Summary of Jerry Capeci & Tom Robbins's Mob Boss

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 On September 21, 1991, FBI agent Robert Marston received a call at his house from an operator with the bureau’s New York switchboard. The caller was involved in an investigation into an illegal landfill. He wanted Marston to speak to someone named Al D’Arco.

#2 The agent was eventually able to speak to Al D’Arco, and the two began talking about the landfill case. D’Arco said people had tried to kill him, and he wanted to retaliate. He said he had weapons at his disposal, and was prepared for anything that happened.

#3 Marston spoke with D’Arco for several minutes, explaining that he was from upstate New York and that he worked for the FBI. He tried to keep his voice as normal as possible, as though he were talking to a neighbor at the church fair he would soon miss.

#4 Marston called his partner, Jim O’Connor, and told him about the plan. You’re kidding, said O’Connor. I thought maybe someone was kidding me. Marston made a few more calls to agents he knew would be eager to interrupt their Saturday nights for a mission like this.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822523067

IRB Media

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Insights on Jerry Capeci & Tom Robbins's Mob Boss

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

On September 21, 1991, FBI agent Robert Marston received a call at his house from an operator with the bureau’s New York switchboard. The caller was involved in an investigation into an illegal landfill. He wanted Marston to speak to someone named Al D’Arco.

#2

The agent was eventually able to speak to Al D’Arco, and the two began talking about the landfill case. D’Arco said people had tried to kill him, and he wanted to retaliate. He said he had weapons at his disposal, and was prepared for anything that happened.

#3

Marston spoke with D’Arco for several minutes, explaining that he was from upstate New York and that he worked for the FBI. He tried to keep his voice as normal as possible, as though he were talking to a neighbor at the church fair he would soon miss.

#4

Marston called his partner, Jim O’Connor, and told him about the plan. You’re kidding, said O’Connor. I thought maybe someone was kidding me. Marston made a few more calls to agents he knew would be eager to interrupt their Saturday nights for a mission like this.

#5

The highest-ranking member of the Mafia ever to defect to the government was Al D’Arco, a Brooklyn-born gangster who had been running a pair of restaurants and overseeing his family’s extensive holdings. He was terrified of the new world he was entering, but he was certain of the fate awaiting him if he stayed where he was.

#6

Al D’Arco was the first Mafia defector, but he was not the only one. A handful of other mob members had made the same abrupt turn in their careers, including a trio of mob captains and a small squad of soldiers. But D’Arco was different from the others because he had no pending legal matters against him.

#7

Al D’Arco was the most significant cooperating witness in the history of the FBI. He was a walking crime encyclopedia, but he was also a murderer. He confessed his own role in a dozen killings and the unfulfilled murder plots against many more.

#8

When Al D’Arco took the stand as a government witness, he was asked how he became involved in the mob. It was always around my neighborhood, in my family, he said.

#9

The Navy Street Gang was a group of men who controlled the streets of north Brooklyn in the 1940s. They were notorious for their assassination and gambling activities, but they had powerful connections that allowed them to avoid prosecution.

#10

The family had to find a godfather for Sonny, as Joseph’s had for him. They chose Anna D’Arco’s brother Leo, who had to die before Thanksgiving of that year.

#11

Sonny’s family moved a lot during Sonny’s childhood, because landlords would give them free rent if they signed a new lease. They eventually settled in Brooklyn, at 961 Kent Avenue, between DeKalb and Willoughby Avenues.

#12

The area around the Navy Yard was home to flophouses, tenements, diners, pawnshops, and bars. The Navy Street Gang extorted money from vendors who sold fruits and vegetables from pushcarts.

#13

During the war, the neighborhood across from Casa D’Arco was home to a massive seven-story manufacturing plant that produced wooden frames for army trucks. The wood was used to fuel the furnace in the basement, which kept the building warm.

#14

Sonny’s father, Giuseppe D’Arco, was born in Italy in 1914. He arrived in New York with his mother and brother in 1914. They started a small fabric-dyeing business, which they ran together.

#15

Sonny was pressed into service as well, before and after school. He would be threading giant spools of cotton next to some open barrels of caustic soda or hydrogen cyanide, the stuff they used to bleach and dye the threads.

#16

Joe D’Arco rented out the space under his plant to a local bookmaker. The operation was run by a racketeer named Vincent Alo, who had grown up with Sonny’s dad. He took a liking to the little boy upstairs in the dye shop, tossing him quarters and asking him to pick up sandwiches and coffee from the deli on the corner.

#17

Sonny’s grandfather and father would take him to the movies often as a child. They would watch three shoot-em-ups, back-to-back. The audience was filled with men like his