going to kill her<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\nRusso and Monroe collided years after they first met at the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe. Author\u00e2s collection<\/p>\n
That ability to be present at history\u2019s most dangerous moments, but always just peripheral enough to survive, traces back to how Russo entered the mob\u2019s orbit in the first place.<\/p>\n
It began with an act of defiance. In 1955, Russo was twelve, half-crippled from childhood polio, standing on a Manhattan corner selling ballpoint pens when a stranger in an expensive suit kept stopping by, peeling off a bill and rubbing the withered arm he dragged behind him.<\/p>\n
A doorman finally explained what was happening: \u201cThat\u2019s because you\u2019re, you know, handicapped. Rubbing your gimpy part. It\u2019s good luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russo decided he\u2019d had enough. The next time the man approached, the kid pulled away and snapped, \u201cI ain\u2019t your gimp \u2026 Here\u2019s a rabbit\u2019s foot. Keep your hands off me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russo said there was reportedly a plan to film Monroe with the Kennedy brothers to have something to hold over them. Cecil Stoughton\/THA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
Instead of walking off, the man pulled out a wad of cash and peeled off two hundred-dollar bills. \u201cGive me all those pens. No more pens. From now on, you work for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Only after he left did the doorman tell Russo who he\u2019d just backtalked: Frank Costello, one of the most powerful mob bosses in New York.<\/p>\n
From that moment, Russo became Costello\u2019s courier, delivering envelopes of cash through Manhattan\u2019s underworld. \u201cCostello loved me because I was a gimp,\u201d Russo told the Post. \u201cNobody would ever think I was carrying $4,000, $5,000. But I was.\u201d<\/p>\n
On paper, Frank Sinatra owned the Cal-Neva Lodge, but Russo writes that it was really controlled by the mob. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Dressed in a sharp suit, a teenage Russo moved easily through bars, bookie joints and nightclubs.<\/p>\n
One day he was delivering envelopes at the Copacabana, watching Frank Sinatra do a soundcheck. \u201cSinatra looked at me and asked the manager, \u2018Who\u2019s this guy?,\u2019\u201d Russo recalled. \u201cHe said, \u2018That\u2019s Costello\u2019s boy.\u2019 I felt ten feet tall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russo\u2019s proximity to power came with risks. Monroe was only one node in what he frames as a larger web of hidden conspiracies, including the assassination of John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n
He writes that in November 1963, Costello sent him to New Orleans to meet with Carlos Marcello, the mob boss who controlled Louisiana and much of Texas. Russo claims he bumped into Lee Harvey Oswald coming out of Marcello\u2019s private bathroom at a restaurant days before the assassination. The House Select Committee on Assassinations later concluded that Marcello had the \u201cmotive, means, and opportunity\u201d to kill JFK, noting he could be linked to both Oswald and Jack Ruby.<\/p>\n
Russo claims to have bumped into Lee Harvey Oswald (above) days before JFK\u2019s assassination. REUTERS<\/p>\n
Costello then shipped Russo to Europe \u201cfor [his] safety\u201d in the run-up to Dallas.\u201cI was on the lam and laying low, but I hardly thought about it,\u201d he writes of the twenty-two months he spent being moved around Spain and Italy under an assumed name.<\/p>\n
In one of his book\u2019s most harrowing passages, Russo describes being ordered to attend the execution of Tony \u201cthe Ant\u201d Spilotro and his brother Michael in a Midwest basement after Spilotro\u2019s reckless violence threatened the Outfit\u2019s skim in Las Vegas. \u201cThe men with the bats were professionals and precise with their blows \u2026 shoulders, chest, legs. Everywhere but the head,\u201d he writes. \u201cThe head would be saved for last.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gag removed for a moment, Anthony looked at him and begged: \u201cGianni \u2026 tell them to stop beating Michael. He ain\u2019t done nothing. Please.\u201d Russo couldn\u2019t intervene; he simply watched as the brothers were bludgeoned to death.<\/p>\n
Russo unsuccessfully appealed to John Gotti after he got in trouble with the law and South American drug lords. Cinema Legacy Collection\/THA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
After a shooting at his Vegas club put him in trouble with both law enforcement and Colombian drug traffickers, Russo went to John Gotti for help, only to hear the Teflon Don roar with laughter and offer to buy him a one-way ticket: \u201cBecause you ain\u2019t coming back!\u201d<\/p>\n
Gotti was right to laugh. Russo was being sent to Medell\u00edn, Colombia, the heart of Pablo Escobar\u2019s cocaine empire. At Hacienda N\u00e1poles, Escobar\u2019s sprawling estate, drug money and eccentricity were indistinguishable. \u201cThe more I learned about my host, the crazier he sounded,\u201d he writes. Escobar \u201chad a ton of guns, a ton of coke, and a ton of money, but he also had a giant rubber-tipped stick for beating his hippos,\u201d a detail that reads like farce until you remember those hippos\u2019 descendants still roam Colombia today.<\/p>\n
Again, these are claims, not findings of any official inquiry, and Russo presents them in that spirit: sensational, sourced to particular individuals, and impossible to fully corroborate decades later.<\/p>\n
Russo was sent to Pablo Escobar\u2019s compound in Colombia. There, he watched the notorious drug lord (pictured) beat his hippos. ZUMA Press<\/p>\n
When asked if he worries that somebody might try to kill him for what he\u2019s revealed, Russo is dismissive. \u201cThere\u2019s nobody around now,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cEverybody\u2019s dead.\u201d<\/p>\n
He insists that he was never formally \u201cbuttoned up\u201d into any family, despite having \u201cmade [his] bones and [been] qualified to be made,\u201d and that this liminal status is precisely what allowed him to navigate between mob bosses, movie stars and politicians. \u201cI rose from quarantine in Bellevue to the World of Billionaires,\u201d he writes. \u201cI am a made man \u2014 only by God.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gianni Russo, 81, has witnessed executions, assassinations, and conspiracies spanning six decades in the underworld. But perhaps his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51256,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19808,6239,8455,9,11,10,28580,28581,28582,5637,1076],"class_list":{"0":"post-51255","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-jfk-assassination","9":"tag-mafia","10":"tag-marilyn-monroe","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-headlines","13":"tag-new-york-news","14":"tag-pablo-escobar","15":"tag-pope","16":"tag-the-godfather","17":"tag-vatican","18":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51255\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}