N.Y.Mafia

My name is Joseph Barbaro. I was born in Sicily, but I am now a citizen of America. I am 26 years old and I live in New York City. I’m going to tell you a little story about how me and my cousin’s dreams got shut down by the mob. Vito and I have always been close. We would do anything for one another. He is like my brother.
Life was great. I had the world. I had it all figured out, I had money, my own place to live, I had it all. Then Vito came to the United States. It’s like my world fell apart. We started out just robbing people and giving people a hard time. One night, Vito and I went out to rob a jewelry store on 9th street. This place was a gold mine. Had it worked out, we would be living the dream right now. But, unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out that way. The store clerk must have hit a silent alarm and before we knew it we had the cops on us. I jumped the fence and Vito threw me the jewelry. I heard the cops yell freeze or I will shoot. I kept running but Vito didn’t make it in time. They caught him and gave him a choice. They would ether send him to prison for 15 years or send him to fight in the war. He chose the war.
While Vito was in the war, I started to the harder work in the mafia to work my way up the ladder. I figured I could get him up with me once he’s back from the war. I had to start doing bigger stuff though. Federal crimes. Forging money, and things like that, all the way up to killing people. I wasn’t too bad though. I probably only killed seven people. But I had to rob a lot of people and places. It wasn’t easy, but I had to do it.
It was good once he was out, but I was about to get made. When I did we would completely wreck New York. This is amazing. Vito couldn’t ever get made though. He wasn’t fully Italian. When I get made, Vito was going to be my right hand man. It was great. Everywhere we went, they knew who we were. It was like living a dream. I loved it and so did Vito. We were both living the good life.
We were living a little too well. We were getting into drug trade. We just wanted to try. We only did little stuff. Nothing huge. We only did this for a little while. It bringing in very much. It just wasn’t worth it.
A few months went past. We ended up buying a bar. It was a pretty big bar. It brought in a lot of money. The name was Vincent Ducati. This was a hangout place for crime bosses. They came, drank, gambled, just having a good time. Nothing bad happened. Then one night, a fight broke out. I didn’t think it was bad at first, but it turned out that there were quite a few gang members in there at that time. Guns came out and it got ugly. It turned into a big crime scene. Three people died and seven more got shot. It wasn’t good. Turns out the fight broke out because of the gangs. The cops were all over us for having an unsafe public place. I don’t know how but we made it through it. The cops never found out anything about the business we do. It was too close for comfort. We had a bunch more cameras installed and metal detectors and all that but we still didn’t like it. The cops closed us down though.
“Jump in my car, I have to talk to you,” I said. Vito got in my car.
“We need to talk about what we’re going to do next.” Vito looked focused. This was going to be the biggest thing we have ever done. My driver was going pretty fast. We were going to my house. The biggest crime bosses were coming in to talk about drugs being imported from Cuba. We got out of the drug business but we couldn’t resist on this one. This was big. All the crime bosses were going into this Marriot and we were going to kill them all. This is the only way it would work for us.
It was all ready to go. It was about four in the morning. It was me, Vito, Mikey, Luca, and Sonny. It was about to happen. It was about five once we got all set up. We parked in the parking garage. We were now in the hotel. It was dark and cold. We were using flashlights. We were all dressed in black. Mikey and Luca stayed in the car. We decided to get suits to look like we were window cleaners. We went outside and got into the lift. We went up to the top floor were the bosses were going to meet and we waited. The bosses came in and they sat around this big long table. Once they were all there, we opened fire from outside of the window. It just turned into a big gun fight. I didn’t really expect anything else. I don’t really remember but at some point we jumped through the window and flipped over a table for cover. We caught them by surprise so we got a bunch of them but the rest unfortunately made it and got away. They didn’t make it too far though. The fight went into the hall and we got them with our Tommy guns. Once everyone was done, it was looking pretty good for us so we wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. We ran down to the garage. We found the sight that the car was blown up and Mikey and Luca didn’t make it. I was a wreck. These were my brothers. I have grown up with those two. But anyway, I couldn’t get held up now. We needed to leave so we got another car and left.
We didn’t do anything for awhile, making the police think that we were out of the country. I was still a wreck because of Mikey and Luca. I didn’t know what to do anymore. They were seriously brothers. We couldn’t believe that we made it alone. I guess Frankie said it best, “That’s life.” It was kind of a scary thing. To know that we took down the entire New York mob by ourselves was really something powerful.
After that came the 50s there was still the mob but it was too hard the government and the cops were getting too involved and started arresting other bosses that emerged. The 50’s were a good time for me and Vito. I had a kid and started to get out of the mob life more and we were still on top of New York but it was like we were wise old guys and all the young bosses looked up to us and didn’t mess with us or our connections or anything. It was really the golden years for us.
The 60’s rolled around and we just couldn’t keep up anymore. Plus the mob was kind of disappearing so we just retired. A few years later, my kid was in a car accident. He didn’t make it. He did nothing wrong. He stopped at the red light and started to go but somebody T-Boned his driver side. The other guy lived. But not for long. This guy basically ruined my life and he took my kids life. It was time for him to die. So I killed him. I was so devastated I felt like dying. I still am devastated. Vito went to Florida, had a house on the shore, and had a wife and two kids. They became lawyers and were big in the OJ Simpson case. They are practically famous for that.
Other than my kid getting killed, me and my wife are living a happy life. Although I have to live with the stuff I did in the N.Y. mafia. Sometime I can’t sleep at night or have nightmares about the stuff I did to get rich, sometimes I think I see people that I killed walking the street, sometimes it’s hard to be friends with anybody. It is hard to even live anymore and I thank god that Vito’s kids don’t have that same life.
That is the story of my life in the mob and how I became rich. I became rich by gambling and loan sharking and killing people. I feed off the fear of others and made them pay for what they have done. Still though, don’t screw with me. I will still kill you. But however, I won’t just do it for money anymore. I came to America for a better life but found out it comes with consequences. It is hard to just work for it. That would be why they say that the working man’s a sucker. Sometimes when I lie awake in bed I ask myself would I do it again and my answer is always, and always will be…..No.
The End