John Pennisi
John Pennisi is the interview subject. A very unusual former mobster. john Pennisi writes a regular blog titled Sitdown News (click to find this). He has become an accomplished author as he creates a new life outside his former life as a soldier in the Lucchese crime family.
John Pennisi and Staten Island
The Lucchese crime family has held a strong presence on Staten Island for many years. John Pennisi tells Gary how he was actually a member of the Brooklyn facion of the Lucchese family but they operated out of Staten Island. over the years, with the Mafia clan holding a clandestine initiation ritual here and numerous members of its so-called Brooklyn crew operating on the borough, a mob snitch said last week.
How John Pennisi landed in Witness Protection
John describes himself as a “cooperating witness” because he never wore a wore or “worked” undercover. He started cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation sometime after October 2018, when he walked into the Bureau’s office to share his “concerns and basically crimes that he committed. That was just the beginning of his sharing the secret information about the Lucchese crime family and other New York City mobsters.
www.sitdownnews.com
Here is some information he wrote about:
SECRET INITIATION
Pennisi said he became a member of the Lucchese family in 2013, during a secret initiation ceremony at a house on Staten Island on his wife’s birthday.
Matty Madonna, the acting boss of the Lucchese family, presided over the ceremony, he said. In the darkness of a basement, Pennisi sat in front of a table.
“There was a gun, a knife, there was a picture of a saint, an ashtray, a lighter, and like a diabetic pin, needle to check your blood,” said Pennisi.
Below are some interesting titles of his blog pieces
The Fashion Of Cosa Nostra
Bonanno Wiseguy Falsely Makes Himself A Boss
Nefarious Way of Johnny Sideburns
“A Mob Handbook,”
Below are some excerpts from his blog
A clueless La Cosa Nostra candidate John (Butch) Arpino allegedly seeks advice from Pennisi on how one wiseguy should let another know that he too is a wiseguy.
When Pennisi repeats the curious inquiry to John (Johnny Sideburns) Cerrella, a then-acting Lucchese captain, the boss shakes his head and says, “It is truly unbelievable, a guy like that got no business [becoming a made man]. What’s it come to? They now gotta hand them a f–king handbook after they straighten them out!”
“The Gotti Chaperone Ended Up with a Broken Bone” documents a circa-2000 snafu involving the Gotti family. Peter Gotti accompanied his niece, Victoria, on a trip to see her father, Gambino godfather John Gotti, in the federal pen at Marion, Ill. After the visit, Uncle Pete ordered a longtime associate to chaperone his niece, who wanted to take in a movie.
“No harm was done, just two adults enjoying a night at the movies,” Pennisi writes. However, days later, Victoria’s hotheaded Gambino capo husband, Carmine (Bull) Agnello, “got wind of the movie night.” He summoned the chaperone to his Jamaica junkyard and allegedly broke his arm with a baseball bat.
Show Notes by Gary Jenkins
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