Frank Lino, 76, appeared in
Brooklyn Federal Court Friday where Judge Nicholas Garaufis resentenced him for
his raft of crimes
BY JOHN MARZULLI
A former mob capo who traded
membership in the Bonanno crime family for God and the government skated on six
gangland murders Friday.
Frank Lino, 76, served more
than eight years in prison after his 2003 arrest but was sentenced to time
served in Brooklyn Federal Court as a reward for helping the feds.
Looking tanned, and wearing
black-framed eyeglasses and a double-breasted suit, Lino sheepishly raised his
hand when Judge Nicholas Garaufis glanced around the courtroom looking for him.
“Oh, in the business suit,”
Garaufis observed.
Lino’s cooperation was
“extraordinary” and helped to bring down some two dozen Bonannos including
then-boss Joseph Massino, according to prosecutor Nicole Argentieri.
He also helped the feds recover
the remains of three slain gangsters buried in mob graveyards.
and with God’s good grace he’s
where he should be, a grandfather of 15,” his lawyer, Barry Rhodes, said.
But Lino will spend the rest of
his life looking over his shoulder in the Witness Protection Program, in danger
of being killed for breaking the Mafia code of silence.
The mob rat even provided
information to the feds about his son Joseph, a reputed Bonanno soldier, and
cousin Eddie Lino, according to court papers.
Lino wiped away tears as he
apologized to families of the victims — none of whom was present — and shook
the judge’s hand on the way out of the courtroom.
“Good luck,” Garaufis said.
Lino’s most famous hit was the
1981 rubout of Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano who was marked for death as
punishment for befriending undercover FBI agent Donnie Brasco (Joseph Pistone)
who infiltrated the crime family.
Lino was also implicated in the
1962 murder of two cops by associates of his, but Lino was not charged in the
killings because he had been severely beaten by detectives at a police
stationhouse.
Decades later, after Lino
flipped, there was an extraordinary scene right out of “The Godfather: Part II”
when fictional mob canary Frank Pentangeli’s brother was brought by the
Corleone family from Sicily to sit in the audience at a Senate hearing in order
to silence the would-be informant.
During a 2003 hearing, Lino’s
brother appeared in Brooklyn Federal Court, stood up in the front row and asked
Garaufis if he could speak to Frank.
In Friday’s hearing, Rhodes
reminded the judge of the cinematic moment in his courtroom, adding that Lino
has “spurned that sick world he was once part of.”
Lino is a free man in the
Witness Protection Program along with Massino, who became the highest-ranking
New York City mob boss to become a turncoat after he was convicted of
racketeering and murder, and Massino’s brother-in-law Salvatore Vitale, who
also helped the feds dismantle the Bonannos.
Lino was a 10th-grade dropout
who knocked around as a driver for a funeral home and a stockboy before he
became involved with the Genovese and Colombo families.
He received his button from the
Bonannos in 1977 and embarked on a lifetime of crime.
But Garaufis said Lino appeared
to be truly remorseful for the acts of violence in his “past life.”