The clutching hand?

I did nothing but read when I was in the hospital. I needed to take my mind off of my predicament so I had to transport myself into another place and time.

One of the best books that I read was "The First Family" by Mike Dash. It was about the first real Mafia family in America which was the Morello/Terranova family of Harlem. They were the people of the famous murder barrel and the murder stable and a bunch of murders. Mainly counterfeiters they ran everything from around 1890 to 1918. A good run.

The main bad guy was Giuseppe Morello who was called the clutching hand because of his withered arm from when he was a kid in Sicily. According to the book he was the "Boss of Bosses" for a good portion of the beginning of the last century. When he got out of prison he was smart enough not to try to get his old spot back but became consigliore to Joe "The Boss" Masseria who is usually where most people start when they talk about the origins of the Mafia.

You find out about immigrant life and the gangs of New York and the Black Hand and lots of really interesting stuff. I highly recommend it to fans of the Mafia.

Hey you can't help who your kids marry ya know! Let alone their freakin' in laws!

New York Post (December 20, 2008)

By KATI CORNELL

The former acting boss of the Colombo crime family has been charged with orchestrating a hit on an off-duty NYPD officer - because the cop had married the mobster's ex-wife.
Joel "Joe Waverly" Cacace ordered a two-man hit team to gun down Police Officer Ralph Dols as he climbed out of his car outside his home in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on Aug. 25, 1997, according to an indictment unsealed in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.
"They ambushed Officer Dols and shot him repeatedly outside his Brooklyn home and left him to die in the street," David Cardona, head of the FBI's criminal division in New York, said of the accused gunmen, Colombo wiseguys Dino Calabro and Dino Saracino.
The plot was hatched "merely because Dols was married to Cacace's ex-wife," Cardona said as authorities announced the results of the 11-year investigation by feds and the NYPD.
Dols, 28, was Kimberly Kennaugh's third husband, and the second one to be murdered - a dark history that earned her the moniker "Black Widow."
She and Dols had been married about a year when he died, leaving behind an infant daughter.
Cacace, 67, whose marriage to Kennaugh was almost as brief, is now serving 20 years behind bars on a separate conviction.

I thought about this case when the press was yapping about Bristol Palin's mother in law getting arrested for drugs. When I was growing up you would often run into young ladies whose relatives were "connected." If you were smart you stayed away. If you were dumb you could get in a lot of trouble. See if you were a civilian with a good job the dad or the uncle was very pleased with you. But then they would come to you for favors.

I knew this guy that was on Wall St that started dating the daughter of a made guy. He would pump my friend for information about stocks and how you sell them and market them. This was in the first big boom in the early eighties. This guy decides to set up a boiler room and forces my friend to quit and become the president of the company. They did a lot of pumping and dumping and a lot of penny stock deals. When it all fell apart like it always did my buddy got left holding the bag.

He couldn't say anything because you know, they would of killed him. Plus the girl that was his wife by then divorced him. So he got a royal screwing. What can you say. I told you so. He knew it was fucked up from the start but he had no way out. He did his time, kept his mouth shut and is happily married to someone else and owns a sandwich shop.

You can't help who your kids in-laws are sometimes. Even when you know it is going to end badly there is really nothing you can do.

(Bonus points if you can identify the photo)