[Preface: Don Vito Corleone's son did whack out his own brother, but that's a different matter. The hits carried out by an adult son should not be extrapolated to the father -- especially after the old man had long since keeled over dead out in the vegetable garden.]The Greatest Old Mans in History
Would Ward Cleaver ever push a button on The Beaver? Or on Wally for that matter?
Would Cliff Huxtable ever take out a contract on Theo's head?
Would Archie Bunker ever go dingbat and order a rub out of his beloved Little Girl Gloria?
Heck, even Charlie Sheen by all accounts is a decent father apart from the awful example he sets for his little shits.
[Note: I purposefully excluded from my list of best historical Old Mans both (1) Homer Simpson (whom I seem to recall trying to strangle and/or kill son Bart at various junctures during the ongoing 63-year run of "The Simpsons")...
...and (2) Tony Soprano (who may have largely left son A.J. alone but neverthesless whacked out both his own nephew Christopher and his own cousin Tony B -- recall the whole Joey Peeps fiasco referenced earlier this week).]
The "Vinny Gorgeous" Trial
Which brings us to the other Old Man pictured at the top: Dominick "Quiet Dom" Cirillo -- a former acting boss and high-ranking member of the Genovese organized crime family in New York. A videotape recording introduced in a New York courtroom this week indicates that Quiet Dom actually gave the order to whack out his own boy!
[They called him "Quiet Dom," BTW, because he tended to keep rather quiet -- it wasn't one of those Bizarro World nicknames, like calling a big fat tub of goo, "Tiny," or anything like that].
The locals in the Big Apple call it the "Vinny Gorgeous trial." In a Brooklyn federal court, former acting boss of one of the other New York crime families (the Bonannos) -- Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano -- is on trial for his life on a murder charge. (The Bonannos, BTW, were the crime family depicted in the motion picture Donnie Brasco).
This week, the jury in the case watched a videotape recording in which Vinny Gorgeous was talking to another former Bonanno acting boss -- Joseph Massino. What Vinny Gorgeous didn't realize at the time (2005) was that Massino was working with the feds and had arranged for the secret recording to take place. (It seems that Massino was willing to turn rat to avoid the death penalty on a murder rap of his own).
During the recorded conversation, Vinny Gorgeous and the rat fink Massino started talking about Quiet Dom's son, Nicholas Cirillo (whom I'll call Nicky, since there's no way he wasn't called that (sorry for the double negative)). Nicky was a lower-level gangster associate in 2004 and not yet a "made" member of La Cosa Nostra (an important fact -- read on...).
Nicky Gets Whacked Out
During that time frame, the 41-year-old Nicky reportedly got into a physical and verbal altercation with Vinny Gorgeous' son Junior (close to being "made" at the time) and Bonanno Capo Dominick Cicale (obviously a made man given his caporegime position).
Nicky vanished in 2004 and his body was never found. Suffice it to say he's either with Luka Brassi sleeping with the fishes or he's with Jimmy Hoffa trying to push up daisies through the concrete foundation of the Meadowlands stadium (allegedly).
It's widely thought that Nicky got whacked out because he had assaulted a made man (Cicale), not to mention a near-made man and son of Vinny Gorgeous (Junior). You can't do that shit. Ever seen Goodfellas?
[In that film, Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito character (not yet made) whacks out Billy Batts (a made man played by Frank Vincent) over a shoe shine boy slight, but ultimately Tommy gets whacked too for breaking the rules: Until they open the books and make you, you can't kill or even lay your hands on a "Friend of Ours."]
So we have Nicky gettin' whacked over the Cicale/Junior "row," with the only question being who gave the order? You might think it was probably Junior's daddy Vinny Gorgeous, wouldn't you?
Rats, Revelations & Videotape with Vinny Gorgeous
But not so fast! And now back to that videotape: Vinny Gorgeous and that rat Massino are talking about this very issue of who ordered Nicky's killing, and Vinny Gorgeous says to the rat (he says, he says), "That came from Dom, that came from Dom."
While it seems fairly obvious that it "came from Dom" means the order to whack Nicky came from Nicky's old man, Quiet Dom (since "is" still means "is" even after Bill Clinton), that point was only confirmed and hammered home by Massino's trial testimony this week.
When asked what Vinny Gorgeous meant by "that came from Dom," Massino testified: "I understand that he's telling me Quiet Dom killed his son." Ouch. Methinks even Slick Willie himself couldn't talk his way out of this one.
But It Wasn't Just That Damn Pesky Videotape!
There seems to be plenty of other corroborating evidence as well. First, Quiet Dom and son Nicky were reportedly "estranged." Second, Quiet Dom refused to cooperate with the cops investigating Nicky's disappearance and was reportedly "evasive" when cops questioned him about it.
Third, there's another rule in the mafia that whacking out a made man's son means that you'll get whacked -- even if you're a made man yourself. So it would have been some real serious slimeball shit between the Bonannos and Genoveses if the Bonannos' Vinny Gorgeous -- rather than the Genoveses' Quiet Dom -- had ordered Nicky to be massacred.
So what we're left with is a very strong case that Quiet Dom actually ordered the murder of his own son, as if the boy was some kind of "Bad Girlfriend." The whole thing even went down on Mother's Day 2004! I mean, Homer Simpson and Tony Soprano would have waited a month for Father's Day to roll around, at least!
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/the_mob/2011/04/22/2011-04-22_tape_in_vinny_gorgeous_trial_reveals_mob_king_dominick_quiet_dom_cirillo_oked_hi.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1379590/Quiet-Dom-mob-king-Dominick-Cirillo-OKed-murder-gangster-son-Mothers-Day.html?ITO=1490#
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