Tony Green, Former Bonanno Street Boss, Resides At Brooklyn Halfway House
By Ed Scarpo Saturday, October 31, 2020
Former Bonanno street boss Anthony (Tony Green) Urso, 84, now resides at the Residential Reentry Management field office in Brooklyn, according to the BOP inmate locater. His release date is June 27, 2021.
Anthony (Tony Green) Urso
We looked Urso up after a longtime source told us that Tony Green had recently been spotted in Franklin Square, Long Island.
Tony Green went away to serve a 20-year stretch for murder and racketeering while he was street boss, a promotion he got after the family's official boss, Joseph Massino, was indicted in 2003. Massino went on to flip, wear a wire, and testify against acting boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano. Newsday journalist Anthony DeStefano has written two excellent books about both Massino and Basciano, Vinny Gorgeous: The Ugly Rise And Fall Of A New York Mobster and King of the Godfathers.
Urso was tape-recorded calling for murdering the children of turncoats, arguing that it was the only way to stanch the seemingly endless flow of Bonanno defectors who were crippling the crime family at the time.
"It's gotta stop," a frustrated Urso was recorded saying during a September 13, 2003 discussion about turncoat underboss Salvatore Vitale.
"Now this one's a rat, that one says, 'Well, fuck it, if he can do it, I can do it.' You tell them, 'Whoever turns, we'll wipe your family out.' If you take one kid – I hate to say it – and do what you gotta do, they'll fucking think twice. How would Sal feel if I killed one of his kids?"
In response, former acting underboss Joseph Cammarano cautioned Urso not to do anything that could hurt the family's then official boss Massino, who at the time was awaiting trial for eight murders.
Bonanno turncoat James (Louie) Tartaglione wore the wire that recorded Urso's infamous speech. Tartaglione recorded numerous discussions with Urso and Cammarano. The recordings were part of a four-year probe that led Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn to indict 27 Bonanno wiseguys and associates for racketeering and murder in January 2004.
Federal prosecutors played Urso's tape-recorded words at the trial of Massino, the so-called Last Don who was found guilty of seven mob murders and other racketeering charges.
When they convicted Massino, the Feds seemed to be batting a thousand: thanks to significant help from turncoat associates and wiseguys, they also were able to take down the heads of two other crime families : Gambino boss Peter Gotti and acting Luchese boss Louis (Louie Bagels) Daidone.
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In January 2003, Massino was arrested and Tony Green started running the show. Urso's tenure was to short but memorable. Little is known of the man's early pre-Cosa Nostra life except that he was possibly dyslexic. He moved to New York City and eventually hooked up with the Bonanno crime family.
In the 1970s, Urso became a made man in the crew of Dominick (Sonny Black) Napolitano.
Following Napolitano's 1983 murder, Urso was put in Massino's crew. Eventually, he grew close to Massino and drove for him. By 1988, Urso likely was elevated to capo. In the 1990s, then-underboss Vitale grew increasingly jealous of Urso's new power in the family and attempted to persuade Massino to murder Urso based on fabricated accusations.
"Vitale was my biggest enemy within the family, so much so that on several occasions he attempted to have me killed by bringing false accusations against me," Urso later stated in a letter prior to his sentencing.
"These accusations were dismissed as ridiculous by Massino because he knew of the jealousy on Vitale's part, and Massino knew that I was a loyal friend to him."
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Anthony "Tony Green" Urso Bonanno crime family James "Big Louie" Tartaglione Joseph Massino
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