The Biggest Mafia Informant

[zengrifter]

Ex-mob boss now a devastating informant

By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer
Sun May 28, 7:03 PM ET

NEW YORK - The killers put the dead canary in the freezer. Later, their work finished, they placed the bird inside the mouth of the equally deceased Bruno Facciola.

The August 1990 mob hit followed a tip from two corrupt NYPD detectives that the Luchese family capo had turned government informant. Facciola was stabbed, shot through both eyes and shot again in the head. Then came the bird. Message: Speak no evil.

The slaying was orchestrated by a diminutive thug known to fellow Mafiosi as "Little Al." Few embraced the mob ethos more fervently than Alphonse D'Arco, a hard case from the cradle.

"I was a man when I was born," Little Al once bragged. He committed every crime except pimping and pornography, which he deemed beneath his dignity. Murders? He committed eight while rising through the Luchese ranks.

He especially despised informants. "Rats," he'd spit. He did a three-year heroin rap without opening his yap. So when word came that Facciola was singing, D'Arco arranged for his demise.

And for the canary.

Four months later, D'Arco became the Luchese boss, though not for long. His reign abruptly ended, but not in the fashion he expected: on the wrong end of a jury verdict. Or maybe a bullet.

Instead, D'Arco — disgusted by the loss of mob honor, double-crossed by men he had respected — became in 1991 what he most abhorred: a rat.

And not just any rat. Over the last 15 years, he has brought down mob bosses, underbosses, consiglieres. And he's still making inmates out of ex-accomplices today.

Little Al may be the most devastating mob informant ever.

...continued here - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060528/...made_man_sings