effective witness. Often, when he answered questions, he said "True," rather than yes, giving his responses an air of authority.
He served in the Army as a paratrooper for two years, stationed in Mainz, Germany, and worked as a U.P.S. truck driver and a New York State correction officer before he began working for his childhood friend, Mr. Massino, driving a catering truck to sell coffee and pastries at factories and car dealerships on Long Island.
Mr. Vitale, whose silver hair always appeared carefully combed (he was known as Good Looking Sal), came to idolize Mr. Massino, who was nearly five years his senior.
During the course of his three decades with the crime family, his portfolio of crime was substantial and varied. He told agents and prosecutors of committing arson, burglary, hijacking, loan sharking, extortion, insurance fraud, illegal gambling, money laundering, obstruction of justice and securities fraud.
And then there were the murders. Mr. Vitale pleaded guilty in April 2003 to racketeering conspiracy and murder-in-aid of racketeering, admitting to 11 killings between 1976 and 1999.
The document methodically maps out the various aspects of Mr. Vitale's work with the government. It is known as a 5K motion, for section 5K1.1 of the sentencing guidelines, under which prosecutors can argue for a term shorter than that set out under the advisory guidelines if a defendant has provided "extraordinary cooperation."
In some ways, the lengthy document adds little new information to what the government has already said in court papers and what Mr. Vitale has said from the witness stand at six trials in United States District Court in Brooklyn, where he will appear before Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis in his own case on Friday afternoon. But it weaves together the various narrative strands, trials and cases that were brought, in part, on information Mr. Vitale provided.
Two of the prosecutors who led the assault against the Bonannos, Greg D. Andres and John Buretta, prepared the 5K motion, and, with other submissions, argue for a sentence far shorter than the mandatory life term he faces.
Judge Garaufis, who has presided over cases against scores of Bonanno figures, including four of the trials at which Mr. Vitale testified, will consider the motion, along with a companion document that remains sealed.
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