Steve Neavling

FBI Agent Gerard Conrad was just taking a stroll in Forest Park in Queens when he stumbled upon a meeting between top Gambino mobster Bartolomeo (Bobby) Vernace and others involved in the crime family, the New York Daily News reports.

Conrad happened to be supervising 15 agents who were investigating the crime family when he made the discovery on a warm 2006 day: “I saw three made members of the Gambino family and two associates of the family the park,” the agent said.

Conrad called for a camera, and the photos are now a critical piece of evidence in a racketeering trial, the Daily News reported.

James R. Hoffa

DETROIT — WDIV’s Kevin Dietz reports that it’s “almost a certainty” that the FBI will dig up land in Oakland Township, north of Detroit,  where an ex-mobster claims Jimmy Hoffa’s body is buried.

“Half the office wants to go today, the other half wants to wait a few weeks for better weather,” Dietz reports. “No one is saying digging would be a waste of time.”

The ex-mobster Anthony Joseph Zerilli has told the feds, who have interviewed him on several occasions, that the late mobster Tony Giacalone told him that the body was buried on the land that was once owned by ex-Detroit mob boss Jack Tocco, WDIV reports.

To read more click here.

Boston Mobster Whitey Bulger

Bulger, who had been hospitalized for chest pains, and was released earlier this week, was set to go to trial this week.

“The complexity of the case, the multiplicity of defendants, the uncovering of a corrupt relationship between Bulger and rogue agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as a number of related civil cases, have resulted in an accumulation of evidence …” the judge wrote in citing one reason for the delay, the Herald reported.

To read more click here.

Lawyers for mobster James “Whitey” Bulger are seeking more evidence to bolster their claim that the accused serial murderer was given a license to kill by the federal government, the Boston Herald reports.

Defense lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns to order the release of all relevant correspondence between the Department of Justice and the New England Organized Crime Strike Force, the Herald wrote.

“The federal government and the Department of Justice has a long-standing history of providing protection and rewards, even to murderers, if it assists them in other investigations they are interested in,” Attorney J.W. Carney Jr. stated in court papers filed Friday.

Bulger was a useful FBI informant in the government’s investigation of his rivals in the New England Mafia.

Bulger’s trial is scheduled to begin in March, the Herlad reported.

Ma Barker/ wikipedia photo

 Up for sale: Two story, lakefront Florida retreat riddled with bullets.

The suggested starting price: $1 million.

The frame house in rural Ocklawaha, about 60 miles northwest of Orlando, is where FBI agents killed legendary Ma Barker in 1935, Reuters reports.  She was the mother of some  gangsters of the Barker and was considered an accomplice to their crimes.

“It’s like walking into a time capsule in 1935. The fact that it has this extra history is a really interesting cachet,” Mark Arnold, a realtor, told Reuters.

Barker was one of the most notorious gangsters, wanted in the early 1930s for murders, kidnapping and robberies.

Steve Neavling

 Accused mobster Joseph “Mousie” Massimino is suspected of conducting Mafia business from behind closed bars, the Philadelphia Daily News reports.

Among the evidence is a letter that Massimino sent to a friend in 2005 while locked up in New Jersey’s South Woods State Prison.

The letter advises a friend to “get in touch with Michael and tell him to tell his mother to tell her husband that he better get my f—in money.”

Federal prosecutors plan to argue their case at an upcoming mob-racketeering trial.

Massimino’s attorney, Joseph Santaguida, hopes to convince a judge to keep the letter from the jury.