He was also facing the death penalty if convicted in a separate murder trial due to be held later that year, but after agreeing to testify against his former associates, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for both indictments in 2005.

Massino testified twice for the government, helping to win a murder conviction against his acting boss Vincent Basciano in 2011, and was resentenced to time served in 2013.

[10] After he turned state's evidence, Massino claimed his first murder victim was a Bonanno crime family associate named Tommy Zummo, whom he shot dead some time in 1969.

[14] He led a successful truck hijacking crew, with the assistance of his brother-in-law Salvatore Vitale and carjacker Duane Leisenheimer, while fencing the stolen goods and running numbers using the lunch wagon as a front.

[28] On June 14, 1977, Massino was inducted into the Bonanno family along with Anthony Spero, Joseph Chilli Jr. and a group of other men in a ceremony conducted by Carmine Galante.

The hit was approved and executed on July 12, 1979; Rastelli subsequently took full control of the family and rewarded Massino's loyalty by promoting him to capo.

[32] Following the Galante hit, Massino began jockeying for power with Dominick "Sonny Black" Napolitano, another Rastelli loyalist capo.

Both men were themselves threatened by another faction seeking to depose the absentee boss led by capos Alphonse "Sonny Red" Indelicato, Dominick "Big Trin" Trincera and Philip Giaccone.

[33] The Commission initially tried to maintain neutrality, but in 1981, Massino got word from his informants that the three capos were stocking up on automatic weapons and planning to kill the Rastelli loyalists within the Bonanno family to take complete control.

[41] Already skeptical of Napolitano's support of "Brasco",[41] Massino was deeply disturbed by the breach of security when he learned of the agent's true identity.

[44] On August 17, the former renegade Frank Lino and Steven Cannone drove Napolitano to the house of Ronald Filocomo, a Bonanno family associate, for a meeting.

[46] Benjamin "Lefty" Ruggiero, who helped Pistone formally become a Bonanno associate, was also targeted, but was arrested en route to the meeting where he was expected to be murdered.

[45] On November 23, 1981, based on information gained by Pistone's infiltration, six Bonanno mobsters, including the then-missing Napolitano, were indicted on racketeering charges and conspiracy in "the three capos" hit.

[49] On April 21, 1983, Rastelli was paroled,[21] and he and Massino ordered the murder of Bonanno capo Cesare Bonventre, the leader of the family's Sicilian faction.

[58] That year, Massino and Salvatore Vitale secured no-show jobs with the Long Island based King Caterers in exchange for protecting them from Lucchese extortion.

[64] With Rastelli in declining health, Massino was also reckoned as the operating head of the family, though consigliere Anthony "Old Man" Spero was nominally acting boss.

[65] In April 1987, Massino and Vitale went on trial for truck hijacking and conspiracy to commit the triple murder, defended by Samuel H. Dawson and Bruce Cutler respectively.

[25][67] During Massino's imprisonment at Talladega Federal Prison for his 1986 conviction, Vitale functioned as his messenger, effectively becoming co-acting boss alongside Spero.

Like many mafiosi, he was angered at family namesake Joseph Bonanno's tell-all autobiography, A Man of Honor, and regarded it as a violation of the code of omertà.

[96] Wary of surveillance, Massino generally avoided meeting with members of other Mafia families[74] and encouraged his crews to operate independently as well.

He convinced his bosses to lend him a pair of forensic accountants normally used in fraud investigations, believing that they could easily pinpoint conspirators in the family's money laundering schemes.

Stubing believed that the threat of long prison sentences would be sufficient to get any conspirators to turn informer, and thus make it easier to trace how the money flowed to Massino.

[109] Until 2002, the Bonannos had been the only family in the modern history of the New York Mafia (i. e., since the Castellammarese War) to have never had a made man turn informant or government witness.

[143] Massino subsequently claimed he decided to turn informer due to the prospect of his wife and mother having to forfeit their houses to the government.

[147] It also marked the second time in a little more than a year that a New York boss had reached a plea bargain; Gigante had pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice charges in 2003 after prosecutors unmasked his long charade of feigning insanity.

[150] Massino also reported that Vincent Basciano, arrested in November, had conspired to kill prosecutor Greg Andres, but after failing a polygraph test regarding the discussion he agreed to wear a wire[broken anchor] when meeting the acting boss in jail.

[151] While Massino was unable to extract an unambiguous confession regarding Andres, he did record Basciano freely admit to ordering the murder of associate Randolph Pizzolo.

[155] Further confirmation of Massino's defection came in February as he was identified as the source for the graveyard,[156] then in May when the Justice Department dropped the threat of the death penalty regarding the Sciascia case.

"[3] Massino testified again in the 2012 extortion trial of Genovese capo Anthony Romanello, primarily to provide background as an expert on the American Mafia.

[171] Massino lived out his final years in the Federal Witness Protection Program, residing at an upscale retirement community in the Greater Cleveland area under the alias "Ralph Rogers".